You do realise Apple could still do this in their app store AND allow 3rd party app stores?

Not to the same effect. It means if developers don’t want to play by Apple’s rules they don’t have to completely surrender the iOS market. A big enough name could just direct users to the third party App Store.

I would definitely expect a "Facebook Store" to appear if side-loading was allowed which would not only host the Facebook app itself but also provide a safe haven for all of the privacy-violating crap (in fact I'd argue that their review process would require your app to contain the FB SDK for it to be accepted).

That’s an unconvincing argument, why don’t we see a FB Store on Android?

Because the Android store does not even attempt to block their privacy shenanigans.

Just as bad is the puppet master behind Epic... Tencent. They are dying to get all of their WeChat apps into iOS.

Christ, what is with people thinking Tencent is behind Epic? They don't have a majority stake in Epic - Tim Sweeney does. There's zero evidence that anything Epic has done and is doing is driven by Tencent.

Maybe argue about what Epic is doing based on its own merits, rather than some baseless conspiracy about Tencent.

And Tencent approached Spotify and others investments to join in on court case.

Even if that's true (I haven't seen any reports about Tencent pushing their investments to join the case), it's almost as if it'd benefit a lot of companies to not have to deal with Apple's restrictions.

I'll ask again - do you actually have something to say about the merit of the case itself rather than just conspiracies about Tencent? Why is anything you mentioned bad? For argument's sake let's say Apple is in the wrong here and Epic is in the right. Why would Tencent also having a stake in the case change that?

I'm not certain here. for the users that want the on the rails experience that Apple currently provides like the OP (seemingly), they'd still be able to do so. Meanwhile, someone that wants to download apps that wouldn't pass muster with the App Store rules (such as game streaming apps and, yes, Fortnite with Epic's payment system) would still be available to iOS users that would want them (personally speaking, would love xCloud and GeForce Now clients and would be willing to "unlock" the capability in Settings to do so if given the option).

The issue with that is that you would end up with the balkanisation of the app delivery method as we have with PCs. You would end up with hundreds of 'stores' which act as the exclusive distributor for that vendors products.

One workaround could be permitting additional stores, but insisting that anything available on the additional stores must also be submitted to the Apple store. If Apple rejects it, that's their right but the software can still be made available through the third sideloading.

Of course this would also need to be behind a big 'UNSAFE MODE' lock because it would be an obvious target for malware.

And it would be behind a setting just like Android I'd imagine. Alluded to that in the last bit of what I was saying.

At first I hated the whole idea of the various PC game stores and would continue to buy, say, Assassin's Creed games on Steam even though Uplay came out (and iirc, they started requiring Uplay be installed for DRM or whatever anyway). Then eventually I realized that directly in Uplay, you could get pretty absurd discounts plus discounts from some type of point system compounded on top of that. So by cutting out Steam in that interaction, it made it cheaper for me and they effectively got the same amount of money so win/win. Granted, Playnite and GOG Galaxy 2 really streamlined the whole thing such that managing various libraries wasn't an absolute nightmare.

As far as iOS goes, we should look at Android and Fortnite. Originally, Fortnite was side loaded. Then they moved it to the Android Play Store because they weren't getting the traction that they expected. So they went in with the Play Store.

Could Epic do a side loaded Epic Mobile Store or something where you could get Fortnite, an Infinity Sword remaster, or Shadow Complex ported to mobile (great game, shame they haven't done anything with that property since Xbox 360 era really)? Sure, but if that did happen it would be the exception and not the rule. I don't think you'd see the proliferation of alternate storefronts you see on PCs because the storefronts came later in the PC's life so various means of pulling in new applications has been what we've experienced from day one whereas the App Store has always been there for the vast majority of iOS adopters (no App Store era was during the AT&T period and even then, early on people were under contracts and what not/weren't ready to shell out the kind of money an iPhone called for). Non-billion dollar development shops aren't going to leave the App Store because they want the discoverability nor the overhead required of setting up their own payment gateways and what not.

But 3rd party app stores just mean a race to the bottom.

The app store with the least oversight and cheapest prices would be the winner.

Policies like this are good for users but bad for apps and by extension app stores.

Doesn't seem to happen on Android.

My previous experience with the PlayStore might have been different than yours.

In the context of this guideline and other user focused non-tracking/permissions related things, the PlayStore is “already at bottom”.

So more like race to the top?

Races to the top are significantly slower, but possible.

Trust building is really, really hard.

No 3rd party apps stores will not guarantee my one click subscription cancelation Like Apple does, for example

The existence of a third party App Store doesn’t prevent you from voting with your feet and sticking with Apples App Store, if that’s a valuable feature to you.

