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Demanding sideloading is not handicapping in any measure. It is about removing a harmful and arbitrary restriction that Apple imposes on its users. It should no

Demanding sideloading is not handicapping in any measure. It is about removing a harmful and arbitrary restriction that Apple imposes on its users. It should not be up to Apple to decide which apps a user can run on their own device. (And don't even get me started on how Apple readily removes access to apps after demands from Putin's Government.)

truculent 3y ago
Yes, that change I wouldn’t call handicapping; although I’m sure Apple would. On the other hand, I think it’s reasonable to suggest that greater interoperability could result in some features being degraded or unavailable (maybe certain things happen slower, or consume more battery life, for example). We might still decide this is worth it overall, but it could genuinely handicap the UX.
- aftbit 3y ago
  Really? Can you give an example? I don't see why performance or battery life would need to be impacted for users of the default services. In other words, if you want to keep using Apple-only stuff, you would get the same outcome as today.
andrewla 3y ago
On the one hand, as a developer, I agree with you. On the other hand, as a user, and one who has to do de facto IT support for my family, I strongly disagree. Having an off-store method of installing apps is just dangerous. You could argue that it's a question of Apple having an incomplete security model, in which they enforce through human review that apps do not perform malicious behavior. But Apple is just pretty good at this -- the rare app that slips through their net is usually quickly caught and killed, and their security on-first-use opt-ins "Allow this app to access your camera", along with enforcing that apps for whom the permission is denied must still function, is critical, compared to the Android "Allow this app to access all device state forever including private information and your entire DNA sequence" that you get on app install. On the gripping hand, advanced users, like developers, can basically sideload whatever the hell they want. The barrier here is a lot stronger than a checkbox in settings saying "allow sideloading apps" and thus is intrisically more difficult to access, and then only by people who know what they're doing anyway.
- kibwen 3y ago
  > Having an off-store method of installing apps is just dangerous. I can't help but find this to be extremely infantilizing. The whole point of a democratic society is that we believe that we can educate people rather than relying on some authoritarian dictator to decide the limits of our freedoms. What you appear to be suggesting that your family is too stupid to be educated? Are you sure about that?
  - andrewla 3y ago
    I think my reply to the sibling comment covers most of this. But I am not suggesting that my family is too stupid -- rather, that the level of expertise required to safely determine whether a given app is safe to sideload is not only beyond the reach of a casual user, it's beyond the reach even of an experienced expert. Is my family too stupid to understand quantum field theory? I don't know -- maybe? Does the framing of "too stupid" make sense with that question?
    - archagon 3y ago
      Should you also allowlist their internet use, then?
      - andrewla 3y ago
        What's the "sharp edge of the knife" here? For use of web sites, the assumption has been that the user agent is responsible for preventing websites, no matter how malicious, from performing harmful operations. Even before there was a formal concept of "sandboxing" this was the basic assumption, and the biggest violation of it always came from "hey, download this executable and run it on your machine". Maybe someday we'll have sufficient app isolation that there will be no worries about the idea of running completely untrusted native-code apps on your device. But this is not that day.
        archagon 3y ago
        It looks like the off-store app installation method that Apple is developing has exactly the same system protections as App Store apps, including the capability to kill malicious apps. Just as with websites, I think the biggest threat would be deceit: phishing, credit card and identity theft, subscription schemes, etc.

truculent 3y ago

Yes, that change I wouldn’t call handicapping; although I’m sure Apple would. On the other hand, I think it’s reasonable to suggest that greater interoperability could result in some features being degraded or unavailable (maybe certain things happen slower, or consume more battery life, for example). We might still decide this is worth it overall, but it could genuinely handicap the UX.

aftbit 3y ago
Really? Can you give an example? I don't see why performance or battery life would need to be impacted for users of the default services. In other words, if you want to keep using Apple-only stuff, you would get the same outcome as today.

andrewla 3y ago

On the one hand, as a developer, I agree with you. On the other hand, as a user, and one who has to do de facto IT support for my family, I strongly disagree. Having an off-store method of installing apps is just dangerous. You could argue that it's a question of Apple having an incomplete security model, in which they enforce through human review that apps do not perform malicious behavior. But Apple is just pretty good at this -- the rare app that slips through their net is usually quickly caught and killed, and their security on-first-use opt-ins "Allow this app to access your camera", along with enforcing that apps for whom the permission is denied must still function, is critical, compared to the Android "Allow this app to access all device state forever including private information and your entire DNA sequence" that you get on app install. On the gripping hand, advanced users, like developers, can basically sideload whatever the hell they want. The barrier here is a lot stronger than a checkbox in settings saying "allow sideloading apps" and thus is intrisically more difficult to access, and then only by people who know what they're doing anyway.

kibwen 3y ago
> Having an off-store method of installing apps is just dangerous. I can't help but find this to be extremely infantilizing. The whole point of a democratic society is that we believe that we can educate people rather than relying on some authoritarian dictator to decide the limits of our freedoms. What you appear to be suggesting that your family is too stupid to be educated? Are you sure about that?
- andrewla 3y ago
  I think my reply to the sibling comment covers most of this. But I am not suggesting that my family is too stupid -- rather, that the level of expertise required to safely determine whether a given app is safe to sideload is not only beyond the reach of a casual user, it's beyond the reach even of an experienced expert. Is my family too stupid to understand quantum field theory? I don't know -- maybe? Does the framing of "too stupid" make sense with that question?
  - archagon 3y ago
    Should you also allowlist their internet use, then?
    - andrewla 3y ago
      What's the "sharp edge of the knife" here? For use of web sites, the assumption has been that the user agent is responsible for preventing websites, no matter how malicious, from performing harmful operations. Even before there was a formal concept of "sandboxing" this was the basic assumption, and the biggest violation of it always came from "hey, download this executable and run it on your machine". Maybe someday we'll have sufficient app isolation that there will be no worries about the idea of running completely untrusted native-code apps on your device. But this is not that day.
      - archagon 3y ago
        It looks like the off-store app installation method that Apple is developing has exactly the same system protections as App Store apps, including the capability to kill malicious apps. Just as with websites, I think the biggest threat would be deceit: phishing, credit card and identity theft, subscription schemes, etc.