They've kicked us out of open computing by locking down the only computer a lot of folks own (iPhone). And now look what kind of shit they can pull because they own the entire stack! This shouldn't be possible!
We really have to push against this and hope the DOJ forces all phone providers to allow "side-loading" (what a bizarre term!)
The iPhone is a computer, not some gaming console. It has to be free for freedom. You should be able to install straight off the web.
And before you downvote me, please look again how much Apple gives a damn about democracy in the world. And look what it's doing because of its power. Double plus ungood.
It's an American device. It should act like it!
Still, free-as-in-freedom iPhones? Hell no! I give them money because they are not free-as-in-freedom, but provide a walled garden and defend it for me. I don't think I could do this myself; I know lots and lots of people absolutely certainly couldn't in the same way that I couldn't perform open-heart surgery. On iOS right now it's really, really hard to inadvertently give one's data, money or identity to any random app, and even for people who are not in the cohort that somehow always accumulates browser toolbars, the security measures by device/OS and browser vendors are the only thing that keeps them safe. This is an absolutely huge thing. If they break that, it'll wipe out their mobile products.
I do wholeheartedly agree that they lock down too much and too hard. I get that it shouldn't be easy to side-load software, but making it utterly impossible is a bit too advanced-user-hostile. And this particular action of theirs is wayyy over any line one could draw, and I absolutely think their brand should suffer big time for this.
But taking things to the other extreme – free as in freedom – I really don't see how that could end well. Give the big app vendors easy, convenient ways to bypass all restrictions and they'll make use of it, if only to make development cheaper, and then the small vendors and eventually the shady vendors will follow suit, and we're essentially back at the Windows 95 security model with some permission nag screens that no one really cares about anyway, and then everyone gets scammed and flocks to whatever vendor still has a properly secured walled garden. If there is a way to open things up completely while keeping the platform safe and usable for absolute laypeople, I haven't read or heard of it. Right now, I vastly prefer a locked-down but completely usable platform to some abstract notion of freedom.
Requiring permissions from users to access data is good, and an actually well curated app store is just as useful.
That doesn't mean that it shouldn't be possible to install through different avenues as well (still requiring the users permission).
Yes you would get a lot of shitty software if you started installing everything you stumble upon, but the apple store quality would probably increased significantly, because they could deny significantly more apps, as they'd have an alternative approach to get to users that really want it
I think you misunderstood me there. Of course permission systems are going to stay, who in their right mind would give up this crucial innovation?
But free-as-in-freedom implies that I, the owner and user, can do whatever I want, including triggering all sorts of footguns – if I get tricked into installing CriminalBankrobberApp and giving it all sorts of permissions because I believe it legitimately needs those and won't abuse them, it's game over. A non-free iOS can simply make this impossible or so inconvenient that I'll never bother – an app that actively attacks banking apps on my device wouldn't even get on the App Store I guess – but I don't think a free-as-in-freedom iOS could possibly keep that sort of tight control, not with a 30%-of-revenue economic incentive for everyone else to normalize arbitrary distribution channels.
> That doesn't mean that it shouldn't be possible to install through different avenues as well (still requiring the users permission).
How does the user know what avenues are safe and what aren't? Isn't this just a rehash of downloading software from arbitrary websites, just with lots of app stores instead?
> but the apple store quality would probably increased significantly, because they could deny significantly more apps
And lots and lots of others, big names too, would decide to forgo the App Store entirely (even assuming some loss of visibility, those are some really easily-earned (30-x)% in revenue!), so you'd end up with an Epic store and a Steam store and a EA store and a Facebook store and an app store for each media outlet (NYT Recipes now at the NYT App Store!) and possibly for each bank and national app stores and regional app stores and a CoolBeansAppStore with neat UI tweaks and skins and a SuperDuperAppStore with all sorts of small indy apps and a SuperSecureAppStore that distributes copies of other apps with added tracking and tons of Indydev Inc App Stores, and FreeXXXAppStore that has some well-known copyright-agnostic porn apps and absolutely no rules at all and all kinds of malware and scams... pretty much like the internet back then, but with much leakier sandboxes, because there are lots of things apps must be able to do if allowed to that websites pretty much never need(ed?) to do ...
And good luck with crafting a permission system that makes all of this really transparent and clear and actionable and still isn't a huge hassle that everyone just clicks through and works even for disinterested, impatient laypeople ... That's reducing the depth of security to pretty much this single thing that people hate in its current form already.
