I paid for an iPhone for my mom so that she could not load whatever she damn well pleases, because if she does I have to deal with the mess afterwards.
Some folks are okay with walled gardens for specific purposes. If that's not you, that's fine. Perhaps Apple iDevices are then not for you.
There are several, very easy to imagine mechanisms that both provide user freedom and security/idiot-resistance at the same time.
For instance, extending the "parental control" feature to have a toggle for sideloading - then, you just turn on parental control, toggle that off, and keep the PIN. Done.
The idea that the features of the product should completely unnecessarily be restricted for all users for the dubious benefit of a tiny subset of them is laughable. The only logically consistent motive to advocate for this is profit.
If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.
Very, very bad and consumer-hostile sentiment that is inconsistent both with good ethics and with the way that the regulatory system works currently.
Regulations on goods sold exist for a purpose - to allow the user to generally buy things while having some guarantees about their lifetime/security/safety/consistency with marketing/etc.
"If you don't like it, don't buy it" implies that companies should be able to sell goods made with toxic substances, not honor their warranties, lie on their marketing, and steal and sell your personal medical information. This is bad.
If I buy a product, I expect to be able to do whatever I want with it, and to not have arbitrary limitations on how I use that product that exist purely for the sake of making the seller more rich, and this is consistent with the way that consumer protection regulations work in general.
> Uniformity and convention over configuration and customization is why people feel why iOS is more stable and secure than the Android ecosystem as a whole.
False. The vast majority of people have no opinions of whether Android or iOS is more secure. Slightly more, but very few, of them have any opinions on their relative stability, and you can attribute exactly all of that instability to a mix between (1) manufacturers making terrible drivers and support packages for their hardware and (2) Google being generally bad at designing software. It has nothing to do with "uniformity" or "convention over configuration" at all.
No one is forcing you to buy products you don’t like. You’re confusing government sanctioned duopolies (created from bad regulation) like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T for Apple. You are free to buy alternative products from other companies.
> It has nothing to do with "uniformity" or "convention over configuration" at all.
Actually it does. The hardware is uniform and consistent, and therefore so are the drivers. There is a price to choice. Google is also one of the best software companies in the world.
There are choices made for use - having a phone on which everyone around communicates, having an internet connection from the only provider in the area.
Uniformity is a choice if the alternative is a viable choice and this is a complex matter.
And look where it got us.
With regulations. That people generally accept and agree are necessary to some extent...
> No one is forcing you to buy products you don’t like.
...even for goods that you have the option of not purchasing. It literally doesn't matter how many baby bottle manufacturers there are in the US - it is illegal for all of them to put BPA in their baby bottle products, regardless of whether their competitors don't.
> You’re confusing government sanctioned duopolies
No, I'm not. The US has boatloads of laws making it illegal to sell various things in markets where there's absolutely no monopolies/duopolies/oligopolies and buyers have ample choices, such as the above.
> Actually it does. The hardware is uniform and consistent, and therefore so are the drivers.
You're intentionally changing the use of "uniformity" from being about high-level OS user-facing design ("the features of the product should completely unnecessarily be restricted for all users for the dubious benefit of a tiny subset of them" + "Uniformity and convention over configuration" = talking about OS design) to implementation, which is a completely separate issue that's unrelated to the current discussion about user freedom. This is an admittedly clever slight of hand, but makes your point no less invalid.
> There is a price to choice.
Sure - but you haven't shown what the price is to allowing users to use whatever app store they want, you've just brought in completely irrelevant examples like phone hardware choice.
> Google is also one of the best software companies in the world.
Regardless of the truth of this statement, it doesn't change the fact that they're generally bad (note that "bad" is absolute, "best" is relative) at designing software, per my lived experience with dozen of bugs in dozens of Google products across browsers and operating systems over years of use.
Apple's freedom is to make their devices as they see fit. User's freedom is to vote with her wallet. Feel free to buy whatever device you like if you want to have the ability to shoot yourself in the foot and get pwned, I like to have it in some circumstances but it's not what I would recommend to all of my non-tech contacts. I appreciate most EU privacy laws but not where it comes close to taking people's choice to voluntarily give up some freedoms for security, it's the opposite of empowering them.
