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Apple being motivated by improving security are BS, and it pains me te see people in this forum falling for it or reapeating this. There is a great tool to inc

Apple being motivated by improving security are BS, and it pains me te see people in this forum falling for it or reapeating this. There is a great tool to increase security: the browser and its sandbox. You don't need to install anything fishy on your phone, and the sandbox rights coukd be sufficient for many apps. But as an example, Apple denies the full screen feature for websites and even PWA... only installed ones. There's no good reason except favoring apps/appstore. For security? Works great on Android. And you cannot use a third party browser, since they forbid that (all are Safari based) Thank you, EU!!

amelius 3y ago
I sometimes feel that some HN folks need to consider a job inside EU committees. It's probably boring work, but even if you spend 10% of your time in meetings and the remainder on a secret side project, you will be doing society a great service.
- KyeRussell 3y ago
  This is a hilarious instance of the “I could build that in a weekend” mindset.
- timwis 3y ago
  How would you recommend going about that?
- AniseAbyss 3y ago
  [dead]
zeta0134 3y ago
The full screen feature works fine on websites for me? Well mostly fine, it's rubbish for games in particular due to a user hostile feature that forbids rapid screen taps, insisting that you might be using an on screen keyboard and denying you the autonomy to tell Safari to please not. But ignoring that, the feature seems to exist. What am I missing?
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Interesting. You say it works fine and then in the same breath you make a point to show it isn't and then choose to ignore it. What you're missing is that Safari shouldn't have that bit hard wired in.
  - zeta0134 3y ago
    (ah, the juxtaposition was the point. I'm bad at humor early in the morning)
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Np, I'm apparently equally bad at spotting it :)
PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
> And you cannot use a third party browser, since they forbid that (all are Safari based) I think this has turned out to be the current barrier in preventing Google from completing taking over the web standards space.
- heavyset_go 3y ago
  Apple's ban of all browsers but Safari turned out to be the main barrier preventing progressive web apps from being viable, deepening the duopoly power of themselves and Google, because Apple refuses to implement basic browser standards that are necessary for PWAs. And then when they do implement similar browser standards, they don't follow any web standards, they instead make their own proprietary bespoke web standard for Safari[1]. And they also did other fun things like wait until nearly 2021 to support WebP and let Safari be the the #1 source of one-click exploits on iOS. It's weird to see Safari trotted out in defense of web standards of all things. [1] https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifications/ https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifi...
  - KyeRussell 3y ago
    You’re so dead set on “winning” that you’ve completely talked past the point that was being made. The commenter was not even saying that their point justifies Safari being the only browser engine available on iOS. They were making a specific point. If you don’t want to talk to that point, maybe try another thread.
  - SXX 3y ago
    For years Google been stamping "standards" one after another even though other browser vendors were against many of them and they end up being Chrome-only. No matter what Apple itself does Safari being major non-Chromium browser helps Firefox a lot just by existing and having huge marketshare.
    - heavyset_go 3y ago
      How does Apple dragging their feet on implementing the Web Push notification standard, that is necessary for PWAs, in anyway help in that situation? Literally every browser except Safari implemented the the standard, and not out of some noble anti-Google crusade. PWAs threaten the App Store monopoly's moneyhose. How does Apple releasing proprietary web standards just for Safari, like Safari Push Notifications, help in anyway with the purported problem of companies stamping out web standards without consensus? It seems like it's only a problem when Google does it, but when Apple does it, it's Safari "helping Firefox just exist".
mnd999 3y ago
Users don’t want crappy PWAs, they want something that follows the platform UI conventions. It’s good that Apple care enough about about UX to actually enforce this.
- jakub_jo 3y ago
  If users don't want crappy PWAs than they wont use them. It's common sense to let "the market decide" -- why not in this case?
  - rimliu 3y ago
    And they don't. How come Android still has apps that are not PWAs?
  - LadyCailin 3y ago
    Market decisions don’t do anything to prevent the tragedy of the commons - is the general answer. I have mixed opinions on this specific case, but I absolutely see how this could make things worse. If everyone starts releasing their own versions, and not offering the apps in the App Store anymore, than the people who prefer the walled garden (for which there are good reasons to want) then they lose that choice. It’s possible that doesn’t happen - and allowing people that don’t want the walled garden should also have that choice, but you can’t simply boil this complex question down to “free market”. It’s intellectually dishonest, at best.
