Software developers can’t build on a foundation that is constantly, capriciously shifting. This on top of the App Store's already-onerous restrictions and the fact that it’s the only practical way to get your software on one of the world's largest computing platforms has already engendered a deep antipathy [1] among Apple developers, and there are no signs it’s getting better. Something has to give.
I believe it is sustainable if you're willing to burn through disposable 3rd party developers.
From my experience, it always follow the same path. Some promising developer gets infatuated with Apple's supposed ease of use and looks at the shiny aggregate numbers like $155 billion paid out to developers. Said developer jumps through all the hoops and builds a great app. Users love it, but since competition in the app store is insane, the developer barely makes back his/her initial investment. Then Apple changes the APIs and rules, the app becomes unusable and/or expensive to maintain and over time the developer burns out and gives up. Thus, there's now an opening for the next promising developer to start building an app.
As long as Apple doesn't run out of new developers happy to join the App Store, they can treat their 3rd party "partners" as badly as they want. It's kind of the same power dynamic that makes sure that hair saloons all over the world treat their employees badly.
They can build on it... developers have been building on it for years and making money doing it.
Don't make an app that allows users to run unapproved software. I think that's a pretty clear rule.
If your app makes money (directly or indirectly), pay Apple whatever portion of your revenue that Apple demands. I also think that's a pretty clear rule.
If there's something that should obviously be regulated out of existence, it's allowing them to use terms like "buy", "own", etc. for platforms that you clearly do not control. You are renting the software and the device just comes with it.
But its absolutely not true that this is enforced consistently. My iPhone currently contains three full programming language interpreters from the App Store---one for JavaScript, one for Python, and one for Clojurescript. I know one of those can make arbitrary network requests because I've done it, and I think the other two can as well.
So how is that different from iSH? Apple has approved a bunch of apps that can go get third party code and run it.
This is a wall I have hit with App Review quite a few times
You have to stop viewing the apps from a technical perspective. App Review is _intentionally_ non-technical, as frustrating as that is for us developers. They enforce App Store policy from a non-technical standpoint
I produce an app which can download and run code, and was rejected many times through App Review. I was able to point to many other apps which _technically_ also downloaded and ran code — but the difference, to App Review, was entirely in the appearance (my code was text based, it "looked like code" and not like Scratch's visual programming, or nodes, or whatever)
I disagree with the App Review decision in this instance, but I think they are enforcing policy consistently. It just looks random to those of us with enough technical experience to look past the visuals and to the implementation
We'd be happy to include your experiences when we talk to Apple about 2.5.2 if you'd like to share them with us. (I work on iSH, so you can either use the email on my profile or any of the other ways to contact the iSH team.)
I think JavaScript/Clojurescript is the exception because they control the runtime and JIT: whether or not you buy their explanation, I think the reason they state is that this is to enable sandboxing. This is at least plausible to me: to have effective sandboxing, you need to restrict the APIs that a device can call, which means blocking the ability to generate and run arbitrary machine code on-device.
> to have effective sandboxing, you need to restrict the APIs that a device can call, which means blocking the ability to generate and run arbitrary machine code on-device.
Please, no, this is not how security and sandboxing works at all. Otherwise, the moment you have an arbitrary code vulnerability, you'd get full access to everything.
The way effective sandboxing works is by giving a process a set of capabilities/permissions, what have you, that is enforced by the kernel. Those permissions can be "can I open files", "can I talk to the camera subsystem", etc. Then, even if you somehow manage to generate the right function call at runtime, the call will fail. And to be clear, this is how apple's own security works.
Wouldn’t you have this as part of a defense in depth strategy? Apple’s public vs. private APIs and similar things seem to indicate that at least part of their security model involves static analysis of binaries and only allowing a set of approved APIs.
No, it's not a security mechanism period. Public/Private APIs aren't part of the security model, it's a way to prevent app breakage in their ecosystem due to applications using unstable APIs.
> This is at least plausible to me: to have effective sandboxing, you need to restrict the APIs that a device can call, which means blocking the ability to generate and run arbitrary machine code on-device.
This isn't true. You can sandbox arbitrary machine code by restricting the process it runs in (this is how seccomp works on Linux).
But iSH isn’t running arbitrary machine code, it’s a x86 emulator running Linux inside. It’s more sandboxed than a JS runtime, which actually does compile down to machine code.
You've just said it. The difference is the package management. What Apple is defending here is the notion of a store around apps/containers. Apple does not want to provide leaks/wedges into other app ecosystems through native apps. Safari is the only way.
> We're OK with the phrase because the alternative was people's phones being infested with malware and viruses.
Exactly! Next, I hope Apple will apply the same curation and registration requirements to websites if they want to be browse-able on Safari. Internet is a dark place full of scams, fake news, and privacy pitfalls. It's time to replace the open web with a curated premium web. /s
The Apple store does not replace any open standards, it is merely an alternative. Apple cannot and does not you from using or paying for open hardware and software.
When a market becomes a requirement for society to operate it no longer is allowed to hide behind that veil. It's intellectually dishonest to ignore the issue at hand and instead excuse it with a "well no one forces you". Markets are a force that shape how people can live.
This market became a “requirement” (which is a bit BS since Android ecosystem is still much larger than iOS, but anyhow...) because people voted for this system consistently over many years (again and again). They voted with their wallets for it when the iPhone was a tiny newborn dream and RIM/Nokia were king, they continued to vote for it year on year after Android was released, and they are still voting for it... as is.
With this in mind: It’s arguably also intellectually dishonest to pretend that we all woke up today in some kind of “iOS only world” and should now regulate it. a) It’s not, and b) you would be killing the very thing that made everyone want this ecosystem in the first place.
If all the “regulate them!” and “open the store!” people win, then history says most will eventually move on to a new ecosystem that works like the old one (which people evidently like). Android has been open the whole time and the money gravitates away from it... If highly regulated and fully open phones worked so well then iOS would be a footnote in history books, and not the powerhouse that you want to squash.
That's black and white argument. Products change markets over time, not instantly. There does not have to be a singular event.
"Voting with your wallet" entirely ignores what actual voting is. Whatever the original reason no longer applies, now the devices are an expectation for livelihood, safety, and overall communication. It becomes a public problem.
Having two choices is not choice. Google deserves the same regulation apple does. Real choice would be dozens of competitive and entirely independent choices. The nature of markets of scale prevent this from happening.
>> the alternative was people's phones being infested with malware and viruses.
That's a very weak argument. Actually this is a part of Apple's marketing for ignorant people.
I have been using various Linux distros and Android phones for years and never got a malware and virus because:
- I install software from trusted sources or compile from the source
- I keep SW, OS and kernels up-to-date
- It is getting harder and harder to exploit modern systems thanks to improved sandboxes in browsers, namespaces, ASLR and other techs
What people just need is a bit of training on how to use a computer. They don't need Apple.
How would Apple let other app stores and make sure they are secure?
Will they review apps stores? Will it be rules for what an app store should do? If so, the is this the kind of app stores that people want as alternatives: app stores which follow Apple rules?
If Apple will not review app stores and let them be installed than how are they secure? What stops a malware to be presented as an alternative store and then allow installation of a messenger while saving user and password from users?
Hmm, like disallow them in the AppStore but allow sideloading apps, even an alternative app store - and then put a large banner that it is insecure blabla that the user can ignore if he/she so chooses. Or allow it only with some developer mode for which a user would have to touch something n times , like it is on Android. So those who don’t know what is it all about can stay in their walled garden, while the rest can use their goddamn 1000 dollar phone the way they want
No matter how I count, I see only two viable platforms for everyday use in a mobile device. Please enlighten me with the other options (and yeah, I do know about pinephones, and I even own one, but it needs quite a bit of love (not talking about it having an inferior hardware - since I would like to use my phone as a portable camera as well))
Yet despite this, more Apple users have been infected with malware (Xcodeghost) than users of Amazon and Google Android devices combined, despite there being far more Amazon and Google Android users than Apple users.
I'm not sure that's true... Xcodeghost was a single attack that affected ~4000 apps and got it contained comparatively quickly, whereas Android devices get infected with virus-laden with quite regularly.
And this is just five articles I found from a superficial search.
Now don't get me wrong. I absolutely abhor the Apple's App Store and their overzealous security policies, but they work. I just don't think they're necessary to keep our devices safe.
Xcodeghost alone infected hundreds of millions of people (including all Wechat users). Let's add up your examples.
The first one infected a few thousand. The second one spread on Chinese phones, not Google or Amazon phones. The third infected about 120k users. The fourth infected 1 million users. The fifth infected 10 million users.
So the Apple App Store infected at least an order of magnitude more users despite having an order of magnitude fewer users total. Why at least? Apple does not allow third party security apps on its devices, so there are likely to be way more infections that we just haven't heard of.
> How is it 2020 and we're okay with this phrase? What the hell happened?
Shareholders happened, that's why.
The lines between company and customers are blurred, giving perverse incentives to defend company practices that wouldn't fly if there were a clear distinction.
If people want Apple to treat them like children, why should we stop them? I'm not being sarcastic — there may be good reasons we don't want Apple to coddle the public, but I have yet to see them.
Support allowing users to add alternate stores on iOS devices.
Having one choice is not freedom. And it has nothing to do with curration. If Apple's model is superior, then their app store will win against fair competition.
I disagree that this is a straw man. Apple has been consistent for _years_ on this issue -- they clearly believe that choosing the Apple ecosystem is synonymous with choosing to only be able to run code that has been reviewed (theoretically) by the app store team. If it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck then it is a duck.
> I don’t want my non-technical family members being persuaded to install other stores.
On Android this isn't an issue, you leave sideloading disabled. Apple could use the same method. Apple could even make you use XCode to unlock the ability. But locking it entirely is obnoxious.
> Apple could even make you use XCode to unlock the ability. But locking it entirely is obnoxious.
Wow. That is actually a really elegant solution to that problem. Well done.
The only way I would change it would be to walk it a little away from Xcode, and have it be through an official tool for Mac/Linux/Windows, and possibly open source it so it could be ported to BSD/whatever else by the community.
That has it's own issues though, and I don't know that it would actually be better, it's just where I would draw the line.
