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> Sideloading would "hurt competition and discourage innovation" by making it "much harder" to protect the privacy and security of personal devices in the Unite

> Sideloading would "hurt competition and discourage innovation" by making it "much harder" to protect the privacy and security of personal devices in the United States, according to Apple. Taking Apple at their word here, I still don't get it. Can anyone explain the argument they're trying to make? As written it just sounds so ridiculous (but I'm still trying to understand it).

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Can anyone explain the argument they're trying to make? If Facebook removes their app from the App Store (or cripples it), and says you have to side load this app, most Americans will do so. Even if that app violates a number of user-friendly policies. The OS, of course, could enforce that at a technical level, which weakens the argument significantly. Also lots of people will click links and side load spam apps, but that’s par for the course.
- zepto 5y ago
  > The OS, of course, could enforce that at a technical level, which weakens the argument significantly. This is simply not true. An app can lie about what it does, and nothing at a technical level can prevent that.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > An app can lie about what it does, and nothing at a technical level can prevent that I was thinking of the tracking restrictions when I wrote this. The OS simply doesn’t give the app the data.
    - zepto 5y ago
      It’s much harder than that to prevent fingerprinting, or the use of legitimate APIs for illegitimate purposes. In any case the idea that you can achieve privacy and security solely through managing APIs is simply false.
  - echelon 5y ago
    Apple doesn't have the authority to shut down Meta's business. Only our congress, department of justice, and the governments of foreign markets have this power. You can measure just how big of a monopoly the iPhone App Store is by how many billions of dollars shift with simple changes to Apple policy. As much as I hate ads and tracking, it's not Apple's right to be the sole defender of the American people. That's what laws are for. (And besides, Apple is already a direct beneficiary of all that tracking themselves. They're absolutely doing business and making decisions based on your behavior.) Too much economic activity (50+% of American computing) is happening on iPhone for Apple to be afforded the monopolistic privilege of taxing it all. Apple makes so much money from sales of their remarkable hardware, subscription services, and other incredible and highly profitable business units that they won't be at risk by giving this up. For the health of the broader industry and the enduring benefits of fair competition, Apple must relinquish the App Store monopoly. Apple will be more than okay. And they'll shift efforts that used to be spent on protectionism into true innovation.
    - phs318u 5y ago
      > it's not Apple's right to be the sole defender of the American people They're not. They are (and want to continue to be) the sole defender of Apple iDevice customers. The American people (and in fact anyone else), can choose a non-Apple device, and therefore non-Apple ecosystem. To me it all boils down to - is the app ecosystem a public commons or a private commons subject to the owner's T&C's? (for clarity - the owner is not the customer. The customer owns the device, but they do not own the ecosystem).
      - majewsky 5y ago
        If I like neither Apple nor Google, how can I realistically choose a non-Apple non-Google ecosystem? It's getting increasingly difficult to find a bank that does not require one of these 2FA apps that are only available from the Play Store or App Store (and which refuse to work on Android phones with non-standard OSs like Lineage).
        phs318u 5y ago
- olliej 5y ago
  What technical restrictions can they do? It can't be sandboxing, as the entitlements and/or existence of sandboxing for an app is enforced by the App Store, and we've just said we're not using that. It also removes privacy protections: Facebook is required to ask permission to track you on iOS. It's only required to by platform policy in the App Store license agreement. They're not using that any more, so goodbye opt-in tracking.
  - ThatPlayer 5y ago
    Why couldn't they make the entitlements enforced by the operating system with user prompts, rather than the App Store (or both)? Just because that's how it's done right now doesn't mean we're just flipping a switch and suddenly allowing everything. It's still up to Apple on how they implement it. If that's how they choose to implement it, that's on Apple.
    - olliej 5y ago
      Prompt based security has been shown to be a bad "solution" over and over again. The primary goal of which degenerates to "blame the user". Even if you do want to do that, what do you ask the user? Even the basic entitlements often require some amount of knowledge a regular user simply doesn't have. Then the law itself has rules prohibiting restrictions, and I would bet someone will claim dialog based security counts as a restriction. The law even makes it hard (impossible?) for a platform to protect even a modicum of user privacy. Section 2 (b) 3&4 explicitly prohibits a platform owner from placing restrictions on collection and use of user data.
      - ThatPlayer 5y ago
