Apple's AppStore and Google Play are bastardizations of the concept of a package repo. Instead of applications and their dependencies, Google/Apple distribute monolithic executable (duplicating shared libraries for every app) and disallow anyone else to have a trusted cert/3rd party repo.

There's F-droid of course on Android.

For instance, you might have a choice to read-only access to the filesystem and user hardware, or be allowed network access.

Without a static policy, the only choice that someone like Apple or Google would have to rampant abuse would be to blacklist the 3rd party key. This might mean blacklisting an entire repo if the repo owner is not properly vetting apps - which would likely be perceived as way more an abuse of power than the current gate-keeper model.

The non-technical reason is that there is zero financial incentive for a company to risk breaking their security model and affect their reputation, just so that other companies have the ability to not do revenue sharing.

The worst a website can do is trick the user into downloading something. The worst an app can do is steal their data, capture video from their mic/camera, wipe their computer, turn it into a DDOS bot etc. It's night and day.

And so trusting third party certificate issuers who currently don't verify websites or their owners and having them now certify apps is a pretty big leap.

The reason we can trust the CA certificates loaded in our browsers have proper processes and operate transparently is that the browser makers leverage those certificates being preloaded as bargaining power.

Would we have the opportunity to retain that sort of power in this decentralized world? Or do we start seeing the "essential" apps move out of the store and doing things like background monitoring of the user?

Who are users suppose to trust?

Back in the day users also trusted SourceForge....

That is why you should only do this if you are aware of the consequences.

We're at an inflection where in the future we will either retain some control over our devices, or almost none. I'm done arguing for complete control, that's boat seems to have sailed. I'm just trying to influence people to not throw away all their control at this point.

Which is that even incredibly smart, incredibly technical users will still click on random dialog boxes and open phishing emails.

I understand where you're coming from but I wouldn't bet on a future where users are going to be somehow smarter about this sort of thing.

For instance, the /System folder is not writable unless you reboot into single user or recovery mode, then run commands in a shell.

Several app developers (including Mojang with Minecraft) recommended turning off Gatekeeper to run their apps rather than dealing with developer signing or because they did not want to purchase a signing certificate. Apple eventually removed the option to disable gatekeeper from the UI (but retained it as a shell command).

The 'advanced user' override to run these apps has always been to select 'open' from the finder/context menu - but simply double-clicking on an app will give a failure screen, not an override/consent screen. (Yes - rather than telling users to right-click on their app, third parties told the users to disable app verification and quarantine for the whole system.)

I find it surprising how lots of people who live in democratic, free societies, still have this urge for authoritarian solutions to every problem.

The history of the judicial system has shown that even incredibly smart people will sign contracts that are clearly to their detriment. Does that mean the appropriate solution is to only allow contracts that have been vetted by MicroLaw incorporated?

Overall, history is full of smart people doing dumb shit. The only way to completely prevent that is draconian authoritarianism. I would think humanity should have understood by now that that doesn't end well.

It's not so difficult if your MacBook trusts Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft out of the box.

Explicit consent is required for every apk install or update. Which is a bummer if you want to compete with the baked in store apps that "just work" and keep things up to date.

EDIT: Users, given a way to sideload, will always be taken advantage of. At least the enterprise program lets them be cured quickly. https://www.wired.com/story/exodus-spyware-ios/

There's a difference between "people are stupid so let's prevent them from doing stuff that might cause problems, even if sometimes it's useful" and "people are stupid so let's discourage them from doing stuff that might cause problems."

> Fortunately, Apple has to date and clearly intends to continue offering a way to disable this functionality for the "statistically irrelevant" subset of their users that have good reasons to.

For their OS, yes. But the trend of locking the desktop/notebook offerings down to be more like their phone offerings is clear. Maybe there's also drift from their phones/tablets to be more open like their offerings and I'm missing it, but if not, I'm pretty sure I can see where this will eventually end (if Apple gets their way).

The scenario you describe, where my pocket brain can be enrolled in a third-party App Store, is hostile to my security requirements for my pocket device and I’m glad Apple prohibits it.

Nonetheless, it is essential to your liberty and freedom.

I have the ability to recklessly spend the entire contents of my bank account on Amazon purchases if I so choose. I'm certainly not faulting the bank for "allowing" that though! Truly, I will never understand why some are so eager to have their behavior dictated by others.

Would you consider such (common) systems to be authoritarian?

