iDOS 2 will be gone soon
litchie.com
litchie.com
Consider contacting your state's Attorney General office, and the US Attorney General office. Many states' AG offices have antitrust divisions[1].
The US Dept. of Justice also has an Antitrust Division[2], along with a page that details how and why[3] to get in touch with them:
> Information from the public is vital to the work of the Antitrust Division. Your e-mails, letters, and phone calls could be our first alert to a possible violation of antitrust laws and may provide the initial evidence needed to begin an investigation.
The FTC has the Bureau of Competition[4], as well.
[1] https://www.naag.org/issues/antitrust/
[2] https://www.justice.gov/atr
[3] https://www.justice.gov/atr/report-violations
[4] https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-competi...
Not to mention the effect on intellectually curious users (and learning). These computers bundled with phones are crippled, tinker-proof, and there is no way to extend or improve them after purchase except as according to the seller's business model. Un-tethering from the seller and opting not to use their servers is effectively discouraged or prevented. "Protecting you" is a suspect justification for all the hoops one must jump through to "accept the risk". There is no anticipation of user autonomy. The world according to the seller is divided into "developers" and "users". Anyone in both categories is intended to pay Apple twice. First for the hardware, then again for the "developer certificate" and a percentage of any licensing revenue.
Maybe that is what the market is demanding. Or maybe the market does not have full information and thus does not understand the full spectrum of possible choices. As long as the cartel persists we will never know.
Name email and phone number would be great for us to see and share
The State of California will do precisely nothing about the abuses of the largest company on the planet, domiciled in their state, employing tens of thousands of the most well-paid and politically-connected taxpayers of their State, whose primary competitor in this space is doing exactly the same thing to their users, is also domiciled in the State, and is also pissing firehoses of money into its budgetary coffers.
Your call will be politely received, and the regulator on the line will duly note your concerns. After the call concludes, the regulator's office will promptly file your concerns under L, for "LOL @ this fucking nerd".
Vote with your money and don't buy an iPhone.
As Rand would put it:
> “Free competition enforced by law” is a grotesque contradiction in terms.
Choose Android, get actual access to your device and install what you want but have your privacy completely trampled upon by Google
Choose Apple, get marginally better privacy but no ownership of your phone and no possibility to install what you want.
I wish we had a reasonable alternative, it's so frustrating to have to choose between two bad alternatives and the behavior of those companies that completely disrespect and tramples their customer right makes my blood boil.
I just want both the right to use my phone fully and the right to my privacy.
The other caveat being that there are still many apps that are not designed for mobile form factor, and while there is strong work on libhandy and many apps use it for responsive GTK apps, there are many great apps were work hasn’t yet started for mobile sizing/touch input/virtual keyboard
What’s the best way to get involved?
Also submitting issues and spreading the word help. Mastodon is where many of the developers in open source world hang out so follow @linmob@fosstodon and Librem folks and you’ll find the community.
Testing, sponsoring, buying the hardware all great options too.
You don't need a phone just to display an image...
I don't mind if banks/govs require use of some protocol. But forcing use of specific apps goes against past achievements to make public institutions use open formats and protocols, so I reject that where possible, or complain.
It should not be acceptable. I still remember times when people had to pirate MS office to be able to open some .doc from their gov, or use MS windows to run some proprietary form filling software. That's mostly a thing of the past, thankfully. "My-app or highway" attitude feels like a setback in that regard.
And I wish I could just switch banks but in some situation it's not possible and in the country I currently live in, it seems that now no banks support 2fa SMS for any transaction above a tiny amount anyway.
Most people act as if Mobile Phone and Apps doesn't matter. It does and increasingly so. I think the argument would have some ground in 2015 or 2018. But in 2020 and forward looking into 2025 and 2030 there is no denying, phone is acting like an infrastructure, whether we like it or not.
I wish it could be optional.
My ISP still provides (very low quality) landline service for a fraction of my monthly phone bill. The UI on that phone is awesome: just a speaker and dialpad, no display at all.
The problem is, that some important (e.g. banking) apps are missing and cannot be installed/run with the Android emulator. Another problem is, that Sailfish is available only in very few countries, e.g. not in the US.
This post seems to mischaracterize what is going on and seems to be pre-prepared sentiment that has nothing to do with what actually is happening or going to happen
Apple users can still file share dos games, if they download that app now. Not clear what level of device control you are reacting to, without agreeing or disagreeing with your sentiment.
Restoring a device from cloud backup will download all your apps, except apps no longer on the store
The device right now, with the OS right now, with the app right now will still be able to use this app and its file sharing feature in perpetuity which is an aspect that isn't different or worse than other kinds of devices or computers. Only the system restore embellishments being different or better or worse. People on other systems that pay for apps can still run into scenarios where their updated operating system is not compatible with an app they paid for. I'm not trying to be an apologist for things Apple or the mobile landscape could do better, only pointing out the standard people seem to be asking for without realizing it.
yeah. thats where the experience diverges from other platforms.
the current device, with the current OS, won't have any problems. asking for more is mostly a different standard than other platforms, sad to hear they killed making your own app package copies.
So by default you can't count on your apps staying on the phone.
Now we're all crying for a third platform because Apple is too restrictive and Google, surprise (to no one least of all WP users), turned out to be evil and I feel absolutely no sympathy for the tech community, particularly developers who decry the current paradigm. We chose this.
I support the EFF, but that’s basically all I know how to do. Imagine if Google’s software developers went on strike every time they tried to pull another AMP on the open web?
Closed platforms are not in the interest of users.
Tell a non-tech person that their data is being harvested by Google and Facebook, and see what they reaction is.
For example, Kickstarter unionized in 2020. One of things that initiated unionization was this lack of democratic decision making at Kickstarter[1]:
> One of the changes that most angered employees was the decision to end Drip, announced in late 2018. Drip was a tool that had been developed to let creators of projects on the site start subscriptions, similar to Patreon, allowing them to build sustainable revenue streams. Eliminating the tool “came out of the blue,” Zhang says, with “no consultation” with employees who were affected. “It seemed to be at the whim of one person to just make a blanket decision,” she adds.