A unregulated market for toys won’t prevent you from buying lead free toys if that’s a valuable feature to you.

Regulation is the job of democratically elected governments and legislatures, not of companies.

Apple won’t allow it because of $ and because it breaks their vertical integration strategy

That's a terrifying idea. Horrifying.

I absolutely detest this idea of third party app stores. Please tell me why this is a good idea when literally your entire life and its contents are contained in this palm sized device.

Do you really want sideloading of apps that asks average joes for ransomware?

We already have another sandbox - browsers. And you're seeing problems with extensions, popups, .dmg downloads and .exe virus scans, etc. So much so that browsers are constantly fighting against attacks for 20 years.

> We already have another sandbox - browsers. And you're seeing problems with extensions, popups, .dmg downloads and .exe virus scans, etc. So much so that browsers are constantly fighting against attacks for 20 years.

They are, and, if you look around, they're winning: billions of people use Windows, MacOS and desktop Linux, safely, to do all manner of things. Billions of people use the web, which involves all kinds of code from all kinds of places - none of which is held hostage by a single absurdly valuable corporation - and, judging by the continuing success of that platform, I would say it's doing pretty well.

You know what's terrifying? This argument is terrifying. So, you brought up the web … assuming iOS continues to be what it is, and eventually people just stop bothering to make websites: is that okay? Is that what we want?

I actually want a phone with absolutely no app store. Just browser is fine. Given the amount of information it holds, adding any kind of apps that allow system wide access is horrifying to me. Since we don't have such phones, the next best thing is a store run by a company that can have security staff, highly paid security engineers and a whole bunch of people trying to make it secure than some reddit group that wants to distribute apps to billions of people. For that, as I said, just use a browser.

App store reviewers are not the people you should be trusting to make your phone secure. They can and do make mistakes, because their job is to go through a checklist, look for things they don't like, and maybe run some analysis tools that other people wrote. (I'm guessing, of course: this process is completely invisible to the general public). The people who should be making your iPhone secure are the developers at Apple who are improving how apps are sandboxed, catching and fixing security vulnerabilities throughout the OS, sometimes even with open source code and published CVE entries.

If we have so little faith in those developers that we believe the last line of defence - the App Store reviewers - are the thing holding us back from disaster, then we definitely should not be using iPhones.

App store reviews are executing the policies and tools that security engineers built. Whether it is a human checking these policies or automated scripts doing it, the point is that the policies governing those filtering processes are conceptualized, written and developed by experts that know what they're doing and they get paid a handsome amount [250k USD and upwards]. You're also switching from AppStore to the whole device. The device is secure because of things like T2 chip and billions that probably went into making it possible.

It's really obvious to me which is more secure - a 2 trillion dollar company with vested interest and one of the key selling points, that is privacy; or ... literally anything else.

Know who wants 3rd Party App Stores? All the Security App Vendors. Malwarebytes at the gate!

Good, then feel free to not install a 3rd party app store. Your device will continue to be secure, or whatever you think it is right now.

Big enough players are too hard to push back against as an individual. Group purchasing power is required.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24287042

Note that “tracking” is used in an intentionally misleading way here. Apple’s guidelines expressly permit all sorts of silent, invisible, no-opt-in tracking within apps, and most apps in the app store embed this sort of spyware.

The term “tracking” in this instance refers to GPS or contacts permission and other such things that Apple has built an opt-in switch for.

What sort of "silent, invisible, no-opt-in tracking" does Apple allow?

The maker of the app can send network requests, to themselves or any third party service they like, for every single action taken within the app: every launch, every click, every character typed, even every background refresh. They can include a unique tracking identifier to cross-reference these requests, they can further include any login/id information you’ve provided to the app, and they can include location information if the app has GPS permissions.

Even without GPS permission, IP geolocation provides them a rough track log, enough to say “user x was in california on monday, new york on tuesday, then new jersey for the remainder of the month”.

Pretty much anything except location tracking via GPS, unless the users clicks allow. So exactly the same as Google.

The way I read this (as well as their recently-postponed change regarding the advertising ID) is that they are explicitly tightening up the rules and will hopefully crack down on the behavior your describe (malware - aka the Facebook SDK - being embedded in every single app).

Doesn't Apple track every app you install, access and run? Track you if you want to develop your own code for your own fully paid for device?

There has to be be some degree of tying purchases to an account. The real issue here is what is done with the data after it's been collected. Internal use is one thing; such as improving apps etc. When it's used to target individual in a bid to influence their thinking, that's when the real problem starts. Are Apple guilty of the latter?