It is unfortunate that technology evolves so much faster than the average person's understanding of it. It both places a huge need on such intermediaries being present, but puts the running of such an intermediary outside of an entity supposedly operating in the public good (like the government) and into the hands of a corporation that may in one way or another be motivated to abuse such a role - and even if they try not to, being a for-profit gate-keeper guarantees they will be perceived as abusing such a role.

That question can only be meaningfully answered on a case by case basis. Many of them do cross the line as currently implemented in my opinion; to what extent varies. Oftentimes there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for their design rooted in history (ex being created prior to the internet or some other technology). On the whole most of them seem to work well enough.

I would note that the presence of one flawed system does not serve as justification for others to exist as well. The world is certainly imperfect, but that is not a valid argument against improving it.

> places a huge need on such intermediaries being present

I don't dispute this - what I take issue with is the inability to opt out.

> being a for-profit gate-keeper guarantees they will be perceived as abusing such a role

Regarding app stores, the manufacturers could have trivially set them up such that it wasn't possible to abuse them. Functioning examples of such systems already exist. They specifically chose not to do this, so I do not think it is unreasonable to assume the worst about their intentions.

So, your argument doesn't pan out, I think. At some point experts are expert and you are not. I am not an expert at app stores. I defer my app store choices to the people who make my phone, because they have a track record of choices I usually approve of, and their missteps are never in service of "exploit me" (like Facebook's). There are many competing hardware platforms to choose from with many fewer restrictions. I choose the more-restricted and my free time available to focus on actual benefits to the world increases. I don't believe I would benefit the world by using a third-party app store, and I don't have time for the drama it involves. YMMV.

What I am claiming is that you don't have freedom if you can't make these choices for yourself. Sane defaults are fine. Shipping with a prepackaged app store is fine. Even having to reboot the device into a separate mode and enter a password in order to change sensitive system settings is fine. But if I want to add F-Droid, I need to be able to do that and it needs to be a first class citizen. I need to be able to remove Google Play if that's what I want to do. On iOS, there is not and can never be a third party app store under current policy. That is most definitely a restriction on your freedom as a user; I do not believe that any cohesive argument can be made against that statement.

Just because you have the option to opt-out of vendor restrictions doesn't mean that you have to do so. For example, my mobile device won't allow me to disable secure boot or to install my own keys, and it is incredibly difficult to locate one for sale that will. In contrast, my laptop will allow me to do both of those things if I so choose. Doing so requires rebooting into the UEFI shell, which I have the option of password protecting. None of this can be done by a malicious program from user space barring a truly massive security hole. As such, I do not believe that this freedom negatively impacts my security in any way.

I demand the right to take apart my hardware and software as I see fit.

I do not demand the right to receive active support for doing so from the manufacturer.

If they can lock me out with their technology, that is their right as author of the technology. If I can circumvent their lockout with my technology, that is my right as purchased of the technology.

Apple does this so well that most of us aren’t capable of hacking their technology. Good job.

A certain large American tractor company tries to take away your right to attempt to hack their device, rather than simply making it difficult. I disapprove of this with every fiber of my being. As purchaser of the tractor, I may do whatever I wish with what I chose to purchase.

When I buy an iPhone, I knowingly choose to purchase a device that keeps me out so effectively that there are no known ways to hack into it if it’s up to date. Apple has the right to make it so, and it’s very useful to me that they do. I then continue to update it to maintain that line of defense. Folks who root their phone choose otherwise on both counts. That’s their right, too.

If you wish to remove Apple’s freedom to build devices that defend against non-Apple software intrusion, you’re welcome to campaign for that, but I support their freedom to build security countermeasures to the same degree that I support my freedom to purchase a device with those countermeasures enabled. My freedom need not come at the cost of theirs, as the plethora of Android options clearly evidences.

Perhaps an analogy would help here. For example, suppose auto manufacturers started welding the hoods of new vehicles shut. Suppose that legislation was subsequently passed which banned this practice and asserted that you have a legal right to access, inspect, manipulate, and replace the internals of a vehicle you own. This would not be equivalent to requiring the manufacturer to actively support such activity! It would only prevent specific undesirable behavior on their part.

> I support their freedom to build security countermeasures

This is a false implication about my position, and my previous post very clearly addressed this exact point. Providing the user with the means to optionally unlock things does not require that security be diminished. Functioning examples of this already exist in the wild.

> If they can lock me out with their technology, that is their right as author of the technology.

