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> “I’ve driven many miles and never crashed. Why do I need to pay for seatbelts?” Bad analogy. A better analogy is: I’ve driven many miles and never crashed. W

> “I’ve driven many miles and never crashed. Why do I need to pay for seatbelts?” Bad analogy. A better analogy is: I’ve driven many miles and never crashed. Why do I still need Toyota's permission to drive? I'm absolutely in favor of "seatbelts" for computers, but that means sandboxing, not censorship or rent seeking. It also means you can remove the "seatbelt" when you need to.

acdha 3y ago
I used seatbelts because every car safety measure you can think of has had someone complaining about having to pay a cost for something they’re too good a driver to need. Having apps notarized to enforce some basic legal & safety standards seems similar: it definitely costs more than zero, it definitely is a restriction on absolute freedom, but it helps prevent things which are statistically certain to keep happening otherwise.
- repelsteeltje 3y ago
  > Having apps notarized to enforce some basic legal & safety standards seems similar. Which things, exactly?
  - acdha 3y ago
    Consider how well malware and adware has done where the authors can impersonate legitimate developers (remember when people got faux-Firefox as the first Google hit?) or can run distribution campaigns from shady web hosts for years? Notarization and domain limits mean Apple can block malware almost instantly and the developers have to burn a real company identity on each attack campaign.
    - celticninja 3y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39685272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39685272 Not exactly blocking immediately are they.
- jajko 3y ago
  That's a very weak argument in favor of apple, and I respectfully disagree. Just another variation of 'think about the children' meme without much substance, repeated in every single apple discussion ad nausea. Look, you lock your phone as much as you like, your device, your choices (here we are already very far from apple mindset). Why the obsessive need to push this on literally everybody and not even giving the choice? Maybe you have some serious impulse control issues, but most of us don't. It can even be part of purchase process - choose ultra secure more locked down model, or on-your-risk more free. But we all know all this is just about 1 singular thing - revenue via customer/market capture. Oracle stuff indeed.
  - vundercind 3y ago
    > Look, you lock your phone as much as you like, your device, your choices (here we are already very far from apple mindset) It keeps software and service vendors from going around security and privacy protections. Folks don’t always have a choice of what they have to install, so “just don’t install their stuff if you don’t like it” isn’t sufficient to achieve the same results, even if we ignore the inherent difference in UX between “100% of the software for this goes through the App Store” and “some software is not on the App Store”. Doesn’t mean you have to agree that path is better, of course, but it’s also definitely not so easily dismissed as ridiculous.
    - dns_snek 3y ago
      Software and service vendors can't "go around security and privacy protections", they can do exactly what the operating system and Apple allow them to do (short of actual bugs and vulnerabilities which would exist regardless of distribution method). Either those protections are technological, baked into the OS, and therefore apply equally to all installation sources, or they don't exist. There's no in between.
      - vundercind 3y ago
        There’s in-fact an in between, which is humans enforcing rules. It’s what’s in place now. It does have an actual effect, it’s not like it’s imaginary or doesn’t do anything. Some of the rules aren’t practically enforceable by software alone, at least so far (things like “don’t try to fingerprint the user or device in unauthorized ways”)
- bee_rider 3y ago
  Analogies don’t really work in arguments, it always just devolves into an argument about the analogy. They are useful in other contexts (like teaching, where it might be necessary to simplify something). Overuse of analogies is one of the worst things the internet has done to discussion in general.

acdha 3y ago

I used seatbelts because every car safety measure you can think of has had someone complaining about having to pay a cost for something they’re too good a driver to need. Having apps notarized to enforce some basic legal & safety standards seems similar: it definitely costs more than zero, it definitely is a restriction on absolute freedom, but it helps prevent things which are statistically certain to keep happening otherwise.

repelsteeltje 3y ago
> Having apps notarized to enforce some basic legal & safety standards seems similar. Which things, exactly?
- acdha 3y ago
  Consider how well malware and adware has done where the authors can impersonate legitimate developers (remember when people got faux-Firefox as the first Google hit?) or can run distribution campaigns from shady web hosts for years? Notarization and domain limits mean Apple can block malware almost instantly and the developers have to burn a real company identity on each attack campaign.
  - celticninja 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39685272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39685272 Not exactly blocking immediately are they.
jajko 3y ago
That's a very weak argument in favor of apple, and I respectfully disagree. Just another variation of 'think about the children' meme without much substance, repeated in every single apple discussion ad nausea. Look, you lock your phone as much as you like, your device, your choices (here we are already very far from apple mindset). Why the obsessive need to push this on literally everybody and not even giving the choice? Maybe you have some serious impulse control issues, but most of us don't. It can even be part of purchase process - choose ultra secure more locked down model, or on-your-risk more free. But we all know all this is just about 1 singular thing - revenue via customer/market capture. Oracle stuff indeed.
- vundercind 3y ago
  > Look, you lock your phone as much as you like, your device, your choices (here we are already very far from apple mindset) It keeps software and service vendors from going around security and privacy protections. Folks don’t always have a choice of what they have to install, so “just don’t install their stuff if you don’t like it” isn’t sufficient to achieve the same results, even if we ignore the inherent difference in UX between “100% of the software for this goes through the App Store” and “some software is not on the App Store”. Doesn’t mean you have to agree that path is better, of course, but it’s also definitely not so easily dismissed as ridiculous.
  - dns_snek 3y ago
    Software and service vendors can't "go around security and privacy protections", they can do exactly what the operating system and Apple allow them to do (short of actual bugs and vulnerabilities which would exist regardless of distribution method). Either those protections are technological, baked into the OS, and therefore apply equally to all installation sources, or they don't exist. There's no in between.
    - vundercind 3y ago
      There’s in-fact an in between, which is humans enforcing rules. It’s what’s in place now. It does have an actual effect, it’s not like it’s imaginary or doesn’t do anything. Some of the rules aren’t practically enforceable by software alone, at least so far (things like “don’t try to fingerprint the user or device in unauthorized ways”)
bee_rider 3y ago
Analogies don’t really work in arguments, it always just devolves into an argument about the analogy. They are useful in other contexts (like teaching, where it might be necessary to simplify something). Overuse of analogies is one of the worst things the internet has done to discussion in general.