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Allow side-loading so that you don’t leave yourself open to a situation where the only way your customers get access to a voting app is by having your employees

Allow side-loading so that you don’t leave yourself open to a situation where the only way your customers get access to a voting app is by having your employees jailed. The AppStore creates an easily exploitable bottleneck for governments to take advantage of. The hkmap.live situation during the protests in Hong Kong was similar.

tailspin2019 5y ago
As much as I like a lot of the benefits of the walled garden (from a consumer perspective, not necessarily as a developer), this is actually a very good argument for side-loading and one that I hadn't thought about before.
- saurik 5y ago
  ~4 years ago I gave a talk at Mozilla Privacy Lab (perfected from a talk I gave at 360|iDev) that focused on these moral reasons for not having centralized systems, looking at everything from government control to the tyranny of the majority, that I called "That's How you Get a Dystopia". https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms As far as I am concerned, you absolutely cannot have centralized control over something like "all software distribution" without being actively complicit with such regimes, and that people working for Apple have chosen to normalize this is unconscionably immoral :(.
  - tailspin2019 5y ago
    > As far as I am concerned, you absolutely cannot have centralized control over something like "all software distribution" without being actively complicit with such regimes Yeah that seems to distil the problem down to the fundamentals. Will watch your talk, thanks!
viktorcode 5y ago
The app is still available in other countries, so in order to install it in Russia one just have to create another Apple account to install it from a foregn app store on the device.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
  "Just" creating another Apple account means forfeiting all your data, apps, purchases etc. There are many simpler ways to access that same data, for example on navalny's website via a vpn. But all those ways are too complicated for most people.
  - viktorcode 5y ago
    That's not how it works on iOS. iCloud and App Store accounts can be switched independently. After the installation you can switch back to your main account, and all your data will still be there. Newly installed app should auto-update as well. I personally have apps from 2-3 different countries' store accounts on my Apple devices.

tailspin2019 5y ago

As much as I like a lot of the benefits of the walled garden (from a consumer perspective, not necessarily as a developer), this is actually a very good argument for side-loading and one that I hadn't thought about before.

saurik 5y ago
~4 years ago I gave a talk at Mozilla Privacy Lab (perfected from a talk I gave at 360|iDev) that focused on these moral reasons for not having centralized systems, looking at everything from government control to the tyranny of the majority, that I called "That's How you Get a Dystopia". https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms As far as I am concerned, you absolutely cannot have centralized control over something like "all software distribution" without being actively complicit with such regimes, and that people working for Apple have chosen to normalize this is unconscionably immoral :(.
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  > As far as I am concerned, you absolutely cannot have centralized control over something like "all software distribution" without being actively complicit with such regimes Yeah that seems to distil the problem down to the fundamentals. Will watch your talk, thanks!

viktorcode 5y ago

The app is still available in other countries, so in order to install it in Russia one just have to create another Apple account to install it from a foregn app store on the device.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
"Just" creating another Apple account means forfeiting all your data, apps, purchases etc. There are many simpler ways to access that same data, for example on navalny's website via a vpn. But all those ways are too complicated for most people.
- viktorcode 5y ago
  That's not how it works on iOS. iCloud and App Store accounts can be switched independently. After the installation you can switch back to your main account, and all your data will still be there. Newly installed app should auto-update as well. I personally have apps from 2-3 different countries' store accounts on my Apple devices.