        As opposed to the current primary goal of giving all the power to Apple to decide what the user gets? And once again, that's on Apple to implement. If they choose to continue to keep entitlements in the same format, that's on them to explain it to the user. See Android, they handle permissions fine. That section doesn't place restrictions on the generation of user data, only access to generated data. So don't generate it. In my opinion that's to prevent the platform holder from getting an unfair advantage by keeping the data for themselves. If the user doesn't give permission, the device doesn't generate the data, you're not restricting access to data because it doesn't exist.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > If Facebook removes their app from the App Store (or cripples it), and says you have to side load this app, most Americans will do so. The primary reason for this is that Facebook itself has a dominant market position (network effect) and is deserving of antitrust scrutiny. "We need this evil monopoly to protect us from that evil monopoly" has a better solution in smashing them both. Notice that this argument doesn't work anywhere else. If your tetris app which is in competition with many others decides it wants to go out of Apple's store so it can spy more, nobody is following you. They'll just install one of the hundred others. To gain anyone's trust for any app that isn't a monopolist, an alternate store would have to have a similar reputation for rejecting bad apps. But then the scammers wouldn't be able to make it into any of the stores people trust. The advantage is that some of the non-scammers that Apple rejects for illegitimate reasons, would. (Or competitive pressure would cause Apple to get better at not rejecting them in order to prevent it.)
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    I don’t think I’d call Angry Birds or FarmVille or Fortnite or any other game a monopoly, but millions would sideload those.
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      Out of hundreds of millions of users. Is the game going to give up >90% of its user base? Especially when the reason for the move is obvious. If Facebook leaves the app store, and Facebook is completely free and makes money from advertising, everybody knows why they're doing it and it's to screw you out of your privacy. But you can't say no because Facebook is the only way you have to talk to your grandparents, hence the need for antitrust. If Epic Games moves Fortnite to another store because the other store charges lower fees but still has a good reputation for not allowing bad apps, likewise the reason they moved is obvious. It's to have lower fees, because Fortnite makes money by selling things in the game. Many users will be fine with that, as well they should be, because that's the point of allowing other stores. But a game doing it for the same reason as Facebook, well, they're going to lose most of their users. Because nobody needs a game that much, so the company doing it for an adversarial reason will cause large numbers of customers to tell them where to go.
- dgellow 5y ago
  Is it what is happening with Android? From what I read it’s not the case, almost every install is done via the play store, sideloading is a power user feature that has almost no impact on the average user security.
  - p49k 5y ago
    It's not happening as much with Android because Google has a vested interest in making it easy for people to be tracked, so it has fewer restrictions on doing so. The "Ask not to track me across apps" feature on Apple is what this is mainly about for Facebook. But yes, there have been such cases. Epic successfully forced a massive number of Android users to sideload Fortnite to get around Google's policies, and Google wasn't happy and tried to undermine that attempt.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    > has almost no impact on the average user security I don't think that's true. Google publishes malware stats on the on-play and off-play ecosystems and the malware rates differ. Famous examples like malicious versions of FortNite make news headlines. Play policies also enforce various security-relevant action like updating to near-recent targetSdkVersions and fixing a variety of automatically detectable security vulns. No such enforcement exists in the broader off-play ecosystem so it will be easier to install an app with trivial security flaws. Whether this is a justification for banning sideloading completely? That's another question.
- saghm 5y ago
  If it was worth doing this, why aren't they doing that today for Android then?
  - petmon 5y ago
    Epic Games tried side loading Fortnite on Android, and then went back to the Play Store. Here's their statement: Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store.
    - saghm 5y ago
      So basically, the fear mongering about major publishers taking advantage of sideloading is entirely unfounded, which is exactly the point I was trying to make.
- ViViDboarder 5y ago
  I still don’t see what it has to do with hurting competition and innovation.
- Elora 5y ago
  > If Facebook removes their app from the App Store (or cripples it), and says you have to side load this app, most Americans will do so. Even if that app violates a number of user-friendly policies. The OS, of course, could enforce that at a technical level, which weakens the argument significantly. The OS, in iOS' case at least, does already do this. So the case is weak right now. The #1 reason for the app store is to take that sweet cut. The #1 reason to sideload is so those apps can bypass the store's cut. Follow the money.
