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A comment on The App Store is a monopoly: Here's why the EU is correct to investigate Apple. Parent comment

Re:The App Store is a monopoly: Here's why the EU is correct... by wlesieutre on Friday July 31, 2020 @08:02PM (#24015873)
> Obligatory glance over at Steam goes here.

• Steam (Valve)

• Uplay (Ubisoft)

• Origin (EA)

• Epic (Epic)

• Galaxy (CDProjekt)

• LoL Launcher (Riot)

• Battle.net (Blizzard)

• Twitch (Amazon)

• Minecraft Launcher (Mojang)

Probably others I'm missing.

Can't wait to have a whole home screen dedicated to different app stores because each one has a single exclusive game that I wanted to play

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The App Store is a monopoly: Here's why the EU is correct... by Silhouette on Friday July 31, 2020 @08:22PM (#24016022)
So why not build a standard mechanism to install and update 3rd party software into the OS? It's hardly a radical idea. There are plenty of solutions to that problem that don't involve monopolising the distribution of all software on the platform.
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Re:The App Store is a monopoly: Here's why the EU is correct... by wlesieutre on Friday July 31, 2020 @09:15PM (#24016371)
I agree in principle that this would be OK, except part of Apple's vetting processes is making sure apps aren't accessing private APIs.

I don't want to download a game and find out that it's secretly spinning up a background spyware process to monitor the screenbuffer and sending the screenshots off to god knows where.

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Re:The App Store is a monopoly: Here's why the EU is correct... by Silhouette on Friday July 31, 2020 @09:55PM (#24016646)
Surely the solution to that is not to have your OS expose "private" APIs that allow abusive behaviour? It's not as if they aren't widely exploited even on the official app store today.

Once again, trying to filter malware at the app store level is not a viable strategy for robust, reliable security, and it never has been.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The App Store is a monopoly: Here's why the EU is correct... by Apocryphon on Friday July 31, 2020 @09:24PM (#24016428)
Presently, security researchers are already finding both major apps doing this on the Apple App Store (Facebook accessing the camera on the News Feed), and spyware apps happening on secondary Android stores (also on the official Play Store). Sounds like an opportunity for more security watchdog businesses.
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Re:The App Store is a monopoly: Here's why the EU is correct... by wlesieutre on Friday July 31, 2020 @11:52PM (#24017360)
The recent camera and clipboard things aren't private APIs, so the review process isn't looking for them being used in sneaky ways. I do appreciate iOS 14 adding a user-facing indication so we can tell when it's being abused though.
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Re:The App Store is a monopoly: Here's why the EU is correct... by Apocryphon on Friday July 31, 2020 @08:23PM (#24016028)
That's already the case with chat clients, or social media, and many other categories of app. Such is the price of competition and variety.
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