Currently, yes - from a legal perspective. For the public good, that needs to change. We have ample evidence at this point that we cannot rely on the market to make choices in its own best interests in this case. The market consistently chooses the cheapest devices and the largest ecosystems; it does not appear to select based on the openness of the ecosystem. Meanwhile, manufacturers are actively walling off their ecosystems wherever they can get away with it. They often point to security when questioned, but I find these claims dubious at best. Meanwhile, their behavior demonstrably protects their profits while actively pushing our society towards a state that is very easily abused in a great many ways.

To my mind, such regulation is conceptually analogous to the ADA compliance requirements for certain types of buildings in the US. Without the ADA regulation, the market would almost certainly not choose to conform on its own. Nevertheless, it is clearly in the public's best interest for it to do so.

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Editing to add: Your belief that there are no known ways to break into an iPhone if it is up to date is almost certainly incorrect. This article (https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvakb3/inside-nso...) from ~6 months ago was on HN at some point. From the article:

> He gave NSO that phone number and put the phone on the desk. After “five or seven minutes,” the contents of his phone’s screen appeared on a large display that was set up in the meeting room, all without him even clicking on a malicious link, he said.

I have no doubt it's related to the recent rise in authoritarianism too.

Do any of them allow a third party to certify a general purpose application from another developer as safe?

> That’s how they were able to globally kill that Facebook VPN scam app that used Enterprise Certificates, and that’s why all non-enterprise app distribution methods carry an expiry: either you’re a free sideload developer (one week), a TestFlight user (twelve weeks), or an enterprise user (no expiration unless your enterprise earn a revoke for distribution to the public).

To me, that sounds like they're happy to provide various levels of workarounds as long as there's absolutely no way it can compete with their app store. I suspect an enterprise signature used to sign various third party apps for distribution would not be looked upon kindly by them. What's more, I don't believe they should have final call over what software should be allowed on the phone, so even if they did allow a more general signing capability, what ecosystem is going to develop there when the metaphorical Sword of Damocles or Apple's arbitrary whims as to what is acceptable or not are continually reassessed (and possibly checked for conflict with Apple's future business ventures)?

> The scenario you describe, where my pocket brain can be enrolled in a third-party App Store, is hostile to my security requirements for my pocket device and I’m glad Apple prohibits it.

Possibility is not the same as certainty. It's only hostile to your security if utilized. If the ability to do so was gated by a settings toggle, you would be no worse off than you are if you did not enable it.

I certainly hope not.

As a simple example, might you be willing to trust Mozilla to offer a service where they review and certify all submissions that pass review for apps that are willing to pay for the process (allowing Mozilla to use some of their credibility and engineering expertise to raise funds)? I would. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would allow for a company with different principles and motives than Apple to be used, and my sensibilities lie closer to Mozilla's than they do Apple's or Google's.

https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-shuts-down-ios-research-a...

It's in Apple's interest now to position themselves for privacy, because that differentiates them from the major alternative. That said, it's irrelevant who is more trustworthy now. That may change over time, and just because Apple is trustworthy now doesn't mean their business can't change over the next decade. Should we allow a precedent that just because a company has been trustworthy so far that we allow them to ensconce themselves as thew arbiters of trust thereafter?

People thought Google was very trustworthy in the past. I think Google was trustworthy in the past, but little by little they've been incentivized by their business model towards decisions and stances that are not as aligned with what I want anymore.

Companies change, quite a bit and quite often actually. All it takes is different management and/or a different board for a public one. Allowing people to actually assign who they trust at a more granular level than "Apple or Google" is essential if we want a say in our future.

Google was about tracking and ads as their business model once they found one. As was Facebook.

If the lack of “freedom” is killing innovation, where are all of the profitable businesses that take advantage of Android’s “openness”?

If Apple’s “walled garden” is holding back innovation, there should be a lot of innovative, successful third party products that are available for Android that aren’t available for iOS.

Those are the only two platforms we can compare right now when it comes to the “open” vs “closed” debate.

If there are not much innovations happening on other platforms then why are Apple afraid to allow side loading?

Your original point about profits and freedom makes sense now. If Apple allowed side loading or other stores then its profits would decrease. There would companies who would like to bypass that 30% cut. So yes your point is correct its all about profit rather then privacy or freedom.

The only companies that are forced to pay the 30% cut are the game developers for loot boxes and magic diamonds.

So Android users knew they were making a choice to install privacy invading apps? Not to mention all of the spyware that you can install on someone else's phone?