whatshisface 5y ago
Apple defends their absolute control over software that runs on their devices by arguing that malicious actors could give instructions for sideloading malware.
olliej 5y ago
Ok it's very simple. If Facebook says "we're going to put Facebook on a different store", now the majority of americans use Facebook, so now install the second App Store. This App Store fails to maintain the security rules of the real App Store, and now users devices a compromised. A core part of the security model of iOS is the App Store. The App Store makes sure that all applications have a sandbox, and that the sandbox entitlements are safe. The reason one app can't build a list of your other apps is because the sandbox prevents it. The reason it can't read your address book is because it lacks the entitlements to do so without your permission. As far as privacy: The reason Facebook, or any app, is required to ask for your permission before violating your privacy is because of App Store policy. This legislation explicitly makes restrictions on collecting user data unlawful.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
xoa 5y ago
>Taking Apple at their word here, I still don't get it. Can anyone explain the argument they're trying to make? As written it just sounds so ridiculous (but I'm still trying to understand it). There are at least three aspects to this: active attacks, negotiating power between various actors, and platform maintenance. 1. To the first, certain classes of attacks and malware are dramatically harder to execute on locked down platforms like iOS devices than on open systems. Remember, on the PC or Mac enormous amounts of real world risk isn't the result of 0-days but social engineering, pressure, user error or laziness, etc. On iOS, it's simply impossible to just give somebody root access. The user doesn't have it. It's even harder to have a persistent root kit, let alone go down below the kernel. When there are exploits, the owner community as a whole tends to see and have deployed upgrades faster. There are more barriers to the kinds of low effort mass adware and the like that plagued many non-technical (this does not mean stupid or undeserving) people before, like the classic of opening your relative's browser and discovering a hundred competing searchbar and ad injecting add-ons and such. And on and on. Of course, there are security issues that can arise from this too. And if a player is more powerful than Apple is (like a major government) then the whole thing can go very bad, because now there isn't any way to bypass that either. On balance I think the long term risks are higher with no owner controlled root cert like the current situation, but we shouldn't be blind to the fact that Apple worked to solve a huge problem with computing that the tech community were really assholes about (me included to some extent in the 90s, I remember the BOFH type admin and jokes that went around hell desk quite well). There is some baby amongst the bath water. 2. To the second and per above, that Apple has a secured position as powerful player on the iOS platform shouldn't obscure that there are other very powerful players vs the normal user. Many people find certain things like Facebook effectively indispensable. And individually they lack the weight to negotiate. Facebook and the like do not give a single shit about you individually. If you tell them "you better stop XYZ tracking or no more service from me!" that likely won't even get a reply. But Apple's control means it acts as the focal point of hundreds of millions of very valuable users combined. Apple can say "thou shalt disclose privacy practices and formulate and obey a policy" or "thou shalt not have persistent device traction" and attach an OR ELSE to it and actually have it stick. But if a player of Facebook's scale could then just say to everyone "you must go and sideload Facebook Store and grant it full permissions to keep using our product" that power might well completely dissolve. In principle government could be dealing with some of this, but government is often pretty slow, heavy handed, and faces its own problems with corruption, lobbying etc. 3. To the third, while Apple is obviously making plenty of profit and some of their resources are obviously going into irritating bikeshedding UI-cycle stuff, that shouldn't disguise that upkeep of a modern networked platform isn't free. There really is a major cost to keeping up security, to developing and maintaining system frameworks, infrastructure etc, and then keeping up with that for years after a product has been sold. How that is paid for also has implications for effectiveness. It's not necessarily feasible to build all of it into hardware pricing. If users are asked to pay (remember, paid OS upgrades were once the rule in the proprietary world), lots of them won't, which means the platform becomes more fragmented and more people miss out on critical security updates sooner or later. Having it be part of developer prices might be a least-bad way to do it. There is some link between those who benefit most and those who pay most, and it doesn't create the same negative incentives for users. People mock the "Apple Tax" but honestly paying taxes for infrastructure isn't always a bad idea. If anything I wonder if Apple shouldn't actively lean into that and announce they're going to make it more progressive, with 0% fee for the smallest fish rising to the highest amount for the biggest ones. But it too depends on some level of enforcement, same as taxes IRL. ---- Again, none of this is to say there aren't major, obvious downsides to the level of control Apple has too. Their accountability is limited, and their incentives certainly aren't all aligned with their customers. Their control has been used for anti-competitive ends and moving into other services that should be more competitive (backups being a simple example) with negative effects (not just money, but lack of E2EE encryption). I do think there is room for legislative improvements. But it's not entirely simple.
