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What puzzles me to no end is how many people were happy not only with having no control over their device (which is fine if they don't want it), but also other

• jutrewag 4y ago
  It’s a device for convenience. I want the critical functions work well. If you can make that work in an open system, great but I haven’t seen that being successfully done.
• squokko 4y ago
  One argument for this position is that this policy essentially gets people to trust iOS software more, and to buy more of it (sideloading will certainly increase at least the absolute amount of malware out there, or apps that don't meet Apple's criteria). This position is somewhat supported by the fact that iOS users spend MUCH more per user on software and in-app purchases than Android users even of similarly expensive phones.
  • ReptileMan 4y ago
    Umm ... the sandboxing on ios is extreme enough that malware is just not having much to do.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• kennend3 4y ago
  This is what i find most interesting about this whole debate. Read the comments on the article itself, it is just full of "i dont want to do this".. so great, don't sideload apps (no one is forcing them to), but why are they so keen on preventing others from doing it as well?
  • JohnMakin 4y ago
    > Read the comments on the article itself, it is just full of "i dont want to do this".. so great, don't sideload apps (no one is forcing them to), but why are they so keen on preventing others from doing it as well? because it's going to make unscrupulous companies like google/fb/etc all force you to go through their app clients to install their sideloaded apps, without any of the scrutiny and control the apple store has provided historically. that's not really a world I want to live in. While yes, I can just uninstall those apps, some are nearly intrinsic to a mobile experience, like the youtube app.
    • planede 4y ago
      Similarly how they do it on Android?
      • yamtaddle 4y ago
        1) Android doesn't restrict spying as much as Apple does, 2) Android is far, far less lucrative per-user than iOS. Maybe sideloading on iOS will work out like Android has. Maybe not.
    • rtpg 4y ago
      Shouldn’t most of the protections come at the OS layer? Weird tracking nonsense isn’t stopped by App Store policy alone (far from it!)
      • JohnMakin 4y ago
        Apple can and has threatened to pull apps from the store for unscrupulous behavior. Absolutely no one is claiming that the app store itself provides protection. It's the fact that Apple can decide who gets to publish on a device that over a billion people use. I'm also not really sure how OS level protections would prevent an app from sending out data it shouldn't. Apple is acting as a regulator here because no one else is.
  • yamtaddle 4y ago
• augment002 4y ago
  It’s pretty simple. Side-loading can be exploited by social engineering. Two very bad consequences for me if sideloading were easy: 1. There would be no safe product to recommend to my aging parents who would be vulnerable to social engineering. 2. A company with a popular produce like Facebook could go outside the store, which would normalize side-loading, thus rendering argument like ‘people who want safety can stick to the store’ moot. The arguments about not wanting to control what other people do are moot. If you want a platform with side-loading, buy android.
  • rdedev 4y ago
    Wouldn't it be fairly straightforward to lock down a particular device with the unlocking step tied to another phone ? Like let's say I buy a phone for my kid and I lock it down using my iphone. For installing any app on my kids phone they require some form of authentication from my device. With more people in the loop I feel social engineering becomes more difficult
    • augment002 4y ago
      [dead]
    • kiratp 4y ago
      My family buys their own phones but I’m assumed to be tech support when things go wrong. I do not want the responsibility of locking down their phones (and neither they do).
  • jeroenhd 4y ago
    Side loading is already possible. Yes, you can only do it for a few days at a time, but that's why there's an easy tool that will refresh the application for you. I haven't heart of social engineering involving https://github.com/altstoreio/AltStore https://github.com/altstoreio/AltStore but maybe you know something I don't. Either way, installing apps onto iOS devices over the network exists today.
• ChildOfChaos 4y ago
  I really don't care about having full control over my device as long as my device doesn't stop me from doing any critical function. Life is too complex and there is too much going on and too much to figure out and too many demands on my time, I just want to pick up a device, use it for what i need and then put it away. I don't want to spend hours tinkering to get every little thing the way i want it, i'm happy to outsource that to someone that knows what they are doing and in return I get a device that just works. Now we are going to end up with a bunch of app stores, which is horrible and annoying to manage on a phone, side loading apps, apps requiring certain app stores so you have to download that app store just to get it and then apps that don't meet the standards that Apple have set. If you don't like that, you could have bought an Android, but I was happy with it, I want my devices to get out of my way.
• crazygringo 4y ago
  Answer to your puzzle: because as soon as sideloading is allowed, sideloading will become required by the most popular apps. And then suddenly I lose all the protections afforded to me by the Apple Store, such as easy cancellations of subscriptions, easy refunds of apps that don't work, a layer of protection against malware, and so forth. It also just makes my phone that much harder to use, as finding and installing apps becomes that much harder. If everybody gets sideloading, that absolutely will impact me directly, and negatively. Does that make sense?