  - mnd999 3y ago
    They won’t have a choice. Low quality crap is cheaper to make so in a lot of cases that is all there will be.
  - kiicia 3y ago
    in this specific case its Google decision, not whole market, Google is usurping web space and web standards
  - palata 3y ago
    Counter-example: I don't want crappy ElectronJS apps, but I don't have a choice. Discord/Slack don't have an open API that would allow a good third-party client. If I don't like PWAs but WhatsApp stops supporting anything else, how can I use WhatsApp without the PWA?
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
> the browser and its sandbox. A lot of viruses (and jailbreaks on iOS amongst others) are distributed via this browser / sandbox; it's only secure in theory and it took decades to get to that point. Sure (before the Rust evangelists swoop in), part of that was due to using unsafe languages; part was due to extension frameworks that had too much power (ActiveX, which was even used to update your operating system, I can't fathom why they thought that was a good idea). But it'll take many more years of zero incidents, jailbreaks, etc before I'd trust the browser over Apple's app sandboxing and app review and distribution approach.
- peoplefromibiza 3y ago
  a bit of history massaging in this comment. Chrome and Firefox are as secure as Safari, if not more, banning them is a commercial choice not a technical one. iOS exploits still exist, there's no real advantage in Apple sandboxing apps, they are routinely leaking users data and being exploited as well. OTOH Apple refusing to implement certain web standards is proof that they cannot guarantee a safe implementation, which is a reason more to allow better browsers on their platform.
- stefan_ 3y ago
  This is funny because by far the most impactful breaches of security on iOS phones have been due to the Apple components, like the messaging app that inexplicably is still written in ObjectiveC as it's ever been, or the image framework found to contain various bits of opensource code they never updated, never audited, or the various terrible magic "serialization" features. This Apple native crud they force every app to use (up to the whole browser engine, like in the IE days!) is truly the ActiveX of our times. Only you can't even get rid of it.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  Microsoft thought ActiveX was a good idea because they built Internet Explorer out of OLE and COM. Everything in that era of Windows was built to be embeddable and composable - "compound documents" being the original design goal. If you needed to stick, say, a video into a web page, COM/OLE was the obvious way to do that on Windows in 1996. It's not any different from, say, early Firefox extensions being built out of XUL - in fact, I recall XUL extensions for Firefox that would literally add ActiveX support back in. It wasn't until Chrome came along where extensions didn't get to muck about with browser internals. You can exploit in both native and browser contexts. Most jailbreaks nowadays are assisted by a native application that you dev-sign to deliberately pwn yourself with. In the past we had websites that you could use to jailbreak with. Both are sandboxed environments with significant attackable surface area, so one is not necessarily more trustworthy than the other purely on measures of exploitability.
xattt 3y ago
> Thank you, EU!! I think this plan will move forward because of consumer protections afforded in the EU (ie including sideloaded apps) not available elsewhere.
tonmoy 3y ago
Are you sure PWA doesn’t work on iOS? I remember installing websites as apps on my iPhone. According to this SO answer I think one can even make it full screen (with a workaround at least): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53061258/pwa-not-opening-in-full-screen-mode-on-iphone-ipad https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53061258/pwa-not-opening...
- loganwedwards 3y ago
  I “installed” drop.com as a PWA on my iPhone. It gets full screen real estate and a launcher icon.
Terretta 3y ago
A non-app-store web app on iPhone has been able to be full screen since initial release of Home Screen web apps. When you launch from Home Screen, it gets the whole screen. See the Xbox Cloud Gaming "app" for instance, which is outside the App Store, just launch then "Add to Home Screen", close, and run from Home Screen. https://www.xbox.com/en-us/play https://www.xbox.com/en-us/play As for what can be done with browsers, see the venerable iCab but also Kagi's Orion browser which runs Firefox and Chrome extensions, even on iOS. Yes, it's WebKit based, but so was Chrome for a long time. https://help.kagi.com/orion/browser-extensions/macos-extensions.html https://help.kagi.com/orion/browser-extensions/macos-extensi... Given you can run Xbox games or arbitrary extensions from other browsers, it's clear the web app and WebKit limits are less restrictive than most discussion acknowledges. For the last few features that used to be missing, like notifications or other native hooks, notice Microsoft has the sidecar native app for iOS that handles in-game chat, LAN discovery for Xbox setup, and notifications.