I mean, really, I am sometimes struggling to tell what's safe and what isn't on the web, and I should tell, I'm building some of the stuff that's on the web – how is someone who's busy being a lawyer, or is elderly and kinda struggling with the latest generation of gadgets, or a stressed-out parent with zero time for ITSec studies on top, or 15 years old, etc. pp. supposed to make that call that in a similarly confusing environment, on similarly bad data – possibly worse data.
The only reason this works on Android so far is probably that the UX of using other stores or sideloading is so bad; some have tried to establish their own, but churn is just too brutal for next to everyone.
I'm not saying free and open mobile platforms cannot be done, or that there's absolutely no way to open up iOS without wreaking havoc, and I'm definitely not saying that wouldn't be really worthwhile, because I think it would be absolutely fantastic to have an open and free mobile platform – but I believe that's going to be much, much more difficult than just throwing out all the restrictions and calling it a day, because we've been there in the early internet and security-wise it was an absolute nightmare.
Do you think that people are incapable of using personal computers then? Just the regular old PC.
This argument falls flat on its face, because it is blatantly obvious, that, for some reason, people are capable of using PCs, and don't explode from the confusion of doing so.
Every single argument that you are making, could apply to the PC. But people still do alright using PCs. Phones should not be any different.
> good luck with crafting a permission system
How are they doing that on the PC? PCs work fine.
> how is someone who's busy being a lawyer
Thats an interesting question. Which has an answer. How does a lawyer use a PC, right now? So thats how they'll do it.
> pretty much like the internet back then
Why do we have to talk about the internet from a long time ago? Just talk about the current internet. Which people use. On the PC. Right now.
> t there's absolutely no way to open up iOS without wreaking havoc
Just do it the same way that PCs currently work. Right now. Because PCs work, right now, and society is not falling apart.
> because we've been there in the early internet and security-wise it was an absolute nightmare.
We don't need to talk about the early internet. Just make the iPhone the same as modern day PCs. Which people are already capable of using just fine.
> Just make the iPhone the same as modern day PCs. Which people are already capable of using just fine.
Ransomware attacks are absolutely rampant, though you'll never hear about the vast majority of incidents of course, and pretty much all of those start with someone running thingycorp_salaries_full_list.xlsx.exe, enabling macros for a fishy .docx, opening an infected .pdf, downloading and running infected installers, plugging in random USB keys, and so on. Then there's lots and lots of phishing attacks going on, and that's with most companies already clamping down on attack vectors really hard — if people used private PCs as much as they use their private smartphones, for sensitive things like banking, without an IT department to shield them from the worst of it, I guess consumer Windows would get a lot more locked down really quickly.
> people are capable of using PCs, and don't explode from the confusion of doing so.
People may not explode from confusion, but if they had a better idea of how complex IT security has become, they might at least feel somewhat uneasy. Even people in IT roles screw up and get pwned, or build systems in a way that lets them get pwned easily, all the time really. Bad actors have become pretty sophisticated over the last decade as well, and Covid-19 is only making things worse as lots of unsavory individuals with money and resources find that real-world crime doesn't quite deliver the returns it used to, and everyone and their mother now conduct large parts of their lives through their smartphone and move lots of money through those devices. Personally, I've definitely noticed both attack volume and sophistication going up few notches already.
> How does a lawyer use a PC, right now? So thats how they'll do it.
The vast majoriy will depend on IT people to keep them safe, and their devices will be quite thoroughly locked down, and their email pretty aggressively filtered. Incidents definitely still happen, though. Same with medicine.
I really don't think it's a stretch to imagine people getting socially engineered en masse to install shady apps in a world where each app store and each app requires an entirely new security assessment on little to no data by end users, or apps getting compromised and not get pulled, or whatever. It's possible to solve that quandary, but it's not going to be as easy as just throwing out all restrictions without devising some other mechanism to take their place in protecting users.
> Because PCs work, right now, and society is not falling apart.
Society isn't falling apart from lots and lots of issues I'd consider quite severe. I'd rather not let anything get to that point if it can be prevented.
They use PCs right now. As of this moment. They are using PCs, just fine.
It is the existing status quo that everyone is using PCs already.
> I'd rather not let anything get to that point if it can be prevented.
There is not "getting" anywhere. We are already here. We are already living in a world where lots and lots of people use the PC.
Thats what you don't understand. This is the status quo. There are no changes. People already use PCs, right now.
> as easy as just throwing out all restrictions
There is no throwing anything out, because people already are using PCs, right now. Lots of people use them.