> The vast majority of people have no opinions of whether Android or iOS is more secure.
This is just some random unsubstantiated claim. Apple buys entire billboards in city centers that basically promote privacy. You are saying you know better than their entire marketing department.
Even laypeople pay attention and notice that it's their Android owning friends' bank accounts get hijacked but not iPhone owning friends, etc.
> you can attribute exactly all of that instability to
Whatever you attribute this to, potato, potato, the end result is one has been more stable, more secure, supported for longer, more profitable for indie app developers etc than the other.
So much misinformation
No one is forcing “everything to be homogenous”. If you don’t like homogeneity, then avoid it. It’s not hard to understand. My choices are none of your business just like I’m not going to criticize you for wanting more freedom to customize your device at the expense of security and stability.
Maybe purchase a different product that more closely aligns with your needs.
0: ie. someone watches you enter your apple id and passcode and later swipes your phone, only to sideload spyware that hides itself from the UI, then re-plants your phone without you knowing
Yet, it's up to me to decide whether I want that security or whether I want to trade security for freedom/flexibility. Not you, or any other authoritarians seeking to exert control over others.
> Maybe purchase a different product that more closely aligns with your needs.
This is an incredibly toxic and user-hostile sentiment that also is completely inconsistent with the way that consumer protection laws work in general[1].
I absolutely can manifest that choice - but it doesn't matter, because I have the right to be able to make that choice for any particular manufacturer.
> To quote your linked comment, I wouldn't expect you nor any other sane consumer to purchase goods that are "made with toxic substances, not honor their warranties, lie on their marketing, and steal and sell your personal medical information".
It doesn't matter that you wouldn't expect one to - it's wrong for a seller to sell one of those things at all, and that's why we've enshrined into our legal system that "some bad things are illegal to sell, regardless of whether the consumer has the ability to avoid them or not".
> Apple does not do any of that
It's pretty blindingly obvious that I'm not claiming that Apple is doing any of those things, and just using that as an example of the point that "some things are illegal to sell".
> and I think that you're intentionally derailing the discussion by comparing their guidelines + practices to any of the above.
The one who is doing that is you, by intentionally misinterpreting my words and reading things that I didn't write. The comparison is entirely apt - "we have laws against selling/doing some bad things x, Apple is selling/doing bad things y, even though x != y it's reasonable to have laws against also selling/doing bad things y".
Discussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11231631
Instead, the proposal is that people be able to install whatever software they want, that runs as a normal iOS app subject to the iOS security restrictions. Being able to install a non-Apple-approved app does not give you the ability to read and write arbitrary kernel memory, or do other actually dangerous things.
This is a strange red herring. Attacks of this form are protected from by the OS, not the App Store. You can't do attacks like this by sideloading apps onto your own phone in developer mode because iOS itself protects against this - and we're discussing specifically allowing users to choose what App Store they use, not relaxing any of the security restrictions of the OS. Someone familiar with the basics of OS design would be aware of this distinction.
Sure, you could say that I should just use this "Developer Edition", but that requires me to have access to install it on every puter I walk up to (just to be prepared for somewhat common web attrocities like full-page elements that prevent me from interacting with the page in ways that I feel should never be forbidden).
I don't tend to see 'warning' messages in the dev console that seem to be attempts to dissuade me from using the dev tools. Maybe…twice in >20 years?
https://www.kandji.io/mdm/start/product/?nis=8
https://www.jamf.com/lp/apple-mobile-device-management-mdm-j...
https://www.hexnode.com/mobile-device-management/macos-devic...
Even today it is not ok to be careless with what you put on your machine, but in a couple of decades, it could be a true disaster, specially if public services are fully tied to your digital identity. You would not want your digital self to be entertaining any random* program as guest.
* effectively random - see first point
But having a debilitating disease is a different story and beyond the persons control.
Given a choice, I and many others here will continue to learn and adapt.
The subset might include you, or a majority of HN people even. Just a smaller % of population than currently.