- afavour 3y ago
  To be clear you absolutely cannot run Xbox games in a web browser. The service you’re talking about is just streaming video from a remote Xbox to the phone. You and the OP are both right about fullscreen. There is a web fullscreen API, which Apple does not support. However, PWAs strip out the browser UI so you’re effectively fullscreen. Though you can’t do anything about the status bar, nor can you lock screen orientation. But more to the original point, none of this has anything to do with security. Apple disallowed a native Xbox streaming app because they demanded a cut of the revenue and MS wasn’t willing to give it.
  - Terretta 3y ago
    Not sure what you mean by strip out the browser UI. When home screen apps first came out we built some for clients and if I recall correctly, lack of browser UI was default.
    - afavour 3y ago
      Right, PWAs strip out the browser UI. We’re in agreement. (it actually isn’t by default, it requires specific flag, but it’s more or less what everyone considers to be a standard for PWAs)
voytec 3y ago
> Apple being motivated by improving security are BS, and it pains me te see people in this forum falling for it or reapeating this. It's the same with privacy. Forcing app publishers to state what user data is being sucked out of their phones was just a poor PR stunt. Nothing has changed. Applications still require payments in form of contact lists (which is more or less illegal in Europe if you don't have permission of all people in your address book to share their names and phone numbers), disguised as helping users check if their friends are using a service, or to even allow user to use some app functionality. Unimaginative accountant that currently leads Apple on one hand bullshits public opinion when disallowing Facebook to steal data from users' devices and, on the other hand, after blocking Zuckerberg's ability to do so, he disgracefully used children protection to announce that Apple will now inspect users' data under the pretense of looking for child porn. Apple users are being deprived of OS control with most of updates and it's always done under the untruthful pretense of increasing security or protecting users' privacy. When this little man finally pushes ads to core macOS, he'll state that it's to help users.
- augment003 3y ago
  > It's the same with privacy. Forcing app publishers to state what user data is being sucked out of their phones was just a poor PR stunt. > Nothing has changed. Applications still require payments in form of contact lists This is actually proof that users don’t make good choices when it comes to privacy and security even when they have the necessary information.
  - voytec 3y ago
    True, but majority of users, not all of them. On the other hand, there's little non privacy-invasive apps of certain types and corporations make good use of users' inability to pick lesser evil. App Store helps them a lot, too, because to see what invasive practices developer/publisher uses, one has to click on app title to see details, while having a very comfortable "GET" button as the only button and only thing that looks clickable on the list. Cook's typical smoke and mirrors approach.
    - 3y ago
exabrial 3y ago
PWAs and SPAs are awful. And to think they’re not downloading and executing code is foolish. There is no memory model for a browser. Each browser implants is sandbox however it wants.
arcticbull 3y ago
> There is a great tool to increase security: the browser and its sandbox. You don't need to install anything fishy on your phone, and the sandbox rights coukd be sufficient for many apps. To this day the browser is still a second-tier experience to native apps. But that's fine, because anything you get from the macOS and iOS app stores are sandboxed too. So are non-App Store apps on macOS that choose to run in sandbox.
tolmasky 3y ago
The AppStore, in its current incarnation, almost certainly decreases security. And I mean this in a very concrete and demonstrable way. Apple on the one hand insists on touting the safety of the AppStore, and its reliance on app-review for this safety, to people (and Congress!),creating the reasonable expectation that if something has made it onto the AppStore, then it it’s gone through this stringent analysis and should be considered safe by default. However, they then bizarrely and deliberately refuse to actually police the store, to an alarming and almost cartooninsh level. We’ve seen this time and time again: scan apps remain on the store for months despite being reported. Take just last month when fake Authenticator apps flooded the AppStore to take advantage of Twitter getting rid of mobile phone based 2FA, and not only were those apps allowed on the store, but often managed to get top recommendation. At least on the web the expectation is that it’s the wild west and you should be careful what you install. On the AppStore it’s as if Apple has purposefully invested effort into creating the perfect mark for von artists: convincing their customers that a shark infested