joe_the_user 5y ago
Proof by 1st order corporate brochure logic (CBL): "Hurting security" is a bad thing. "Hurting competition and discouraging innovation" is a bad thing too. One bad thing always leads to another. QED.
legutierr 5y ago
I have some questions about how access to Secure Enclave, and in particular hardware keys, would work in a sideloaded app. Could one sideloaded app somehow impersonate another sideloaded app, and thereby trick the PKA/SKP into signing a message with a private key that it shouldn't have access to? If there is no way to securely distinguish between two sideloaded apps, such that one app could impersonate another in getting access to OS- or hardware-level cryptographic services, then that could be a real problem, I think. I don't yet know enough about how these crypto services are implemented to know whether this would actually be a problem in practice, however.
zjaffee 5y ago
In the 90s and early 00s people would download all sorts of apps from the internet and would inadvertently be installing viruses, they think their app review process prevents this entirely. Fear of downloading viruses is something a certain subset of computer users no longer worries about because everything is either through the app store or in a browser.
- dgellow 5y ago
  Even if sideloading is a thing, the vast majority of users would still use the App Store.
newshorts 5y ago
I take it to mean people like my dad will end up with some “virus scanner” sideloaded app that he thinks he needs on his iPhone because he saw a pop up on one of the NRA related conspiracy websites he visits. Having just reinstalled everything because he had a ransomware attack on his computer, I can understand the argument…
- chunkyguy 5y ago
  Sideloading has nothing to do with security. Apple can just use Gatekeeper for iOS like they do for the Mac. They want the control over distribution via AppStore
ksec 5y ago
Let's say the App Store improve security and privacy ( and in many ways it does ) And now the it is often argued by proponent of going to Android. And let just say this is fair argument. But no one have suggested how they solve the current issue with App Store, Apple's power of Digital ( App ) distribution. Where it has 50%+ of Smartphone Market in US. When Apple's App Store practice and policy have been found to be Anti- competitive, Unfair ( while at the same time crying foul of 4G/5G agreement ) and inconsistent for years. Rent-Seeking in App Store fees. A Flat 30% on all categories. Did you ever see that in retail? ( The answer is no, considering 99% of HN dont know much about Retail ) Apple wield so much power, that politicians around the world are un-happy. But as far as we are aware, no body at Apple think it is a problem. They are still thinking about it as a money problem.
jlokier 5y ago
You might be surprised at how many apps aren't really a "choice" these days. I and other people I know have to use phone apps for work, mainly for authentication, meetings and integration with the work calendars, and then have to use more apps to access bank accounts (both business and personal), credit cards, and to authorize some payments in real-time. Some of those things don't exist in any form other than as a phone app. Even the desktop browser versions require the phone app for authentication. It is assumed you have one. No, there is not a sufficiently free market from which to choose alternatives. For example, you may have to "choose" a job, phone-based bank, and credit cards, based on what is available in difficult times, not based on choosing what you'd prefer. If those essential apps switch to sideload-only because they can, those people have to comply. Not because it's a free choice. The phone is not only a social device, and the constraints are no longer things like Facebook, they are things more like essential utilities which nowadays require a phone. Even an unlocked Android won't do. In some countries phone apps are now required for access to government services. Maybe side-loading is the future, and it has some benefits. But it would be wrong to say there is no security and privacy issue if apps remain essential for access to services, stop being subject to app store curation, and can then require permissions to do whatever they like on the phone in future, such as turning on the microphone and location services, and reading photos, files and messages. Some of them already require too many permissions, and of course we already accept, uncomfortably, if we really need those services. The app store curation keeps this in check to some extent; it is not a technical problem.
bearbearbear 5y ago