Nobody bought an iPhone because of this retriction. Most people buy iPhones for fashion. There are very few people who have been duped into buying iPhones because of the security and privacy marketing that doesn't hold up to the barest scrutiny — most iPhone users simply don't care about that aspect of Apple's marketing.
> I don’t want my non-technical family members being persuaded to install other stores.
Frankly, that's not your decision to make.
If they own the device, they get to decide. If they don't or are too young, then you can use various controls (i.e parental controls) to lock your devices down the way you want.
This isn't straw man. It's been used twice in this thread incorrectly.
Frankly, it's also my families decision to use Facebook, and they have the freedom to use it, but that doesn't mean I won't continue to discourage them from using the platform. Just because that's their decision doesn't mean they are properly informed about their technical decisions or understand the impact. If absolute distribution freedom was a major concern for them I'd tell them to buy Androids.
It’s absolutely my decision by to make if they ask me to recommend something to them. Especially if they have been having problems with malware and that’s why they are asking.
If they own the device they get to use it as it was designed to be used.
They also have the legal right to change it themselves (at least in the US).
What you don’t have is any basis for forcing Apple to design software the way you want, or to force my family members not to be able to follow my recommendation to choose iOS as Apple wants to offer it to them.
That’s between them and Apple and me.
What right do have to dictate how any of these three parties choose to interact?
You can't make that decision for me and millions of others.
You're voting to make our industry inequitable and running software some Orwellian dystopia.
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple one day mandated that we hand them the copyright to the code we write. We're one step away from that now: we already have to write against a strict spec, fit all the rules, and are subject to arbitrary dismissal. They take 30% and leave us the crumbs. The appeals process is unfair. If Apple likes what you've got, they can just clone your app. One step away.
We're in prison and you're rationalizing about your parents.
There's a pretty clear reason for passing legislation to force Apple to allow third party stores, and I think it has been explained well in the parent comments: some people believe users should control their devices. There are also pretty clear reasons for not doing so: other people believe Apple should control its devices.
Politicians can legislate things. They already get to dictate how parties interact. I'm not sure how rights come into it, since they wouldn't be breaching any of your rights that I can think of.
This is not an accurate representation of reality.
Users simply cannot control their devices. No individual can no matter how skilled. Software complexity moved past that point decades ago.
All we can actually do is choose who to trust when we acquire software.
Nobody is forced to choose or trust Apple, but many do.
Since choices exist for people who want to decide for themselves who they trust to provide software, the argument cannot be about that.
The people who argue that Apple should be forced to allow third party stores are only interested in the potential commercial gain they could make if they had access to Apple’s customers.
They just want access to the customers so they can make money out of them.
That is all this argument is about and all it has ever been about.
> The people who argue that Apple should be forced to allow third party stores are only interested in the potential commercial gain they could make if they had access to Apple’s customers.
> They just want access to the customers so they can make money out of them.
> That is all this argument is about and all it has ever been about.
And this is not an accurate representation of reality. I have zero professional or financial connection to software development, but I still want Apple to allow third-party stores or at least third-party installs so I can do the things on my phone that I want to that Apple says no to. I want to play games on an emulator, I want to stream video games (e.g. xCloud) without downloading individual wrapper apps for each game or attempting to play through Safari, I want to use proper browser engines other than Safari and hopefully have proper uncrippled PWA support, I want to run interpreters/compilers/shells like iSH, I want to play adult games, etc.
What I find even more abhorrent is the notion that because you bought an Apple product that you belong solely to Apple when it comes to anything in regards to that device. I'm a consumer/customer period, not Apple's customer. I bought the phone because of the hardware quality and that should be the end of the transaction.
No. The work has already been done for all those things I want, I just can't utilize any of it. I don't want Apple to do anything other than allow me to install apps outside of the App Store and without the bullshit 7-day restriction on sideloading.
I know what I bought and iPhones are still the best option for my use case despite the limitations. Just because I decided to purchase an iPhone from the limited options (Android or nothing), doesn't mean I have to be head-over-heels in love with it and I can still be unhappy with certain aspects of it. I can still desire improvements to what I consider the best available option.
You can continue to try to do mental gymnastics and twist the contexts here, but you're bending over backwards to let Apple bend you over.
What's even more frustratingly absurd is that you think that you can "hack" your iPhone without going through Apple. The only way to do that is purchasing a Mac for around $1k and to get over the previously mentioned bullshit 7-day restriction is a $99/yr developer account.
You can hack your phone by jailbreaking without paying anything to Apple.
I don’t have any problem with you being unhappy with Apple for not building what you want. The iPhone is pretty far from what I want too.
What I dispute is that they should be forced to build something for you, or that there is any ‘should’ about this. I want an open device too, and would prefer such a device to the iPhone, however I don’t want Apple to be forced to make one for me.
There are no gymnastics going on here. Apple’s software is not designed to make it easy for you to customize the way you would like. Nobody disputes that.
What I dispute is the use of the government to force them to change their designs, especially since we have alternatives to choose from and can contribute to them if we so desire.
> All we can actually do is choose who to trust when we acquire software.
Right, but when you buy an iPhone Apple says that they are the only people you can trust. The argument is that this isn't necessarily the best scenario.
Of course users can control their device. Control doesn't mean assembly programming, control means to decide how they want to use it. I am not a car mechanic, I won't approach my car with a tool. Still I control my car as I can drive it to any workshop of my choice to have changes done. The car manufacturer has no say in this.
Whom can I pay for to install something like Termux on my iPad? Apple not only forbids third-parties from offering such a service via the App Store, they also do their best to prevent this by any other path. That they are not 100% successful (jailbreaks) doesn't mean the situation is anyhow comparable to cars, where there is a wide ecosystem of 3rd party support for customization.
You are detracting from the point. The point isn't that there is exactly one alternative, which is somewhat more customizable, the point is that Apple makes it willfully difficult to customize. This is not equal to cars.
No they make it willfully difficult to customize. Installing applications is not compromising. And stop with strawmen like "Why buy an iPhone if it isn’t what you want? ". The discussion is about the freedom any buyer of any product should have. Fundamental customer rights.
2020, the new battle ground is now on how to define the term Straw man.
I am sorry this is completely off topic. But it is quite funny I notice the word suddenly gained usage, ( especially in any political debate ) and it is now sort of misused and misapplied all over the place.
( Not suggesting your or your GP are right or wrong in using the term )
This is exactly the perspective we disagree over: in my opinion, Apple users and developers are absolutely forced to do something.
There is a thing. They may or may not prefer different ways of handling that thing. Apple makes a choice for them, and prevents them from making their own choice.
Call it what you will, but in my book, lacking the freedom to make your own choices is the definition of slavery.
And when Google decides to stop allowing that, then what?
There's a duopoly and history suggests that when one can get away with rent seeking the other will follow.
If we continue to allow this behavior now then we guarantee it'll continue on the future.
This is exactly what happened with the 30%. Google did it because Apple had set the standard. They didn't do it because they did the math and came the exact same conclusion as Apple ina vacuum.
If Google decides to do that, then you might have an argument.
Google has a great incentive not to do it, which is that if they do it there would be a real argument for software distribution. to be regulated by the government.
Can you explain how this is an example of rent seeking? I can see how it is of profit seeking, but how is offering a product, services, and platform rent seeking?
Some developers may disagree with Apple’s strategy, but it’s obvious that they are investing in technologies that support developers, and continue to reach more customers - which also makes the platform better for developers.
> There is no reason at all for Apple to be forced to do anything.
Apple impacts businesses, consumers, engineers - multiple industries - with their bad behavior.
Apple has an illegal platform and it must be regulated. They've captured 50% of the United States computing market and illegally inserted themselves as middleman into every transaction, every software install. They punish everyone trying to do business and make engineers dance through flaming hoops.
Apple has become their own banana republic. Anticompetitive and illegal.
> Apple impacts businesses, consumers, engineers - multiple industries - with their bad behavior
Unfortunately the alternative is letting businesses and engineers impact the life of their own customers negatively.
Developers had way too much power to screw up users for years, and they did: spying and tracking behind our backs. Mandatory rootkits [1]. Piracy Protection and DRM that did way more than advertised and caused nuisance for paying customers. Rootkits on music albums. Apple has fixed or is trying to fix most of those.
If government wants to step up to regulate developers, small or big, maybe it's fine. But until then then Apple has provided the best solution to toxic developers.
Sure you can say "you can't just not install the app from the toxic developer", but then why isn't it ok to use the "you can just not buy an iPhone" argument?
The AppStore has every right to publish only apps they deem rightfull - so there would be absolutely no change there. Yet, apple should not be able to disallow me from using my device in any way I want to - that is I should be able to sideload anything, make it an alternative app store or a simple app.
They are even free to hide that option from regular users so the security of them won’t be harmed - they can’t install malware with 2 clicks because there will be 4 apple prompts explaining why it’s a bad idea. But I get to install a prog language interpreter or a proper browser - so win-win (other than apple’s profits, but I couldn’t care less)
> Yet, apple should not be able to disallow me from using my device in any way I want to
And my point is that random application developers should not disallow me from using my device in any way I want to, nor they should be allowed to make my device work against my interests.
So far, as a user, for the last 25 years, Apple has not disallowed me as much as random developers have, and in fact Apple has fought that fight on my behalf.
What Apple is doing by limiting developers powers is 100% in my interest since I don't care about developers that are hostile to me.
I 100% agree that I should be able to run what I want, but the other side of the story matters too. Maybe there's a technical solution? Maybe if everything was open source? Maybe better sandbox/firewalls?
I agree with you except that I believe that there is a third alternative.
All the safety issues that are solved by Apple’s approach could be solved by some combination of open source and or open source development, in an open way that does away with the single gatekeeper.
That would be better than either Apple or the Government controlling software distribution.
A lot of the anti-Apple arguments I see here seem to have an element of ideological fixation. IMO the practicalities of the real world are always more involved than an ideological black/white distinction, and just as you said here there are always tradeoffs on different fronts. Openness instead of a walled garden is nice, but how far can you go with it? If you think about it, every company is essentially a plutocratic organization or even somehow military-like, where most important decisions are made by the few elites at the top and passed down, and people are quite fine with it.