pool is totally safe to swim in. And this is the undeniably bad stuff, it doesn’t even touch on the “grey area” of these disgusting children’s casino apps that dominate the AppStore, and that Apple shares the profit on to the tune of 15-30%. The incentives are all broken. Apple profits when scam apps buy ad-placement using real apps names for keywords. Apple profits from apps that convince kids to buy garbage IAP. It would be one thing if the AppStore actually lived up to its supposed principles, at the cost of hurting competition, innovation, and the occasional frustrating developer rejection. There’s actually be a trade-off to discuss, and we’d actually be arguing about principles, and whether safety matters vs. freedom blah blah blah. Hell, as a parent, there’s versions of a well managed AppStore that I’d probably begrudgingly accept.there be a “can’t argue with the results” thinking there. But that’s not what this is, and I’m tired of pretending toy is in arguments that defend the AppStore. It’s been 15 years, the AppStore isn’t in beta, it’s not “a work in progress”, there’s no room for arguing about its vision vs it’s “current” reality. The AppStore has shown us what it actually is: a supremely lazy and un creative business cudgel that serves neither developers nor customers, and instead serves Apple first and ironically Apple competitors and criminals second. How does it serve Apple competitors you ask? Consider that companies like Amazon are offered special AppStore rates. Little developers don’t get that, big companies do. So not only does the AppStore exhibit monopolistic behavior, it also props up other monopolies. Also, the search sucks and it’s ugly. It feels like a free samples booth at a Costco. No one at Apple has any taste anymore. Not really relevant to the argument, but just want to point out there’s zero to be proud of in that product.
tempodox 3y ago
Don't celebrate just yet, Apple will drag their feet and make this as painful as they possibly can for everyone involved.
roamerz 3y ago
>>Apple being motivated by improving security are BS Their motivation is most definitely money now. Maybe not in the start though. Whatever their motives are though I’m super satisfied as a customer that they haven’t went down the android path of version calamity, an app store that I have zero trust in as an app buyer. Also tell me an android flavor the supports devices purchased 6 years ago? It’s a package deal. Having the wealth that is generated by the things that the EU has mandated will cause cuts in other areas of device support and/r&d. The option is making less profit or bumping prices to offset. In time we will see. I think it would be great of Apple to just stop selling devices in the EU as a thanks to politicians who voted for this ill advised rule. I’d like to see how long it would take for them to roll it back because you know they would eventually buckle to the people. To you and those of like thinking just assert your freedom of choice and go buy an android device along with the shit show it is and leave us to our relatively safe walled garden.
- pxoe 3y ago
  >definitely money now wait, so it wasn't money before? when they ran all those ads and did all of that 'we're the only privacy company' marketing? i guess it worked really well. when some of it was kinda just, reframing of lacking features and capabilities, and their 'closed ecosystem/walled garden' structure, as 'more secure'.
  - roamerz 3y ago
    I think is was more about the customer in the Steve Jobs era. And honestly I’m glad money is a component of it now. A financially healthy Apple is a sign they are meeting the customer’s needs. I bought into the ecosystem coming from Android for all the reasons stated. I honestly miss the ability to sideload apps and firmware but am willing to pay the walled garden price. If you don’t like IOS in it’s current form don’t buy it but don’t knowingly buy it knowing it’s not what you want. Don’t be the noisy spoiled 1% of our society and try and make the rest conform to your ideals. Go choose something else to ruin. If enough consumers vote with their wallet Apple will take notice. In this case that is the correct way to pursue change.
tim333 3y ago
>Apple being motivated by improving security are BS I'm not sure how they are motivated but in a report Apple cited: >In Nokia’s 2021 threat intelligence report, Android devices made up 50.31% of all infected devices, followed by Windows devices at 23.1%, and macOS devices at 9.2%. iOS devices made up a percentage so small as to not even be singled out, being instead bucketed into “other”. I personally use iOS and got it for my mum and aunt etc as it seems to suffer much less from malware in normal usage. I'm not sure if there is any evidence to the contrary?
quitit 3y ago
>Apple being motivated by improving security are BS, and it pains me te see people in this forum falling for it or reapeating this. Genuinely looking for evidence of this counterpoint you're making. As the evidence for the security angle is proven. iOS takes less than 1% of malware, Android takes nearly 50%, in between we have Windows, IoT devices and even MacOS taking more malware than iOS. So where's the data that this strategy isn't working to protect iOS devices? I want to see it.