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> Can anyone explain the argument they're trying to make? If Facebook removes their app from the App Store (or cripples it), and says you have to side load this app, most Americans will do so. Even if that app violates a number of user-friendly policies. The OS, of course, could enforce that at a technical level, which weakens the argument significantly. Also lots of people will click links and side load spam apps, but that’s par for the course.

zepto 5y ago
> The OS, of course, could enforce that at a technical level, which weakens the argument significantly. This is simply not true. An app can lie about what it does, and nothing at a technical level can prevent that.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > An app can lie about what it does, and nothing at a technical level can prevent that I was thinking of the tracking restrictions when I wrote this. The OS simply doesn’t give the app the data.
  - zepto 5y ago
    It’s much harder than that to prevent fingerprinting, or the use of legitimate APIs for illegitimate purposes. In any case the idea that you can achieve privacy and security solely through managing APIs is simply false.
- echelon 5y ago
  Apple doesn't have the authority to shut down Meta's business. Only our congress, department of justice, and the governments of foreign markets have this power. You can measure just how big of a monopoly the iPhone App Store is by how many billions of dollars shift with simple changes to Apple policy. As much as I hate ads and tracking, it's not Apple's right to be the sole defender of the American people. That's what laws are for. (And besides, Apple is already a direct beneficiary of all that tracking themselves. They're absolutely doing business and making decisions based on your behavior.) Too much economic activity (50+% of American computing) is happening on iPhone for Apple to be afforded the monopolistic privilege of taxing it all. Apple makes so much money from sales of their remarkable hardware, subscription services, and other incredible and highly profitable business units that they won't be at risk by giving this up. For the health of the broader industry and the enduring benefits of fair competition, Apple must relinquish the App Store monopoly. Apple will be more than okay. And they'll shift efforts that used to be spent on protectionism into true innovation.
  - phs318u 5y ago
    > it's not Apple's right to be the sole defender of the American people They're not. They are (and want to continue to be) the sole defender of Apple iDevice customers. The American people (and in fact anyone else), can choose a non-Apple device, and therefore non-Apple ecosystem. To me it all boils down to - is the app ecosystem a public commons or a private commons subject to the owner's T&C's? (for clarity - the owner is not the customer. The customer owns the device, but they do not own the ecosystem).
    - majewsky 5y ago
      If I like neither Apple nor Google, how can I realistically choose a non-Apple non-Google ecosystem? It's getting increasingly difficult to find a bank that does not require one of these 2FA apps that are only available from the Play Store or App Store (and which refuse to work on Android phones with non-standard OSs like Lineage).
      - phs318u 5y ago
olliej 5y ago
What technical restrictions can they do? It can't be sandboxing, as the entitlements and/or existence of sandboxing for an app is enforced by the App Store, and we've just said we're not using that. It also removes privacy protections: Facebook is required to ask permission to track you on iOS. It's only required to by platform policy in the App Store license agreement. They're not using that any more, so goodbye opt-in tracking.
- ThatPlayer 5y ago
  Why couldn't they make the entitlements enforced by the operating system with user prompts, rather than the App Store (or both)? Just because that's how it's done right now doesn't mean we're just flipping a switch and suddenly allowing everything. It's still up to Apple on how they implement it. If that's how they choose to implement it, that's on Apple.
  - olliej 5y ago
    Prompt based security has been shown to be a bad "solution" over and over again. The primary goal of which degenerates to "blame the user". Even if you do want to do that, what do you ask the user? Even the basic entitlements often require some amount of knowledge a regular user simply doesn't have. Then the law itself has rules prohibiting restrictions, and I would bet someone will claim dialog based security counts as a restriction. The law even makes it hard (impossible?) for a platform to protect even a modicum of user privacy. Section 2 (b) 3&4 explicitly prohibits a platform owner from placing restrictions on collection and use of user data.
    - ThatPlayer 5y ago
