5 ms·

It would more be like if food safety inspections were optional, but only restaurants that opt in would be allowed to show a sign they were inspected either phys

It would more be like if food safety inspections were optional, but only restaurants that opt in would be allowed to show a sign they were inspected either physically or on their web page. It would be trivial to be able to check for this. Door dash would show a sign saying which restaurant is safe to avoid being sued after an incident. If you think restaurants and food safety is a good analogy it’s not a good argument for Apple in my opinion.

judge2020 5y ago
Apple is still the food inspector in this situation, and epic wants an App Store without any apple oversight - I doubt they allow a notarization-type system to be the outcome of this court case.
azinman2 5y ago
Except now there isn’t just 1 inspector, but many. And you have to figure out which you trust. Now imagine there’s a very popular restaurant, but it uses an inspector you don’t know if you trust. But you want to eat the food because all your friends are already there… so you’ll go. This is exactly what would happen— various companies once they reach a certain size will just want to have their own store because either it makes them more money or they have less restrictions. Just look at Facebook and the new 14.5 privacy features that are cutting into their ability to collect data. If you let FB the chance to pull out, they’d do it in a heartbeat knowing they could easily force everyone to install their App Store… which would have 0 privacy restrictions and far less oversight (just look at the Cambridge Analytica scandal for how FB might run an App Store). Given Apple mostly makes money selling hardware, they’re the best incentivized to protect its user base. Disclaimer: I work for Apple but all views my own.
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  Apple could still limit the APIs that are available to developers.
  - azinman2 5y ago
    But if there’s no Apple App Store, you not only can’t prevent private APIs from being used (or abused), but you certainly can’t prevent cross—app tracking and a whole host of other issues.
    - Karunamon 5y ago
      Well.. you could still limit certain APIs to official "app store" signatures, and in fact I guarantee that Apple will take this tactic and it will take further legal wrangling to deal with the overstepping they will no doubt do. And on a more base level, Apple has overplayed their hand for far too long for me to be very sympathetic to their arguments. The app store is still loaded with scams, they still deny things for arbitrary and inconsistent reasons with little-to-no explanation, and they've had years to clean this up. It's not 2007 anymore. Apple isn't acting in good faith. They do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.
      - cmorgan31 5y ago
        Do you believe any large store front acts in good faith? You are inviting less privacy into the room at the expense of money for other people. It’s a bit crazy that we think Apple would somehow be able to limit cross app tracking after being forced to allow side loading and independent app stores. Hey let’s make this one bad actor allow in the rest! It’s not fair that they get to make the rules for the rest of us, we also want to act in bad faith!
        Karunamon 5y ago
        What I am inviting into the room is the ability of people to run what they wish on hardware that belongs to them. This argument that general purpose devices used by an appreciable amount of the general public must be arbitrarily locked down and beholden entirely to the arbitrary, often greed-based whims of multinational, multi-billion-dollar tech corporations because tech-illiterate grown-ass adults might hurt themselves on sharp edges is both paternalistic and offensive, and I'm really quite over it. Make the unlocking process something equivalent to rooting a modern android device (something that requires PC software, terminal commands, a number of steps on the phone, and a data wipe - i.e. something absolutely nobody will do accidentally and vanishingly few will do just because Facebook told them to) and both concerns are allayed. This isn't some dichotomy, and treating it as such is playing right into the hands of the tech corps. This "for your own protection" thing is marketing. We already know that no principles are in play. Besides, mitigating forced obsolescence (and so, e-waste, carbon footprint, etc) is more important than Facebook getting another data point from a minority of users, and this can be addressed legislatively anyways.
- paulmd 5y ago
  facebook literally already got their hand slapped for abusing the very limited sideloading mechanisms that Apple already provided. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-offered-gift-cards-for-root-level-access-to-ios-users-data/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-... This would generalize that and allow them to sideload for everyone. They straight-up would pull out of the app store, block Safari users from the website, and force everyone to sideload a tracker build on day 1.
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    Facebook’s apps have significantly more access than their website does, but they still allow users to use the web to access their services.
  - ric2b 5y ago
    > and allow them to sideload for everyone. They straight-up would pull out of the app store, block Safari users from the website, and force everyone to sideload a tracker build on day 1. I don't understand how people can come up with these crazy hypotheticals when Android has allowed side-loading since forever.
    - spiderice 5y ago
      Android allows FB to track people, so why would FB have the need to side load an app on Android? Whereas Apple recently stopped allowing FB to track people in a big way. I'm not saying the hypothetical is likely to happen, but your argument makes absolutely no sense in this case.
- jay_kyburz 5y ago
  We'll I think now we are talking about the government reviewing apps for the app store. By the people for the people.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  > Given Apple mostly makes money selling hardware Sadly, it looks like they’re trying to diversify away from this, and every time they do we see misaligned incentives that cause them to do the wrong things.
- kmonsen 5y ago
  To be clear I am not saying Apple are wrong here (and they are clearly my own views and not my employer's), but I don't think the food analogy is great. People can still use the Apple app store if they want to, I guess the key thing here is they don't really though, they would rather save a bit of money. Or at least that is what everyone here (well at least Apple I guess) thinks. And the want to eat with your friends argument is also not good I think, I can't see why crossplay would not work regardless of which store you bought the app/game in.