amelius 3y ago

I sometimes feel that some HN folks need to consider a job inside EU committees. It's probably boring work, but even if you spend 10% of your time in meetings and the remainder on a secret side project, you will be doing society a great service.

KyeRussell 3y ago
This is a hilarious instance of the “I could build that in a weekend” mindset.
timwis 3y ago
How would you recommend going about that?
AniseAbyss 3y ago
[dead]

zeta0134 3y ago

The full screen feature works fine on websites for me? Well mostly fine, it's rubbish for games in particular due to a user hostile feature that forbids rapid screen taps, insisting that you might be using an on screen keyboard and denying you the autonomy to tell Safari to please not. But ignoring that, the feature seems to exist. What am I missing?

jacquesm 3y ago
Interesting. You say it works fine and then in the same breath you make a point to show it isn't and then choose to ignore it. What you're missing is that Safari shouldn't have that bit hard wired in.
- zeta0134 3y ago
  (ah, the juxtaposition was the point. I'm bad at humor early in the morning)
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Np, I'm apparently equally bad at spotting it :)

PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago

> And you cannot use a third party browser, since they forbid that (all are Safari based) I think this has turned out to be the current barrier in preventing Google from completing taking over the web standards space.

heavyset_go 3y ago
Apple's ban of all browsers but Safari turned out to be the main barrier preventing progressive web apps from being viable, deepening the duopoly power of themselves and Google, because Apple refuses to implement basic browser standards that are necessary for PWAs. And then when they do implement similar browser standards, they don't follow any web standards, they instead make their own proprietary bespoke web standard for Safari[1]. And they also did other fun things like wait until nearly 2021 to support WebP and let Safari be the the #1 source of one-click exploits on iOS. It's weird to see Safari trotted out in defense of web standards of all things. [1] https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifications/ https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifi...
- KyeRussell 3y ago
  You’re so dead set on “winning” that you’ve completely talked past the point that was being made. The commenter was not even saying that their point justifies Safari being the only browser engine available on iOS. They were making a specific point. If you don’t want to talk to that point, maybe try another thread.
- SXX 3y ago
  For years Google been stamping "standards" one after another even though other browser vendors were against many of them and they end up being Chrome-only. No matter what Apple itself does Safari being major non-Chromium browser helps Firefox a lot just by existing and having huge marketshare.
  - heavyset_go 3y ago
    How does Apple dragging their feet on implementing the Web Push notification standard, that is necessary for PWAs, in anyway help in that situation? Literally every browser except Safari implemented the the standard, and not out of some noble anti-Google crusade. PWAs threaten the App Store monopoly's moneyhose. How does Apple releasing proprietary web standards just for Safari, like Safari Push Notifications, help in anyway with the purported problem of companies stamping out web standards without consensus? It seems like it's only a problem when Google does it, but when Apple does it, it's Safari "helping Firefox just exist".

mnd999 3y ago

Users don’t want crappy PWAs, they want something that follows the platform UI conventions. It’s good that Apple care enough about about UX to actually enforce this.

jakub_jo 3y ago
If users don't want crappy PWAs than they wont use them. It's common sense to let "the market decide" -- why not in this case?
- rimliu 3y ago
  And they don't. How come Android still has apps that are not PWAs?
- LadyCailin 3y ago
  Market decisions don’t do anything to prevent the tragedy of the commons - is the general answer. I have mixed opinions on this specific case, but I absolutely see how this could make things worse. If everyone starts releasing their own versions, and not offering the apps in the App Store anymore, than the people who prefer the walled garden (for which there are good reasons to want) then they lose that choice. It’s possible that doesn’t happen - and allowing people that don’t want the walled garden should also have that choice, but you can’t simply boil this complex question down to “free market”. It’s intellectually dishonest, at best.
- mnd999 3y ago
  They won’t have a choice. Low quality crap is cheaper to make so in a lot of cases that is all there will be.
- kiicia 3y ago
  in this specific case its Google decision, not whole market, Google is usurping web space and web standards
- palata 3y ago
  Counter-example: I don't want crappy ElectronJS apps, but I don't have a choice. Discord/Slack don't have an open API that would allow a good third-party client. If I don't like PWAs but WhatsApp stops supporting anything else, how can I use WhatsApp without the PWA?