      As opposed to the current primary goal of giving all the power to Apple to decide what the user gets? And once again, that's on Apple to implement. If they choose to continue to keep entitlements in the same format, that's on them to explain it to the user. See Android, they handle permissions fine. That section doesn't place restrictions on the generation of user data, only access to generated data. So don't generate it. In my opinion that's to prevent the platform holder from getting an unfair advantage by keeping the data for themselves. If the user doesn't give permission, the device doesn't generate the data, you're not restricting access to data because it doesn't exist.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> If Facebook removes their app from the App Store (or cripples it), and says you have to side load this app, most Americans will do so. The primary reason for this is that Facebook itself has a dominant market position (network effect) and is deserving of antitrust scrutiny. "We need this evil monopoly to protect us from that evil monopoly" has a better solution in smashing them both. Notice that this argument doesn't work anywhere else. If your tetris app which is in competition with many others decides it wants to go out of Apple's store so it can spy more, nobody is following you. They'll just install one of the hundred others. To gain anyone's trust for any app that isn't a monopolist, an alternate store would have to have a similar reputation for rejecting bad apps. But then the scammers wouldn't be able to make it into any of the stores people trust. The advantage is that some of the non-scammers that Apple rejects for illegitimate reasons, would. (Or competitive pressure would cause Apple to get better at not rejecting them in order to prevent it.)
- jtbayly 5y ago
  I don’t think I’d call Angry Birds or FarmVille or Fortnite or any other game a monopoly, but millions would sideload those.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    Out of hundreds of millions of users. Is the game going to give up >90% of its user base? Especially when the reason for the move is obvious. If Facebook leaves the app store, and Facebook is completely free and makes money from advertising, everybody knows why they're doing it and it's to screw you out of your privacy. But you can't say no because Facebook is the only way you have to talk to your grandparents, hence the need for antitrust. If Epic Games moves Fortnite to another store because the other store charges lower fees but still has a good reputation for not allowing bad apps, likewise the reason they moved is obvious. It's to have lower fees, because Fortnite makes money by selling things in the game. Many users will be fine with that, as well they should be, because that's the point of allowing other stores. But a game doing it for the same reason as Facebook, well, they're going to lose most of their users. Because nobody needs a game that much, so the company doing it for an adversarial reason will cause large numbers of customers to tell them where to go.
dgellow 5y ago
Is it what is happening with Android? From what I read it’s not the case, almost every install is done via the play store, sideloading is a power user feature that has almost no impact on the average user security.
- p49k 5y ago
  It's not happening as much with Android because Google has a vested interest in making it easy for people to be tracked, so it has fewer restrictions on doing so. The "Ask not to track me across apps" feature on Apple is what this is mainly about for Facebook. But yes, there have been such cases. Epic successfully forced a massive number of Android users to sideload Fortnite to get around Google's policies, and Google wasn't happy and tried to undermine that attempt.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  > has almost no impact on the average user security I don't think that's true. Google publishes malware stats on the on-play and off-play ecosystems and the malware rates differ. Famous examples like malicious versions of FortNite make news headlines. Play policies also enforce various security-relevant action like updating to near-recent targetSdkVersions and fixing a variety of automatically detectable security vulns. No such enforcement exists in the broader off-play ecosystem so it will be easier to install an app with trivial security flaws. Whether this is a justification for banning sideloading completely? That's another question.
saghm 5y ago
If it was worth doing this, why aren't they doing that today for Android then?
- petmon 5y ago
  Epic Games tried side loading Fortnite on Android, and then went back to the Play Store. Here's their statement: Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store.
  - saghm 5y ago
    So basically, the fear mongering about major publishers taking advantage of sideloading is entirely unfounded, which is exactly the point I was trying to make.
ViViDboarder 5y ago
I still don’t see what it has to do with hurting competition and innovation.
Elora 5y ago
> If Facebook removes their app from the App Store (or cripples it), and says you have to side load this app, most Americans will do so. Even if that app violates a number of user-friendly policies. The OS, of course, could enforce that at a technical level, which weakens the argument significantly. The OS, in iOS' case at least, does already do this. So the case is weak right now. The #1 reason for the app store is to take that sweet cut. The #1 reason to sideload is so those apps can bypass the store's cut. Follow the money.