Regards your > Given a choice
If you have family with such issues, you know it wasn't a choice. Getting older means facing mental plasticity slowdown. You can work to be fit on that front sure, but it is an issue that we will all face and not everyone will choose as you do.
I am not sure I agree with GP's assertion that technology will be inherently harder to deal with though.
This issue can not be decided based on what is appropriate for a niche segment of society. We have a variety of options to serve the general society -- state/control, state/licensing, state/regulation, private/corporate, public/ngo, public/community, personal/ai, personal/expertise. These are not mutually exclusive options and we should discuss the possible configurations, optimal for general societal welfare, rather than denying that the problem exists.
One possibility that comes to mind is that we could possibly rely on trustworthy AI to help us understand the implications of using X in full. So if not walled gardens maybe private landscape architects or AI gardeners.
But one of the two will be required for digital life.
Security researchers, for example, can disable it. And use this to find security vulnerabilities.
The point is, as users we should have the ability... Apple (or any company) should not be allowed to dictate what people are & are not allowed to do on the devices they own.
I don't want to buy a Nokia. Apple's hardware is really good and I want to buy their devices. I just don't want to become a serf in their digital fiefdom.
There is no reason to consider the OS and the App Store part of the device, other than marketing.
I agree with the GP and prefer the current iOS landscape.
For now. Remote attestation is already a thing and soon Android apps will refuse to work on phones that have been "tampered with".
You paid to own it, Apple puts in rules as if you're renting it. It doesn't matter that you can hack it. You shouldn't have to hack your own hardware.
It’s ridiculous to say expect that Apple is obligated in helping you use the device in ways not designed to work. Would you expect Apple also to make it possible to run PlayStation games?
No, of course not. We all know that the ability to run on unapproved roads isn't a "feature", but rather the inability to run on an unapproved road is an anti-feature that they built in the first place. For that matter, the inability to run playstation games outside a playstation is also an anti-feature which had to be engineered by Sony. For that matter, do you buy razors that only fit Gillette approved blade designs? So why restrictions on computing devices then?
I will give credit where its due in that Apple is upfront about the nature of the walled garden. Who knows, maybe there really is a market for cars that only go to approved places.
Most people that argue for your desired outcome can at least see that there are non-zero user-facing benefits to a walled garden. Do you really not have anyone in your life that isn’t an idealistic tech savvy power user? Apple obviously has financial incentive to maintain its 30% transaction cut, and it’s made some silly arguments to try to maintain that. However it’s also raised some very legitimate and well thought-out downsides.
At this point, the conversation has evolved so far beyond the “it’s a road!” analogy that continuing with that line of reasoning feels either ignorant or acting in bad faith, not because of any “won ground” by the pro walled garden lot, but because all that are interested in a legitimate debate know that these misleading comparisons help nobody.
Everything intelligent comes with a set of software. You can replace that software (on almost everything?), but then it's up to you to maintain the setup how you like. That's not unique to iOS.
It is kind of strange if you own something 100% and you can't sell it.
Also, if you buy an Xbox, Tesla, Fitbit watch, fridge, etc. you can’t load whatever you please, either. Why would all smartphones be different?
If you look at it historically, the PC is about the only device allowing that kind of user control.
Because corporations maintaining such control over what should have been our computers is fundamentally unjust. It turns us into serfs of their digital fiefdoms where they make the laws and collect the taxes and tariffs.
Well you should be able to. If the customer is powerless to stop it we're going to see cars and fridges playing ads at full volume very soon.
Someone doing something bad doesn't excuse someone else for doing the same thing.
Historically, women couldn't vote, does that excuse countries that prevent women from voting from doing so, too?
Why should we give a shit about historical norms? For most of history most children died at childbirth. Does that mean we should accept a >50% infant mortality rate?
Are you new here? All of these things are examples of locked down ecosystems that most of us in favor of this change also want unlocked.
The idea that you can own a device and can't do whatever you want with it is asinine. If you can't do what you want, you don't own it.
"Introducing: iLess - A $15/month optional subscription fee that removes sideloading from your phone."
Sure to be a smash hit, sounds like exactly what you're looking for!