Of course the argument here seems to be that Apple is gradually becoming an almost "public good", while if you're unhappy with a company you're working at, you can switch. But then again if there are better alternatives to Apple, nothing theoretically prevents the users from switching. I have been using Android since forever but this year I'm switching to iPhone. The touted "freedom" simply is not evident in most scenarios during my daily phone usage, and I'm fed up with a lot of downsides of Android (ironically, it's hard to think that being tracked by countless potentially malicious apps offers you more "freedom" than living in Apple's ecosystem), also Google is not known to be exactly friendly to developers either and it can be even more Kafka-esque to appeal a ban, apparently.
To maintain the standards of a system, sometimes the maintainer has to get hard, and this would result in them occasionally cracking down on false positives. Still, it's similar to how a society cannot function without an actual enforcer of rules, which is the police. As long as there is a mechanism/will to redress the false positives, it's much better than a system where there's no control at all. Of course, if you say you're a hardcore libertarian and are fine with living in a society without any policing and would rather protect your own interests yourself, no problem and you can always go with the most liberal phone OS out there. But most societies can't realistically function that way nor do most people wish it that way. The app ecosystem is similar in this sense.
There is a misunderstanding of market will choose the best competitor. A competition in of itself is not fair, it needs heavy regulation to become fair - like a running contest could be won by anyone if they were to shoot the other contenders. And this is what happens in unregulated markets - we’ve got an oligopoly, with a really high bar to enter - basically impossible for a newcomer (note that even Microsoft failed to enter it). So there should absolutely be some government regulation to make it fair - and it is not overreach. It is simply no longer Apple’s decision, since it is practically a public service in part, as you noted.
You forget about the splitting of developers were a new project to emerge.
Microsoft failed, partly because it was as of yet not a big enough platform to target by other developers - they have enought things to do with android and apple. A new platform can’t emerge unless there is some incentive for developers to target it. Linux phones are in a special circumstance, because apps are developer for them out of a hobby. But phones are a main social device, you can’t have one that doesn’t have your bank’s app on it for example. Linux phones must emulate android (and it is sort of working, fortunately) to remain afloat.
It's just as easy to firewall your platform and prevent trackers. Open installation and privacy are not mutually exclusive.
The browser is a firewalled platform. Look at what Mozilla can do for privacy on their shoestring budget.
Apple likes it the way they have it. You cannot tell me the DOJ can't force them to open their platform and suddenly every Apple user is stuck on 90's era Windows. This is not how it works.
A firewall partially "fixes" part of the spying/tracking, but doesn't solve any of the other issues I pointed, especially concerning forced installation of software that screws up with my machine.
Also, the fact I use a firewall doesn't excuse developers from being assholes and spying/tracking me behind my back. It's my computer, it's a developer's sacred right to have any kind of code that acts against my interests.
Please read the linked reply. It was a real issue, not an hypothetical. Installing software required by my bank REALLY screwed up my computer in the past, and I didn't really have a choice.
> To copy the argument used by Apple supporters, you can choose another bank.
Not really. I needed to be a customer of the specific bank to receive my salary. Luckily, this changed many year ago after government intervention, though. Now you're allowed to have an account in a bank other than the one chosen by your company. The problem is that every other bank still has the same requirement.
And my father still needs to be a customer of a specific bank to use government-backed credit for small companies that was best for him. There was nothing in the contract about Diebold controlling every single bit coming in or out of his computer.
> Apple has created an exclusionary economic zone and put 50% of Americans in it. This is unprecedented.
It's still not a sacred right of developers to fuck with my computer or threaten my ability to conduct business. My computer is my property, not yours or any other developers. Having asshole developers out of this zone is great for me.
I'm not saying what we have is perfect. I want more freedom, but only for myself and for other users. What I don't want is this freedom to be abused by third-parties, so that I and other users are the mercy of asshole developers, which seem to be the majority in 2020. Freedom is difficult when it comes to closed source software.
> A sandbox will protect you from everything you claim to be worried about.
Still doesn't excuse it, nor completely fixes it.
And I tried everything and couldn't find anything that works with Warsaw by Diebold, other than buying Apple stuff. If you have suggestions I'm all ears.
It's insane that you would compare selling a superior product on a largely free market, to a CIA-backed coup of a foreign independent nation. Can you please point to me to the people Apple murdered to capture their market? This is some incredible anti-Apple rhetoric.
Meanwhile, in our currently implemented "open" platform you have engineers running amok with the personal data of millions of Americans.
No, the fundamental error you are making is you, the developer, are incorrectly assuming, that I, the user, cares about whether Apple lets you make money or do whatever they want on my device.
Even the way the worded your response you are making a plea as a developer to a user "hey take your app own to the gallows and kill it.". I don't have an app. What I do understand is; given the last 20 years of computing is that developers broadly cannot be trusted to run software on my device and I don't have the time to inspect the source code of every app. What I have decided is that I can trust Apple to be the gatekeeper to my device and if you can't play by their rules you won't have access to their official distribution processes.
If I, the user, decide that Apple isn't in my best interest then I'll switch devices. But I have no incentive to adopt a more developer friendly workflow when it's been broadly anonymous developers that have been sucking up and spying on me every chance they get. If some innocent apps get caught in the cross fire, it's unfortunate.
I don't care what you think, honestly. (And don't misjudge my tone here - I mean this in the friendliest way.)
I care about the fact that the US government has let this gorilla grow into King Kong and start throwing us into walls and trampling on our industry.
If this trend continues, the giants will swallow us completely. Our industry has always been special, and the barriers have historically been low. Now that Apple enjoys a position at the top, they're putting up fences and walls for the rest of us.
Apple is shitting into all of our faces, and we're being told to just take it.
Because if you want to enter the mobile market you HAVE to? This “the customers will choose the best” thing has never been true, even in its source. The context is “in a fair competition between competing products” (which won’t be true again, because humans are not rational - otherwise marketing would not matter)
Also, it’s not like I have any chance ever to compete with Apple, even if I were to be the cleverest people on Earth.
It’s not a desire, it is a must. There are certain kinds of application that simply would be meaningless, if they could not target 50% of the population. Like what would a messenger clone do with only half the people? (And I am fairly sure, that if nothing else, financially most apps or app ideas are in this category)
We agree on your last point, an open platform should finally emerge (and it is pretty much happening with pinephone) - but it would be a fairy tale to believe that it can gain foothold in the recent future against these monster corps
There are plenty of messenger apps that don’t have 50% of the US population.
iMessage is one of them, as is Facebook messenger.
There are many other messengers with far smaller user bases. There is no reason at all that a messaging app needs to address 50% of the population immediately.
The best way to prevent the emergence of an open alternative would be to remove the incentive for people to work on it.
The best way to remove the incentive for people to work on an open alternative would be to reduce the restrictions on what people can build for iPhone while still leaving Apple in control of the OS.
Not op, but hardware and UX-wise they do a great job. Photo-taking is especially good which is pretty important on a mobile. Also, their phones will be supported for a remarkable number of years, while retaining their price on second hand markets.
It doesn’t excuse them from letting me use my phone as I want to.
The op should respond since they seem to feel imprisoned, but you do not.
It sounds like you just like the quality of their product.
Apple does let you use the phone as you want to.
They just didn’t design it to do the things you say you’d prefer. I assume that you wouldn’t have made the trade off if you didn’t think it was worth it.
Liking a product enough to buy while wanting it to be designed a little differently is what we do with almost all purchases.
That is pretty much the opposite of living in a communist dictatorship.
I've got a video streaming service. What the hell else am I going to do?
I don't want to deal with Apple and their draconian rules. They translate to "you're small peanuts not worth our time" or "you're not paying us enough".
Apple does not deserve to control all economic activity reaching 50% of Americans. Only the government gets to do that. Last I checked, Tim Cook is not in the Treasury department.
This is the company that cares more about dollars than the lives of Belarusian protestors. I do not want to deal with these thugs. It's insulting, degrading, and costs people their livelihoods.
Apple doesn’t control ‘all economic activity reaching 50% of Americans’.
You might change your view if you had correct facts. This is wrong on two counts. Firstly the amount of economic activity through the App Store is a tiny fraction of what you claim, and secondly Apple doesn’t control it because there are alternatives.
There are many avenues for delivering your streaming service.
You can deliver it via the desktop.
You can deliver it via the web.
You can sell cheap streaming boxes based on raspberry pi grade hardware.
You can create a storefront on Android.
You can deliver individual titles as apps through the App Store store.
> I’m suggesting that consumers should buy a product that that suits their needs.
It's cute you think this is why people buy things.
Also, you're completely missing the point here. Developers have no choice but to developer for Apple and that means that whatever Apple says, Apple gets. That's called bullying, at the very least, and I'm not alone in asserting that it extends into behavior that should at least be regulated.
Mind you, the only reason I think so is that their user base exceeds 1 billion users. There's a public interest in things when numbers are that big. If we were talking about some company with only a million users, the case would be much weaker.
Sure, but this has nothing to do with Nazi’s or concentration camps.
This just has to do with wanting to sell your apps to more people from the developer side, or wishing Google would use better materials to make their phones from the user side.
It has to do with needing, not wanting, access to a sufficiently large market to have even a remote chance of success.
Can you imagine anyone who wanted to make an app now, without publishing on either the Google Play Store or the App Store "in protest"? That's the option you're giving them. "Ask for more gruel or fail" and you're calling that a choice. Lets be honest here, indeed.
You know perfectly well what I meant and refused to touch the point.
As much as I dislike Apple, their ecosystem works for them and their users. Unfortunately the general public isn't aware of the restrictions imposed on them until it matters, like when their screen is broken and they can't pay $$$ for a first party repair.
We need regulation coining and enforcing accurate terminology for the relationship between vendors like Apple and Tesla, and their users. It's not ownership. If I can't run whatever software I want on hardware that I paid for, I don't own the hardware.
Can you imagine if your mattress didn't work with third party bed frames? Or pillows?
Of course their ecosystem works for their users, those of us it doesn't work for have left.
We are just encouraging the rest of you who actually enjoy computers to leave too, and warning app developers to avoid that platform if your app is actually interesting or if a lot of people's careers ride on it, since who knows what apple may decide is not acceptable in the future.