If employees are working on projects that go against their users' interests, democratic decision making can give them a voice that they otherwise wouldn't have.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/how-kickstarter-employees-formed...
SWE's sold their soul/morals/values for money & built evils that there's no way back from. Just have to deal with the consequences of their actions now.
I don't see how that works. As you see fit? Sounds like you need to start your own company, if that's what you want.
I doubt a non-trivial number of developers (let alone Google Developers) care about things like the "open web".
webOS 6.0 on the LG TV is surprisingly pretty damn good. I think they even opened it up for other TV manufacturers to adopt webOS.
I don't disagree that having a third player in the space would improve things, but it is just weird how the perception of some companies change.
Half of the magic of Linux is being able to run it on bare metal. Microsoft is acting against that.
I agree with your bare metal magic point, but I also like using a GUI. As well as being middle aged I also grew up in a technological backwater. So the first arcade game I encountered was Pong and when I was old enough to start working with computers it was with dumb terminals to mainframes and punch-tape print spoolers; that experience of working with technology that was already obsolete is kinda like extra lifespan. Loving the command line is one thing, but i love GUIs precisely because I didn't have access to them early on, and being able to see things on a screen is still magical for me.
I know GUI development is a lot more work, but I've been very disappointed by the snail's pace of advancement on Linux, and how little experimentation or efforts at standardization there are. GNOME these days feels like a clunky kid's toy. My most recent desktop annoyance was installing PyCharm on a a laptop running Ubuntu, and then finding that there was no obvious way to either add it to my start menu or the dock (it's built in Java and launches from a shell script, and though it shows up in the dock when it's running, there's no option to pin it there). It's not that hard (see below) but the fact that I had to go and look for a solution just speaks to how crap and broken the Linux desktop experience is by default.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/571135/pycharm-has-...
I take your point that WSL creates a new problem for Linux lovers by invalidating a default use case. And I agree that Microsoft is doing so for its own selfish reasons so it can continue to rake in billions from enterprise and OEM licensing, while the plucky Linux underdogs rely mostly on the generosity of sponsors and community spirit. But there's more to a GUI than a compositing window manager that lets you play with tiling and transparency (the last really innovative and cool thing in Linux Land, and where the idea is still implemented best).
But my counter to that is that desktops matter, and Linux users are just not really trying these days. There re too many options and most of them are just not very good or even interesting. Look up one of those 'Best Linux desktops in 2021' and all you see is a bunch of OK launchers with some beautiful wallpaper, maybe a widget or two. The wallpaper is usually much cooler than the user interface it is decorating. When the packaging is more interesting than the product, the product is failing. the only distro I've seen really trying to innovate in this area is Deepin, a Chinese distro where they have really worked on the front end and is developing its own distinct visual identity.
I just don't get how Linux people go into ecstasies about new way to do graphics in the terminal but then shrug their shoulders at the craptastic state of the Linux desktop. As you correctly point out, Microsoft is now making moves to draw Linux users back to their commercial platform and with their resources, experience, and tenacity may well succeed.
To Linux folk who view that prospect with horror, my advice is make an environment that people like to use. The terminal is not that. The terminal is for nerds, developers, autists, and control freaks, who make up only a small portion of computer users. I match all those categories to varying degrees but even I don't want to spend my whole life in the terminal. And by 'environment people like to use' I do not mean 'imitate Windows' (although you should shamelessly pinch ideas from there). Experiment. Play. You know a great source of user interface ideas that people absolutely like to use and where you can try out wacky ideas? Videogames.
People love games. They are full of eye candy. Videogames use eye candy to rapidly convey information in very intuitive ways. People can rapidly learn to perform very complex tasks when supported by a rich interface. If you don't want desktop Linux to die for lack of attention and you don't want to see Linux-on-your-own-hardware itself die for lack of users (because everything they need is available on Apple, Windows, or in the cloud), make desktop tools that look fun, futuristic, and don't keep forcing people back to the terminal.
(then take a look at youtube vanced)
I know you are most likely referring to Play services, but still worth noting for folks who may not know it exists as an option. I suppose for the latter, microG may offer a useful option.
Note : you must create this collection on firefox addon or find existing one as you will need the collection ID.
ublock and the other featured apps essentially had to adapt to the mobile firefox way of doing stuff and opening settings in a separate mobile ff tab etc.
> Choose Apple, get marginally better privacy
I disagree with the word “marginally” here. Compared to Android, it’s far better and keeps staying ahead (while Android may try to catch up for certain features and controls).
If you won't install any apps why bother with a smartphone then?
At least I'm looking for one now because my Nokia E5-03 died yesterday so now I have to figure out what to get.
I want something small, that I can stick in my pocket and not worry about the screen, with days of standby battery life, and where I don't have to read and "agree" to pages of legalese.
In the heyday of feature phones, I could pick one up for $20. Nowadays, those phones are designed for old people, and are more expensive than a cheap smart phone.
All apps I run use SafariViewController for in-app web browsing, so the same ad blocking systems kick in, too, and the app itself has very limited capabilities to track our web activity. Facebook is sole notable exception.
They also added "App Tracking" prompt recently. I doesn't do much for technical standpoint (like DNT header in browsers), but Apple _can_ enforce it via app publishing restrictions - only if they choose to do so.
I'd say they are very close to Android or desktop macOS.
The Safari WebView restriction means there is no browser choice.
I cannot put any trust in iOS supporting WebExtensions in a meaningful way, given their track record of undermining web technology - but hopefully I will be proven wrong.
Yeah, DNS based blockers misses a LOT of ads and webannoyances. And if you think that the content blockers are good enough you probably havent been using youtube lately on safari as they are now able bypass all current content blockers that I tested (adguard[1], 1blocker, wipr).
> ... and are adding support for WebExtensions to Safari in next iOS release.
Yeah, but I'm not holding my breathe that they will allow extensions similar to uBlock and noscript (hope to be wrong).
