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Curious take, this. Allowing side-loading would only have a net positive impact on those who desire it, and zero impact on you who wants the walled garden. So w

Curious take, this. Allowing side-loading would only have a net positive impact on those who desire it, and zero impact on you who wants the walled garden. So why the opposition?

elondaits 5y ago
Not necessarily true. Some companies (Epic?) might choose to distribute apps exclusively via sideloading… and you can’t always choose not to install an app (e.g. WhatsApp is sadly essential in my country for work, social life, ordering food and even getting COVID vaccines, since the government uses it to hand appointments)
- anfilt 5y ago
  Epic tried it on android but the law of defaults are strong. Too much friction for an average user but at least on most android devices users can enable developer mode or even root if they want. So google here is not trampling over device owner’s property rights.
- mdoms 5y ago
  But right now Epic doesn't (can't) distribute on the main app store. So either way you're not using it.
joshuamorton 5y ago
This is true only if you presume social engineering is impossible.
- keleftheriou 5y ago
  But sideloading doesn’t imply that app isolation (sandboxing) is also going away, nor does it imply that any app would ever be able to trick the user into running it with escalated privileges (sudo/root) as is the case on most computers. We’re not talking about going back to the old Windows security model where you were always one wrong click away from damaging other apps or the OS, or having your data stolen.
JimDabell 5y ago
> Allowing side-loading would only have a net positive impact on those who desire it, and zero impact on you who wants the walled garden. No, it affects everyone, even the people who don’t want it. Consider the time when Facebook got caught spying on minors by abusing their iOS enterprise certificate, and expand that to everybody. If Apple allowed sideloading, Facebook could just remove their application from Apple’s App Store. They would still have roughly the same amount of users, because even if a person doesn’t want to sideload, most of them will do it anyway if it’s the only way to get Facebook. And now all of those people, who didn’t want to sideload, will be subject to whatever Facebook wants to do that Apple’s rules stopped them from doing. This isn’t really about individual choice, it’s about the effect on the ecosystem. As soon as you give giants like Facebook a way to opt-out from Apple’s rules, it affects the whole ecosystem, not just the people who choose to sideload. Sideloading would probably be quite convenient for me personally. But I would rather not have sideloading because of its effect on the ecosystem.
- anfilt 5y ago
  The thing is with the facebook event was apple signed their app so running it was relatively painless. Take the instance of epic trying to sideload on android it flopped because the friction from prompts to enable the feature. Although, I am of the opinion letting people just load their own personal signing keys. Its not like facebook can sign their app with their own key and expect to work on other peoples devices in that situation. Unless its signed by apple’s private key that all devices would have stored. However, if you had your own signing key you could sign the linux kernel ect or whatever you want, but its definitely not a click/tap and install situation with your own signing key.
  - JimDabell 5y ago
    People will jump through a lot of hoops to install crapware though. Facebook even has to put big red warnings in browser devtools to stop people running code from scammers that will take over their account.
    - anfilt 5y ago

Curious take, this. Allowing side-loading would only have a net positive impact on those who desire it, and zero impact on you who wants the walled garden. So why the opposition?

elondaits 5y ago

Not necessarily true. Some companies (Epic?) might choose to distribute apps exclusively via sideloading… and you can’t always choose not to install an app (e.g. WhatsApp is sadly essential in my country for work, social life, ordering food and even getting COVID vaccines, since the government uses it to hand appointments)

anfilt 5y ago
Epic tried it on android but the law of defaults are strong. Too much friction for an average user but at least on most android devices users can enable developer mode or even root if they want. So google here is not trampling over device owner’s property rights.
mdoms 5y ago
But right now Epic doesn't (can't) distribute on the main app store. So either way you're not using it.

joshuamorton 5y ago

This is true only if you presume social engineering is impossible.

keleftheriou 5y ago
But sideloading doesn’t imply that app isolation (sandboxing) is also going away, nor does it imply that any app would ever be able to trick the user into running it with escalated privileges (sudo/root) as is the case on most computers. We’re not talking about going back to the old Windows security model where you were always one wrong click away from damaging other apps or the OS, or having your data stolen.

JimDabell 5y ago

> Allowing side-loading would only have a net positive impact on those who desire it, and zero impact on you who wants the walled garden. No, it affects everyone, even the people who don’t want it. Consider the time when Facebook got caught spying on minors by abusing their iOS enterprise certificate, and expand that to everybody. If Apple allowed sideloading, Facebook could just remove their application from Apple’s App Store. They would still have roughly the same amount of users, because even if a person doesn’t want to sideload, most of them will do it anyway if it’s the only way to get Facebook. And now all of those people, who didn’t want to sideload, will be subject to whatever Facebook wants to do that Apple’s rules stopped them from doing. This isn’t really about individual choice, it’s about the effect on the ecosystem. As soon as you give giants like Facebook a way to opt-out from Apple’s rules, it affects the whole ecosystem, not just the people who choose to sideload. Sideloading would probably be quite convenient for me personally. But I would rather not have sideloading because of its effect on the ecosystem.

anfilt 5y ago
The thing is with the facebook event was apple signed their app so running it was relatively painless. Take the instance of epic trying to sideload on android it flopped because the friction from prompts to enable the feature. Although, I am of the opinion letting people just load their own personal signing keys. Its not like facebook can sign their app with their own key and expect to work on other peoples devices in that situation. Unless its signed by apple’s private key that all devices would have stored. However, if you had your own signing key you could sign the linux kernel ect or whatever you want, but its definitely not a click/tap and install situation with your own signing key.
- JimDabell 5y ago
  People will jump through a lot of hoops to install crapware though. Facebook even has to put big red warnings in browser devtools to stop people running code from scammers that will take over their account.
  - anfilt 5y ago