Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps

Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by epaga on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @10:55AM (#19036080)

Yes, this is the optimal measured response from Apple. They're treating Facebook the way they'd treat any other company that did this.

It's also a step up from the warning they gave with the whole Onovo thing. Strike two...

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by hn_throwaway_99 on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @10:59AM (#19036126)

To be clear, this app that was just removed WAS just a reskinned Onavo app - same code and "ONV" class prefixes, etc.: https://twitter.com/chronic/status/1090394419902197761

Facebook got caught, and then they tried to use their enterprise cert to get around App Store review because they knew it would get rejected.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by dabockster on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @04:26PM (#19039686)

I give it a week until Facebook starts using some sort of exploit to get Onavo onto iPhones. Probably guessing it will be a Safari exploit based on past history. That's when the real fireworks will begin.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by acct1771 on Friday February 01, 2019 @03:12AM (#19052488)

Please elaborate on this.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by jug on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @04:27PM (#19039696)

Business Insider has a leaked memo and internal discussions and even many Facebook employees agree this was stupid and shooting themselves in their foot. I quote “When will we learn?”

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by abricot on Thursday January 31, 2019 @04:27AM (#19043572)

Link: https://www.businessinsider.in/leaked-memo-facebook-scrambli...

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by edraferi on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @02:17PM (#19038259)

Pathetic.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by ianamartin on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @11:38AM (#19036560)

It's really not how Apple would treat any other company. Any other company would get banned from the app store permanently.

I do agree that this is measured. The question is how long, if ever, before Apple grants them a new cert. If Apple lets them back into the Enterprise Developer Program, this is a few days of inconvenience. If they keep them out, this effectively kills their apps on the iOS app store because FB can't effectively work on the apps internally.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by Illniyar on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:38PM (#19037851)

I imagine this is how apple would treat any company with a widely used app. Whether it was Snapchat, dropbox or Candy Crush Saga. I doubt they'll consider such a misstep reason enough to inconvenience or even harm millions of their users.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by Illniyar on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:36PM (#19037827)

It does not preclude test flight or just installing it through a developer machine. The vast majority of app developers don't use an enterprise account to test beta releases.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by erobbins on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @03:26PM (#19039065)

Facebook's development process for iOS (and android) is dependent on having most/all employees dogfood beta releases and report bugs that can be ignored. This breaks that pretty badly, and now users in the wild will have to report bugs before they can be ignored.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by nradov on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @06:16PM (#19040667)

Alternatively, Facebook engineering could just, you know, test their app. Instead of moving fast and breaking things.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by solarkraft on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @11:40AM (#19036594)

I do hope they'll let them suffer for a few days.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by magduf on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @12:52PM (#19037386)

I hope they'll drag it on indefinitely, and maybe the two will have a giant war of sorts. This is one of those cases where I don't like either side, so I'm happy to see them having a destructive fight.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by jug on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @04:29PM (#19039718)

I hope they get an automated reply where they can apply for a new certificate and await approval. Then being put in some queue for a month.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by rock_hard on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @11:44AM (#19036640)

Wonder what’s gonna happen to Google and others who distribute their research apps the same way?

https://support.google.com/audiencemeasurement/answer/757381...

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by TheKarateKid on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:52PM (#19038009)

Google and others have not been flagrantly caught breaking the rules in the past and warned directly by Apple, like Facebook has.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by keepper on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @05:01PM (#19040040)

https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/30/googles-also-peddling-a-da...

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by kefabean on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:14PM (#19037628)

I’m guessing Apple has more to lose getting in to a battle with Google. There’s a fair degree of co-dependency between the two organisations.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by zuck9 on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:31PM (#19037781)

How so? A world without Google would have shitty search initially but would exist perfectly fine. iOS/Windows, Safari/Firefox, Apple Maps, iCloud Mail/Outlook, Vimeo already exist and soon a decent search engine would surface.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by belak on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @02:19PM (#19038281)

There's an interesting article on Gizmodo (so please take it with a grain of salt) about trying to cut Google out of your life - long story short, it's surprisingly hard and some things you wouldn't expect will break.

https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-u...

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by robin_reala on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @02:26PM (#19038361)

YMMV. I mostly moved off Google for my own usage last year and deleted my paid Google Apps account (let’s ignore work usage as that’s out of my hands). Remaining services I use are YouTube (no competitor), books.google.com (occasionally, when Hathi is proving too slow) and groups.google.com (the project I mostly contribute to organises there). Of those three I could dump books.google.com without too much effort and I only interface with groups.google.com via email; moving to another provider would be totally possible if needed.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by belak on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @02:35PM (#19038495)

True enough. I found the things mentioned in the article interesting because you also lose things like Google Web Fonts and a number of services which depend on the Google Maps APIs for mapping.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to completely disconnect because I've got a number of friends who share photos through Google Photos (and I would like to keep access to those), a number of friends who only use Hangouts (not sure if that's better or worse than FB Messenger), and YouTube doesn't have any real competitors.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by asteli on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @03:20PM (#19039005)

it's hard to compete with YouTube's network for content discovery, but if you're uploading/distributing video Vimeo remains a great primary service.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by yata01 on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @11:08PM (#19042251)

One of my largest problems with ridding Google from my life has been dealing with their Captchas.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by mtgx on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:46PM (#19037944)

Well, for one, Google pays Apple a ridiculous $12 billion a year for having Google search by default in Safari:

http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-eng...