> I'd say they are very close to Android or desktop macOS.
Anyone with experience using uBlock/NoScript/uMatrix can attest that content blockers on iOS is not close at all, it's just a skeleton of uBlock Origin capabilities.
[1]adguard created a shortcut extension to bypass the content blocker restriction but its utterly annoying to do it everytime some random video.
On my Android phone I have no google account and I've disabled anything related to google. Yes I worry I've missed something somewhere, but on the whole, at least I can.
I was given an iOS tablet as a gift, tried setting it up and it absoltely requires setting up an account with an apple and giving them a phone number. Haven't found a workaround. So the tablet sits in a box unusable, because I'm not giving apple a phone.
There's the PinePhone. I'm posting from one right now. It's still not super easy to use and non-voip calls/mms are still a bit of a mess.
Here is a "radical" idea: what if we had an Apple users union? What if Apple had to justify their app censorship to that union? What if the union could vote that censorship out?
Our current capitalistic model assumes that competition is the solution for the consumer, but the Apple/Google stranglehold is essentially indisruptable.
Of course, the only way we could really get this union model would be to have it forced by the same government which has repeatedly and increasingly failed to protect the consumer from these bloated monopolistic corporations. I guess we'll have to settle for some optimistic SciFi porn. Paging Cory Doctorow: https://pluralistic.net/
What you really want is a third party app store which is operated as a co-op, supports multiple platforms (making it easier for users to switch and keep their apps), and has enough users to have bargaining power.
When the union says "Ok, Apple isn't cooperating, so everyone... " ...actually, what would you have the members do? Turn off icloud? Stop buying new airpods? You will never get all the "users union" members to give up one atom of convenience.
Saying "people won't do that" is just a self-fulfilling prophecy. Convince them that it's in their interest and they will.
On Android it is locked down in an inaccessible /data partition, unless rooted. (Ignoring /sdcard and the iOS equivalent Files app)
On iOS you can access almost the entire filesystem via extracting iTunes backups. You can freely dig into app internal database, files, message history, etc. You can even edit these backups and restore them, allowing full write access
lol, not sure which android you are talking about... probably the one where you need to find an exploit to be able to root it (I guess even HN forgot that you are supposed to be administrator on your own computer)
The fastest of the open source phones right now has the same processor as the Pixel 2. IIRC it might even be another libhybris implementation (glibc/mesa/gbm userspace on an Android kernel and driver stack).
I'm able to use all the standard apps (Uber, games, etc) without a Google account. I use Aurora instead of the Google Play Store, local maps as my GPS back-end, and my phone only contains the apps I actually used instead of pre-baked vendor bullshit. It's all super smooth and completely stable. I really can't say enough nice things about it.
If you're looking for the third option, I would really give aftermarket android roms a try.
I don't understand why that's not possible now. Responsive websites are basically 1:1 in functionality w/ desktop, there is no need to have separate, gimped "m.bank.com" sites anymore.
End result of this is that I stopped doing banking on my phone, and 90% of my use cases are now served by F-Droid or by apps not on the Play store.
Pretty sure that's a non-starter for anyone who needs to use their phone for work, which is more people than you would think now that so many office workers are remote.
Still sucks of course, but a far cry from the false dichotomy of "submit to Apple/Google rule or lose your job."
The point is that you shouldn't need to jump through flaming hoops to avoid Google's spying
You know... since 2017 when I started getting wary of Apple due to Qualcomm, IMG and Services Strategy. I sometimes wish Microsoft are still in the Mobile race. Trying find some synergy between Desktop PC gaming, Xbox and Mobile. Surface Phone. Porting some of their work from Xbox.
But unlike Microsoft and Google. Apple has no inherent weakness in their business and strategy. They also have an extremely strong cult following both online and offline.
So unless government managed to do something about it ( which I seriously doubt ), the future will be as frustrating as it is now.
They had: - great song management - better than YouTube song discovery (looking into playlists with the same song) - incredible ui (skins) - small memory footprint
I wonder who worked on that team and what they are up to today. And/or if Microsoft could open source it.
It's highly likely that even if there's an commercial alternative which gains significant market share to compete with duopoly in the future, they will have to do so by either compromising privacy or ownership of the device.
Solution right now is to make difficult lifestyle choice by using passion or idealistic projects. LineageOS + Fdroid can get things done for those who use their smartphone as an tool and ready to sacrifice a bit of social conformity(which can be a privilege at current times).
There are more extreme alternatives like Linux phones which I hope becomes less extreme in years to come.
> For example, iSH was once rejected with the rationale that “During review, your app installed or launched executable code, which is not permitted on the App Store.” The template itself clearly outlines the case it is meant to apply—an app that is installing code by itself, to bypass review—but in the case of iSH the reviewer chose to install code and then complained that the app did what they told it to do.
I can see the arguments from https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/11/08/fixing-section-2-5-2/ applying here.
I mainly use Linux but was looking for a secondary laptop/tablet hybrid for my office needs. I considered getting an iPad but ultimately went for a Surface Pro, which was the right choice I think. The device and UI (just Windows 10) is not nearly as polished as iPadOS, but at least I can just install normal FOSS software like KeepassXC instead of downloading some proprietary app from the store, hoping it won't exfiltrate my data. I can even play the occasional round of SimCity 2000 in DOSBox. iOS & iPadOS devices are great for media consumption, but I would never consider them for any type of "serious" office work.
They have sweet hardware so us developers always wanted then. We always were the last use case; everyone machines, content creators, and then developers.
The ideal machine for a programer looks absolutely nothing like the ideal machine for a digital artist.
For many, many people, the iPad absolutely DOES replace having a traditional computer. The prediction came true.
I rarely bother traveling with a laptop anymore unless I need to present or run demos. My iPad pro + the fancy keyboard case gives me insane portability and battery life plus access to all my files (via Dropbox), native Office, etc.
Whining that "you can't do anything but game and consume in iOS" in 2021 is just hilariously wrong.
