3 ms·

Although I'm generally happy with Apple's walled garden model, IMHO sideloading is getting much more important than ever for a few reasons: 1) Apple engaging i

by mrtksn 3y ago

Although I'm generally happy with Apple's walled garden model, IMHO sideloading is getting much more important than ever for a few reasons: 1) Apple engaging in rent seeking may stifle progress and create another Nokia catastrophe. When a device is locked down, Apple can make you purchase inferior services and if they can do it for long enough they can end up irrelevant. Big things are happening in China, not good idea to milk customers instead of head on competition just because there's a political pressure on China and locked down devices in users hands. 2) Political instabilities all over the world. Apple services might not be available all the time and they might be limited due to political reasons. 3) Huge appetite by the governments to control user's devices and make vendors act as the police. Maybe you support this if you feel like the power is on your side but don't forget that your enemies can take over at any time. Locked devices are extremely risky for any kind of resistance. It's also very interesting if Apple can manage to make this EU exclusive. If Europeans manage to come up with actually popular use cases, can Apple deny this to US users? For how long? AFAIK in China WeChat can do a lot of stuff that it's not allowed in the West, can Apple pull this in EU-USA context? IMHO it would be much harder.

yladiz 3y ago
> It's also very interesting if Apple can manage to make this EU exclusive. I imagine it will be configurable, since I would guess there will be region specific rules (for example China might only want to allow App Store apps, which they can completely control the distribution of).
Terretta 3y ago
> Locked devices are extremely risky for any kind of resistance. Tell that to the surveillance states that hate your iPhone.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  The same states that just purchased the Pegasus software from Israel and breached the iPhones anyway? O.K. I'll tell them. Meanwhile there are real wars happening in Europe and the Middle East, people are hacking phones to fly drones, trigger devices or detect enemy. It would suck badly if you are the one who has no access to an Android device, and you have to wait for Apple reviewers to approve the app that can use the seismometer to detect and rely the tank positions in your neighbourhood. It's 2025, the war still goes on and Trump decides that Putin is right, to de-escalate the situation orders Apple to stop providing services to users in Ukraine because people are using their phones to film and locate Russian soldiers, prolonging the war. There you have it, someone on the other side of the planet just cut your communications as they see fit so you can be exterminated without causing much trouble. Very dangerous stuff. These devices are expensive, people can't just get something that will work at whim. Unfortunately, Apple's walled gardens can't protect you against tanks or missiles.
  - Terretta 3y ago
    > Pegasus software from Israel and breached the iPhones anyway Pegasus doesn't help them with all iPhones, and the set of phones it can break into becomes much smaller if you take the (not entirely simple) step of pairing your USB (Lightning) port to a management tool, even just the Apple Configurator, and/or using the features Apple added that let you emergency disable biometrics and wired unlocks together with a good self-erase config setting. Apple now even offers you a feature that can revoke Apple's keys from your iCloud backup, so even they can't provide access to surveillance states through your cloud backups. (You lose a number of features including making your photos and messages unrecoverable if you lock yourself out, which most users would hate. That's why it's not a default.) Of course the new Lockdown mode is useful if this matters to you, added by Apple specifically to deter nation state level skulduggery, as a belt and suspenders approach on top of the ongoing work to sandbox better. Your scenarios seem less far fetched now that Musk switches things on and off on a whim, but journalists and human rights activists and CEOs worldwide are under attack constantly. The rest of your post ignores Apple's resistance to both state apparatus and APTs, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple–FBI_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple–FBI_encryption_dispute This iPhone in question was a 5C, old enough at the time to still be attacked (can't fix old hardware issues, for example). Situations like this led to not just software but hardware changes, and Apple continues to advance both technology fronts in efforts to ensure Pegasus-like tools are left unable to compromise your security and privacy. So no, in a balance of harms, I don't want the device opened up, I want it provably secure with no backdoors and nothing that can be used to pry an entry. There are, as you note, plenty other devices on the market for DIY use, so the free market gives us the best of both worlds, hackable by design and secure by design. . . . PS. A couple levels above you wrote, "Huge appetite by the governments to control user's devices and make vendors act as the police. Maybe you support this if you feel like the power is on your side but don't forget that your enemies can take over at any time. Locked devices are extremely risky for any kind of resistance." On the contrary, that's exactly the fight Apple is fighting, and they have been taking away their own access rather than have it available to those you're worried about in that comment. That is strictly better.
kmeisthax 3y ago
> can Apple deny this to US users? For how long? Yes. For as long as either... - The US fails to pass DMA-equivalent antimonopoly law. We had the Open App Markets Act (OAMA) but it's basically dead thanks to lobbying - The EU fails to impose DMA requirements outside of their jurisdiction One thing to note is that the EU loves extraterritoriality. They call it the Brussels Effect - they write laws in such a way that it's cheaper to just comply worldwide than try and carve out the EU. For example, GDPR protects EU citizens, rather than people in the EU, so anyone with EU citizen data has to comply with GDPR even if they have no contact with the EU. The US and EU are both sovereign nations, so there's all sorts of ways this could play out. The EU could amend the Digital Markets Act to require worldwide compliance, which would obligate Apple to offer sideloading to Americans. The options to combat this from the US side would be fairly limited and arguably too extreme to use. Most of Apple's lobbying has been to prevent the US from mandating sideloading, but they wouldn't be arguing for, say, a full-on ban of sideloading purely to distolerate our hypothetical EU worldwide DMA requirement.
- solarkraft 3y ago
  The punishments for GDPR and DMA non-compliance are also related to worldwide turnover, rather than something local.
- andrepew 3y ago
  GDPR can apply extraterritorially but not to the extent you're suggesting. For example, I am an EU citizen living in Canada. GDPR does not apply to any company interacting with me. However, for a US citizen living in an EU country GDPR would apply to every company they interact with. Even US based companies.
  - WirelessGigabit 3y ago
    > For example, I am an EU citizen living in Canada. GDPR does not apply to any company interacting with me. Weirdly enough that is not true. The sheer fact that you are an EU citizen covers you under GDPR. Now, you may not have recorse as the company you're dealing with does not have an entity in Europe that you could sue.

