Comment by will_brown | Hacker News Reader

Comment by will_brown | Hacker News Reader

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>Should Smsrt TV makers be forced to allow any third party app? What about console makers? Should Nintendo be forced to allow adult oriented games on their platform?

I think the argument is Apple has a little more market dominance (both smart phone hardware and OS) than a single smart tv maker or even Nintendo in the console market.

Keeping the market dominance point in mind, Apple isn’t just deciding what is and isn’t allowed...you had a number of developers with successful apps not just have to contend with a copy cat app created by Apple but because of their control over the marketplace Apple killed their developers apps and took the entire market (rightly or wrongly).

So yeah if you change your facts and the smart tv or Nintendo allowed apps/adult games, saw developers create a market and then the hardware maker launched their own software competitors and disallowed the initial apps/games...there would be blowback.

You also had a number of developers who successfully were marketing fake “virus protection” including Kasperky that were kicked off the store. Should Apple have kept those on the store? Facebook bought a “successful” VPN product that it used to spy on users and figure out that WhatsApp was popular before it bought it. Should Apple have kept that?

Would you be okay if apps with the same capabilities were marketed as a way to catch cheating spouses?

If Apple decides they wanted to ban loot boxes in games, would you be opposed to that?

>Would you be okay if apps with the same capabilities were marketed as a way to catch cheating spouses?

Aren't apps with these same capabilities (and more) being marketed as a way to track and spy on a spouse? (regardless of their fidelity)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/world/middleeast/saudi-ar...

Of course I don’t agree with the app. But from what I can tell, at least on iOS, the app is just a front end for a website and a set of services. The app itself doesn’t intercept communications on the phone or use any special phone permissions. From another site, I saw the Absher service will notify the husband via SMS.

With NYT’s (usual) shallow technical reporting, I can’t tell what the app does. Just like the article for this post. The only reason we on HN suspect that the apps for this article must be using some combination of MDM API’s and a VPN is because we know how iOS works.

But I can always throw the question back at you. How can you on one hand say that it would be okay if this app did do something similar (which I can’t tell) and Apple banned it for privacy reasons but not okay to ban other software that is spyware?

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