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I want Apple to protect me from app developers. For me, it’s a feature not a bug. I want them to prevent social media companies from tracking my device across

I want Apple to protect me from app developers. For me, it’s a feature not a bug. I want them to prevent social media companies from tracking my device across my other apps. I want them to integrate billing so I can easily cancel subscriptions or get refunds. I want them to require Oauth that allows me to keep my email private from app developers. These features make my customer experience better not worse. I’m sorry it sucks for app developers to make less money but for customers it’s mostly a good thing.

mperham 1y ago
None of that requires a 30% cut.
- jobs_throwaway 1y ago
  [flagged]
- roamerz 1y ago
  Requires, no but in all regards it’s a great deal for app developers. You write code they do everything else. You want options? They exist (Windows/Android) but are all shitified minefields of commercial ads and poor design choices that I only use when required. Is Apple perfect? No far from it. When I buy and use their products though I feel more like the customer than the product. It’s a tool built for me not their advertisers.
  - nostromo 1y ago
    This is correct. App devs hate "paying" the 30% cut, but often aren't smart enough to realize that they make more on iOS than Android specifically because it's a high-trust environment and people trust that Apple has their back. There's a reason most of us app devs make most of our money on Apple devices.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      Except there are markets where Apple is hardly present, so this doesn't hold, as those money making apps on iDevices are mostly from tier 1 countries. I assume most app vendors would gladly get some money from those countries as well, if they want to grow their user base.
    - jbverschoor 1y ago
      They also happily pay 3+% for charging a card with stripe. And more than happy to fork a few percent for some accounting / VAT handling. That’s included with the App Store.
- mullingitover 1y ago
  Kinda dishonest to cite that 30% number when most developers don't pay it. The fee has been 15% for years now if your revenues are under $1M.
  - kagakuninja 1y ago
    And it is the same cut that console companies take from developers. And then when we point this out, people respond with some bullshit that consoles are not "general purpose computers"...
    - TheDong 1y ago
      Consoles are trivially avoidable. Family group chats that require a blue-bubble-capable phone, grandmothers that only know how to use facetime, those are actually important. I can't get into my coworking space without a door unlock app on my phone. On the other hand, exactly 0 times in my life have I ever been told "yeah, you need to own an xbox to go to the dentist's office". Phones are indeed in a different class from game consoles and should be held to a higher standard. But yes, also, game consoles should allow you to develop your own programs and side-load them.
      - mullingitover 1y ago
        > I can't get into my coworking space without a door unlock app on my phone. And that app is probably free, covered by the costs of the paid apps, the majority of which are brainrot games and social media[1]. Honestly this system isn't half bad, it's essentially a tax on idleness that funds a bunch of virtuous activity. [1] https://www.statista.com/chart/29389/global-app-revenue-by-segment/ https://www.statista.com/chart/29389/global-app-revenue-by-s...
        TheDong 1y ago
        The app is free for users, but the coworking space pays the app's company a considerable fee to manage access to the doors and audit logs and such, so it's not that it's subsidized by brainrot games. Free apps on iOS should be subsidized by, I don't know, the purchase price of the phone and the $100 yearly developer fee I'd think. > Honestly this system isn't half bad, it's essentially a tax on idleness that funds a bunch of virtuous activity. The system isn't funding "virtuous activity", the system is a for-profit system for the benefit of the richest company on the planet.
Workaccount2 1y ago
Those features have fat apple tax overhead and are not unique to iPhones. That's why I talk about the veneer that users don't care to look beyond. Customers get bent by Apple and aren't even aware of it.
jobs_throwaway 1y ago
[flagged]
gostsamo 1y ago
If you don't like social media, don't use it. Isn't that what all apple fans tell when someone dislikes apple practices?
- hightrix 1y ago
  > I want them to prevent social media companies from tracking my device across my other apps. They didn't say anything about not liking social media, only that they don't want to be secretly tracked.
- spacedcowboy 1y ago
  This is good advice. I do that. HN and occasional reddit browsing (on the "old" design, the "new" one sucks ass) is where I draw the line.
- JimDabell 1y ago
  The problem is that other apps advertise on Facebook, and in order to attribute new installations to the ads (to find out how effective they are), they had to add the Facebook SDK in those other apps. Then when the social media-avoiding users ran those other apps, they ran Facebook code on their device without knowing and still got tracked. This is what Apple’s ATT was designed to prevent. If app developers want to do that now, they need to ask the user for permission. The more Apple’s control over the platform is rolled back, the more stuff like this happens. As a user, I don’t want to be using, say, a recipe app and be secretly tracked by Facebook in the background.
tomp 1y ago
All those are awesome features, and I use them all the time. But that's no reason to prevent them from being opt-out. It should be possible to not use OAuth, integrated billing, social media tracking etc.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > that's no reason to prevent them from being opt-out I’m genuinely surprised Meta and e.g. Citrix haven’t launched their own app stores in the EU. Maybe GDPR disincentivises the worst shenanigans.