I personally was very excited about the iPad right up until the point I found out it had been 'downgraded' to use the iPhone interface. It went from 'shut up take my money' to 'meh, i will get something else' pretty much instantly.
I have bought a few for family members. They use it for gaming, watching videos, and some light web surfing. I personally just use a nice light laptop.
You can extend it like you have. But many people do not.
If I had to 'do over' I might go down the route you have. But as is I am pretty sunk into my work flow.
iOS imposes limitations on that, you cannot run third party applications that are not on the store, you can't write your own programs or scripts, or you can with 100 limitations that makes it in practice impossible to do so.
And I'm not talking about the hardware, it's powerful, probably more powerful by a lot of computers, but in the end the stuff that you can do on an iPad is far less than the stuff that you can do with a Raspberry Pi, a 35$ computer, but with Linux on it, and that lets you do whatever you want.
My wife pretty frequently wants to do simple room diagrams.
I'm hosting a game night for an RPG. Everybody needs a laptop - the player software doesn't work in Safari.
I frequently pull and add notes to large passages of text. My notes are kept in markdown and in the cloud. This workflow is basically unusable outside of a real computer.
Most people want real computers.
BUT let’s talk about them:
1. The ROM. Sure, hardware hacking is probably going to require specialized tools not available in iOS. Most people don’t do this, though.
2. There’s nothing about “simple room diagrams” that suggests this is a task you need a traditional desktop/laptop to do — unless you’re insisting on using a drawing program that only exists on those platforms. No points here.
3. I’m taking your word for it that your software won’t work in Safari, but plenty of us played RPGs for decades without having any computers around at all, and I’ve definitely been party to game nights where an iPad was entirely sufficient.
4. I mostly live in text files, too. You know what works great on my iPad? Text files. No idea what you’ve done to your workflow to make it impossible to do on a tablet, but suffice it to say it’s not an inherent limit to iOS (or, I presume, Android).
All that said, nobody is arguing that YOU should switch tools. But it’s hilariously wrong to insist that iPads aren’t “real” computers, or aren’t capable of handling a broad range of general computing tasks that formerly required full-on laptops or desktops.
Let's talk about office. Try to open a spreadsheet with macros on an iPad, of course you can't, even if Microsoft wants to implement it, that would violate the clause that an application shouldn't run third party code. A lot of companies have spreadsheets with macros to do their administration (I don't say that this is good, I only say that in the real world Excel is abused and that is a fact).
Safari doesn't have the same support of Firefox/Chrome. In my country for a couple of sites of some public administration you still need Internet Explorer! Even if the site work on Safari, they are probably not optimized for touchscreens and mostly thought to be used with a keyboard and a mouse.
And all the other applications? How about all the management software that is used in all companies?
Email clients? Too basic compared on the one for PC. Other specific applications? The one on iOS are more basic. Specific kind of software to talk to specific equipment? Doesn't exist.
Support for external USB OTG devices? Practically not existent on iOS.
Macros are a corner case. Sure, I use them sometimes, but they're only present in a small minority of my overall spreadsheets. I don't need them on the iPad.
Word functions BEAUTIFULLY on the iPad. I use it ALL THE TIME. Ditto PowerPoint.
"In my country for a couple of sites of some public administration you still need Internet Explorer!"
This is not a problem with the iPad.
Complaining about the email client on the iPad is REALLY rich considering most folks use a webmail client that is even MORE limited. I use iOS mail quite often, and while it can't do everything Outlook can do, it's more than sufficient for most people, and more than sufficient for ME most of the time.
You've made more of a case for "alerighi doesn't like iOS" than you have for "iOS isn't useful for real work," in other words.
IOW, you're defining "PC" in a way that excludes the thing you don't want to define as a "computer," which amounts to a semantic game, not a description of reality.
For many, many people, an iPad answers all the needs they have. It's a computer.
The laptop can do everything that the iPad can do except being a touchscreen device.
So, unless I know I have to write code, I don't carry my laptop anymore. 10 years (or even 5 years ago), this was unthinkable for me.
YMMV, but this guy couldn't even use the device for entertainment/reliable text editing. If that's what it takes to replace a "traditional computer", then I'm pretty sure my left shoe qualifies as one.
God help you if you actually want to browse a network share or use a non-standard cloud.
The iPad is just barely, barely capable of downloading a document from email, opening it, signing it and emailing it back out. I bet most users couldn't do it without instruction.
To be fair, on a PC every app has access to your Dropbox.
Every app on my ipad needs oauth access. That means those credentials can sit on a remote server and be leaked or used at will, and no firewall or filesystem permission is going to help me.
So selling a blown-up iPhone for $500 to that market made more sense than what Android OEMs did, which was advertise Flash compatibility.
That being said, I have only ever owned Android tablets. I dip my toe into iOS and iPadOS every now and then but it always feels too locked down compared to what I'm used to.
Tablet is literally everywhere for those on the Field. From Engineers on site, to Sales going to visit client doing presentation.
The way we should think about it is that Tablet didn't replace PC as "the" computing platform, as the platform itself, the pie grow a lot bigger. There are close to 300M iPad user. That is not a bad figure.
Also there are lots of old apps that have found homes on Linux (like gEDA) that don't run on iOS because Apple makes things so hard.
What do you mean? Unlike Android, most apps on iPhone are native code.
It'd also allow apps to dynamically load external software, which could be used as a bypass for Apple's stringent app store requirements.
The magic keyboard accessory apple sells for the iPad also turns it in to the same form factor as a laptop.
You very realistically could replace a MacBook with an iPad Pro and magic keyboard if apple let people run macOS on it.
EDIT: mocp under Termux works, so is not as limited as I tought.
Look also at Pythonista and a-shell for useful, if limited, programming environments. Both work by translating code into JS or wasm.
May or may not be pedantry, but it’s not allowing the UIKit APIs, only SwiftUI. Still possible to make a full app, but on top of the IDE features that it lacks from Xcode, it’s specifically shutting out important parts of current iOS app development in 2021.
That’s not to say there’s not good reasons for it too, but it’s worth pointing out.