judge2020 5y ago

Apple is still the food inspector in this situation, and epic wants an App Store without any apple oversight - I doubt they allow a notarization-type system to be the outcome of this court case.

azinman2 5y ago

Except now there isn’t just 1 inspector, but many. And you have to figure out which you trust. Now imagine there’s a very popular restaurant, but it uses an inspector you don’t know if you trust. But you want to eat the food because all your friends are already there… so you’ll go. This is exactly what would happen— various companies once they reach a certain size will just want to have their own store because either it makes them more money or they have less restrictions. Just look at Facebook and the new 14.5 privacy features that are cutting into their ability to collect data. If you let FB the chance to pull out, they’d do it in a heartbeat knowing they could easily force everyone to install their App Store… which would have 0 privacy restrictions and far less oversight (just look at the Cambridge Analytica scandal for how FB might run an App Store). Given Apple mostly makes money selling hardware, they’re the best incentivized to protect its user base. Disclaimer: I work for Apple but all views my own.

frosted-flakes 5y ago
Apple could still limit the APIs that are available to developers.
- azinman2 5y ago
  But if there’s no Apple App Store, you not only can’t prevent private APIs from being used (or abused), but you certainly can’t prevent cross—app tracking and a whole host of other issues.
  - Karunamon 5y ago
    Well.. you could still limit certain APIs to official "app store" signatures, and in fact I guarantee that Apple will take this tactic and it will take further legal wrangling to deal with the overstepping they will no doubt do. And on a more base level, Apple has overplayed their hand for far too long for me to be very sympathetic to their arguments. The app store is still loaded with scams, they still deny things for arbitrary and inconsistent reasons with little-to-no explanation, and they've had years to clean this up. It's not 2007 anymore. Apple isn't acting in good faith. They do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.
    - cmorgan31 5y ago
      Do you believe any large store front acts in good faith? You are inviting less privacy into the room at the expense of money for other people. It’s a bit crazy that we think Apple would somehow be able to limit cross app tracking after being forced to allow side loading and independent app stores. Hey let’s make this one bad actor allow in the rest! It’s not fair that they get to make the rules for the rest of us, we also want to act in bad faith!
      - Karunamon 5y ago
        What I am inviting into the room is the ability of people to run what they wish on hardware that belongs to them. This argument that general purpose devices used by an appreciable amount of the general public must be arbitrarily locked down and beholden entirely to the arbitrary, often greed-based whims of multinational, multi-billion-dollar tech corporations because tech-illiterate grown-ass adults might hurt themselves on sharp edges is both paternalistic and offensive, and I'm really quite over it. Make the unlocking process something equivalent to rooting a modern android device (something that requires PC software, terminal commands, a number of steps on the phone, and a data wipe - i.e. something absolutely nobody will do accidentally and vanishingly few will do just because Facebook told them to) and both concerns are allayed. This isn't some dichotomy, and treating it as such is playing right into the hands of the tech corps. This "for your own protection" thing is marketing. We already know that no principles are in play. Besides, mitigating forced obsolescence (and so, e-waste, carbon footprint, etc) is more important than Facebook getting another data point from a minority of users, and this can be addressed legislatively anyways.
paulmd 5y ago
facebook literally already got their hand slapped for abusing the very limited sideloading mechanisms that Apple already provided. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-offered-gift-cards-for-root-level-access-to-ios-users-data/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-... This would generalize that and allow them to sideload for everyone. They straight-up would pull out of the app store, block Safari users from the website, and force everyone to sideload a tracker build on day 1.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  Facebook’s apps have significantly more access than their website does, but they still allow users to use the web to access their services.
- ric2b 5y ago
  > and allow them to sideload for everyone. They straight-up would pull out of the app store, block Safari users from the website, and force everyone to sideload a tracker build on day 1. I don't understand how people can come up with these crazy hypotheticals when Android has allowed side-loading since forever.
  - spiderice 5y ago
    Android allows FB to track people, so why would FB have the need to side load an app on Android? Whereas Apple recently stopped allowing FB to track people in a big way. I'm not saying the hypothetical is likely to happen, but your argument makes absolutely no sense in this case.
jay_kyburz 5y ago
We'll I think now we are talking about the government reviewing apps for the app store. By the people for the people.
saagarjha 5y ago
> Given Apple mostly makes money selling hardware Sadly, it looks like they’re trying to diversify away from this, and every time they do we see misaligned incentives that cause them to do the wrong things.
kmonsen 5y ago
To be clear I am not saying Apple are wrong here (and they are clearly my own views and not my employer's), but I don't think the food analogy is great. People can still use the Apple app store if they want to, I guess the key thing here is they don't really though, they would rather save a bit of money. Or at least that is what everyone here (well at least Apple I guess) thinks. And the want to eat with your friends argument is also not good I think, I can't see why crossplay would not work regardless of which store you bought the app/game in.