How do you pay with privacy if you get an Android phone? On an Android phone, you get to choose which SMS app you use, which means neither Apple nor anyone else sees who you are messaging in order to check if you're messaging an iMessage user. You get to install apps on your device without telling anybody. You get to develop apps for your own device without giving your banking details to anybody. You can find your location without sending your location to Apple or anybody else. None of those are possible on iOS. Freedom and privacy go hand in hsnd.
This is something that should definitely be discussed a lot more.
And in defining this new relationship we should also define the responsibilities of the parties. Like for example who is responsible for recycling. I believe such a relationship is fine as long as it is not confused with traditional ownership.
> Don't make an app that allows users to run unapproved software. I think that's a pretty clear rule.
Is it? Apple can one day decide that a web page with JavaScript loading in an app is “unapproved software.” And now your entire app/business is in jeopardy.
And what about apps like Reddit and Imgur that host tons of NSFW content, yet are allowed to be published in the App Store?
"Don't make an app that allows users to run unapproved software. I think that's a pretty clear rule."
This is a non sequitur.
"Don't do things that are not 'approved' even though 'approvals' are to a great extent, arbitrary"
Apple shifts their interpretation of rules all the time, more problematically, they literally change the rules themselves, and can do so at any time.
They will continue to push and try to eat into other business models to the extent they have the power to do so.
If Apple could interpret or change their rules so as to take a 30% cut of Uber's business - they would. They only reason they don't, is because they don't have enough power to do so. Yet.
This 'just follow the law' rhetoric reminds me of some other kind of populism ...
I’d love to see Apple support an Xcode on iOS devices - and have it provide the runtime things like iSH could rely upon. In one fell swoop they could control the code people can run while also making the systems that much more replacements for traditional devices.
> Don't make an app that allows users to run unapproved software. I think that's a pretty clear rule.
If you think curl or wget are evil unapproved software I don't see how presenting a rational argument as a counterpoint could possibly be of any benefit. Sometimes I forget that people with such opinions actually exist.
This is almost literally like the people I've seen freak out about seeing someone do complex things from the command line in a public place (coffee shop, etc) and jump to the wildly wrong conclusion that something was being "hacked".
I don’t think folks think that wget or curl are evil. It just seems pretty obvious that this kind of app would be forbidden by Apple. Which sucks, but I don’t think it’s surprising.
Were one so inclined, anyone comfortable with embedded programming and electronics could make an arbitrary calculator perform the critical decryption calculation.
It would be slow as hell, but it's proof of the underlying theme: attempting to ban general purpose computing is insane.
Just because token developers are succeeding does not mean that the app store serves any general purpose unless that general purpose is "make the proprietor of the app store rich".
The issue is whether the App Store restrictions are arbitrary and constantly shifting, and that has been consistent basically since Apple started allowing third party software on iOS.
iOS developers have made over a half a trillion dollars over the last decade on this unsustainable, constantly shifting foundation that they hate so much.
Makes you wonder why they bother ? Maybe it's because the very rules you say developers hate are the ones users find appealing.
The question is this: Do you want to build within a certain set of categories Apple unambiguously supports?
If you're building a to-do app supported by a monthly subscription, there's no shifting foundation there. If you're building a free-to-play game whose in-app purchases consist of "handful of gems," "bag of gems," and "trunk of gems," you have nothing to worry about from App Review.
If you're building something without obvious precedent, however, trying to break new ground in the spirit of tech entrepreneurship – the answer is no longer so clear-cut. And so the App Store has in many ways self-selected developers for "safe" categories over the past decade, and yes, many of these have found great success (even if that half-trillion dollars tends to follow a power law with most of it going to the top earners in each category).
What the App Store is definitively not, however, is conducive to innovation, experimentation, and risk-taking. There are outliers, of course, who have managed to do something novel within the constraints set down by Apple. But the biggest risk you take when building your business on the App Store is not that your product will fail in the market, but that Apple will prevent it from ever reaching the market.
No, your biggest risk when building your business on iOS will be selling nothing, which is the most common result. So many people try and the expected outcome is nothing.
People tend to like iOS better because the app ecosystem is better and it is that way because of restrictions. The restrictions aren't necessarily the exactly correct set to achieve the quality and profit apple seeks, but if they were all that terrible, the iOS experience would be terrible and it isn't.
It'll essentially keep staying just bad enough that it doesn't get regulated to hell or abandoned by users... and no better.
People are generally upset because the barrier for entry to create an app is low and the profit for winners can be very high, which means there are an enormous number of people trying and regulating that is hard.
> People tend to like iOS better because the app ecosystem is better and it is that way
I can’t speak for you but I know that I am prone (as most humans are I think) to project myself on others.
I use iOS because it’s the only OS that runs on Apple-designed mobile silicon, which is extremely good in terms of performance. Also (and this is not a joke) my partner hates green bubbles. You may be surprised how many people feel that way, which I personally think is kind of a shallow opinion, but it’s a real reason more than one person has stuck with iOS. Some people buy it as a status symbol because it is a fairly expensive phone, beautiful (imo) and apple advertises well. Some people can’t buy it because Apple has a great and widespread repair network. I know for a fact that a great many people share your opinion and buy iOS phones because of the App Store, that said I don’t think it’s safe to assume it’s the only or even the primary reason people do it.
Well you listed several things which are proxies for the quality of the iOS experience, a significant amount of which is a direct result of the more curated app store. It's popular and a status signalling object - but it wouldn't be if the core experience was bad. Many people just follow tastemakers and don't know at all why the thing they "like" is better or worse than anything else, that's fine, but they're still doing so ultimately because of quality.
The app store moderation isn't the only dimension of the quality of the ecosystem, but it has a significant effect.
I have a mild preference for android, but it was more or less just luck which landed me on an iPhone for my current phone. It literally came down to which one I could acquire quicker after I destroyed my old phone before an extended out of state trip. The Pixel I bought is still in its sealed box because the shipping was delayed while I literally picked up an iPhone from the Apple campus store at the last minute before my flight.
I do think the iOS app ecosystem is pretty terrible. I buy Apple because the overall security and privacy is better and of course the ecosystem ties. But I have mostly given up on shopping for apps. The app store is flooded with me too games with in-app purchases and knockoffs of legit apps. To make it worse, Apple puts advertisements before actual search results when you search for an app. Innovative new apps are rare or just get drowned in the app store.
Off the top of my head? Google Photos is actually usable, there are many options for game streaming and emulation, PWAs work, Termux (think iSH but significantly faster) works, transparently proxying phone calls through Google Voice or other services works, browser extensions work, on-device system-wide ad-blocking is available, and there are multiple options for driving infotainment (including Android Auto) without a head unit in the car. It is enough of a gap that I have never considered using an iOS device even though they're offered to me for free.
Some major pieces that are missing from both are the ability for user-installed apps to auto-update without using the system app stores and the ability for a user-installed app to process call audio.
No, only 0.15 trillion [1] spread out over roughly 1 mio games and 3.4 mio non-gaming apps [2]. So that's a mere $35k in average lifetime value. But as anyone used to lying with statistics knows, the average revenue is much higher than the median revenue. In Apple's case, the factor appears to be 56x [3].
So the typical App Store app makes $630 in total over its entire lifetime. That's surely not enough to finance its development.
Accordingly, I am convinced that pretty much all iOS developers lose money on their apps. A very few lucky winners get rich, and everyone else is treated as disposable.
You need to take into account that lots of apps rely on advertisement (especially these days), and another big chunk is made to interact with something else that makes the money (like Netflix or Amazon).
iOS developers have made over a half a trillion dollars over the last decade on this unsustainable, constantly shifting foundation that they hate so much.
I don't know why you think that this comment is relevant given that iSH is free.
You're focusing on the wrong part. The contention from iSH and many other posters in the thread is about AppStore rules being inconsistent which in turn makes it unsustainable as per the GP.
The comment is that it's clearly sustainable and stable enough to allow persons to make a significant profit from it even which shouldn't be possible without some stability and predictability to the platform.
I believe that you are missing the central point. The AppStore rules are unsustainable for people that volunteer their time and expertise for free like the developers of iSH.
Some developers have made half a trillion. Others have lost probably a lot more.
The problem with a closed ecosystem that capriciously removed apps isn't that you can't make money. It's effectively protectionism, with those allowed inside the walled garden having less competition and therefore an easier time taking profits.
I can't tell you how many conversations I've been involved in where there was discussion of, "yeah, but what are the chances this makes it through the AppStore?" and the answer is almost never 0% or 100%.
> Maybe it's because the very rules you say developers hate are the ones users find appealing.
Users may not know or care, but it is a stretch to say it is appealing to power users that they cannot run ish. It is not appealing to regular users that they can't buy books from within the Kindle app. Etc. Etc.
Power users who want to run a Linux environment on their phone are a minute fraction of the iOS user base. I don’t think Apple is interested in serving every possible user, and they’re probably quite content to let people who need this type of feature find it on a different platform.
I’m an iOS user and a kindle user. Having to go to another place to purchase kindle books doesn’t bother me. But it is mostly about how often I do it. If I was purchasing books every hour it would really bother me. But I only purchase books once a month or less. So it’s not a big deal for me.
In quite some countries, book pricing is fixed by the publisher and cannot vary between websites according to the law. If AAPL takes a 30% margin, the whole model cannot work and you are much better off not selling anything.
> Because in case you're not aware Amazon isn't some mom and pop store. It has enough clout to negotiate terms with publishers.
Not everywhere, as GP wrote. In France, the price of a book is fixed: it sells the same price whether you’re Amazon or a small bookstore (you’re allowed to offer a 5% reduction max).
That is disingenuous, at best. Apple takes a large percentage on purchases through the phone, so Amazon doesn't allow the purchase through it. It's not an arbitrary decision on their end.
My understanding is that Amazon also takes their chunk of flesh from book publishers/authors. Honest question then: how is that different? You can publish a book but if you aren’t on Amazon you drastically limit your exposure to potential readers.
Amazon doesn't block customers from buying books from elsewhere and reading them on Amazon devices. It's fiddlier than buying through the integrated Amazon store, but it's a fully supported way of using your Amazon device.
