4 ms·

Can you expand what Apple has done to count “malicious compliance”?

lagadu 3y ago
Breaking PWAs is the most recent example but the most well known was their (now dead and buried) attempt to circumvent USB charging requirements.
bmicraft 3y ago
Everything they've done around the right to repair
- laserlight 3y ago
  As far as I know, they ship a whole package of tools to customers who would like to repair their equipment. They also made the latest iPhone models easier to disassemble. What do you think they should have done in order to comply benevolently?
  - dns_snek 3y ago
    A non-exhaustive list: - They don't allow repair shops to freely order parts, each part must be ordered on-demand, requiring repair shops to pass their customers' personal information to Apple. This adds significant delay to repairs which makes 3rd parties an unappealing option - They implement digital pairing between parts that require Apple's authorization, which is inaccessible to third party repair shops. In practice this means that you could buy 2 identical brand new iPhones from the Apple store, and they wouldn't work when you swapped their screens. - They restrict Apple authorized repair shops from performing many useful repairs, I'm not completely up to date on the exact list, but you can watch videos from Louis Rossmann or read materials from other educators on the topic - They gaslight users asking about data recovery options on their own forum, claiming that any repair shop which offers to recover data is scamming them, and ban actual experts who correct them to say that data recovery is possible https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV4_mLw2BGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV4_mLw2BGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrILfIE9IB4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrILfIE9IB4
    - blashyrk 3y ago
      And, of course, all this is done under the guise of "security" or "protecting privacy" and the users are cheering for it. You never know when a 3rd party company is going to place a digital time bomb _somehow_ by putting a screen from iPhone A into iPhone B! Better let Apple fix it. Oh, the margins? What margins? It's not margins, it's the price of SECURITY!
    - laserlight 3y ago
      Thank you. All of these sound valid criticisms to me.
      - kjreact 3y ago
        Don’t be too quick to accept these criticisms. You have to compare to competitors in the industry to get a clearer picture. Looking at screen repairs for Samsung Galaxy phones the same security issues arise and there are complaints about Samsung blocking third party repairs due to security concerns. So are both Apple and Samsung just being greedy or is there more to the issue at hand? I’m inclined to believe a company unless they’ve demonstrated that I cannot trust them.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        > You have to compare to competitors in the industry to get a clearer picture. This tells you nothing. They each have the same incentives. They want you to pay a premium to the manufacturer for repairs, because they're the manufacturer, and because that causes more devices to be uneconomical to repair and so more people have to buy new ones.
        laserlight 3y ago
        I agree. I give Apple more benefit of the doubt than other tech giants. I see many knee-jerk reactions to what Apple does --- in my opinion --- rightfully. After all, many of these decisions are trade-offs, such as reusing parts from another iPhone being a measure against theft. I thanked the previous user I replied to because they were able to go beyond knee-jerk reactions and highlight issues in which Apple is pushing too hard on the trade-off scale.
blashyrk 3y ago
Core Technology Fee™ designed to render third party stores completely dead on arrival, for one.
stevefan1999 3y ago
The DMA tax. It has the side effect of killing off open-source projects for the iOS with their egregious installation fee in Europe. Every time you install an open-source app, the developers are extorted by Apple with Core Technology Fee of €0.5 each and the Fee waiver guideline does not mention open-source to be a valid criterion for such exemption. Limiting USB-C speed to USB2.0 for iDevices that are deemed "not pro", and not having Thunderbolt access despite the hardware could in theory allows it, limiting customers choice to buy the "pro" models for a full experience. And a slightly bigger Lightning cable is still being used in Apple Vision, which is clearly a flying middle finger to the USB-C change. Apple are starting to commit on the adoption of RCS standard in 2024 too but they still won't support Google's E2E extensions, and instead working with GSMA to make their own encryption standard. The point of RCS is to make communications open, not by trying to make you feel special. Perhaps Apple is still trying to make a segregated market with different colored bubbles just like iMessages. This might be controversial, but I think it counts: notarization hell (I would like to call it "notorization", combining both notarization and notorious). Starting from Catalina, Apple is forcing all Mac app to be notarized by Apple before use, making the experience of installing custom software other than downloaded from the App Store extremely difficult, in that you have to press a lot of buttons, buried deep in the settings and not as apparent as they should. This makes genuine open-source development for the Mac itself quite hard as it not only need to go through Apple's notarization service before publishing, which is sometimes flaky and not always available all the time, but it also means Apple have control over what apps are allowed simply by revoking your certification, unless you jailbroken your Mac to disable notarization (https://disable-gatekeeper.github.io https://disable-gatekeeper.github.io). Interestingly, Apple could have totally banished checkra1n from running in Mac by revoking the notarization, but Apple doesn't.
- zodiac 3y ago
  > Every time you install an open-source app, the developers are extorted by Apple with Core Technology Fee of €0.5 each I don't think this is true? AIUI a developer can choose to operating using the "old business terms" even in the EU, in which case they don't have to pay the fee. https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/ https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/ backs this up by stating that the CTF is an element of the "new business terms".

