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> 2. I will be forced to use third party stores because critical apps are no longer distributed through the App Store. This seems very unlikely. It hasn't hap

> 2. I will be forced to use third party stores because critical apps are no longer distributed through the App Store. This seems very unlikely. It hasn't happened on Android. Amazon has their own Android appstore and nobody is forced to use it, and I think nearly nobody does. But because Android has this possibility, I can use F-Droid which is excellent. What does a "critical app" even look like? I don't have any apps on my phone that I would call critical, only convenient. My banking apps from the playstore are nice to have, but not critical. I can do banking on their websites, at an ATM or over the phone. Uber is sometimes convenient, but I've gone years without using it before and many people don't have it at all. If Facebook makes their own Facebook store and uses it to ship malware, it won't effect me because I never used their app in the first place, none of their crap is critical. That's the power of not submitting to peer pressure. Maybe a "critical app" is one your government legally requires you to install, e.g. some sort of pandemic tracing app. But thankfully my government (America) has not gone that far. I don't think there is presently such a thing as a "critical app" in America. Only apps which may feel critical because of peer pressure or convenience, but aren't actually critical.

noirscape 4y ago
F-Droids official repo also does strong curation really well in my experience. Searching the Play Store usually surfaces some SEO-gamed garbage apps. Pretty much all Android apps I use from the Play Store were at friend recommendations. F-Droid has some issues (specifically, they have a very big requirement that all APKs must be build by their server, which has some issues and locks their official repo down to FOSS apps), but even just on the surface their curation is just so much better. And hey, if I don't like something, I can literally just plug in any arbitrary URL I want and as long as it points to a repository, it'll show up as valid. From what I've heard the Apple App Store isn't much better in this regard, except there you just don't have the option to ignore it (and the jailbreaking community seems more open, except the same "pay for every tiny thing" culture that plagues iOS has made it way over to that platform). The EU forcing Apple to open up iOS should ideally result in a more fair, better curated ecosystem of smaller app stores and the development of apps that people actually want to use rather than apps that exist to make exciting number go up at an ad agency. There'll be some initial blowback, but the long-term benefits will be that much better for mobile phones on the whole (which to be frank, is desperately needed). It also gives a secondary avenue for apps against Apple's app store guidelines, which have been noted in the past to basically be completely arbitrary (the main examples of this are the fact that Apple plays censor for VPNs in some countries, Steve Jobs telling people that want to have NSFW apps on their iPhone to "go buy an android", the last policy still leading to numerous social media apps getting in trouble because an app reviewer found something NSFW (this is why Tumblr banned NSFW) and for a very specific example of a game that somehow kept violating the guidelines: the iOS port of the Binding of Isaac was rejected for over a year because Apple wanted to play moral guardian, there's also the completely unreasonable ban on allowing emulation and really I could continue on and on about how absurd this is).
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  Regarding the NSFW thing: if this was so big for Tumblr, how does Reddit get away with it? I mean, some subreddits are pretty seriously NSFW :)
  - noirscape 4y ago
    To put it simply: pray to the whatever spiritual deity you believe in (or other such thing) on app review and hope that Apple doesn't try anything when reviewing your app. The best method is always to make sure that adult content can never end up before a reviewers eyes, so unless you have an unusually thorough reviewer who goes out of their way to look for it, they won't complain. Apples role as a moral guardian on NSFW content is one of the bigger driving factors as to why NSFW gets treated as second class, even though NSFW content has been estimated to be a very large amount of all internet traffic. Tumblr is just one example. Discord had to restrict all NSFW channels in their app for iOS users because their randomly assigned App Store reviewer managed to get their account into an NSFW channel and found the expected. Reddit just never had to deal with this issue because they didn't even have an iPhone app for years (their current app is a highly modified version of an older app, Alien Blue, but AB was pulled from the App Store when Reddit bought it) or they deal with it quietly so you don't hear about it. Not all companies who get shafted on the NSFW rule speak up about it, but those that have... all have repeatedly commented on the fact that the process is basically completely opaque and you need to basically pray that Apple doesn't decide to pull your current version either. Tumblr picked the easy way out (ban all NSFW in general) because they were about to be sold to Verizon and Yahoo didn't want to bother trying to find a way to appease to apple at the last minute.
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      Ah that makes sense. Yes Reddit is pretty good at not showing you NSFW unless you actually go and look for it. But when you do it takes you all the way down the rabbit hole (figuratively!! - I hope), this is why I found it a bit surprising, it's not just some lingerie pics or anything. In a way though, that means Safari should be banned too. And the camera app, I mean point it down in the right state of undress... ;)
4ad 4y ago
> It hasn't happened on Android There have been cases where authoritarian countries have forced people to sideload government-issued malware onto their Android phones.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  Those countries can simply ban iphones if they want to. An OS can't solve all evil.
- noirscape 4y ago
  At the same time, Apple has also been doing the opposite by playing government censor for the CCP by removing VPN apps from the App Store in China. The knife here in terms of risking government overreach slices both ways, but in the case of Apple, they are in a much more vulnerable state for this sort of thing, since the CCP requires them to have meat shields (they need to have an office there) to continue operating in China. One is massively more beneficial on the whole for user freedom.
  - 4ad 4y ago
    This is true, on a global scale both options are bad. On the other hand, on a personal scale, the walled garden is much better option for me. It sucks that the Chinese are stuck between a rock and a hard place, but I am not, and I don't see how it's anyone's business to regulate my choice of technology. Just because the status quo is bad for some people, it doesn't means it should be made worse for everyone else.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
> It hasn't happened on Android. Likely because doing for Android alone represents too much of a risk given the profit potential. With these stores being able to exist on both platforms, that equation changes a lot, especially with iOS users' eyeballs traditionally having been valued more highly.