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

> the browser and its sandbox. A lot of viruses (and jailbreaks on iOS amongst others) are distributed via this browser / sandbox; it's only secure in theory and it took decades to get to that point. Sure (before the Rust evangelists swoop in), part of that was due to using unsafe languages; part was due to extension frameworks that had too much power (ActiveX, which was even used to update your operating system, I can't fathom why they thought that was a good idea). But it'll take many more years of zero incidents, jailbreaks, etc before I'd trust the browser over Apple's app sandboxing and app review and distribution approach.

peoplefromibiza 3y ago
a bit of history massaging in this comment. Chrome and Firefox are as secure as Safari, if not more, banning them is a commercial choice not a technical one. iOS exploits still exist, there's no real advantage in Apple sandboxing apps, they are routinely leaking users data and being exploited as well. OTOH Apple refusing to implement certain web standards is proof that they cannot guarantee a safe implementation, which is a reason more to allow better browsers on their platform.
stefan_ 3y ago
This is funny because by far the most impactful breaches of security on iOS phones have been due to the Apple components, like the messaging app that inexplicably is still written in ObjectiveC as it's ever been, or the image framework found to contain various bits of opensource code they never updated, never audited, or the various terrible magic "serialization" features. This Apple native crud they force every app to use (up to the whole browser engine, like in the IE days!) is truly the ActiveX of our times. Only you can't even get rid of it.
kmeisthax 3y ago
Microsoft thought ActiveX was a good idea because they built Internet Explorer out of OLE and COM. Everything in that era of Windows was built to be embeddable and composable - "compound documents" being the original design goal. If you needed to stick, say, a video into a web page, COM/OLE was the obvious way to do that on Windows in 1996. It's not any different from, say, early Firefox extensions being built out of XUL - in fact, I recall XUL extensions for Firefox that would literally add ActiveX support back in. It wasn't until Chrome came along where extensions didn't get to muck about with browser internals. You can exploit in both native and browser contexts. Most jailbreaks nowadays are assisted by a native application that you dev-sign to deliberately pwn yourself with. In the past we had websites that you could use to jailbreak with. Both are sandboxed environments with significant attackable surface area, so one is not necessarily more trustworthy than the other purely on measures of exploitability.

xattt 3y ago

> Thank you, EU!! I think this plan will move forward because of consumer protections afforded in the EU (ie including sideloaded apps) not available elsewhere.

tonmoy 3y ago

Are you sure PWA doesn’t work on iOS? I remember installing websites as apps on my iPhone. According to this SO answer I think one can even make it full screen (with a workaround at least): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53061258/pwa-not-opening-in-full-screen-mode-on-iphone-ipad https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53061258/pwa-not-opening...

loganwedwards 3y ago
I “installed” drop.com as a PWA on my iPhone. It gets full screen real estate and a launcher icon.

Terretta 3y ago

A non-app-store web app on iPhone has been able to be full screen since initial release of Home Screen web apps. When you launch from Home Screen, it gets the whole screen. See the Xbox Cloud Gaming "app" for instance, which is outside the App Store, just launch then "Add to Home Screen", close, and run from Home Screen. https://www.xbox.com/en-us/play https://www.xbox.com/en-us/play As for what can be done with browsers, see the venerable iCab but also Kagi's Orion browser which runs Firefox and Chrome extensions, even on iOS. Yes, it's WebKit based, but so was Chrome for a long time. https://help.kagi.com/orion/browser-extensions/macos-extensions.html https://help.kagi.com/orion/browser-extensions/macos-extensi... Given you can run Xbox games or arbitrary extensions from other browsers, it's clear the web app and WebKit limits are less restrictive than most discussion acknowledges. For the last few features that used to be missing, like notifications or other native hooks, notice Microsoft has the sidecar native app for iOS that handles in-game chat, LAN discovery for Xbox setup, and notifications.