I'm not aware of them blocking sellers from listing books on Amazon and also at a lower price elsewhere (though it wouldn't surprise me if they did), and they certainly don't block sellers from telling their customers how much Amazon's cut is.
You do run into a bit of a problem though: Amazon wants their cut, Apple wants their cut, the credit card company wants their cut, the publisher wants their cut, and there are likely others in the chain as well. That's not to say that each party doesn't deserve payment for their services, but there does have to be some limitations on how much they can take.
And that limit should reflect how involved they are in the existence of the product. Is a credit card company intrinsically vital to the existence of a book? No. Then their cap should be reasonably low, like in Europe.
Is Apple intrinsically vital to the existence of an ebook?
People can complain about things and still prefer them. Just like you may dislike that your spouse cleans the dishes poorly, but you aren't going to switch to someone else for that reason.
Most software developers in HN are not in it only for the money.
Software is an essential part of our modern life: transport, communication, manufacture, finance, etc. depend on software.
At least in those areas, we need reliable software and we need device owners to have control over their devices. We need to have a good software infrastructure if we want to progress as a species.
The current software landscape is bad, and Apple is actively trying to make it worse.
If Apple made game consoles, it would be OK, because game consoles are not essential to our society, but smartphones have become essential to our personal lives.
That last point is a big problem. When we require people to have smart phones then there is no more privacy from government surveillance. Their authority becomes more absolute, and any fear of populist upheaval is gone.
If tomorrow we wake up unable to play video games, we would be kinda disappointed, but our life would keep going normally (unless you're a game developer).
If we wake up unable to access banking, communication or transport, our life would be more or less ruined, for everyone.
I think a lot would actually change if we had no videogames. I'm pretty sure suicides and crimes related to mental health would increase. But it's only my opinion - I'm not a researcher.
They don't do anything essential. You could replace them with jigsaw puzzles and we'd be fine and likely better off in many ways, because that's less addictive and less resource intensive, too. We just wouldn't have as much fun.
"Maybe it's because the very rules you say developers hate are the ones users find appealing."
This is fairly easily disprovable by the mere existence of Android - which has a healthy app market place, tons of great apps and is for all intents and purposes, just as secure.
Google Play does a fine job of promoting good apps, keeping bad ones out, and I can still go 'off network' and download my IT app or whatever that doesn't conform to Google Play rules.
There are no material negative side effects.
If Apple adjusted their policy to match that of Google, users would have more choice, and be better off.
Be careful: the Play Store has a bunch of problems too and is in some ways almost as bad as Apple's App Store. The real reason that Android is better than iOS is that you can sideload apps from third-party sources.
I think it’s more likely that Apple users are self selected to prefer the Apple App Store model, similar to the way Android users are self selected. The mere existence of those two markets doesn’t really tell us conclusively what users prefer. You would need to control for other factors, such as user income, demographics, etc etc.
It's borderline 'conclusive' because there is literally no material difference between 'security' on either system, ergo, it cannot be a material choice for 'selection'. Only the 'appearance' thereof.
Moreover, I really don't think Apple users in any conscious way are into this - I have never in my life heard a single user hint at this.
If you were to ask Apple users 'If you could have a bunch more apps right now, that you do not have because of Apple's closed model, and that having those apps would in no way affect the security or integrity of your device' - would they say yes?
Of course they would.
This is getting absurd - the 'restrictions' on Apple, while based on some degree of legitimacy, are also, unambiguously a vector for them to pursue leveraging the control they have on their platform to make money.
This isn't conspiratorial, my gosh, this is exactly the kind of position every business wants to be in, it's like the 'whole point'. They can milk their dominance and suck profits out of adjacent sectors and cover it with some other related policy? It's 'business gold'.
Eventually users will figure out, and they'll figure out faster if the tech literate tell them.
As an example of one of many things that are much worse on iOS, I share pictures of friends' and relatives' kids with them automatically via Google Photos. All but one of my relatives also use Android, and this works perfectly. One uses iOS, which doesn't allow background uploads, so I get pictures from them months after the event when they happen to have Google Photos open to reminisce, which is annoying for the rest of us, but a potential privacy invasion for them because we all know when they're looking at their old photos.
For people who use the phone features a lot, the inability of iOS devices to conveniently use Google Voice and similar proxies is a nonstarter.
For gamers, the inability of iOS to support Steam Link and Geforce Now is a nonstarter.
For people who value privacy, the inability to install apps or get your location without telling Apple is a nonstarter.
These are all due to Apple's policies. The hardware itself is nice, but because of all the restrictions, it isn't very useful.
> Software developers can’t build on a foundation that is constantly, capriciously shifting
I have few empathy for these developers. They voluntarily accepted (and thus, promoted) Apple's obviously callous store conditions. They essentially agreed to play lottery with their work. Whatever bad happens to them, they had it coming.
You are being downvoted, but the entire video game industry is the living proof that you can mistreat your developers and use a high churn rate to make sure you never run out of them.
Seems more like they built an application which violated the App Store rules from the beginning and now want an exception carved out for them “because Linux” or something. Emulating a whole system that itself follows none of the apple walled garden restrictions is a recipe for failure.
The argument is that enforcing App Store Review Guidelines inside a scripting engine is technically very difficult and usually not an issue provided the characteristics we mentioned exist regarding user intent. The other argument is that our scripting environment is substantially identical to all other environments inasmuch as review decisions made against us would apply to them, which leads to semi-absurd rejections.
Do you want to make money building software, or do you want to see how far you can push Apple’s patience by building software that breaks clearly defined AppStore rules?
Hi, Saagar from the iSH team here. We received a call from someone who runs App Review at Apple earlier this evening. They apologized for our review experience, telling us that they've accepted our appeal and that they will not be removing iSH from sale tomorrow. We'll work out the details with them in the coming days.
A huge thanks to all of you for your support of iSH!
I’m happy for iSH, and I have no doubt Apple reversed their stance because the community has been so vocal about this. I feel for all the small devs who has apps removed from the App Store for similar reasons and never had a chance to fight.
Everything is done with "security" as an excuse because it's hard to argue against[1], but I think people are slowly starting to see through that. Apple wants to control every aspect of your life, and if you let it, it will. I wonder whether those who work at Apple and are responsible for doing such things really understand the implications, and whether they agree with it...
Many people, although certainly not everyone, are perfectly ok with this. I, for one, don’t have the expectation that my iOS devices are general purpose computers. I have the expectation that the device works with zero configuration for a set of fixed purposes in a design language that I’m accustomed to. That’s it.
Exactly! When I’m on my phone I want to use the internet, take pictures, use banking apps, access email and Dropbox, and watch video. That’s mostly it.
I don’t expect or want to be productive, as security is more important.
Coming from a country where at some point the only way to have internet banking was to install an impossible-to-uninstall rootkit in my own machine that fucked up accessibility, messed up Steam and made it impossible for me from using competitors (because other banks needed incompatible rootkits), iOS being the way it is makes a lot of sense.
I once had to spend a whole weekend untangling the mess made by one of these rootkits in my father's computer. I remember it screwed with his ability to use third-party USB digital signing dongles, which he needed for his company to operate. The bank's rootkit basically prevented him from conducting business, and since he needed both bank and emitting digital receipts, the only solution was creating another partition.
I'm not even expecting security at this point, I just want to use the damn thing without some asshole bank developer ruining it forever (or until I reformat the machine).
The general-purpose computer you’re referring to requires an administrator that makes security decisions and provides safer environments for users who don’t have the expertise to do the administration part, or don’t want to spend time on it.
One could describe what Apple sells “system administration as a service” (possibly even “network administration as a service”. They control what software can run on any phone in the iOS ‘network’). I don’t think that’s “wants to control every aspect of your life”. Their privacy stance seems to be at odds with that.
I think this is closer to Hanlon's razor than it is to "Apple wants to control every aspect of your life".
Big selling point for Apple products is privacy, security, and consistency of experience. All of these things are made easier by this policy (including applying to iSH). The cost is less flexibility / freedom.
Not quite Hanlon, but just replace "stupidity" in the original formulation with "unwillingness to spend the massive engineering effort required to provide both security and flexibility".
Though in all honesty I think that even with stupendous engineering effort, it will always more safe to just disallow certain actions entirely. After all, although birth control is a great way to not have a baby, not having sex at all is even better.
People have been this since Apple first launched the iOS app store. It plays well on message boards. So far, it has done a terrible job of describing reality.
They are boiling the frog slowly. The T2, app notorization and kext depreciation are steps towards locking the device down. Combined with the iPhone-ification of their hardware I see the Mac becoming more like the iPad than the iPad becoming a general purpose computer.
I'd call it a "not great" job at describing reality–Macs today are certainly more locked-down than they were five or ten years ago, but I think it would be unfair to compare them to iOS right now.
There is nothing on my Mac that prevents me from downloading and running absolutely anything I want, or from writing my own software and running it.
By default, there are security guardrails in place that you have to turn off (one click!), but I 100% support measures like this. It means it's harder for nontechnical people get duped into running nefarious code, but creates no meaningful roadblock to people like HN readers who quite reasonably want to do whatever the hell they like with their computers.
Give it a few more years. They're working on it. They've already done Gatekeeper, SIP, removal of kexts, making the root partition read-only every boot even if you turn off SIP, etc.
What was that little storm a few months back where they turned on code signature checking on shell scripts? One could just imagine the final step is you have to have a developer license to run your own code.
This has driven me insane in 10.15.7. If my ISP has intermittent connectivity, macOS starts beach balling. To prevent this I have to shut off internet.
The catch?
Shutting down the network requires suffering through multiple beach balls. Every single mouse click or key press invokes a beach ball. Everything goes away the moment internet is connected.
Legacy stuff that they are currently eroding. They
invalidated (or threatened to) developer signatures on Desktop/Laptop that were supposed to be 100% about security over an iOS business dispute.
It's sad. I'm a Linux diehard, but during the pandemic I considered buying an iPad to SSH into my office workstation, browse the web, etc. as I got stuck in an awkward accommodation.
Hardware is great, but the keyboard lacks a dedicated ESC, and I was quite uncomfortable with the fact that terminal apps seem like second rate citizens / not well liked by Apple.