Also worth noting, we can still realize our dreams of digital natives around us. Build academies, hackerspaces and whatever kind of non-profit entity/space will enable you to teach hacking to uninitiated folks.
Sadly though I think that there will always be a significant majority of the population who don't care how their world works, and hope only to consume media and distractions to avoid the unpleasantness of our world.
Most people I know have no mechanical sympathy for the computer nor ability to turn it off.
My (now passed away) Grandmother had better (but not great) than a lot of my-aged people I've explained things to - and thanks to basic on the BBC micro a long way back, way better abilities in terms of actually making the computer do what you want.
Likewise, most people who graduate from Computer Science curriculum have no idea what they're doing. They're very knowledgeable about specific problems (eg. some graph algorithms, analog electronics, programming language theory) but fail to conceive computing as an ensemble of ethical and usability concerns.
You know how it took thousands of people to build the first atomic bomb, and most of them had no clue what kind of evil force they were working on? Computing industry is like that most times, except of course in the free software ecosystem, where it does happen but community cooperation enable more skill sharing and more perspective about software from a political perspective.
Apple can't just impose to user what basically boils down to a fee to use your own hardware as you want, while at the same time preventing their competitors from competing at par with their services. Their draconian policies have been getting harsher and more drastic over time, it almost feels like they are really trying to get the EU Commission to punish them somehow.
I don't see why the option to sideload stuff onto the iPhone you've bought would make the platform less secure, especially if it is disabled by default and requires explicit user consent to be turned on.
Also, their focus on "security" has always felt very phony to me, as much as their focus on "standards" always basically meant they only evangelized for interoperability when it suited their interests. What they have been doing with iMessage in the USA is the epitome of abusing your market position, but I guess the FTC doesn't really care about that.
You don't see how running any code you want on a device is less secure than restricting the kind of code that you can run? I think the risk is heavily overstated by Apple, but it's a bit inane to claim that it doesn't make the platform less secure.
I agree with you that the process you describe is probably sufficient and I don't think the security aspect is a reasonable argument against allowing sideloading.
Who's Apple to decide what I consider to be secure or not in my own free will, on my device? It's like saying that guys from Ford have the right to chime in whenever they want and tell me I can't drive my Ford-branded car to a given supermarket chain.
They're deciding what is secure on their platform that they can be held liable for. Once you buy an iPhone, you can do whatever you want to it. You can hack it, you can smash it with a hammer, you can submerge it deep underwater. There's absolutely no one restricting your free will in any way here. What you are doing is, of your own volition, purchasing a device that you know has software that has built in restrictions, that you may or may not be able to bypass, but it wasn't designed to be, and getting upset that it doesn't behave as it wasn't promised.
The car analogy doesn't hold up. It'd be more akin to buying a car with android auto and being really upset that it doesn't run apple carplay.
1. In which markets does Apple have a majority, i.e. monopoly, position?
2. Given that the answer to point 1 is "none," they have no monopolistic position to abuse.
Special rules only come into play when one player effectively controls an entire market, like MSFT and personal computers in the late 90s.
You don't get to draw the market boundaries in such a way as to establish that Apple has some weird, narrowly defined monopoly.
With that being said, your analogies don't actually hold up at all.
> People paid good money for their phones, and so they must be free to use them as they see fit.
Apple doesn't hide its policies from its customers and while some people may be ignorant to them, it doesn't change the fact that it's not hidden away. You're not tricked into buying an iPhone thinking you'll be able to install any software you want on it. Anyone that cares enough to want to do so is also fully capable of looking this information up and understanding that they can't (even if they really want to).
> To me this sounds like buying a car that's restricted from entering Germany
It's more like you buy a car knowing fully well that it doesn't run Spotify on its computer then buying it anyway, then being upset that it doesn't run spotify. I get that your point is more that a car's purpose to drive places and an iPhone is a computer so its purpose is to compute things, but even a car imposes restrictions on its use with things like a governor to prevent you going over a certain speed. If you want a car without that restriction you buy one without it.
> or buying a fruit processor that forbids you to blend fruit
If anyone bought a fruit processor that doesn't blend fruit, that's kind of on them. But given that this were hypothetically possible, the person wouldn't have to buy that fruit processor because they should know before hand that that particular one doesn't blend fruit.
Some of them are children. Some need or prefer Apple's locked in stuff (iMessage.) Not to mention Android is a slow burning trash fire.
I've seen so many ignorant comments like this about iOS lately I'm on the fence about deleting my HN account. I think I'd be happier, and all the people here who keep defending Apple's abuse would be happier.
All of the "alternative" stores and distribution methods work with this mechanism, there is no better way and it is completely at Apple's whims.
Really, most interested users probably gave up at this point, looking at the decaying Jailbreak ecosystem.
Even just for coding, that sounds awful to me. iOS users bought a mobile device, and particularly if they're on an iPad Pro, a mobile device with a really good processor. For me, part of that would be being able to treat it like a mobile device, that it should keep working if I drive through a tunnel, that I should be able to use it on the go.
Hard for me to wrap my head around people being satisfied with "ignore that you have a well-built device with interesting sensors in front of you, and instead just use it as a thin client to another functioning computer."
There are cheaper thin clients out there than an iOS device if someone is OK ignoring their native hardware, doing all of their programming through a terminal, and having functionality break if their device goes offline.
Sent from my iPhone
Lately Apple started mandating that apps like telegram or discord must make it impossible for iPhone users to see nsfw content, which has tipped the balance towards android for me. For the first time in many years I'm using an Android phone. But as I said, one of all the factors to consider.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apollo-for-reddit/id979274575
I got an iPhone because it does what it does well, and doesn't do other things at all.
iPhones are slick, costly and secure, at the cost of not being malleable.
It's a trade-off I made at purchase time and I know most users of both iPhone and Android never considered that tradeoff.
Where is the next generation of developers going to come from, if they grow up on iPads?
But I feel the same towards Apples stance on server hardware, which they discontinued over a decade ago: Even if servers don't make a sizeable profit on their own, they help ensure that developers can build large scale stuff inside the apple ecosystem.