afavour 3y ago
To be clear you absolutely cannot run Xbox games in a web browser. The service you’re talking about is just streaming video from a remote Xbox to the phone. You and the OP are both right about fullscreen. There is a web fullscreen API, which Apple does not support. However, PWAs strip out the browser UI so you’re effectively fullscreen. Though you can’t do anything about the status bar, nor can you lock screen orientation. But more to the original point, none of this has anything to do with security. Apple disallowed a native Xbox streaming app because they demanded a cut of the revenue and MS wasn’t willing to give it.
- Terretta 3y ago
  Not sure what you mean by strip out the browser UI. When home screen apps first came out we built some for clients and if I recall correctly, lack of browser UI was default.
  - afavour 3y ago
    Right, PWAs strip out the browser UI. We’re in agreement. (it actually isn’t by default, it requires specific flag, but it’s more or less what everyone considers to be a standard for PWAs)

voytec 3y ago

> Apple being motivated by improving security are BS, and it pains me te see people in this forum falling for it or reapeating this. It's the same with privacy. Forcing app publishers to state what user data is being sucked out of their phones was just a poor PR stunt. Nothing has changed. Applications still require payments in form of contact lists (which is more or less illegal in Europe if you don't have permission of all people in your address book to share their names and phone numbers), disguised as helping users check if their friends are using a service, or to even allow user to use some app functionality. Unimaginative accountant that currently leads Apple on one hand bullshits public opinion when disallowing Facebook to steal data from users' devices and, on the other hand, after blocking Zuckerberg's ability to do so, he disgracefully used children protection to announce that Apple will now inspect users' data under the pretense of looking for child porn. Apple users are being deprived of OS control with most of updates and it's always done under the untruthful pretense of increasing security or protecting users' privacy. When this little man finally pushes ads to core macOS, he'll state that it's to help users.

augment003 3y ago
> It's the same with privacy. Forcing app publishers to state what user data is being sucked out of their phones was just a poor PR stunt. > Nothing has changed. Applications still require payments in form of contact lists This is actually proof that users don’t make good choices when it comes to privacy and security even when they have the necessary information.
- voytec 3y ago
  True, but majority of users, not all of them. On the other hand, there's little non privacy-invasive apps of certain types and corporations make good use of users' inability to pick lesser evil. App Store helps them a lot, too, because to see what invasive practices developer/publisher uses, one has to click on app title to see details, while having a very comfortable "GET" button as the only button and only thing that looks clickable on the list. Cook's typical smoke and mirrors approach.
  - 3y ago

exabrial 3y ago

PWAs and SPAs are awful. And to think they’re not downloading and executing code is foolish. There is no memory model for a browser. Each browser implants is sandbox however it wants.

arcticbull 3y ago

> There is a great tool to increase security: the browser and its sandbox. You don't need to install anything fishy on your phone, and the sandbox rights coukd be sufficient for many apps. To this day the browser is still a second-tier experience to native apps. But that's fine, because anything you get from the macOS and iOS app stores are sandboxed too. So are non-App Store apps on macOS that choose to run in sandbox.