IMHO, there's a lot of untapped potential in the iPad as a programming device if Apple was more reasonable. The alternative Android tablet ecosystem, unlike phones, is total a mess. Samsung has a lot of nice offerings, but software is mediocre and they seem to be really unfocused.
I eventually ended up getting a Surface Go, which is quirky is some regards, but supports Linux really well and is a real computer, not a locked appliance.
Lenovo Chromebook Duet, it is an awesone little chromebook tablet that suport android apps and linux containers. 128gb storage and 4gb of ram for about 300 dlls. it was on sale for about 230 last week.
For iPad as a thin client - Blink is great and allows remapping caps lock to escape. That's actually something you can do globally with the magic keyboard.
Upset that ish is being removed - as somebody who has had it since TestFlight came out. I was surprised they got approved for App Store, but once it was on there... seems crazy to have them removed.
Android keyboards also lack Esc. The key in that place implements the go to home functionality (Android's middle button.)
My use case is the now deprecated / defunct Linux container in Samsung's Dex.
I didn't find a way to configure the keyboard and X11 to map it to an Esc for Linux. I've been using Control [, which is a little pain.
A chromebook can be an excellent SSH terminal. Cheap, light, and a decent keyboard. You can install a Linux container, and inside that, run ssh-agent, so you load up your keys just once.
The one major annoyance is the lack of a caps-lock key, which is replaced by the "do-anything" Google search button. So you have to press that and right-alt to turn on and off caps-lock.
Since they are standard across all chromebooks, I've come to appreciate the dedicated navigation keys, volume, brightness and screen lock. I use those a lot more than I have on a regular laptop that mixes those with the Fn keys.
> I eventually ended up getting a Surface Go, which is quirky is some regards, but supports Linux really well and is a real computer, not a locked appliance.
Doesn’t have working cameras though, right? I was looking into the Surface Go a bit as a Linux tablet recently, but it sounded like I wouldn’t have a working webcam (which I use fairly often these days for videoconferencing) and I’d need to install a kernel fork since some of the hardware isn’t supported yet in mainline Linux.
I’d be glad to be wrong about these, since a lightweight Linux tablet (especially with LTE support!) would be amazing. My criteria for hardware that supports Linux really well these days though is more “works out of the box” and less “requires tinkering.”
iPad keyboard support let’s you remap Caps Lock, CTRL, Cmd, Opt, and Globe key. I’ve remapped Caps Lock to Escape on both iPad Pro Magic Keyboard (and 2018 MacBook Pro 15). Works great in iSH, Shelly, and several other remoting apps.
I concur, the iPad is not yet a good place for development, except for python and JS perhaps if it's reasonably self contained.
I tried with the Pro, the best setup was to remote into a raspberry pi. Editors are becoming better but it's still clunky partly because of the git integration that must be done with another app and the general lack of multi-windowing.
A chromebook with the linux install seems a best choice for now (didn't try but looked viable enough)
Android hardware running GNU/Linux distros (such as Sailfish OS) on top of Android blobs via libhybris could be a stopgap solution as well. But indeed, phones running normal Linux distros need to be the norm in this case.
I have Librem pre-ordered but I expect it will be barely usable as an Android replacement (yet). Though it had to start somewhere and I am glad Purism started that. There are many many smaller and bigger things which went into Android or iOS which will need to be re-done from scratch and things like Google Pay probably won't ever be on such a device. Camera will probably be quite bad, etc. On the other hand, there is Andbox which should partly fill in the app gabs in the meantime.
We are losing the war because those who are supposed to fight for general computing are ceding ground to the duopoly due to a myriad of reasons(convenience, "security", ease of use, etc)
Same here. I run Termux on my Pixel, but I also have an iPad and was really excited to when I installed iSH. I hoped their initial approval of iSH meant that Apple was becoming more liberal.
Hell, I was even wondering if this would make it conceivable for me to switch back to an iPhone at some point if I became unhappy with Android.
I just categorize iOS devices as consoles, analogous to things like Nintendo game systems, and not as true general purpose computers.
I also consider it foolish to attempt to innovate on this platform beyond the narrow confines of what mobile devices typically do, or to put too much engineering work into iOS specific stuff. Apple can and will simply revoke your app for fickle reasons. iOS is a pretty dumb term for cloud apps and the web, and that’s it.
That being said I do have an iPhone... because for my phone that’s all I want and it works well and has better privacy than most Android devices. I basically want web, email, texting, calls, and maps, and maybe occasional apps like Uber or whatever. I don’t use it as a “real computer.” I have a real computer for that.
Same. With Termux I was able to set up a rudimentary Node.js dev environment on my device - useful for showing people stuff I was working on which wasn't published.
Sure, but for all intents and purposes a Linux box is also ‘crippled’ but the ridiculous learning curve, lack of security, and capriciousness of the major companies that support the distros.
Think that's just over the horizon, which should be a positive but really it just completes the circle that iOS is all Apple needs and MacOS is the legacy system that will eventually be deprecated.
The big difference is that you generally see more people who would find it useful to run arbitrary software on their phone than on their TV or smart fridge, especially considering that recent phones have single core performance approaching (or exceeding older) laptops.
There are plenty of people in this world for whom their smartphone is their primary or only computer (by necessity or choice), and it sucks that they cannot actually take full control of their computer.
(For what it's worth, I also think that if you are in the minority who want to run custom software on your TV, the manufacturer should absolutely not be able to prevent you from doing so, because it's your TV - void your warranty while you are using unsupported software? Maybe. Prevent install outright? Hell no.)
The reviewer that reinstalled the package manager with wget is my favorite part of this whole debacle.
The reviewer could in theory reimplement an os in python or javascript in one of the already approved scripting applications. Then implement apt-get or another package manager and install all sorts of dangerous codes!! /s
Many apps, especially JavaScript based ones download unapproved JavaScript without a user's consent or knowledge as updates to the app outside of the review process but those are still allowed.
Yet another example of apple's ongoing control freakery. I wonder how many incidents will be required before those who rush to defend them every time get it?
Apple tolerate app store developers as a necessary evil. If they could develop all of their own apps they would.
As with suppliers, as with stores, as with everything they would gladly prefer to do it all themselves and give zero access or share the slightest collaboration with anybody.
They are utterly ruthless in this regard and will continue to be for as long as they exist. This includes doing bad and nasty things as well as those the apologists can more readily rationalise.
I am a little surprised anybody takes risks in this arena. Of course for $$$ apps that trivially fulfil apple's arbitrary rules (for now) the potential payout justifies it but for free/open source apps why risk the pain?
For a company that happily generates colossal margins by using the effectively slave labour of a totalitarian state which puts people in concentration camps and disappears political opponents them being unethical/inconsistent in the app store seems very unsurprising. Even in western countries they happily bankrupt suppliers after poaching all their staff. Yet there appears to be shock when they do things considerably less evil... Strange to me.
> Soon after we released iSH without apk, we found users who had figured out a way to get apk back using wget and were posting about this throughout the internet. We suspect this was the reason why our rejection notice mentioned wget specifically
As the writer of one of the links in that sentence, I almost feel bad for making the post I did. Almost. If I hadn't someone else would have, clearly. I'm not some super hacker that discovered a hidden backdoor here.
It's frustrating, to say the least, that Apple won't let me do what I want with hardware I own. Yep, I know it's a long standing issue, and I'm not the first one to have this gripe, but this sort of nonsense is why I'm moving away from the Apple ecosystem. Once you piss off your power users, I wonder if the ecosystem will survive for long.
Then again, maybe I'm just having a "get off my lawn" moment, and Apple is on the right path. I'm not clairvoyant, I just want to have a nice Mosh client that can run a Python script to find an IP and open a firewall hole. But nope, that's evil scripting, I guess.
> Then again, maybe I'm just having a "get off my lawn" moment, and Apple is on the right path.
No, you are not wrong, and they are not on the right path, except maybe for themselves.
They have no right at all to tell people what they can and cannot do on devices that we paid for, and it's damned time that antitrust regulations somewhere forced them to allow sideloading and alternative app stores.
This is one thing that I hate the most about IOS. I like the polished look and the usability. To be completely honest, I don't need to have a shell running on my phone. I'm not going to write a shell script to automate anything on the tiny screen of my iPhone 8. iSh is an emulator anyway! But, like many other curious users, I don't want to lose the ability to do it. Especially when the hardware is a lot more capable that what the OS supports. I understand that Apple does it for "security" purposes!! They should at least enable this on iPad OS. May be warn the users about the "perils" of "foreign code'! I've been using iSH since the TestFlight days. I played around and downloaded packages. Even downloaded Perl! Now that's gone. I can sideload it using Xcode, but not everyone has a Mac to do it.
The original complaint was that you can't run your own unapproved code on your iDevice. I explained why this was false, and then the goalposts were moved to to some other concern.
This is not a realistic scenario, but even if it was there's a trivial workaround: sign up for a new account.
And at the end of the day, what made you buy that iDevice? Raw hardware? You can buy any old ARM tablet if that's what you want. You probably bought that iDevice because you want the secure device, with a full stack and ecosystem, which includes ongoing work from Apple to provide OS patches for security holes and OS bugs. I don't get the pearl-clutching over the limitations for a fundamentally secure computing appliance by design (which is a major selling point of the device in the first place).
If a comet hits CA tomorrow and the company collapses, do you think I would still be able to "control" my device? What about patching it up or installing a new system?
People who buy iOS devices don't control them. Full stop.
Apple has multiple regional data centers, if they’re all wiped out it probably means the collapse of civilization anyway. So another implausible scenario.
Just saying “you don’t control your device” doesn’t make it true, and regardless: the limitations have been a known quantity for a long time, and most people are fine with them. Apple’s secure, locked-down device experience is so popular that we’re complaining about their monopoly.
That's not what I said. It's fine for devices to only run signed code. It only becomes bad when the owner isn't in control of whose code signatures are trusted.
If you have to rebuild and reinstall your app every 7 days, it doesn't meet a reasonable definition of "runs any code you like". You are being technically correct, but disingenuously so.
>The nature of iSH meant that this problem was fundamental, as users can always add back functionality that we remove.
