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Comment by kristianc | Hacker News Reader

> Just because they own and run the market place doesn't mean it is without regulation.

That's exactly what Apple is doing - in this case protecting their ecosystem from providers that use undocumented APIs and MDMs whose business model is fingerprinting customers and selling to advertisers.

What exactly do people expect of Apple here? Apple gets criticized if it doesn't take a hard line on customer privacy, but when it does exactly that it is abusing monopoly power and needs to be regulated and broken up.

If people want third party app stores that's fine, but let's be very clear about what that means. It is going to come with compromises in terms of crappy UX, dark patterns, privacy violations, private APIs and all sorts of stuff that users pretty much hate.

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The issue is that the moment you introduce the third-party app store, these gambling, privacy-disrespecting apps will flourish. That unique Advertising identifier is now worthless if they can just target ads based off of <more permanent unique ID>. All of the private APIs, like getting your phone's actual Tel number, will now be used and sent off to Facebook. Overall, your phone becomes just as "free" as android, and just as "apps can do anything, even if it's bad" as Android.

I’m pretty sure the APIs to get the device’s phone number, along with most other identifying characteristics, are gated behind entitlements that Apple will not grant third party developers.

Please stop calling these undocumented and private APIs. I know you feel that there is no difference, but continuing to spread flawed information even after being told that it’s incorrect is not arguing in good faith.

What’s inaccurate about it? They’re undocumented, and they’re APIs. Hence “undocumented API”.

They are documented: https://help.apple.com/deployment/ios/

Apple has an App Store, they want to take unfair advantage by limiting competition. Third party have an App Store, they want to take advantage by using dark UI and other unethical practices. Every approach has its own advantages and disadvantages. No one is doing you a favor by providing you services, they want to earn money in return and usually more than the worth of services they put in. Choose which devil you want to liv with

Personally, give me apps that don't use MDM and flout the clearly stated "rules of the garden" over having five different versions of WhatsApp, four of which are stuffed with malware.

At least in the OP, it looks more like disgruntled responses to the 'standard' Apple policy of

1) make iOS/inhouse app changes

2) throw every competing app under the bus.

It is a well established history that says to developers "if you have an app that fills a need iOS hasn't addressed, your days are numbered, good luck when somebody at Apple writes the mvp of your app themselves".

Not hard to imagine an App Store future that is just corporate portals and games, with everything else covered by Apple thus off limits.

So by that logic WhatsApp, Fantastical, VSCO, Camera+, Halide, Google Photos, Evernote, Bear Notes, Google Maps, Spotify should all be worried then?

No because these apps don't abuse undocumented APIs or look for loopholes in Apple's review guidelines.

> these apps don't abuse undocumented APIs or look for loopholes in Apple's review guidelines

Many of these apps do exactly this.

Would you like to back up that statement with some facts?

I know Uber has been smacked before for using private API’s before. Maybe not as hard as a no-name developer would have been but the uncomfortable truth is not all app developers are equal and honestly I understand the reasons for that.

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