Certainly. They use it in app store ads, to determine their own product development, and to market their products.

On other platforms, I can install apps on my devices without telling anybody.

Which platforms?

Most Android distributions, most Linux distributions, Windows, etc.

Pretty sure most of those would be sending telemetry including installed apps back to the company.

And we know for a fact Windows does this.

> Pretty sure...

Now you know that you were wrong. Windows allows you to disable telemetry and certainly doesn't report apps you install to Microsoft if you don't want it to. Same for Android and obviously for desktop and server Linux distros. This is simply not possible on iOS.

You can install apps on iOS without using the store.

And if you are willing to jailbreak then you have the full suite.

> You can install apps on iOS without using the store.

Not without reinstalling weekly unless you reduce your privacy even further by also give Apple your banking details.

> And if you are willing to jailbreak then you have the full suite.

On these other platforms, you don't have to rely on your device being so insecure that it has a rootable vulnerability.

“Willing to” is not “able to”.

> Doesn't Apple track every app you install, access and run?

Do you have a source on the them tracking every app a user runs? Obviously they have to collect every app I install for updates and subscriptions, but collecting every run might be too much.

They advertise a whole product which draws all this tracking data as nice graphs to developers: https://developer.apple.com/app-store-connect/analytics/

It's essentially Google Analytics, just for apps on iOS.

Where do you think those "Daily active devices" data comes from?

Users must opt in though. It’s part of the iOS set up to allow this and you can change it any time

This setting is opt out, not opt-in. It's unclear if opting out hides the data from Apple or just from the app developers.

It is opt-in now; when setting up iOS for the first time it asks you if you'd like to enable "iPhone analytics" (OS-wide analytics for Apple) and if you accept then it asks you whether you want to share the analytical data with the app developers.

It's opt out.

No, it’s opt in when you set up your device.

Don't they verify executables for this reason? Do they provide info about whether they log this process?

I believe iOS handles this process differently. Apps are signed in advance (when the app is approved and published to the Store) and the signatures are only checked locally against a hardcoded signing key. But even on Mac when it comes to notarization, I'm pretty sure the signatures are only checked on first run and then the result of that is cached (partly for performance reasons).

Same on Mac AppStore.

Why would they verify it everytime you run the app? It already goes through heavy review before it comes onto the app store.

On iOS under: Privacy -> Analytics & Improvements

They (a) show what data is being sent e.g. stack traces and (b) provide the privacy policies.

At least on my device I am not seeing a list of apps being sent to Apple.

Your device doesn’t need to send it. They know what apps you’ve downloaded already and on what device. The real question is, does it send when you remove an app? If so, they are tracking your apps you have installed.

If your device offloads apps, they know when you download it again and thus can infer usage.

That really does seem like whataboutism.

No one is claiming Apple is perfect, but this is a marked improvement of apps requiring tracking to function.

This is exactly whataboutism.

I think we're arguing semantics about business philosophy.

whataboutism: n. An accusation of hypocrisy designed to deflect from bad behavior on the part of another party.

Ha! Ive never actually looked the definition up. This is definitely whataboutism (I still havent looked the definition up so Im trusting this the actual definition)

well, I did make that up.

but here's dictionary.com on the subject, and I think it's congruent, you'll have to judge for yourself:

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/whataboutism

Remember that app SDK that decided to hijack every URL open and leak auth tokens back to the mothership?

That's all right with Apple:

https://www.securityweek.com/malicious-behavior-found-advert...

These rules are not worth the bytes used to transfer them. It's the epitome of selective enforcement.

I’m not sure what your point is.

> […] the tech giant has found no evidence that apps using the Mintegral SDK are harming users. […] The company says app developers are responsible for the behavior of their products, including the behavior of third-party code, and they should exercise caution when using third-party code to insure it does not accidentally undermine security and privacy.

This seems to be correct. This is an SDK the application developer chose to use. Its behavior may be harmful to other ad networks, but doesn’t seem to have any effect on the user. Which is to say, the SDK isn’t doing anything the app itself couldn’t just do itself. The SDK may be doing stuff the developer isn’t aware of, but that’s true of any third-party code, and this is why developers need to ensure they validate third-party code appropriately.

This is literally what GDPR will enforce. Under GDPR you're not allowed to 'trade' extra functionality or access for tracking.

I'm still applauding Apple for taking this stance on privacy, but want to point out that privacy in no way requires a walled garden approach to software.

This policy is straight from GDPR. The Play Store and the Amazon App Store also enforce this, despite neither enforcing walled gardens.