5 ms·

I am deeply invested in the Apple ecosystem and yet, can’t wait for the DoJ to throw the gauntlet on the App Store. I really hope they get broken up, with the

by atonse 5y ago

I am deeply invested in the Apple ecosystem and yet, can’t wait for the DoJ to throw the gauntlet on the App Store. I really hope they get broken up, with the App Store being extracted into a separate business.

echelon 5y ago
1000%. Apple created the most anti-developer, anti-computing protection racket our industry has ever seen. They captured 50% of all American consumer computing and won't let you have a relationship with your customer, won't let you bill your customer without extracting obscene margin, make you jump through weird hoops, won't let you deploy at your cadence, and won't let you write software the way you want. This shouldn't have been allowed to happen. The closed nature of the platform is abnormal and has been anticompetitive from the start, and the DOJ fell asleep at the wheel. iPhone computing is general purpose computing and commerce. It's not video game toys. All platforms like this should be open like Microsoft Windows. Make no question. Apple's stance is about capturing every ingress to American consumers they possibly can so that they can tax it. They're fleecing American companies. DOJ has one action to take: Force Apple and Google to allow web-based installs of any software (including non-Safari web browsers!) and prevent both companies from running any form of required payment gateway.
- orbz 5y ago
  On one hand, the developer in me agrees with you that it does make life harder. On the other hand, as a consumer I've found that I'd rather not trust developers to write software however they want. I want them to have restrictions on how much of my stuff they can access, how they can update their software and how much of a blast radius there would be from messing something up.
  - echelon 5y ago
    Life is hairy and complicated. Every day millions of Americans jump into death chariots and we expect them to mostly be fine. We should not err on the side of creating a locked down Fisher Price playpen for consumers. Not at the expense of our freedoms and the rest of our industry. Think about how much damage this has done to innovation because costs are redirected to Apple's coffers rather than putting more engineers behind novel ideas. Apple is sitting on mountains -- a continental shelf -- of opportunity cost. What a waste.
  - izacus 5y ago
    Those two things are not fully related. Apple could (and to some extend does) design a system that keeps YOU in control without being an anti-competitive platform that prevents competition in non-OS / non-platform markets. Preinstalling and pushing Apple Music / iCloud (not to mention giving it private entitlements the competitors can't use) is not related to the iOS security model by itself. There's also no reason that the curator of your app store has to be the same entity that sold you your hardware - there are plenty of even more trustworthy organizations and people that could create curated stores which might be even more relevant than AppStore haphazard and inconsistent curation. Imagine if AppStore could just be a framework where you can choose curators you trust more than a Californian megacorp.
    - judge2020 5y ago
      I don't think that's possible if your goal is zero (system-altering) malware - pretty much all (with the exception of checkra1n) recent iOS releases have had a jailbreak that works by chaining exploits to break out of the app sandbox and can be installed via just signing an IPA, gain root and install Cydia/other dpkg frontends. Without the app store you would see these making their way to things people can download, just in the form of 'free vbucks' or other illegitimate apps that silently alter the system to install system-wide adware that replaces ads in other apps with their own.
      - izacus 5y ago
        You're again mistaking security and software safety for anticompetitive business practices. Apple loves to mix this too - after all, their marketing is spending a lot of money persuading it that those two are related. They're not. Even currently, AppStore is not without malware, so they have failed at that goal and us users have paid too great of a price by distortion of no.1 tenement that makes capitalism a functioning and decent system to live in: competition. It's like an abused wife being afraid to run away from her husband because she thinks he's the only one that can protect her.