whatshisface 5y ago

Apple defends their absolute control over software that runs on their devices by arguing that malicious actors could give instructions for sideloading malware.

olliej 5y ago

Ok it's very simple. If Facebook says "we're going to put Facebook on a different store", now the majority of americans use Facebook, so now install the second App Store. This App Store fails to maintain the security rules of the real App Store, and now users devices a compromised. A core part of the security model of iOS is the App Store. The App Store makes sure that all applications have a sandbox, and that the sandbox entitlements are safe. The reason one app can't build a list of your other apps is because the sandbox prevents it. The reason it can't read your address book is because it lacks the entitlements to do so without your permission. As far as privacy: The reason Facebook, or any app, is required to ask for your permission before violating your privacy is because of App Store policy. This legislation explicitly makes restrictions on collecting user data unlawful.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

xoa 5y ago

>Taking Apple at their word here, I still don't get it. Can anyone explain the argument they're trying to make? As written it just sounds so ridiculous (but I'm still trying to understand it). There are at least three aspects to this: active attacks, negotiating power between various actors, and platform maintenance. 1. To the first, certain classes of attacks and malware are dramatically harder to execute on locked down platforms like iOS devices than on open systems. Remember, on the PC or Mac enormous amounts of real world risk isn't the result of 0-days but social engineering, pressure, user error or laziness, etc. On iOS, it's simply impossible to just give somebody root access. The user doesn't have it. It's even harder to have a persistent root kit, let alone go down below the kernel. When there are exploits, the owner community as a whole tends to see and have deployed upgrades faster. There are more barriers to the kinds of low effort mass adware and the like that plagued many non-technical (this does not mean stupid or undeserving) people before, like the classic of opening your relative's browser and discovering a hundred competing searchbar and ad injecting add-ons and such. And on and on. Of course, there are security issues that can arise from this too. And if a player is more powerful than Apple is (like a major government) then the whole thing can go very bad, because now there isn't any way to bypass that either. On balance I think the long term risks are higher with no owner controlled root cert like the current situation, but we shouldn't be blind to the fact that Apple worked to solve a huge problem with computing that the tech community were really assholes about (me included to some extent in the 90s, I remember the BOFH type admin and jokes that went around hell desk quite well). There is some baby amongst the bath water. 2. To the second and per above, that Apple has a secured position as powerful player on the iOS platform shouldn't obscure that there are other very powerful players vs the normal user. Many people find certain things like Facebook effectively indispensable. And individually they lack the weight to negotiate. Facebook and the like do not give a single shit about you individually. If you tell them "you better stop XYZ tracking or no more service from me!" that likely won't even get a reply. But Apple's control means it acts as the focal point of hundreds of millions of very valuable users combined. Apple can say "thou shalt disclose privacy practices and formulate and obey a policy" or "thou shalt not have persistent device traction" and attach an OR ELSE to it and actually have it stick. But if a player of Facebook's scale could then just say to everyone "you must go and sideload Facebook Store and grant it full permissions to keep using our product" that power might well completely dissolve. In principle government could be dealing with some of this, but government is often pretty slow, heavy handed, and faces its own problems with corruption, lobbying etc. 3. To the third, while Apple is obviously making plenty of profit and some of their resources are obviously going into irritating bikeshedding UI-cycle stuff, that shouldn't disguise that upkeep of a modern networked platform isn't free. There really is a major cost to keeping up security, to developing and maintaining system frameworks, infrastructure etc, and then keeping up with that for years after a product has been sold. How that is paid for also has implications for effectiveness. It's not necessarily feasible to build all of it into hardware pricing. If users are asked to pay (remember, paid OS upgrades were once the rule in the proprietary world), lots of them won't, which means the platform becomes more fragmented and more people miss out on critical security updates sooner or later. Having it be part of developer prices might be a least-bad way to do it. There is some link between those who benefit most and those who pay most, and it doesn't create the same negative incentives for users. People mock the "Apple Tax" but honestly paying taxes for infrastructure isn't always a bad idea. If anything I wonder if Apple shouldn't actively lean into that and announce they're going to make it more progressive, with 0% fee for the smallest fish rising to the highest amount for the biggest ones. But it too depends on some level of enforcement, same as taxes IRL. ---- Again, none of this is to say there aren't major, obvious downsides to the level of control Apple has too. Their accountability is limited, and their incentives certainly aren't all aligned with their customers. Their control has been used for anti-competitive ends and moving into other services that should be more competitive (backups being a simple example) with negative effects (not just money, but lack of E2EE encryption). I do think there is room for legislative improvements. But it's not entirely simple.