That's the point, isn't it? When I had an iphone, I always understood that there are no local terminal apps because apple banned them. They shifted the rules slightly since then to make it easier to make apps for teaching programming, but the goal was never to make generic dev environments. When I heard about this app, I assumed there had been a fairly fundamental change in the sorts of apps apple allowed. It seems like no such change occurred - apple just didn't notice what the app was doing until after it was released.
Good on the iSH people for giving it a shot. I doubt they'll break through the apple wall, but there's always a chance.
it isn't really a local shell. As they describe it, it's an x86 interpreter, and therefore all of the code you run is sandboxed and isolated from the OS the same way as a Python interpreter would be. Python would let you make a network request, pull code down, and exec() it, so this doesn't really seem that different.
>Educational apps designed to teach, develop, or allow students to test executable code may, in limited circumstances, download code provided that such code is not used for other purposes.
"in limited circumstances", "provided that such code is not used for other purposes". This is worded generically enough that they can pretty much ban anything that downloads code with it. They also have this:
>Such apps must make the source code provided by the Application completely viewable and editable by the user.
Arguably, allowing a user to download binary code instead of source code is expressly banned.
While it would be nice if apple took the stick out of their ass for once, I can't say I'm surprised by this development.
Likely option 1. In my experience, App Review will not entertain any sort of "preliminary approval" but you could theoretically submit a less polished version of the app to test the waters.
Don’t build software for Apple devices. It’s a pretty straightforward solution.
Apple has shown time and again that they’ll crush your project/business in an instant without recourse or a second thought.
Nothing on the App Store, regardless of whether it complies with Apple’s policies currently or not, has any guarantee it won’t be disappeared tomorrow for non-compliance when the wind blows in a different direction (like any number of parental control apps prior to Screen Time).
This year I build qoob, an app to interact with an IOT electric scooter parking. In August I had the MVP ready, we build 2 prototypes and could save and charge scooters of all voltages in office halls.
The project is not my main job, so time is precious.
I was asked to create a new functionality: Allow companies to buy and borrow e-scooters between company employees.
But what happened is that I had to implement Apple Login, since FB and Google did work already.
Who should I take care off? Apple or the customer/users?
Is it optimal to prioritize the Apple Login, that nobody requested?
I don't care about monopoly persse, I'm concerned because it doesn't let me be user-centric, consumer-centric.
(and I can't leave apple, because I can't leave my users)
Apple wins before I can breath.
If I don't say Android/IOs app, I'm off the market for a IOT B2B product. Would be a beautiful Harakiri but totally useless
I read the comment as "I have limited time and must be wise about what I spend it on. Apple is forcing me to spend time on something I don't want to as other things are more important".
Apple is controlling his product roadmap.
Whether people use it or not is not the point. It's the it's the opportunity cost of having built something else that would have been MORE impactful to customers.
Took me about 2 months, since I do it on weekends, and had to move the deployment of the back-end microservices to a ci/cd docker instance since .so files of openssl can't be compiled in mac and used in linux ( i use Aws lambdas). And of course, I have a MAC because HOW else I would BUILd and Archive my ApPLE XCOdE IOS app haahah? In my prev company we had a Mac machine plugged with SSh to Jenkins!!! GOd! A company that has 700milion visitors A MONtH is forced to do this!
You see, the problem is they force my choices All the time, and by forcing it I have to make bad decisions.
I don’t know, it’s not like these compete with a true *nix userland or Xcode really (since Apple can get 100x or more performance than the emulator that iSH is forced to use due to the sandbox restrictions). It seems like they are more concerned that Microsoft can say “No Game Pass? But I can download Tux Racer on iSH!!1!” which doesn’t look awesome to a judge.
I’d love to be wrong. Every time I think about buying an iPad keyboard I get cranky that I can’t run brew and CPython (or shoot, Swift outside of the subset in Playgrounds) and everything else I can on a real Mac.
It's long overdue. Mac OS is next inline. Apple is innovator but in completely different space. In locking in users by using mix of influencers, expert talk and compelling hardware design. It pains me deeply and the only reasonable explanation that I find for my self for falling in this trap is that this was deeply hidden under Jobs management. Now it s clear as day.
Worst part: their target demographics is clueless and ready to give trust. Mobile computing will be under strict control and restricted until we have a linux based revolution in this space.
On other hand I find it very healthy for my self using mobile devices only in cases when I cannot use a real computer.:)
Apple's insistence is probably because they don't want to let other developers [even Google] near JIT, which is the only way to make a super performant browser (although a sandboxed browser's speed would probably be acceptable on modern hardware).
There are at least two reasons that Apple tries to prevent tools like iSH. In order of what I suspect is their motivation:
1. Users can be foolish or even tricked into installing apps and entering commands. If iSH provided a possible attack vector, these kinds of users would get bitten (and they would complain about weak Apple security). As Apple really does seem to be making a strong effort on security (and privacy, it appears?), losing a few useful apps and a few users is worth the trade.
2. This is a bit more of a stretch, but for various reasons Apple wants to control the macos/ios development process. Whether it's to force developers to own Mac computers (when xcode could probably run quite well on iPad Pro...), or to perhaps guarantee a more consistent outcome (which ultimately should affect the users in a positive way, or at least a less negative way), Apple wants to control the process.
I will say it again. The one thing Apple will try to defend is the concept of an app/container. I wrote a similar comment supporting their actions with video game streaming platforms the other day[1]. Any app that creates some kind of a wedge into another kind of app/container ecosystem is not going to fly. I do believe this will get solved by having a store within a store model. It just means all the packages/apps that are run from within the other platform will need to have some kind of listing/metadata shared and controllable in some fashion by Apple. The interesting thing will be the relationship with devs. Does Apple need to have a direct one or not?
I don't think other Chinese companies would get away with it, but WeChat yes. It isn't really a China thing. It's a platform power balance thing. Do you think Apple wants to give WeChat that wedge/leak? It is an obvious special circumstance given the market circumstances. As I said before, I think store within a store is coming it's just not ready yet. You can be sure whatever Apple comes up with will fit the needs of WeChat and they will be coerced into using it.
is this a literal statement where some human from Apple called on the telephone to speak to someone about this situation, or is this a phrase that actually means they received an email notification about the situation? I ask because it seems well outside the norm of no-human contact regarding support from FAANG companies.
Sounds like the developer got caught in the act and Apple was being quite forgiving in this case. The Phil Schiller name drop sounds like total bullshit, though.
I've even had Apple calling me back for consumer stuff.
When I had a battery issue I called them and they called back with instructions on where to send it to it fixed.
Their whole phone support system is kind of weirdly different, at least in the countries I used it (South America and Europe). It doesn't have call-centre noise, the accent matches the region I'm calling from, and the person on the other side seems to have WAY more freedom to go off-script and even joke with us. It's almost like calling a friend.
Yeah, they actually call you. It's a bit annoying, actually, since they call you at a random time and also they basically read off a script, so they might as well email you.
The solution is to have a sound recording device nearby and record the call as soon as you hear it's from Apple. Or record the calls on your phone if it allows it.
It should be a starter kit of any developer for Apple platforms, just in case, you know.
(Recording calls from numbers you don't recognize as a habit is not that stupid. Who knows, one day it's a robocall, another day Apple, still another day some death threats you'd want to hand over to police.)
It is illegal to record phone calls in California without obtaining consent from all parties. If you ask Apple for consent, they will hang up.
If you record the conversation without consent and shame them on the Internet, you can be sure Apple will sue. It is one the most litigious companies in our industry.
This is it. Go on record or shut up. Send an email or shut up. Don't tell me you tried to inform me of anything otherwise.
They didn't want to go on record for such an innocuous thing — why? Because they know a paper trail could hang them to dry in a court? Okay, now we've got an INTENT here.
What if I don't record them, technically, but put them on a speakerphone instead and let two to three reliable witnesses listen to the entirety of it?
Ironically, as far as I know, at least in some countries they record all their support calls ("for quality improvement") and you either have to agree to it or no support for you.
Cant imagine how Apple would let this through in the first place but makes sense they would pull it.
I grabbed a copy after reading this and very nice work by the developers but easy to see how an app that lets me install other apps on ios would be banned.
To me it appears they admit that iSH allows scripting (ummm, obviously), and that scripting is against Apple’s policy (as we all know). From one of their articles: “Soon after we released iSH without apk, we found users who had figured out a way to get apk back using wget and were posting about this throughout the internet”.
It looks to me that Apple’s main reason for not allowing scripting is to prevent an app from deploying other apps within itself (preventing any competition with the app store), with a secondary reason being security for users (harder to argue against).
I can’t see Apple ever allowing a shell app into the store, as that would turn your iDevice into a general purpose computer.
My argument is that Apple already allows scripting (as they have already approved dozens of such apps, including their own) and my suggestion is a clarification of the guidelines to make this explicit rather than subject to arbitrary review.
My guess is that Apple disallows scripting because it is a clear boundary they can make which prevents an alternative way of loading programs(apps). They then whitelist in some kinds of apps that allow scripting, but that won’t compete with the App Store.
The WebView exception [edit: that used to exist] is from an older version of the agreement, but it helps indicate what they mean: “3.3.2 An Application may not download or install executable code. Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if all scripts, code and interpreters are packaged in the Application and not downloaded. The only exception to the foregoing is scripts and code downloaded and run by Apple’s built-in WebKit framework, provided that such scripts and code do not change the primary purpose of the Application by providing features or functionality that are inconsistent with the intended and advertised purpose of the Application as submitted to the App Store.”
If scripting were allowed, how would you or Apple ensure iSH doesn’t break any of the other 2.5.x clauses.
I understand on one hand Apple wants to prevent Epic from installing their own competing app store on iOS, and they also probably don't want to be sued by Nintendo for hosting emulators (even if emulators are probably legal.) It's pretty obvious that a) it's Apple's walled garden so they can mostly do what they want, b) the vast majority of iOS apps are games and c) other game platforms are similarly restrictive.
On the other hand, Apple probably doesn't want to kill Scriptable or Pythonista (and I don't want them to either.) One of the nicest features of iOS (and macOS) is that you can use scripting apps and languages to construct workflows that use multiple apps, access the internet, etc.. Scriptable and Pythonista are also useful as personal programming and learning platforms.