Yet, that hasn't really been the hindrance I feel it ought to have been.
It's only shortsighted because they lock it down. It's got the same M1 hardware (if slightly less powerfull IIRC), and you can get an official keyboard+trackpad (and many third party ones), so the only thing that really keeps it from being a PC is their software installation policy that locks what can be run.[1]
1: Well, and also their policy of only allowing iOS to run on the hardware. This would be less of an issue if you could throw Linux, or even just Android on them. I'm sure Microsoft would be happy to ship an M1 ARM version of windows if they had hardware that would allow it to run.
Users that want the choice can choose. Devs that want the choice can choose. You can stay in your walled garden. And considering the uptake of alternate app stores on Android this seems like FUD to me.
If they had the option of going to a less restrictive store, they probably would, and they would do things I am not happy with there. That would be a loss for me.
I think you’re underestimating the power of defaults. App developers know that the vast majority of users will not install an alternative app store, even if the platform allows them to. For proof, see the Android app ecosystem. There has been no migration from Google’s Play Store. There isn’t even a hint of store fragmentation. What you see is: 1) some OEMs run their own stores, which mostly rehost apps from Google’s store. These stores are not meant to be installed by arbitrary Android devices, so there is no chance that a user might feel compelled to install the store on their device. 2) F-Droid exists to host FOSS apps, some of which violate some asinine Google policy and as such are exclusive, but most of which are also available on the Play Store.
Basically, we have strong real-world evidence that allowing sideloading does not create app store fragmentation. If you want to argue against sideloading from a security standpoint, you’d be better served with the “sideloading allows an abusive spouse to install a keylogger/tracker on their partner’s phone” narrative.
My windows phone would get unplugged at 9am, and I’d party until the sun came up. Pretty much everything was disabled by then (by the battery saver), but I could still call a cab. Everyone’s iPhone was an expensive paperweight until someone located a charger.
I do agree with your statement today. iPhones have gotten markedly better at being a phone first and computing device second. It’s still got a ways to go, but my phone isn’t dead at 2am with battery saver on.
There are also people offering to sign you app with an enterprise certificate for a fee in the more dodgy corners of the internet but Apple is known to crack down on those once in a while as this obviously goes outside their ToS.
The largest loophole still is probably Enterprise Distribution, which allows high-limits (long time, many devices) signing associated with an Enterprise account.
If the app isn't open-source, you don't have any great options. Hypothetically, compiled apps from other developers can be re-signed just like apps you build yourself (see AltStore [1], which uses this technique), but those apps are still time-bombed and have to be periodically refreshed. The barrier to entry means you don't see a ton of apps around that do this; if something can't be compliant with App Store rules, it generally doesn't get made on iOS.
(There's also jailbreaking, and there used to be a decently-large community of developers building applications and tweaks for jailbroken iOS devices. That's gotten smaller both as Apple's made jailbreaking more difficult to maintain, and as new features in iOS have made much of the functionality people used to jailbreak for redundant.)
Since this is really intended to make developing iOS apps more accessible, it requires resigning or rebuilding apps. Since iDOS is open source, that should be no problem here - you can compile and install your own copy, likely just by loading the upstream project in Xcode and deploying it your iDevice like app developers do. A usability problem is that apps installed this way are only runnable for a week [0], at which point the signature must be refreshed or iOS will refuse to open the app.
AltStore [1] is a project that streamlines this ordeal as much as possible. It’s an alternate app store that allows you to install a bunch of open source apps not allowed in the app store (e.g. apps using permissions that would be rejected, or game console emulators). It also comes with a server component that uses Apple’s frameworks on Mac/Windows to refresh those apps’ validity on iDevices on the same network. If you regularly connect your iDevice to a network with an AltServer of your own, the apps should continue to work.
It’s certainly not pretty, and very far removed from fare more open Android devices, but workarounds to run your own software on iDevices do exist. There’s an entire subreddit, r/sideloaded, dedicated to this apparently mostly for piracy purposes.
[0]: Unless you pay for the Apple Developer Program, which has much longer limits. This limit is for free accounts.
[1]: https://altstore.io/
IMO this shouldn't be legal.
Think about it this way: A chair supplier telling Apple to only allow it's employees to sit a certain way. Or architects telling it to only build their HQ's a certain way. Not as an advice, but, enforced.
How ridiculous is that!
You see MacOS devices completely dwarfed in both users and profit per user by iOS devices.
As that executive, who keep in mind probably doesn't share your opinions on open technology or they would never have got into that position. What decisions would you be making on the direction of their platforms.
I can't help but think we're only going one way and it's not towards something more open.
You can see it in the back and forth dance on the Mac. Will Apple ruin it by closing down too much? Time will tell.
DOS came with a debugger that let you modify and create your own software. The Mac didn't.
Planned obsolescence was also not something new --- the infamous Lisa was designed with clock hardware and software that couldn't make it past 1995, for a machine released in 1983. (The PC AT, from 1984, has an RTC that went to at least 2000, and is still a design in use today.)
Apple taketh away:
"Apple on Wednesday agreed to pay $113 million to settle consumer fraud lawsuits brought by more than 30 states over allegations that it secretly slowed down old iPhones, a controversy that became known as "batterygate. Apple first denied that it purposely slowed down iPhone batteries, then said it did so to preserve battery life amid widespread reports of iPhones unexpectedly turning off. "
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/936268845/apple-agrees-to-pay...
The thing they did wrong was not telling people. Now they do.
Not as ridiculous as being well aware of the limitations of iPhones wrt to installing applications outside of App Store and still buying one. People should vote with their wallets. Me personally I do not mind the limitations, but if you do - don't buy it.
That only works in efficient markets, which, obviously phones are not. An oligopoly where the barrier of entry requires like a billion dollars to spin up new phone hardware, a new OS, and an app ecosystem is not a place where effective competition is going to occur.
Do you know what the tool for doing that is called? Government. Vote with your actual votes.