- wtallis 1y ago
  If privacy or security protections are opt-out, Facebook, et al. will try to use any leverage they can to push their users to opt out. There's real value in a platform that doesn't give Facebook, et al. that opportunity. There are also obvious downsides; it's a tradeoff that might not be right for you but definitely isn't one-sided.
_aavaa_ 1y ago
> I want them to prevent social media companies from tracking my device across my other apps. Apple is the one who implements the advertising ID companies use to track you. And preventing that tracking is a os-level feature, not a thing they review out of app. > I want them to require Oauth that allows me to keep my email private from app developers. You are describing a private email address.
TheDong 1y ago
We're on Hacker News, not Granny News. Being a hacker means having curiosity about the things around you, having the desire to be able to change and understand things. On android, I wrote small toy apps for myself, I could build and self-sign an APK, I could poke at how the system worked and read all the source code I wanted. Tragically, due to blue bubbles and group chats within my family, I was forced to switch to iOS, and I thought sure, it wouldn't be so bad... No, it sucks for hackers, you can't build and sign apps from linux reliably, you need an apple account and to pay $100 even if you do have a macbook, the APIs are limited, you can't see the source code for the most of the kernel or platform, apple has a ton of APIs you're not allowed to use. My firefox addons I developed for myself installed fine on android, but I can't even use those on iOS. I want apple to let me use the device I paid for.
- davisr 1y ago
  You weren't forced to do anything. You submitted to peer pressure, and that was a decision that, along with millions of others making that same decision, led to the current state. The very state that you're now complaining about. Don't like it? Don't use it. (I don't.)
  - lucianbr 1y ago
    Government intervention, or legal system intervention is one way in which millions are collectively deciding to move away from the current state. In theory at least. > Don't like it? Don't use it. Life is slightly more complicated than this.
- nostromo 1y ago
  It's true, I like my Granny phone. And you can choose a hacker phone if you want! I personally do my hacking on Mac, Linux, and on my RasberryPis, in my secure home and behind a firewall. But I don't want a hacker-friendly phone holding my passwords, credit cards, social media, email, photos, GPS location, cameras, microphones, etc., with a persistent cellular connection to the internet and at constant risk of being left in a taxi or cafe. I would never put the effort into locking everything down, and I'd probably fuck it up if I tried anyway.
CamperBob2 1y ago
I want Apple to protect me from app developers. For me, it’s a feature not a bug. Security is not mutually exclusive with informed consent. Apple's greatest trick was convincing you -- and, evidently, themselves -- that it is.
- wtallis 1y ago
  Every attempt at providing the general public with an "informed consent" escape hatch to security or privacy features ends degrading to either consent fatigue or "misinformed consent" dark patterns.
  - CamperBob2 1y ago
    What do you suggest, then? As users, does rent-seeking paternalism really serve us better in the long run?
    - wtallis 1y ago
      The rent-seeking is fundamentally a separate issue from the paternalism. Lots of the anti-Apple lobbying and PR is drawing attention to the 30% fees, but for many of those companies, they care much more about winning the freedom to spy on their users or engage in other predatory or abusive business practices. But aside from that, you cannot simply point people at the approach that led to Windows UAC and GDPR cookie consent banners and consider the problem adequately solved.
      - CamperBob2 1y ago
        So you'd prefer that instead of the (rare) UAC prompt, Windows should simply refuse to do what the user asks, unless they pony up for a developer license?
        wtallis 1y ago
        No, but I think it's incredibly naive and shortsighted to suggest that we should impose a legal requirement that any platform adopt such an obviously imperfect approach. Your memories of Windows Vista may have faded, but UAC prompts were certainly not rare when UAC first showed up, and they're still common enough to cause consent fatigue and undermine their effectiveness as a security measure.
m463 1y ago
I would like to know what is running on my phone, what it is doing and who it is communicating with. I would like to be able to prevent it, like running a firewall or disabling bluetooth for certain processes or more...
- tech234a 1y ago
  I think apps have to request permission to use Bluetooth on iOS with the exception of audio playback
- autoexec 1y ago
  No phone can really give you that. Even if the OS were better, the wireless chipsets themselves are black boxes that do their own thing giving you zero insight or control into what how or why. There's plenty of room for improvement, but ultimately they'll always be insecure and untrustworthy by design.
trinsic2 1y ago
And they also tie you into systems you don't control. That power can be wielded against you when you least expect it. When you trade security for freedom, you deserve neither.
henry2023 1y ago
Have you ever used a PC or laptop? I bet you have at least a computer and the fact that you can download and install software without an intermediary doesn't make you lose any of the things mentioned above.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
leptons 1y ago
So it's okay to leave your macbook wide open to all of the things you described? Because Apple doesn't force any of that on their macbooks. So are you really that safe?