@everyone We got a call this evening from someone who runs App Review. They apologized for the experience we had, then told us they've accepted our appeal and won't be removing iSH from the store tomorrow. We'll stay in contact with them to work out details. Thanks everyone for your support!
I've been following iSH for a while and was very happy when it finally came out of beta. iOS needs a good shell and iSH seemed perfect. I actually thought this will fit into apple's strategy of marketing ipad as a replacement for Laptop
iSH is awesome. I've been using the beta for about a year (or more) and have provided some feedback to Theodore a few times. This eventuality was almost certain because of the App Store restrictions that have been in place since before the iSH project was launched. In this way, Apple sucks. They have complete control over what an app can and cannot do. There is no alternative (besides jailbreaking) to the Apple App Store for iOS apps. This is part of the deal that you should know about when you buy an iOS product.
> Advanced users are welcome to build iSH themselves—it’s free and open source and always will be!
I mean, the app store fiasco sucks, but at the same time if you're advanced enough to want a command line on an iDevice you're probably advanced enough to do 'git clone', hit the build button in XCode, and do a local install. It's grade school level of difficulty.
Ideally they'd offer a release that you can build and install locally that's full featured and is wholly unfettered by concerns about app store policies.
Whether you are advanced or not to do that doesn't matter.
I am advanced enough to sideload applications via XCode. I have done so. I stopped doing it, because reinstalling every 7 days is an annoyance that no app was worth. I switched to Android instead.
As another comment notes, this also does not cover people who have an iOS device but no Mac. Which is definitely an overwhelming majority of iOS owners in general (just looking at iOS vs Mac hardware sales), though I don't know about power users. I could see people who consider themselves iOS power users to also likely have a Mac, but at the same time I could also see them as wanting to use the Mac as little as possible.
I’m actually not sure about that, as far as I can tell there’s no way for me to build the app without having access to another Apple machine running the full MacOS. I just have an iPad and a Linux desktop, which generally suits me fine.
So, the App Store fiasco sucks, and doubly so for those who are not already entirely inside Apple’s walled garden.
Last I checked it was possible to run Mac OS in a VM on linux and install via USB tether. This isn't quite the grade school level of difficulty, but if you're using linux as your daily driver you're already accustomed to doing things the hardest way.
Is Apple really expecting developers to port their tools to the arm macs with their iOS policies (that I’m sure they are salivating to establish for macOS).
Good luck to them and their iOS developer minions.
if in the end, tactics like this drive technically minded people away from their platforms, it will in the end, hurt them (less innovative and polished apps)...
its sad... i remember the days when os x was hitting home run after home run, and polished third-party (many indie) innovative apps were flourishing... maybe im just being nostalgic idk
iSH runs Alpine Linux which might be easier to get precompiled packages for given the popularity of it in the Docker ecosystem - using the actual system terminal requires a lot more setup and precompiled binaries might be hard to find for arm64 (or you might end up compiling a bunch of stuff you need, if it's even compatible). But the precompiled IPA file is usable outside of jailbreaks since there are programs[0,1] which sign and install an IPA for non-jailbroken devices.
Aside from possibly having the program you want precompiled, it's a pretty good terminal–we know of users who SSH into localhost to use it as their terminal app of choice.
I’ve been all in on Apple for about 15 years, but have been slowly moving away as it gets harder to use their products for development and power usage.
Got a windows laptop recently, and the developer experience is much better than Mac OS which surprised me. Thinking about getting a surface pro to replace my iPad for traveling.
Edit: the only thing that keeps me on the iPhone right now is that their hardware (chips in particular) are so much better.
Make sure to grab one of the more mature Surface lines. My original Surface Pro had bad thermals; melted the adhesive for the display off. Friend had a Surface Book 1 snap in his bag, and another friend had a Surface Pro X die on him ~2 weeks after buying it.
Interestingly enough, all these issues only happened on the first version of each product line.
There is no point fighting Apple. Companies spend resources on Apple moving goal posts and focus on artificial problems. Once companies stop supporting Apple products, users will switch to better platforms or Apple will change their ways. I made sure everyone I know is informed about Apple shady practices and knows to avoid their products.
My short term plan is to get an Android device, root it and install something else.
Long term plan is to keep an eye on Librem and get one when it actually ships possibly after an iteration or two. Or not, I might get one sooner if I think I have some time to try to build something for it.
I really hope these eventually succeed but that's not a given. The existing app stores moat is very strong.
Average people would never think to use these independent Linux phones the way they are today, and it's not a given that the situation will noticeably improve in 5-10-15 years.
I want good options available to everyone, not just a subset of the typical desktop-Linux audience.
I'd still like a good explanation why I can't do what I want with my phone.
You don't want do to that? Good, don't. Make it so that I can, if I have to tick a box somewhere hidden in Apple's labyrinthine and undiscoverable Settings app.
Of course, we already know the answer why I can't do what I want with my phone, because it isn't my phone, is it, Apple continues to think of it as theirs and they simply grudgingly rent it to you for awhile all the while treating you the user as the enemy.
I was going to make a reddit-like crack about "please sir can I have some more gruel" but dang asked me to keep it clean so I'll respond a bit more high brow by mentioning that I think you don't realize how that's not actually a solution.
I do realize it doesn’t give you what you want - which is an iPhone customized to your desires and Apple mandated to provide customer service and support for those customizations.
But it does resolve the question of what you have a right to do with your phone, which is in fact anything you like.
The thread is about whether an iPhone is your phone or Apple's. If Apple has made the device they way they wanted and the way the user should want (secure), it is Apple's device. If they failed and made an insecure device, it is yours.
Whether people can buy other phones is irrelevant to the question of whose phone an iPhone is. I fully agree that people should buy other phones.
#unpopularopinion: If someone wants an Android experience they should buy an Android phone where iSH functionality is basically built it. iSH is cool, but they were skirting the rules and everyone knows it. This isn’t shocking, and there were bound to be hiccups on the fringes of the rules like this.
If you want a phone for just getting the normal stuff done in a curated world, then pick iOS as that’s what they are trying to do. If you want a phone/device that is wide open to play with, extend, and hack on in a basically open manner, then pick Android as that’s what they are trying to do.
What seems like a waste of time is to pick one side and then complain about it not being enough like the other side. Pick your flavor, the world offers both. And then quit whining if the other side is more successful by some metric... Make your chosen side better or switch.
I don't understand how this was permitted in the first place. Everything about this is against the app store guidelines. Unfortunately I don't see how you can have this be compliant at all.
> Consistent enforcement of Apple’s incorrect interpretation would require the removal of all scripting apps, including many of the most popular applications in the App Store and some of Apple’s own applications.
The problem with "consistent enforcement" is
1) the guidelines are purposefully vague
2) there are reports of unwritten internal rules that are different from the public rules
3) I suspect that the amount of revenue that a company brings through their app also affects how rules are applied
But, it's their platform and they can do whatever the hell the way with no (legal) consequences at all.
The guidelines are quite specific. What has happened is that over time new applications and use cases have arisen for which the guidelines were never designed for e.g. remote app streaming.
Also Adobe, Google and Microsoft contribute significantly to Apple's bottom line and they have all had apps blocked.
vague: of uncertain, indefinite, or unclear character or meaning.
The fact that these stories about multiple parties interpreting the same exact guideline different, and in some cases even Apple interpreting it differently I think justifies the usage of "vague".
This is not really an example of that effect. This is just the nature of news. The app won’t somehow become any more used after it’s removed because it’ll be, well, removed.
> The app won’t somehow become any more used after it’s removed because it’ll be, well, removed.
On the contrary: it can be distributed through TestFlight, and potentially even available in AltStore. If added to AltStore, it would make that platform much more well known. In addition, if users install it from the App Store right now, it's signed and won't disappear or expire after any period of time. AltStore, TestFlight builds, etc., all require routine maintenance to stop from expiring. The iOS App Store release, however, will continue to function indefinitely, even if Apple pulls it from sale.
Not for long. There was a post, a couple months ago, by a developer that was screaming about having his developer account permanently banned, because he was using TestFlight as his distribution system.
Call me crazy, but I'll bet this has something to do with youtube-dl and the RIAA DMCA takedown. Apple probably got wind that you could install youtube-dl on iSH and "infringe" on copyright.
Apple won't allow you to run youtube-dl on your iOS device. Section 2.5.2 is just the excuse. If 2.5.2 didn't cover it, they'd make up another rule to do so.
Apple isn't going to let people sidestep copyright on iOS. It doesn't matter whether youtube-dl or curl or wget have legitimate uses. If they can be used to sidestep copyright, Apple will ban them.
Google lets banks remotely disable phones [0]: 114 points in 11 hours
Google lets apps prevent users from taking screenshots [1]: 315 points in 14 hours
Devs on HN shrug it off when an app screws over users, but they take to pitchforks when an app is removed.
There's also a heavy bias in favor of Google and against Apple on HN, but Apple does nothing nearly as hostile to users, and so millions of people will continue to happily give their money to Apple.
Only user-hostile developers fail to understand this and clamor for Apple's restrictions to be weakened so they can prey more freely upon users.
The practice of rigging app store removals as a means of increasing launch-hype is becoming an increasingly utilized marketing technique for apps. The "Hey" e-mail app successfully used this tactic recently. This marketing technique is a form of social engineering and fraud that spurs artificial discourse regarding well-known legal hurdles affecting apps. App developers then re-publish a compliant app that capitalizes on the very marketplace that the app developer and their pool of new users claim some deep-seated issue with. The old switcheroo!
What does a compliant version of iSH look like? I'm not sure this marketing technique applies here as complying would defeat the entire purpose of the application, so it seems like they're just going to let come what may with regards to removal.
“Hey” very clearly gamed an Apple TOS violation to increase the visibility of their project as a marketing stunt during its launch. This practice is becoming increasingly common as companies try to position themselves as being relatable to average users. It’s free publicity, integrates into a hotly debated topic poll, and garners a lot of commentary which can be easily driven by shills.
Software developers can’t build on a foundation that is constantly, capriciously shifting. This on top of the App Store's already-onerous restrictions and the fact that it’s the only practical way to get your software on one of the world's largest computing platforms has already engendered a deep antipathy [1] among Apple developers, and there are no signs it’s getting better. Something has to give.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580762