Breaking PWAs is the most recent example but the most well known was their (now dead and buried) attempt to circumvent USB charging requirements.

bmicraft 3y ago

Everything they've done around the right to repair

laserlight 3y ago
As far as I know, they ship a whole package of tools to customers who would like to repair their equipment. They also made the latest iPhone models easier to disassemble. What do you think they should have done in order to comply benevolently?
- dns_snek 3y ago
  A non-exhaustive list: - They don't allow repair shops to freely order parts, each part must be ordered on-demand, requiring repair shops to pass their customers' personal information to Apple. This adds significant delay to repairs which makes 3rd parties an unappealing option - They implement digital pairing between parts that require Apple's authorization, which is inaccessible to third party repair shops. In practice this means that you could buy 2 identical brand new iPhones from the Apple store, and they wouldn't work when you swapped their screens. - They restrict Apple authorized repair shops from performing many useful repairs, I'm not completely up to date on the exact list, but you can watch videos from Louis Rossmann or read materials from other educators on the topic - They gaslight users asking about data recovery options on their own forum, claiming that any repair shop which offers to recover data is scamming them, and ban actual experts who correct them to say that data recovery is possible https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV4_mLw2BGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV4_mLw2BGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrILfIE9IB4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrILfIE9IB4
  - blashyrk 3y ago
    And, of course, all this is done under the guise of "security" or "protecting privacy" and the users are cheering for it. You never know when a 3rd party company is going to place a digital time bomb _somehow_ by putting a screen from iPhone A into iPhone B! Better let Apple fix it. Oh, the margins? What margins? It's not margins, it's the price of SECURITY!
  - laserlight 3y ago
    Thank you. All of these sound valid criticisms to me.
    - kjreact 3y ago
      Don’t be too quick to accept these criticisms. You have to compare to competitors in the industry to get a clearer picture. Looking at screen repairs for Samsung Galaxy phones the same security issues arise and there are complaints about Samsung blocking third party repairs due to security concerns. So are both Apple and Samsung just being greedy or is there more to the issue at hand? I’m inclined to believe a company unless they’ve demonstrated that I cannot trust them.
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        > You have to compare to competitors in the industry to get a clearer picture. This tells you nothing. They each have the same incentives. They want you to pay a premium to the manufacturer for repairs, because they're the manufacturer, and because that causes more devices to be uneconomical to repair and so more people have to buy new ones.
      - laserlight 3y ago
        I agree. I give Apple more benefit of the doubt than other tech giants. I see many knee-jerk reactions to what Apple does --- in my opinion --- rightfully. After all, many of these decisions are trade-offs, such as reusing parts from another iPhone being a measure against theft. I thanked the previous user I replied to because they were able to go beyond knee-jerk reactions and highlight issues in which Apple is pushing too hard on the trade-off scale.

blashyrk 3y ago

Core Technology Fee™ designed to render third party stores completely dead on arrival, for one.

stevefan1999 3y ago

The DMA tax. It has the side effect of killing off open-source projects for the iOS with their egregious installation fee in Europe. Every time you install an open-source app, the developers are extorted by Apple with Core Technology Fee of €0.5 each and the Fee waiver guideline does not mention open-source to be a valid criterion for such exemption. Limiting USB-C speed to USB2.0 for iDevices that are deemed "not pro", and not having Thunderbolt access despite the hardware could in theory allows it, limiting customers choice to buy the "pro" models for a full experience. And a slightly bigger Lightning cable is still being used in Apple Vision, which is clearly a flying middle finger to the USB-C change. Apple are starting to commit on the adoption of RCS standard in 2024 too but they still won't support Google's E2E extensions, and instead working with GSMA to make their own encryption standard. The point of RCS is to make communications open, not by trying to make you feel special. Perhaps Apple is still trying to make a segregated market with different colored bubbles just like iMessages. This might be controversial, but I think it counts: notarization hell (I would like to call it "notorization", combining both notarization and notorious). Starting from Catalina, Apple is forcing all Mac app to be notarized by Apple before use, making the experience of installing custom software other than downloaded from the App Store extremely difficult, in that you have to press a lot of buttons, buried deep in the settings and not as apparent as they should. This makes genuine open-source development for the Mac itself quite hard as it not only need to go through Apple's notarization service before publishing, which is sometimes flaky and not always available all the time, but it also means Apple have control over what apps are allowed simply by revoking your certification, unless you jailbroken your Mac to disable notarization (https://disable-gatekeeper.github.io https://disable-gatekeeper.github.io). Interestingly, Apple could have totally banished checkra1n from running in Mac by revoking the notarization, but Apple doesn't.

zodiac 3y ago
> Every time you install an open-source app, the developers are extorted by Apple with Core Technology Fee of €0.5 each I don't think this is true? AIUI a developer can choose to operating using the "old business terms" even in the EU, in which case they don't have to pay the fee. https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/ https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/ backs this up by stating that the CTF is an element of the "new business terms".