You keep phasing this as a "change" when it is not. People using PCs is the status quo.
They're not. They're doing this for maximizing the companie's profit. Which they absolutely don't need to (it's not like if apple was struggling financially, or trying to find an subtle business model that works).
I thought I'd made a pretty strong case to not trust Apple's PR in my first paragraph. To clarify, no, I don't think that is the case, and people should be very miserly with their trust towards orgs like Apple in general.
The thing is, no matter their rationale, their product decisions have far-reaching real-world consequences. This particular decision has obvious real-world consequences to protesters in Belarus, and it is a disgusting decision, and definitely makes for a strong argument against leaving them with that much control.
On the other hand, however, their security stance works really, really well, as far as I can tell, and it keeps their users quite safe from lots of harm, and that's something I keep giving them money for, because I value security highly.
Forcing their walled garden free-as-in-freedom wide open will amend #1, but what about #2? Literally hundreds of millions of iPhone users around the world depend on the ecosystem being safe – my mom has an iPhone mostly because they keep their walled garden clean, so she doesn't have to get a CS degree to do that herself, and also because it's a very nice product that she enjoys a lot, but I'd advise her very strongly to get something else if Apple's security was shoddy. As I've argued, I have very strong doubts that this could be done without breaking much of what makes iPhones so secure.
I'm definitely not arguing that this makes Apple's ability and growing propensity to abuse their power a great thing – I think it's absolutely creepy in a deeply dystopian way – but right now the only way to build such a safe environment that I know of relies on strict centralized control, and having such an environment is one of the prime things that make this technology manageable for everyone and their mother.
If someone comes up with a free-as-in-freedom smartphone that's secure, easy to use, has the necessary polish and all the important apps and isn't laser-focused on people who live inside emacs, I'll be happy to part with a bunch of money for that.
How? And why? Most people won't care. I think disallowing Telegram to operate freely will wipe out Apple's iOS products in countries where real freedom of speech matters.
But I think with the current high bar for anti-trust, it can be argued that Apple is "hurting consumers" through the lock-down of their platform.
It's fine that Apple should offer a safe, curated experience of using their devices through the App Store. I'm even fine with the App Store having some OS-level integrations which would not be available to 3rd parties. But the App Store should have to compete on its own merits for how it delivers value to the customer - it should not be the only option by fiat. Maybe at the beginning, but not when smartphones are the dominant computing platform and the main way people use software on a daily basis.
The 30% cut which Apple requires is simply not justified for how much value Apple offers to businesses which drive revenue through the App Store. Again, maybe at the beginning, but the App Store no longer offers any meaningful benefit in terms of discoverability. Losing almost 1/3 of revenue out of the gate can make the difference between viability and not for a lot of companies at the margins, meaning this policy costs the user access to all those products which might be able to exist were it not for the "apple tax".
Even under the current legal framework, I just don't see how it's justified.
In general, prices don't need a legal justification. That's a big part of free enterprise.
> This is exactly the type of thing it's designed to protect us from.
What makes you so optimistic? In practice, complicated laws with lots of reach usually work in favour of the party that can afford more and better lawyers. (Or, sometimes, the party that is winning the PR battle for the hearts and minds of public opinion.)
Well it would need a legal justification if the alternative is that Apple would be penalized under anti-trust regulation for using its market share to hurt consumers for its own benefit. Even "free enterprise" operates within a legal framework.
> In practice, complicated laws with lots of reach usually work in favour of the party that can afford more and better lawyers.
I mean this is an incredibly defeatist and cynical view. Don't get me wrong, I'm not overly optimistic that things will change based on the way laws have been applied in the last few decades, but the fact that people see laws as primarily a tool for the powerful - and don't even have an expectation for legal enforcement to operate on behalf of the consumer - seems to me to be a large part of the reason the US is looking more and more like a failed state.
I have higher hopes for simple laws. And also for efforts to lower barriers to entry.
See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_deregulation and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air for a legislative efforts that did much good.
Some interesting thoughts on rail freight transport at https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/SurfaceFreightTransporta... If all you did was follow casual online discussions about the state of American rail transport, you'd think it's in shambles. What's interesting is that the deregulated freight part of the industry is actually doing great. It's the transportation of people part that's not so hot.
I have no ready answer for Apple's walled garden. But as I stated earlier, I'm afraid heavy handed interference might do more harm than good, since Apple has so much money to through at lobbyists and lawyers.