        awillen 5y ago
  - Steltek 5y ago
    You don't need control of the app store to do that.
  - jclardy 5y ago
    > how they can update their software I agree on all your points except this one. The App Store update process has grown long in the tooth. It was fine for the first 5 years or so, then they added auto-update, great. But now 10 years in it is still all or nothing. Either the OS allows all apps to auto-upgrade, or you do it yourself. There is no way to "remove" an app from the update list if you want to keep an old version. There is no way to ever go back to an old version if you accidentally upgrade. Backing up an old version of an app requires a Mac to extract the binary. Each app already has it's own settings screen, why not add an "auto-update" toggle to each (And by default it gets your system-wide setting.) And from the developer side - no way to have paid upgrades, unless you release the "new" version as a separate app with a bundle discount alongside the old version. So instead you get either more apps moving to subscriptions, or more abandoned apps because the developer can't support free updates.
  - Drew_ 5y ago
    > I want them to have restrictions on how much of my stuff they can access, how they can update their software and how much of a blast radius there would be from messing something up. The OS already does this for you, no software distribution monopoly (App Store) needed. This idea that an App Store is the only path to security is FUD. If allowing 3rd party app distribution on iOS actually did allow some sort of destruction of iOS user's privacy and security, then iOS is clearly garbage.
actuator 5y ago
App Store should be just the start. Mobile web for more than 50% of the US users is also restricted to Apple's whims. They should be forced to allow competing browser engines(not just skins on Safari engine) on the platform. If Microsoft couldn't even bundle IE on Windows, it should be possible to make an alternative browser(along with engines) for iOS.
- causality0 5y ago
  Looking back on Microsoft in the 90s they seem almost childish. If the Apple/Google duopoly had existed forty years ago the government would have smashed both companies into dozens of pieces.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    I don't dispute that the regulatory climate has become far less responsive over the decades, but why forty years ago- during the Reagan administration?
- handrous 5y ago
  Be careful what you wish for. Safari's forced presence on the most lucrative mobile platform is the reason we don't, for all practical purposes, have only one browser engine, period, now. Which is something only nerds like us care about on a technical level, so I don't think the typical user is harmed or bothered by all browsers on iOS sharing an engine, but the social harm of Google 100% owning the Web would reach beyond us. [EDIT] Incidentally, I see the fact that there's an angle for this being beneficial as a comment on the beyond-terrible state of privacy legislation and anti-trust enforcement in the US, same as the reasons that the App Store is a good thing (by which I mean, the worst things it forbids should just be illegal, and those restrictions enforced everywhere)
  - actuator 5y ago
    While your concern is genuine, Apple almost has 60% of the active mobile device market share(according to Statcounter). I think my concern is two fold. - Apple holds the gateway to both App Store and Web(through standard support). Having worked on web apps in the past, I truly admire the amazing distribution capability the web provides. I can spin up an obscure Linux distro and my web app works on it as long as a browser with good standard support is available. This gives platforms parity at some level and doesn't concentrate the power in the hands of a single platform. I would want most apps to be just web apps. - If Apple's marketshare keeps on increasing like it has been, we might run into a situation where just one company controls your hardware, OS, services and even web. This is way more scary.