The trouble is that the walled garden approach only works if the wall goes all the way around. If Facebook, Google, or the other big ad companies are allowed to access the iOS ecosystem without consumer protections, then they absolutely will and will force users to go along with it. This is about developer freedom, not user freedom.
Apple does. I buy a Macbook, and I can modify the bootloader to completely leave MacOS. It's a pain in the ass, and Apple certainly doesn't make it easy as it was on x86, but it's an option. Even if I use MacOS, I still have the option to disable system integrity, install unsigned apps and use third-party software managers.
That's a system that lets me escape the walled garden. They give me concessions inside their OS and an escape-hatch for third-party OSes if they really fuck things up. The iPhone has none of those things. If you buy an iPhone, your only way to leave the walled garden is to not use the iPhone. Buying an Android phone does not break your iPhone out of the walled garden.
Without this becoming a rant, what fraction of that "security" is protecting you from nothing more than apps that didn't pay the Apple tax. You must admit, the narrative that only approved apps are "good"/"safe" is insanely self serving and conveniently hard to falsify.
You have a point but without Apple’s restrictions, someone can build tracking free Facebook client too, if that’s something people want.
The fact that Facebook can do any spying on you at all (because it can still track you, on your current Apple device, right now) is because government regulators are dropping the ball. It's not Apple's responsibility, it's not something they're good at, and it's not something that they should be doing.
The government, so far, has been rather toothless in terms of ensuring the privacy of people and have issued paltry fines to the companies that amounted to no more than a slap on the wrist and extracting a promise that they'll do better next time (with their hands behind their back and fingers crossed).
The reason I purchase apple devices is because they are the only ones that are taking my privacy seriously.
Government regulators are letting the market decide how valuable customer data is and Apple is saying "it is valuable and our customers value not letting random people getting it." Thus, I am voting with my wallet because in this case, votes for elected officials isn't doing much.
Well... https://www.macrumors.com/2022/11/21/icloud-for-windows-corr...
You don't need the App Store for security, it isn't a dichotomy.
Then [company] lose marketshare to those who don't care about anything outside of the App Store, and when media outlets and social networks pick up on how [company] app on this third party store tracks so much more information than it used to, even more people will uninstall. It's what we've seen on Android for years, there is a huge reputation factor when it comes to third party app stores. That reputation factor is the reason why F-Droid is the major choice outside of the Play Store.
There is incentive here for app developers to continue to provide solid services. Just not Facebook, as their primary goal is tracking.
Epic Games is going to put their own storefront on iOS, and it's going to have few if any of the polices for customer protection that the App Store does.
Then an app like F-Droid will come along and offer even more protections than the App Store. Confound it!
For my part, this is a step in the right direction. With a few more fixes, iOS might even become usable enough for me to buy a device that runs it.
If you wanted to use an abusive subscription system currently you would have to do it outside the app via a web browser
If Facebook makes a change that kills the low-tracking front-ends and insists everyone be tracked more, and in response you grovel to them and put up with their new app, then no amount of EU law or App store law was ever going to protect you from yourself. Apple store polices are a red herring, the problem you're actually highlighting is the adversarial relation you have with fb.
If it requires diving in to Settings or connecting the phone to a computer -- Facebook would never abandon the App Store, friction to using side-loading would be too high.
Reminder that Epic tried this with Fortnite and eventually went back on the play store. And this was on the platform that had sideloading since day one.
I’m free to resolve my cancelled flight by either waiting a week for the free alternative or buying a combination of rail and ferry tickets to get me from Stansted to Berlin, but only because I have an understanding boss, enough money, and an app which can get me arbitrary hotels on route because that’s more than a day’s journey unless I plan to sleep in a train station.
I’m free to not remain in a country whose politics or laws I dislike. But only because I got lucky with a few things.
I’m free to not download any app which forces me to sideload. But only because they don’t exist yet on iOS (except for the ways that apparently never counted according to all the people demanding this) — there’s too many ways a theoretical “optional” can become an “actually mandatory”, from laws to employers to defacto monopolies, and those are just the ones I’ve seen examples of in other contexts.