For what it's worth, the default historical case people always cite in favour of trust busting, Standard Oil, actually shows the opposite. See eg https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-standard-oil-was-a-pr...
Source: The people he engages with as he attempts to increase Apple's market cap.
https://vid.alarabiya.net/images/2018/04/07/6f86bd65-aefa-4a...
I don't think what the USA is doing is something that should be followed. See anything privacy endangering in the US.
That's a really random nitpick though and I get what you meant.
> It's an American device. It should act like it!
I’m guessing you’re speaking about the “freedom” meme but there’s nothing uniquely American about freedom. If anything, capitalism tends to trump “freedom” and any pressures to equal the balance (like government oversight) almost always gets heavily condemned. So from that regard, iPhones (and Apple in general) are very much American entities. Not that I have anything against iPhones (I have one myself) but this is “just business”, as they say.
Just go buy a phone running the market leading OS, Android.
It is not possible for other parties to break this market open. Other parties are relegated to niche markets without any power. Using a smartphone from a niche party will give you a very reduced experience and is for most people not a viable option.
It might just be about doxxing, but the PR problem remains, of course.
This very much reminds me how Google disappeared websites of Russian opposition (weeks after signing some memorandum with kremlin,) and then told "maybe they need to improve their search engine friendliness?"
I don't know whether that's a common thing, and I expect many companies wouldn't go the Telegram route and publish the demands because they don't want to put stress on their relationship with Apple.
Discord apparently has channels that are used for similar activities, but I don't know whether Apple has asked Discord to hide those channels from the app, or whether anyone complained to Apple in the first place.
So, "even" by the word of US law, Apple has no permission to engage with Belarus government.
I doubt there are any laws that would forbid Apple from taking or acting on a report of content policy violations.
This is the kind of behavior that only comes from a company that knows they can get away with murder, and when that happens, it's time to tighten the screw a bit before things get waaay out of hand.
This is worthy of the Ministry of Truth
To wit: "Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology [...]"
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I
(Talk about a "walled garden" ...)
> Apple released a statement saying they didn't want us to take down the 3 channels run by the Belarusian protestors, but just specific posts "disclosing personal information."
> This sly wording ignores the fact that channels like @karatelibelarusi and @belarusassholes consist entirely of personal information of violent oppressors and those who helped rig the elections – because that is why those channels exist.
So wait, the issue foremost is the doxing. Doxing is against the clearly stated rules of their platform, so they don’t want you doxing people in apps on their platform. Which is okay with me, because the mob (The “majority”, note Durov even cites a very high consensus percentage for us to feel good about it) deciding who is ok to dox and who is not ok to dox is always dangerous for humanity.
Now, Belarus is without doubt (in my view) run by “violent oppressors”, and there is no rule of law by which protestors can seek redress, but the notion that it’s okay to dox people because you took a poll somewhere that included some percentage of Belarusians is downright naive and scary, and doesn’t smell much better at all than the government itself, however true it may be.
That Apple steps in and micromanages at this level is the disturbing element in my opinion, because certainly they’re only doing it because they were notified by Belarusian authorities, but to me the greater issue is the mob justice, against which there is also no appeal or redress, which to me is very scary, even if in this instance it is correct.
Getting government contracts and keeping a market open is vastly more important.
Plus the whole privacy thing is just marketing, they have worked with the US government with PRISM. They will keep running the advertisements regardless if they sell your data to a government or corporation.
Having said this, you can still use Telegram Web on Safari to bypass these restrictions.
Visible but disabled items can be important for discoverability.
Knowing when and where to apply which ux rules is probably more important than knowing all the rules.
FTR: I'm happy to work with what I think are good ux-ers so they certainly do exist.
Edit: Reading the article again, there is actually a very simple fix to view these posts: Go over to your friend with an android and access them to there, and then remember to buy android in the future to avoid censorship like this. This is surely the main reason Apple doesn't let them show this note.
Showing where user generated content has been censored and the rational as to why is definitely a feature I would want to have regardless of how inconvenient it might be - especially in the context of political discussions.
Second, them being irrelevant is certainly not a good reason to forbid those notices.
Third, that they are forbidden makes them all the more relevant.
> Previously, when removing posts at Apple’s request, Telegram replaced those posts with a notice that cited the exact rule limiting such content for iOS users. However, Apple reached out to us a while ago and said our app is not allowed to show users such notices because they were “irrelevant”.
Fucking hell, Apple.
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cough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Ministry_...