tolmasky 3y ago

The AppStore, in its current incarnation, almost certainly decreases security. And I mean this in a very concrete and demonstrable way. Apple on the one hand insists on touting the safety of the AppStore, and its reliance on app-review for this safety, to people (and Congress!),creating the reasonable expectation that if something has made it onto the AppStore, then it it’s gone through this stringent analysis and should be considered safe by default. However, they then bizarrely and deliberately refuse to actually police the store, to an alarming and almost cartooninsh level. We’ve seen this time and time again: scan apps remain on the store for months despite being reported. Take just last month when fake Authenticator apps flooded the AppStore to take advantage of Twitter getting rid of mobile phone based 2FA, and not only were those apps allowed on the store, but often managed to get top recommendation. At least on the web the expectation is that it’s the wild west and you should be careful what you install. On the AppStore it’s as if Apple has purposefully invested effort into creating the perfect mark for von artists: convincing their customers that a shark infested pool is totally safe to swim in. And this is the undeniably bad stuff, it doesn’t even touch on the “grey area” of these disgusting children’s casino apps that dominate the AppStore, and that Apple shares the profit on to the tune of 15-30%. The incentives are all broken. Apple profits when scam apps buy ad-placement using real apps names for keywords. Apple profits from apps that convince kids to buy garbage IAP. It would be one thing if the AppStore actually lived up to its supposed principles, at the cost of hurting competition, innovation, and the occasional frustrating developer rejection. There’s actually be a trade-off to discuss, and we’d actually be arguing about principles, and whether safety matters vs. freedom blah blah blah. Hell, as a parent, there’s versions of a well managed AppStore that I’d probably begrudgingly accept.there be a “can’t argue with the results” thinking there. But that’s not what this is, and I’m tired of pretending toy is in arguments that defend the AppStore. It’s been 15 years, the AppStore isn’t in beta, it’s not “a work in progress”, there’s no room for arguing about its vision vs it’s “current” reality. The AppStore has shown us what it actually is: a supremely lazy and un creative business cudgel that serves neither developers nor customers, and instead serves Apple first and ironically Apple competitors and criminals second. How does it serve Apple competitors you ask? Consider that companies like Amazon are offered special AppStore rates. Little developers don’t get that, big companies do. So not only does the AppStore exhibit monopolistic behavior, it also props up other monopolies. Also, the search sucks and it’s ugly. It feels like a free samples booth at a Costco. No one at Apple has any taste anymore. Not really relevant to the argument, but just want to point out there’s zero to be proud of in that product.

tempodox 3y ago

Don't celebrate just yet, Apple will drag their feet and make this as painful as they possibly can for everyone involved.

roamerz 3y ago

>>Apple being motivated by improving security are BS Their motivation is most definitely money now. Maybe not in the start though. Whatever their motives are though I’m super satisfied as a customer that they haven’t went down the android path of version calamity, an app store that I have zero trust in as an app buyer. Also tell me an android flavor the supports devices purchased 6 years ago? It’s a package deal. Having the wealth that is generated by the things that the EU has mandated will cause cuts in other areas of device support and/r&d. The option is making less profit or bumping prices to offset. In time we will see. I think it would be great of Apple to just stop selling devices in the EU as a thanks to politicians who voted for this ill advised rule. I’d like to see how long it would take for them to roll it back because you know they would eventually buckle to the people. To you and those of like thinking just assert your freedom of choice and go buy an android device along with the shit show it is and leave us to our relatively safe walled garden.

pxoe 3y ago
>definitely money now wait, so it wasn't money before? when they ran all those ads and did all of that 'we're the only privacy company' marketing? i guess it worked really well. when some of it was kinda just, reframing of lacking features and capabilities, and their 'closed ecosystem/walled garden' structure, as 'more secure'.
- roamerz 3y ago
  I think is was more about the customer in the Steve Jobs era. And honestly I’m glad money is a component of it now. A financially healthy Apple is a sign they are meeting the customer’s needs. I bought into the ecosystem coming from Android for all the reasons stated. I honestly miss the ability to sideload apps and firmware but am willing to pay the walled garden price. If you don’t like IOS in it’s current form don’t buy it but don’t knowingly buy it knowing it’s not what you want. Don’t be the noisy spoiled 1% of our society and try and make the rest conform to your ideals. Go choose something else to ruin. If enough consumers vote with their wallet Apple will take notice. In this case that is the correct way to pursue change.

tim333 3y ago

>Apple being motivated by improving security are BS I'm not sure how they are motivated but in a report Apple cited: >In Nokia’s 2021 threat intelligence report, Android devices made up 50.31% of all infected devices, followed by Windows devices at 23.1%, and macOS devices at 9.2%. iOS devices made up a percentage so small as to not even be singled out, being instead bucketed into “other”. I personally use iOS and got it for my mum and aunt etc as it seems to suffer much less from malware in normal usage. I'm not sure if there is any evidence to the contrary?

quitit 3y ago

>Apple being motivated by improving security are BS, and it pains me te see people in this forum falling for it or reapeating this. Genuinely looking for evidence of this counterpoint you're making. As the evidence for the security angle is proven. iOS takes less than 1% of malware, Android takes nearly 50%, in between we have Windows, IoT devices and even MacOS taking more malware than iOS. So where's the data that this strategy isn't working to protect iOS devices? I want to see it.