noirscape 4y ago

F-Droids official repo also does strong curation really well in my experience. Searching the Play Store usually surfaces some SEO-gamed garbage apps. Pretty much all Android apps I use from the Play Store were at friend recommendations. F-Droid has some issues (specifically, they have a very big requirement that all APKs must be build by their server, which has some issues and locks their official repo down to FOSS apps), but even just on the surface their curation is just so much better. And hey, if I don't like something, I can literally just plug in any arbitrary URL I want and as long as it points to a repository, it'll show up as valid. From what I've heard the Apple App Store isn't much better in this regard, except there you just don't have the option to ignore it (and the jailbreaking community seems more open, except the same "pay for every tiny thing" culture that plagues iOS has made it way over to that platform). The EU forcing Apple to open up iOS should ideally result in a more fair, better curated ecosystem of smaller app stores and the development of apps that people actually want to use rather than apps that exist to make exciting number go up at an ad agency. There'll be some initial blowback, but the long-term benefits will be that much better for mobile phones on the whole (which to be frank, is desperately needed). It also gives a secondary avenue for apps against Apple's app store guidelines, which have been noted in the past to basically be completely arbitrary (the main examples of this are the fact that Apple plays censor for VPNs in some countries, Steve Jobs telling people that want to have NSFW apps on their iPhone to "go buy an android", the last policy still leading to numerous social media apps getting in trouble because an app reviewer found something NSFW (this is why Tumblr banned NSFW) and for a very specific example of a game that somehow kept violating the guidelines: the iOS port of the Binding of Isaac was rejected for over a year because Apple wanted to play moral guardian, there's also the completely unreasonable ban on allowing emulation and really I could continue on and on about how absurd this is).

GekkePrutser 4y ago
Regarding the NSFW thing: if this was so big for Tumblr, how does Reddit get away with it? I mean, some subreddits are pretty seriously NSFW :)
- noirscape 4y ago
  To put it simply: pray to the whatever spiritual deity you believe in (or other such thing) on app review and hope that Apple doesn't try anything when reviewing your app. The best method is always to make sure that adult content can never end up before a reviewers eyes, so unless you have an unusually thorough reviewer who goes out of their way to look for it, they won't complain. Apples role as a moral guardian on NSFW content is one of the bigger driving factors as to why NSFW gets treated as second class, even though NSFW content has been estimated to be a very large amount of all internet traffic. Tumblr is just one example. Discord had to restrict all NSFW channels in their app for iOS users because their randomly assigned App Store reviewer managed to get their account into an NSFW channel and found the expected. Reddit just never had to deal with this issue because they didn't even have an iPhone app for years (their current app is a highly modified version of an older app, Alien Blue, but AB was pulled from the App Store when Reddit bought it) or they deal with it quietly so you don't hear about it. Not all companies who get shafted on the NSFW rule speak up about it, but those that have... all have repeatedly commented on the fact that the process is basically completely opaque and you need to basically pray that Apple doesn't decide to pull your current version either. Tumblr picked the easy way out (ban all NSFW in general) because they were about to be sold to Verizon and Yahoo didn't want to bother trying to find a way to appease to apple at the last minute.
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    Ah that makes sense. Yes Reddit is pretty good at not showing you NSFW unless you actually go and look for it. But when you do it takes you all the way down the rabbit hole (figuratively!! - I hope), this is why I found it a bit surprising, it's not just some lingerie pics or anything. In a way though, that means Safari should be banned too. And the camera app, I mean point it down in the right state of undress... ;)

4ad 4y ago

> It hasn't happened on Android There have been cases where authoritarian countries have forced people to sideload government-issued malware onto their Android phones.

GekkePrutser 4y ago
Those countries can simply ban iphones if they want to. An OS can't solve all evil.
noirscape 4y ago
At the same time, Apple has also been doing the opposite by playing government censor for the CCP by removing VPN apps from the App Store in China. The knife here in terms of risking government overreach slices both ways, but in the case of Apple, they are in a much more vulnerable state for this sort of thing, since the CCP requires them to have meat shields (they need to have an office there) to continue operating in China. One is massively more beneficial on the whole for user freedom.
- 4ad 4y ago
  This is true, on a global scale both options are bad. On the other hand, on a personal scale, the walled garden is much better option for me. It sucks that the Chinese are stuck between a rock and a hard place, but I am not, and I don't see how it's anyone's business to regulate my choice of technology. Just because the status quo is bad for some people, it doesn't means it should be made worse for everyone else.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

> It hasn't happened on Android. Likely because doing for Android alone represents too much of a risk given the profit potential. With these stores being able to exist on both platforms, that equation changes a lot, especially with iOS users' eyeballs traditionally having been valued more highly.