by mrtksn 3y ago

yladiz 3y ago

> It's also very interesting if Apple can manage to make this EU exclusive. I imagine it will be configurable, since I would guess there will be region specific rules (for example China might only want to allow App Store apps, which they can completely control the distribution of).

Terretta 3y ago

> Locked devices are extremely risky for any kind of resistance. Tell that to the surveillance states that hate your iPhone.

mrtksn 3y ago
The same states that just purchased the Pegasus software from Israel and breached the iPhones anyway? O.K. I'll tell them. Meanwhile there are real wars happening in Europe and the Middle East, people are hacking phones to fly drones, trigger devices or detect enemy. It would suck badly if you are the one who has no access to an Android device, and you have to wait for Apple reviewers to approve the app that can use the seismometer to detect and rely the tank positions in your neighbourhood. It's 2025, the war still goes on and Trump decides that Putin is right, to de-escalate the situation orders Apple to stop providing services to users in Ukraine because people are using their phones to film and locate Russian soldiers, prolonging the war. There you have it, someone on the other side of the planet just cut your communications as they see fit so you can be exterminated without causing much trouble. Very dangerous stuff. These devices are expensive, people can't just get something that will work at whim. Unfortunately, Apple's walled gardens can't protect you against tanks or missiles.
- Terretta 3y ago
  > Pegasus software from Israel and breached the iPhones anyway Pegasus doesn't help them with all iPhones, and the set of phones it can break into becomes much smaller if you take the (not entirely simple) step of pairing your USB (Lightning) port to a management tool, even just the Apple Configurator, and/or using the features Apple added that let you emergency disable biometrics and wired unlocks together with a good self-erase config setting. Apple now even offers you a feature that can revoke Apple's keys from your iCloud backup, so even they can't provide access to surveillance states through your cloud backups. (You lose a number of features including making your photos and messages unrecoverable if you lock yourself out, which most users would hate. That's why it's not a default.) Of course the new Lockdown mode is useful if this matters to you, added by Apple specifically to deter nation state level skulduggery, as a belt and suspenders approach on top of the ongoing work to sandbox better. Your scenarios seem less far fetched now that Musk switches things on and off on a whim, but journalists and human rights activists and CEOs worldwide are under attack constantly. The rest of your post ignores Apple's resistance to both state apparatus and APTs, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple–FBI_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple–FBI_encryption_dispute This iPhone in question was a 5C, old enough at the time to still be attacked (can't fix old hardware issues, for example). Situations like this led to not just software but hardware changes, and Apple continues to advance both technology fronts in efforts to ensure Pegasus-like tools are left unable to compromise your security and privacy. So no, in a balance of harms, I don't want the device opened up, I want it provably secure with no backdoors and nothing that can be used to pry an entry. There are, as you note, plenty other devices on the market for DIY use, so the free market gives us the best of both worlds, hackable by design and secure by design. . . . PS. A couple levels above you wrote, "Huge appetite by the governments to control user's devices and make vendors act as the police. Maybe you support this if you feel like the power is on your side but don't forget that your enemies can take over at any time. Locked devices are extremely risky for any kind of resistance." On the contrary, that's exactly the fight Apple is fighting, and they have been taking away their own access rather than have it available to those you're worried about in that comment. That is strictly better.

kmeisthax 3y ago

> can Apple deny this to US users? For how long? Yes. For as long as either... - The US fails to pass DMA-equivalent antimonopoly law. We had the Open App Markets Act (OAMA) but it's basically dead thanks to lobbying - The EU fails to impose DMA requirements outside of their jurisdiction One thing to note is that the EU loves extraterritoriality. They call it the Brussels Effect - they write laws in such a way that it's cheaper to just comply worldwide than try and carve out the EU. For example, GDPR protects EU citizens, rather than people in the EU, so anyone with EU citizen data has to comply with GDPR even if they have no contact with the EU. The US and EU are both sovereign nations, so there's all sorts of ways this could play out. The EU could amend the Digital Markets Act to require worldwide compliance, which would obligate Apple to offer sideloading to Americans. The options to combat this from the US side would be fairly limited and arguably too extreme to use. Most of Apple's lobbying has been to prevent the US from mandating sideloading, but they wouldn't be arguing for, say, a full-on ban of sideloading purely to distolerate our hypothetical EU worldwide DMA requirement.

solarkraft 3y ago
The punishments for GDPR and DMA non-compliance are also related to worldwide turnover, rather than something local.
andrepew 3y ago
GDPR can apply extraterritorially but not to the extent you're suggesting. For example, I am an EU citizen living in Canada. GDPR does not apply to any company interacting with me. However, for a US citizen living in an EU country GDPR would apply to every company they interact with. Even US based companies.
- WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  > For example, I am an EU citizen living in Canada. GDPR does not apply to any company interacting with me. Weirdly enough that is not true. The sheer fact that you are an EU citizen covers you under GDPR. Now, you may not have recorse as the company you're dealing with does not have an entity in Europe that you could sue.