  • enjo 4y ago
    Why has that not happened on Android phones?
    • qtzaz 4y ago
      It has. Fortnite is not available in the Play Store. Given that iphone owners are more wealthy I expect this to happen much more often when sideloading is allowed on iphones since there's more money to be made. It's gonna get bad imo.
    • badwolf 4y ago
      Android hasn't restricted cross-app tracking from Facebook and such as strongly.
    • criddell 4y ago
      What about Fortnite? There are also some apps that are only available in particular (non-Google) app stores.
      • toast0 4y ago
        Sure, there's Fortnite, and a smattering of other apps that aren't in Play Store. But, even though Android has made sideloading easier over time, it's still not that common; most popular apps don't even offer an apk download outside the Play Store. Attempting to load an apk with the setting off used to just give a failure message that quickly disappeared; now it actually takes you to the setting and asks you if you want to do it (with scary text suggesting you don't). Certainly, Play Store doesn't feel as restrictive as the App Store, so that's probably a factor. But I doubt popular apps will drop Apple's store, because it will significantly reduce the number of people willing and able to install their apps.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• RedOrGreen 4y ago
  Paraphrasing: "If you don't want to, don't sideload apps, no one is forcing you to" - do people really not see the problem? It's not that technically unsophisticated users will want to sideload apps. They don't know / don't care / have different things to worry about. But they want their Facebook. Or SnapChat, or Insta, or TikTok, or whatever. Once other app stores are allowed, there's nothing stopping Meta (for example) from revoking their existing apps, and requiring the use of the Facebook App Installer for access to Facebook. They've paid people in the past to use their Onavo VPN app to bypass Apple's privacy controls, so this would be unsurprising. Of course, that's just an example; replace with the next SnapChat, TikTok, whatever. If that's the thing that teens want, and the way to get it is to click a bunch of "Yes I agree" dialogs, they'll happily do it. And now suddenly some developer has access to all your family financials through your teen. If your solution is "well, people shouldn't do that then", you might not understand teens. (Or grandparents. Or regular people.)
  • recursive 4y ago
    > there's nothing stopping Meta Well, there is maybe one thing. That is their projection of reduced installs. It's not just an issue of clicking "Yes". It's probably also an issue of knowing how to do it in the first place. The first party app store will always be easier.
• icehawk 4y ago
  Because software companies have proven they can't be trusted-- as soon as they can Facebook or someone will try to force side loading as the method to get their apps.
• m3kw9 4y ago
  I have plenty of control and am happy I don’t have to deal with developers that installs outside AppStore like Mac, getting hacked is no joke and side loading ups the chances
• hindsightbias 4y ago
  Everybody thinks they need something they don’t really need.
• twobitshifter 4y ago
  I just think back to before the iPhone. If you wanted something on your phone, it was still a walled garden, just one that the carriers put up. A new ringtone would cost you, and you’d be charged monthly for access to using gps through your phone. By strong arming carriers Apple took this revenue to themselves which had the paradoxical effect of opening things up from where they were before. Without this, there’s no doubt you’d be using a Verizon App Store and I’d have AT&T and governments would see no need to take action because there was carrier competition. Is being able to install whatever you want on your phone, a good thing? Undoubtedly, but we wouldn’t have tasted this opportunity without Apple’s move to take App Sales in house. We also have to be mindful of the devil we don’t know. if you’re OSS you see sideloading as blissfully unchaining your device, but if you’re an Apple competitor you see it as a chance to do everything you were forbidden to.
  • toast0 4y ago
    Depends on the phone. On a Symbian, you just downloaded a SIS file; later versions required code signing. Afaik, WinCE and Palm phones were similar. I had some java capable feature phones that were similar, put together a jad file and hope that write once, run everywhere works (I remember my first phone had some features that used a J2ME standard interface exactly backwards; turn on backlight would turn it off, and vice versa). I didn't even select those two phones for their openness, I just had them and tried to write/run code and it was available. Certainly, the carriers had stores, but it's not like they had software I wanted to run.
  • Nullabillity 4y ago
    The US isn't the whole world.
• mimikatz 4y ago
  Because the people in my life who aren't as technical as me and I support will be taken advantage. Sideloading would make their lives noticeably worse as scammers, hackers, and thieves trick them into doing dangerous things. Not giving them the options makes their phone a safer place, which is why people want it applied to others. Smart tech users do lose out in the trade off, but it is a trade off.