joe_the_user 5y ago

Proof by 1st order corporate brochure logic (CBL): "Hurting security" is a bad thing. "Hurting competition and discouraging innovation" is a bad thing too. One bad thing always leads to another. QED.

legutierr 5y ago

I have some questions about how access to Secure Enclave, and in particular hardware keys, would work in a sideloaded app. Could one sideloaded app somehow impersonate another sideloaded app, and thereby trick the PKA/SKP into signing a message with a private key that it shouldn't have access to? If there is no way to securely distinguish between two sideloaded apps, such that one app could impersonate another in getting access to OS- or hardware-level cryptographic services, then that could be a real problem, I think. I don't yet know enough about how these crypto services are implemented to know whether this would actually be a problem in practice, however.

zjaffee 5y ago

In the 90s and early 00s people would download all sorts of apps from the internet and would inadvertently be installing viruses, they think their app review process prevents this entirely. Fear of downloading viruses is something a certain subset of computer users no longer worries about because everything is either through the app store or in a browser.

dgellow 5y ago
Even if sideloading is a thing, the vast majority of users would still use the App Store.

newshorts 5y ago

I take it to mean people like my dad will end up with some “virus scanner” sideloaded app that he thinks he needs on his iPhone because he saw a pop up on one of the NRA related conspiracy websites he visits. Having just reinstalled everything because he had a ransomware attack on his computer, I can understand the argument…

chunkyguy 5y ago
Sideloading has nothing to do with security. Apple can just use Gatekeeper for iOS like they do for the Mac. They want the control over distribution via AppStore

ksec 5y ago

Let's say the App Store improve security and privacy ( and in many ways it does ) And now the it is often argued by proponent of going to Android. And let just say this is fair argument. But no one have suggested how they solve the current issue with App Store, Apple's power of Digital ( App ) distribution. Where it has 50%+ of Smartphone Market in US. When Apple's App Store practice and policy have been found to be Anti- competitive, Unfair ( while at the same time crying foul of 4G/5G agreement ) and inconsistent for years. Rent-Seeking in App Store fees. A Flat 30% on all categories. Did you ever see that in retail? ( The answer is no, considering 99% of HN dont know much about Retail ) Apple wield so much power, that politicians around the world are un-happy. But as far as we are aware, no body at Apple think it is a problem. They are still thinking about it as a money problem.

jlokier 5y ago

You might be surprised at how many apps aren't really a "choice" these days. I and other people I know have to use phone apps for work, mainly for authentication, meetings and integration with the work calendars, and then have to use more apps to access bank accounts (both business and personal), credit cards, and to authorize some payments in real-time. Some of those things don't exist in any form other than as a phone app. Even the desktop browser versions require the phone app for authentication. It is assumed you have one. No, there is not a sufficiently free market from which to choose alternatives. For example, you may have to "choose" a job, phone-based bank, and credit cards, based on what is available in difficult times, not based on choosing what you'd prefer. If those essential apps switch to sideload-only because they can, those people have to comply. Not because it's a free choice. The phone is not only a social device, and the constraints are no longer things like Facebook, they are things more like essential utilities which nowadays require a phone. Even an unlocked Android won't do. In some countries phone apps are now required for access to government services. Maybe side-loading is the future, and it has some benefits. But it would be wrong to say there is no security and privacy issue if apps remain essential for access to services, stop being subject to app store curation, and can then require permissions to do whatever they like on the phone in future, such as turning on the microphone and location services, and reading photos, files and messages. Some of them already require too many permissions, and of course we already accept, uncomfortably, if we really need those services. The app store curation keeps this in check to some extent; it is not a technical problem.

bearbearbear 5y ago