mperham 1y ago

None of that requires a 30% cut.

jobs_throwaway 1y ago
[flagged]
roamerz 1y ago
Requires, no but in all regards it’s a great deal for app developers. You write code they do everything else. You want options? They exist (Windows/Android) but are all shitified minefields of commercial ads and poor design choices that I only use when required. Is Apple perfect? No far from it. When I buy and use their products though I feel more like the customer than the product. It’s a tool built for me not their advertisers.
- nostromo 1y ago
  This is correct. App devs hate "paying" the 30% cut, but often aren't smart enough to realize that they make more on iOS than Android specifically because it's a high-trust environment and people trust that Apple has their back. There's a reason most of us app devs make most of our money on Apple devices.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Except there are markets where Apple is hardly present, so this doesn't hold, as those money making apps on iDevices are mostly from tier 1 countries. I assume most app vendors would gladly get some money from those countries as well, if they want to grow their user base.
  - jbverschoor 1y ago
    They also happily pay 3+% for charging a card with stripe. And more than happy to fork a few percent for some accounting / VAT handling. That’s included with the App Store.
mullingitover 1y ago
Kinda dishonest to cite that 30% number when most developers don't pay it. The fee has been 15% for years now if your revenues are under $1M.
- kagakuninja 1y ago
  And it is the same cut that console companies take from developers. And then when we point this out, people respond with some bullshit that consoles are not "general purpose computers"...
  - TheDong 1y ago
    Consoles are trivially avoidable. Family group chats that require a blue-bubble-capable phone, grandmothers that only know how to use facetime, those are actually important. I can't get into my coworking space without a door unlock app on my phone. On the other hand, exactly 0 times in my life have I ever been told "yeah, you need to own an xbox to go to the dentist's office". Phones are indeed in a different class from game consoles and should be held to a higher standard. But yes, also, game consoles should allow you to develop your own programs and side-load them.
    - mullingitover 1y ago
      > I can't get into my coworking space without a door unlock app on my phone. And that app is probably free, covered by the costs of the paid apps, the majority of which are brainrot games and social media[1]. Honestly this system isn't half bad, it's essentially a tax on idleness that funds a bunch of virtuous activity. [1] https://www.statista.com/chart/29389/global-app-revenue-by-segment/ https://www.statista.com/chart/29389/global-app-revenue-by-s...
      - TheDong 1y ago
        The app is free for users, but the coworking space pays the app's company a considerable fee to manage access to the doors and audit logs and such, so it's not that it's subsidized by brainrot games. Free apps on iOS should be subsidized by, I don't know, the purchase price of the phone and the $100 yearly developer fee I'd think. > Honestly this system isn't half bad, it's essentially a tax on idleness that funds a bunch of virtuous activity. The system isn't funding "virtuous activity", the system is a for-profit system for the benefit of the richest company on the planet.

Workaccount2 1y ago

Those features have fat apple tax overhead and are not unique to iPhones. That's why I talk about the veneer that users don't care to look beyond. Customers get bent by Apple and aren't even aware of it.

jobs_throwaway 1y ago

[flagged]

gostsamo 1y ago

If you don't like social media, don't use it. Isn't that what all apple fans tell when someone dislikes apple practices?

hightrix 1y ago
> I want them to prevent social media companies from tracking my device across my other apps. They didn't say anything about not liking social media, only that they don't want to be secretly tracked.
spacedcowboy 1y ago
This is good advice. I do that. HN and occasional reddit browsing (on the "old" design, the "new" one sucks ass) is where I draw the line.
JimDabell 1y ago
The problem is that other apps advertise on Facebook, and in order to attribute new installations to the ads (to find out how effective they are), they had to add the Facebook SDK in those other apps. Then when the social media-avoiding users ran those other apps, they ran Facebook code on their device without knowing and still got tracked. This is what Apple’s ATT was designed to prevent. If app developers want to do that now, they need to ask the user for permission. The more Apple’s control over the platform is rolled back, the more stuff like this happens. As a user, I don’t want to be using, say, a recipe app and be secretly tracked by Facebook in the background.

tomp 1y ago

All those are awesome features, and I use them all the time. But that's no reason to prevent them from being opt-out. It should be possible to not use OAuth, integrated billing, social media tracking etc.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> that's no reason to prevent them from being opt-out I’m genuinely surprised Meta and e.g. Citrix haven’t launched their own app stores in the EU. Maybe GDPR disincentivises the worst shenanigans.
wtallis 1y ago
If privacy or security protections are opt-out, Facebook, et al. will try to use any leverage they can to push their users to opt out. There's real value in a platform that doesn't give Facebook, et al. that opportunity. There are also obvious downsides; it's a tradeoff that might not be right for you but definitely isn't one-sided.