Nope
Their designs are protected at the point of a gun through patents and copyrights. Breaking those literally means the police will use force to stop you and to ruin and imprison you.
Take away these restrictions and you’d see an identical iPhone, but without Apple’s restrictions. I bet that phone would sell millions. That would actually allow voting with your wallet to be real.
Since the government enables these behaviors, it is also the only one who can actually reign them in. Unless these nearly perpetual lock-ins stop, voting with your wallet is impossible.
If Apple actually delivered what was best for consumers, knock-offs wouldn’t matter too much.
My actual argument is that either we must regulate the idea monopoly we created or eliminate it by stopping the government protectionism.
Give other company your money.
If there is no authority / safety-check over the apps, potentially thousands could lost millions from new wave of scams. Some sort of oversight has to be in place for devices with that much personal data. In the worst case scenario, Apple could get sued for that.
Chair suppliers don't have a history of decreeing sitting posture. The iPhone OTOH has been locked down from day 1.
Everyone is paying a lot of money for a system they basically own nothing about. You keep paying, for apps, for hardware, that’s forever tied up to the whims of that platform’s owner (not you).
Not in favour of more laws, but forcing the hands of these platforms so they provide more control to their customers is not a bad thing.
At the moment none of them have any incentive to do it.
What are the costs? I can buy an iPhone or an Android phone and switch pretty easily can’t I?
> Not in favour of more laws, but forcing the hands of these platforms so they provide more control to their customers is not a bad thing.
Maybe more control isn’t a good thing? But even so aren’t there phones in the market they cater to those who want more control.
Software would need to be repurchased if it's even available on the other platform. Maybe you could but I know I couldn't easily or cheaply switch.
I could easily switch. I guess maybe we should all make sure we buy software that is device independent or something too.
If you want regulation, then I think thats a good starting point. Software doesn’t have to be made for every device, but if you buy it for one you buy it for all.
Or we can just let things go too. Seems to be working mostly fine.
Should they be allowed to decide to buy a device whose manufacturer maintains a sole-source app retailer?
They discover it later, when they ask some more expert friend "can you install me an app to do so, like the one you have on your phone", and you have to explain that no, you can't because Apple didn't approve it for the store. And then they understand that they made a bad choice, but it's too late.
Or when someone goes to you asking for an iOS app and you have to explain that putting it on the store (the only way they can install it permanently, even if they need it only on one phone) they will have to spend a lot of money. While with Android you just give them the .apk and you are done. And most of the time these customer will buy Android phones because it's cheaper to buy a new phone than get the app on the store.
My toaster can't run any software at all.
Most people will care about their inability to run their own software on their iPhone about as much as they care about running it on their toaster, or car, or desk. Most people are not naturally hackers or tinkerers.
>Or when someone goes to you asking for an iOS app and
If someone is going to you asking for an app that you compiled yourself, let alone one that you programmed yourself, they're such a statistical anomaly it isn't funny.
> If someone is going to you asking for an app that you compiled yourself, let alone one that you programmed yourself, they're such a statistical anomaly it isn't funny.
Yes, that could be the case, but it's more common with apps like emulators of old console, that on iOS are not approved, or to listen to music from YouTube in background and without ads, or a file manager to copy stuff from/to a removable device, and so on.
There is also the case of people that asks me for apps for their business and I have to say, sorry for iOS I cannot do so because Apple forbids that. You would better buy a cheap 200$ phone/tablet only for that application, because getting it approved by Apple and putting it on the store will cost you more.
And all I even want to do is have a parametric equalizer so PowerBeats sound decent with Apple Music while I run…
there is a lot of pressure to buy either an iPhone or an official (GooglePlay) Android phone. Most (all) services only support these two options. Also true for public/governmental institutions.
On Android the Play Store is a major distributor of malware [1]. I would like to avoid that, which comes with trade-offs, which I accept. Is it perfect? No. But it works.
I do wonder if there is a path where iOS can be completely replaced by a third party OS, so iPhones can be used in a way to allow you to install anything you want, but it is no longer Apple's 'responsibility'. However, that also comes with its own set of problems.
[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/play-store-identified-as-main-...
In this case, it is the ability for an app to install and execute arbitrary code that hasn't been reviewed. I download an update to DoodleJump and it installs some malware on my device. I'd be none the wiser.
I don't want that stress, which is why I chose an Apple device. It protects me from that scenario.
Go look at your settings?
As the recent leaks showed, the walled garden didn't protect you from invisible malware
If there were no legal restrictions with what you're doing with you're phone, Apple would have a very hard time preventing you from doing what you want. Anyone could buy an exploit for iOS for a million and sell unlocks for 50$.
There is force and coercion involved, so a governmental intervention is much more necessary.
It would also make it way easier to transfer your apps from platform to platform and to switch OSes.
No. https://www.wired.com/2010/07/feds-ok-iphone-jailbreaking/
They simply make it technically infeasible to jailbreak since jailbreaks run untrusted code that bypasses security restrictions (eg. adware that survives resets).
You wouldn't need to send your phone or anything, you can do fully remote jailbreak from a web browser with the right exploits.
You'd be surprised how popular pay-to-jailbreak shops are/were in places where this isn't enforced. You go there and the guy jailbreak your phone in front of you then hands it back to you. There's absolutely a market
Apple since 2008: Tells people that they can't install programs on their own devices. Any mention of asking the government to force them to stop this is met by Hacker News users vehemently defending their right to let Apple (and only Apple, at all times, with no off switch) decide everything.
I don't buy it. Something stinks here. This is nothing short of a digital new world order and obviously the current status quo is very, very valuable to the companies who run these platforms but I believe it's also very valuable to the entire power matrix that holds us all in check.