I'm guessing Tim Cook is not ready to give that up in the name of "fighting for privacy." Otherwise he'd have already made DuckDuckGo the default search engine.

There's no doubt in my mind Steve Jobs would've kicked Google out, but Tim Cook is much more of a bean counter to make such a move.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by threeseed on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:44PM (#19037920)

Also a significant proportion of searches are being addressed by Apple's Search service.

And Apple has shown with Maps that they are capable of building a decent competitor to Google.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by vl on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @02:25PM (#19038351)

Fun fact: Google searches from mobile Safari are profit-shared with Apple.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by kefabean on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @06:23PM (#19040703)

Apple runs certain aspects of iCloud on the Google Cloud Platform so there are likely to be fairly hefty contracts at stake...

Search for ‘Google Cloud’ in the following:

https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by Twisell on Thursday January 31, 2019 @02:53AM (#19043202)

However penalizing/threatening a customer of Google Cloud for something totaly unrelated would open the road to an antitrust case as huge as Google leverage on current IT sector.

PS: On the otherside migrating all services out of Google Cloud would be a technical challenge (their needs are huge) but at the end of the day a minor annoyance for Apple.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by dgzl on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @02:24PM (#19038335)

Don't forget about Android OS and the Pixel phones.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by sidewaysloading on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @02:13PM (#19038223)

https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/30/googles-also-peddling-a-da...

TechCrunch at least caught on.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by zwily on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @12:02PM (#19036869)

I’m guessing this will stop, unless Google has a special agreement in place.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by guillim85 on Thursday January 31, 2019 @06:18AM (#19043986)

"Sorry, this page can't be found."

But the page is still available in cache https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RqQCNF...

The page asks users to trust Google Inc.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by faizmokhtar on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @08:59PM (#19041596)

seems like the page have been taken down?

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by 3chelon on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:11PM (#19037594)

It seems Apple have been trying to occupy the moral high ground on privacy for quite a long time now. It's relatively easy for them to differentiate themselves from the other big tech companies, because Apple's products cost so much that, for once, you are not the product.

Unless FB and Big G start charging for their services, I don't see how they can change their behaviour.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by reaperducer on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:50PM (#19037980)

It seems Apple have been trying to occupy the moral high ground on privacy for quite a long time now

It's easy to occupy the high ground when everyone else is in the gutter.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by 3chelon on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:52PM (#19038012)

That is a very good point.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by agigao on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @04:41PM (#19039846)

good one.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by CaptainZapp on Thursday January 31, 2019 @04:25AM (#19043561)

Even if Facebook starts to charge for their service I wouldn't touch any of their properties with a ten foot pole.

I assume that they gladly take my cash to then nevertheless sell me out to the highest bidder.

They knowingly stole money from kids (via their parents credit cards) and did so knowingly and for years. They did just about everything possible to keep the stolen loot, including trying to automate their disputes on charge backs. [1]

This carcinogenic pustule of a company is unredeemable and is unable to learn anything. Money and growth is the only goal to be achieved. Fuck all consequences!

Why would I ever trust such a company with money and believe they're not lying to my face.

[1] https://www.revealnews.org/article/facebook-knowingly-duped-...

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by Cyclone_ on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:48PM (#19037968)

Very true, I think that even if Fb and G were to start charging it wouldn't work since people are so used to them being free

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by ranchpredictor on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @02:34PM (#19038471)

Would you even believe them? Haha

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by philipodonnell on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:22PM (#19037682)

I wonder if the $20 payment was so that Facebook could plausibly claim they _were_ distributing internal apps to employees?

I'm sure "employees" is defined loosely enough in the agreement to include "contractors", and the bar there is pretty low, getting paid pretty much makes you a contractor.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by r00fus on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @03:38PM (#19039193)

I'd bet if you look at their internal FIN system these "employees" weren't listed as 1099 vendors.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by bashinator on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @03:34PM (#19039152)

Minors generally not legally able to be held to a contract.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by bogomipz on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @03:33PM (#19039134)

For someone who isn't as familiar with the mobile development can you say how do beta testing services like Applause, BetaBound and uTest differ from TestFlight? Is it just that latter are verified to be compliant with the App Store's TOS?

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by saagarjha on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @03:37PM (#19039179)

Yes. Other testing services which rely on enterprise distribution are technically against the rules, although Apple usually turns a blind eye to them unless they're doing something actively malicious.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by bogomipz on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @03:44PM (#19039254)

So are Applause, BetaBound and uTest be considered enterprise distribution then?

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by saagarjha on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @03:59PM (#19039411)

I have not used these services, but it's very likely that they are since that's basically how all beta testing outside of TestFlight works.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by droussel on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @05:13PM (#19040142)

You can use Ad Hoc deployments, which is what I used to do on TestFlight before it got acquired by Apple.

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by saagarjha on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @05:17PM (#19040167)

This requires registering UDIDs, right?

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Re:Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps by droussel on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @05:27PM (#19040271)

Yes, it does. For testing, in smaller business, this is fine however as you can register up to 100 devices. Enterprise certificates were much easier to use in big enterprise thought even if they weren't really "meant" for that purpose.

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