by atonse 5y ago

echelon 5y ago

1000%. Apple created the most anti-developer, anti-computing protection racket our industry has ever seen. They captured 50% of all American consumer computing and won't let you have a relationship with your customer, won't let you bill your customer without extracting obscene margin, make you jump through weird hoops, won't let you deploy at your cadence, and won't let you write software the way you want. This shouldn't have been allowed to happen. The closed nature of the platform is abnormal and has been anticompetitive from the start, and the DOJ fell asleep at the wheel. iPhone computing is general purpose computing and commerce. It's not video game toys. All platforms like this should be open like Microsoft Windows. Make no question. Apple's stance is about capturing every ingress to American consumers they possibly can so that they can tax it. They're fleecing American companies. DOJ has one action to take: Force Apple and Google to allow web-based installs of any software (including non-Safari web browsers!) and prevent both companies from running any form of required payment gateway.

orbz 5y ago
On one hand, the developer in me agrees with you that it does make life harder. On the other hand, as a consumer I've found that I'd rather not trust developers to write software however they want. I want them to have restrictions on how much of my stuff they can access, how they can update their software and how much of a blast radius there would be from messing something up.
- echelon 5y ago
  Life is hairy and complicated. Every day millions of Americans jump into death chariots and we expect them to mostly be fine. We should not err on the side of creating a locked down Fisher Price playpen for consumers. Not at the expense of our freedoms and the rest of our industry. Think about how much damage this has done to innovation because costs are redirected to Apple's coffers rather than putting more engineers behind novel ideas. Apple is sitting on mountains -- a continental shelf -- of opportunity cost. What a waste.
- izacus 5y ago
  Those two things are not fully related. Apple could (and to some extend does) design a system that keeps YOU in control without being an anti-competitive platform that prevents competition in non-OS / non-platform markets. Preinstalling and pushing Apple Music / iCloud (not to mention giving it private entitlements the competitors can't use) is not related to the iOS security model by itself. There's also no reason that the curator of your app store has to be the same entity that sold you your hardware - there are plenty of even more trustworthy organizations and people that could create curated stores which might be even more relevant than AppStore haphazard and inconsistent curation. Imagine if AppStore could just be a framework where you can choose curators you trust more than a Californian megacorp.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    I don't think that's possible if your goal is zero (system-altering) malware - pretty much all (with the exception of checkra1n) recent iOS releases have had a jailbreak that works by chaining exploits to break out of the app sandbox and can be installed via just signing an IPA, gain root and install Cydia/other dpkg frontends. Without the app store you would see these making their way to things people can download, just in the form of 'free vbucks' or other illegitimate apps that silently alter the system to install system-wide adware that replaces ads in other apps with their own.
    - izacus 5y ago
      You're again mistaking security and software safety for anticompetitive business practices. Apple loves to mix this too - after all, their marketing is spending a lot of money persuading it that those two are related. They're not. Even currently, AppStore is not without malware, so they have failed at that goal and us users have paid too great of a price by distortion of no.1 tenement that makes capitalism a functioning and decent system to live in: competition. It's like an abused wife being afraid to run away from her husband because she thinks he's the only one that can protect her.
      - awillen 5y ago
- Steltek 5y ago
  You don't need control of the app store to do that.
- jclardy 5y ago
  > how they can update their software I agree on all your points except this one. The App Store update process has grown long in the tooth. It was fine for the first 5 years or so, then they added auto-update, great. But now 10 years in it is still all or nothing. Either the OS allows all apps to auto-upgrade, or you do it yourself. There is no way to "remove" an app from the update list if you want to keep an old version. There is no way to ever go back to an old version if you accidentally upgrade. Backing up an old version of an app requires a Mac to extract the binary. Each app already has it's own settings screen, why not add an "auto-update" toggle to each (And by default it gets your system-wide setting.) And from the developer side - no way to have paid upgrades, unless you release the "new" version as a separate app with a bundle discount alongside the old version. So instead you get either more apps moving to subscriptions, or more abandoned apps because the developer can't support free updates.
- Drew_ 5y ago
  > I want them to have restrictions on how much of my stuff they can access, how they can update their software and how much of a blast radius there would be from messing something up. The OS already does this for you, no software distribution monopoly (App Store) needed. This idea that an App Store is the only path to security is FUD. If allowing 3rd party app distribution on iOS actually did allow some sort of destruction of iOS user's privacy and security, then iOS is clearly garbage.

actuator 5y ago

App Store should be just the start. Mobile web for more than 50% of the US users is also restricted to Apple's whims. They should be forced to allow competing browser engines(not just skins on Safari engine) on the platform. If Microsoft couldn't even bundle IE on Windows, it should be possible to make an alternative browser(along with engines) for iOS.

causality0 5y ago
Looking back on Microsoft in the 90s they seem almost childish. If the Apple/Google duopoly had existed forty years ago the government would have smashed both companies into dozens of pieces.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  I don't dispute that the regulatory climate has become far less responsive over the decades, but why forty years ago- during the Reagan administration?
handrous 5y ago
Be careful what you wish for. Safari's forced presence on the most lucrative mobile platform is the reason we don't, for all practical purposes, have only one browser engine, period, now. Which is something only nerds like us care about on a technical level, so I don't think the typical user is harmed or bothered by all browsers on iOS sharing an engine, but the social harm of Google 100% owning the Web would reach beyond us. [EDIT] Incidentally, I see the fact that there's an angle for this being beneficial as a comment on the beyond-terrible state of privacy legislation and anti-trust enforcement in the US, same as the reasons that the App Store is a good thing (by which I mean, the worst things it forbids should just be illegal, and those restrictions enforced everywhere)
- actuator 5y ago
  While your concern is genuine, Apple almost has 60% of the active mobile device market share(according to Statcounter). I think my concern is two fold. - Apple holds the gateway to both App Store and Web(through standard support). Having worked on web apps in the past, I truly admire the amazing distribution capability the web provides. I can spin up an obscure Linux distro and my web app works on it as long as a browser with good standard support is available. This gives platforms parity at some level and doesn't concentrate the power in the hands of a single platform. I would want most apps to be just web apps. - If Apple's marketshare keeps on increasing like it has been, we might run into a situation where just one company controls your hardware, OS, services and even web. This is way more scary.