As users, we only have any visibility into three numbers:
A. The number of good apps that make it through the filter. (True positives.)
B. The number of good apps that are caught by it. (False positives.)
C. The number of fraudulent apps that make it through the filter. (False negatives.)
B may be larger than C, leading to the perception that the filter does more harm than ngood. But we are getting caught in a base rate fallacy. To really understand the filter, we need one more number:
D. The number of fraudulent apps caught by the filter. (True negatives.)
My impression is that average people have no idea what a huge sea of garbage, fraud, and bad actors is swirling out there on the Internet. The number of bad people is relatively small, but the volume of malicious hot garbage they are able to spew out is incredibly large. I wouldn't be surprised if every false positive (a good app like the one here getting caught) was balanced by a thousand true negatives (bad apps being filtered out).
With rates like that, the filter is clearly vital. But we don't see the full picture, so we never really know.
One piece of anecdata we do have is what unfiltered ecosystems look like. And they seem to universally descend into roiling cesspits of porn, hate speech, warez, etc.
So while it's very important to continue being critical of gatekeepers because they wield disproportionate social power, it's also good to be mindful that they aren't all bad. Notice how these days hacking always seems to be about phishing or email attachments? Everyone seems to have forgotten the days when worms in executables downloaded from the web were a major attack vector. That dwindled because the major OSes put these filters in place.
As usual, when something is working like it's supposed to, people incorrectly think it's doing nothing at all.
Stores and platforms can and should keep all their sophisticated fraud-detection tools, hardened runtime environment, etc. and continue to guard against untold numbers of awful apps.
The human review is supposed to take over where the mechanics fail. Yet we know (from Epic trial, etc.) that Apple has a comically small number of people assigned to this, relative to the millions of apps in existence. We can extrapolate how little time must be spent on each human review.
We also know that people outside of Apple were able to dig up scams pretty easily, without even having access to all the tools/data that Apple must have. Apple clearly could have invested more in this, and did not.
So we know (1) the Apple review team is limited, (2) serious problems can still be found with relatively little effort, and (3) they nonetheless choose to spend their limited resources chasing minor violations of App Store Rule of the Week.
We also know from the Epic trial that, despite what they say, Apple certainly will give some developers special treatment. This means leniency or rule-bending was an option for them here, and who better to work with than a developer like this, who has spent years writing software for Apple platforms, clearly increasing the value of Apple devices in the process? Apple looked at that years-long relationship and said: “get out of our store”.
I spent a lot of time cleaning computers for friends and family, and often times they would have viruses because users were looking at porn or downloading games.
Well, it turns out most users like looking at porn and downloading games. Most users want to play indie games (that may be garbage) or read not-licensed foreign comics. Users enjoy being able to boot up old programs and play with fan made mods.
Let's not pretend cracking down on all of this is for the user. Honest computer security would give the user a clear and readable label ("hey, this free game is going to send off your personal data including browser history") and let them make the choice. Users are not farm animals to be kept in neat little pens.
Plus the new feature of creating and packaging your iOS / iPadOS app + uploading it, directly on the iPad.
Apple seems to contradict its own rules since a few years now.
I checked quickly in the guide and no mention of "Me, Apple, can do whatever I want in my store."
Broken analogy? Apple is the police of Apple store.
I don't know what you wanted to demonstrate but, sorry, you failed :/
It's not the same on MacOS because users aren't going around looking for new apps to install. People install their core programs (e.g. Office, maybe some games), and they get everything else on the web.
Yes. That's part of their profit margin. Just as how the PS5 literally sells for less than it costs to make the console[0], Apple doesn't realize all of their profits from iPhone sales until after purchase where they expect a certain dollar figure from their customers to be spend on either their subscription services or via the 30% app store cut.
This is also happening in VR, by the way - the Valve Index is still the top but the Oculus Quest 2 is insanely close to matching the Index in experience, and that's all thanks to how Facebook literally sells that at a loss of $400, since they want $800 for a version without (1) Ads and (2) their cut from Oculus store sales[1].
> It's not the same on MacOS
Exactly, and I think the pricing difference of these devices reflects that (despite the main cost centers, being manufacturing tooling and labor, having largely similar costs for both). If the iOS landscape turned into the MacOS landscape overnight, we'd see a similar jump in cost for the phone thanks to the lost post-sale revenue.
0: https://www.gamesradar.com/ps5-is-being-sold-at-a-loss-but-h...
1: https://i.judge.sh/imperturbable/Mint/TuPfZ65njJ.png ( https://business.oculus.com/products/#:~:text=Oculus%20for%2... )
The thing is iPads offer good experience as a tablet but when you want from it a bit more Apple doesn’t allow it because of their Apps Store policies.
Personally I think iPad could be a great device for coding on the go. But the fact that we can’t install anything outside of apple’s control blocks this option.
RDP or SSH is nice but it relies on internet connection. I’d like to use the native power of the device. With M1 there’s no reason it wouldn’t be able to do so.
Their arguments about security to sounds more like bunch of excuses.
Surface Pros are about as good as you can get right now for a general purpose computer that is also a tablet and also are not incredibly expensive.
Also in the future Steam Deck might actually fit the category! Like if you don't mind the extra knobs and controls it's basically a fully supported Linux tablet! :)
A side aspect is running afoul of copyright and that is likely the other significant money spinner / target.
The popularity of these articles and podcast may have shined a light on this bit of hackery. It sucks it is getting booted, but it’s largely interesting because it allowed you to do the thing Apple doesn’t want you to do.
[0] https://www.howtogeek.com/739100/how-to-install-windows-31-o...
> allows for downloading of content without licensing.
How does this solve the problem of letting customers run a fat app without forking over for the corresponding server horsepower to run it? I know that JS is high performance when written well, but it takes time and money to do it right.
Definitely have a cloud backup of your device enabled in case you need to ever reset your device so that you don't lose the app.
If you want to install it on another device things become more complex...
But that's messed up if you did that.
I think I'll stick with running DOSBox in a browser.
This just opens opportunity for “makers” devices (you can do something uniq) and companies. Ie some cheap phones with OS targeting market in Africa. This also means a new type of VCs / ycombinators.
Any web browser based app runs executable code ffs.
Apple should (in theory) give refunds for this, or make the developer whole somehow, because the dev's reputation is screwed.
Consumers would benefit from real competition and disruption in this space, as competition increases efficiency and lowers costs.