_aavaa_ 1y ago

> I want them to prevent social media companies from tracking my device across my other apps. Apple is the one who implements the advertising ID companies use to track you. And preventing that tracking is a os-level feature, not a thing they review out of app. > I want them to require Oauth that allows me to keep my email private from app developers. You are describing a private email address.

TheDong 1y ago

We're on Hacker News, not Granny News. Being a hacker means having curiosity about the things around you, having the desire to be able to change and understand things. On android, I wrote small toy apps for myself, I could build and self-sign an APK, I could poke at how the system worked and read all the source code I wanted. Tragically, due to blue bubbles and group chats within my family, I was forced to switch to iOS, and I thought sure, it wouldn't be so bad... No, it sucks for hackers, you can't build and sign apps from linux reliably, you need an apple account and to pay $100 even if you do have a macbook, the APIs are limited, you can't see the source code for the most of the kernel or platform, apple has a ton of APIs you're not allowed to use. My firefox addons I developed for myself installed fine on android, but I can't even use those on iOS. I want apple to let me use the device I paid for.

davisr 1y ago
You weren't forced to do anything. You submitted to peer pressure, and that was a decision that, along with millions of others making that same decision, led to the current state. The very state that you're now complaining about. Don't like it? Don't use it. (I don't.)
- lucianbr 1y ago
  Government intervention, or legal system intervention is one way in which millions are collectively deciding to move away from the current state. In theory at least. > Don't like it? Don't use it. Life is slightly more complicated than this.
nostromo 1y ago
It's true, I like my Granny phone. And you can choose a hacker phone if you want! I personally do my hacking on Mac, Linux, and on my RasberryPis, in my secure home and behind a firewall. But I don't want a hacker-friendly phone holding my passwords, credit cards, social media, email, photos, GPS location, cameras, microphones, etc., with a persistent cellular connection to the internet and at constant risk of being left in a taxi or cafe. I would never put the effort into locking everything down, and I'd probably fuck it up if I tried anyway.

CamperBob2 1y ago

I want Apple to protect me from app developers. For me, it’s a feature not a bug. Security is not mutually exclusive with informed consent. Apple's greatest trick was convincing you -- and, evidently, themselves -- that it is.

wtallis 1y ago
Every attempt at providing the general public with an "informed consent" escape hatch to security or privacy features ends degrading to either consent fatigue or "misinformed consent" dark patterns.
- CamperBob2 1y ago
  What do you suggest, then? As users, does rent-seeking paternalism really serve us better in the long run?
  - wtallis 1y ago
    The rent-seeking is fundamentally a separate issue from the paternalism. Lots of the anti-Apple lobbying and PR is drawing attention to the 30% fees, but for many of those companies, they care much more about winning the freedom to spy on their users or engage in other predatory or abusive business practices. But aside from that, you cannot simply point people at the approach that led to Windows UAC and GDPR cookie consent banners and consider the problem adequately solved.
    - CamperBob2 1y ago
      So you'd prefer that instead of the (rare) UAC prompt, Windows should simply refuse to do what the user asks, unless they pony up for a developer license?
      - wtallis 1y ago
        No, but I think it's incredibly naive and shortsighted to suggest that we should impose a legal requirement that any platform adopt such an obviously imperfect approach. Your memories of Windows Vista may have faded, but UAC prompts were certainly not rare when UAC first showed up, and they're still common enough to cause consent fatigue and undermine their effectiveness as a security measure.

m463 1y ago

I would like to know what is running on my phone, what it is doing and who it is communicating with. I would like to be able to prevent it, like running a firewall or disabling bluetooth for certain processes or more...

tech234a 1y ago
I think apps have to request permission to use Bluetooth on iOS with the exception of audio playback
autoexec 1y ago
No phone can really give you that. Even if the OS were better, the wireless chipsets themselves are black boxes that do their own thing giving you zero insight or control into what how or why. There's plenty of room for improvement, but ultimately they'll always be insecure and untrustworthy by design.

trinsic2 1y ago

And they also tie you into systems you don't control. That power can be wielded against you when you least expect it. When you trade security for freedom, you deserve neither.

henry2023 1y ago

Have you ever used a PC or laptop? I bet you have at least a computer and the fact that you can download and install software without an intermediary doesn't make you lose any of the things mentioned above.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

leptons 1y ago

So it's okay to leave your macbook wide open to all of the things you described? Because Apple doesn't force any of that on their macbooks. So are you really that safe?