Google's Play Store allows Meta apps more permissions than Apple's App Store currently does.

Meta lost tens of billions in market value (and an estimated $10 billion a year in revenue) when the new Apple App Store privacy rules went into effect. That's a powerful incentive.

Yes, Apple is pretty good about privacy. That'll be one reason for Meta and others to create their own stores.

Valve, Epic Games, and Nintendo seem better about privacy but are barred from iOS.

Does Valve or the Epic Games store have a privacy policy they enforce on products they sell? I didn't think so. How are they "better about privacy"?

Also, Nintendo products and Fortnight both were in the App Store store.

Valve and Nintendo are barred from iOS in what way? I have the Steam Link app on my iPad, and there are several Nintendo games in the App Store.

Steam cannot distribute apps on ios.

Steam doesn’t distribute apps on Android either? Is it even something they’d want to do?

I'm sure they'd love to - someone else pays for the ecosystem, and they just sell software in it with no markup (or they keep the markup, rather than the ecosystem creator).

I would argue that apple doesn't do this for the good of the users, apples own apps are not restricted in the same way others are. The whole point is giving their own apps an edge over everyone else. This is what gives apple the power to demand deals like the recently covered deal with Google that gave them billions in search revenue.

And just by pure coincidence, Apple started to push much more of their ads in their App Store around that time.

The incentive for Meta, etc to start their own “anything goes” app stores was low when it was a possibility only on Android. It being possible on iOS changes the equation significantly with how iOS users are typically higher value targets due to how on average, they buy/spend more.

It also gives them the opportunity to normalize per-megacorp app stores across the board instead of them always being a weird Android thing like they be if Meta opened an App Store on Android now.

I'm sure it'll be a weird iOS thing too if it happens. Apple is going to make it as difficult as they possibly can, the same way sideloading is not trivial on Android for normal users.

Also running a third party store does not have to mean being able to break privacy protections. If the ecosystem relies on app inspections that much it simply needs to be secured better.

> If the ecosystem relies on app inspections that much it simply needs to be secured better.

How do you secure something without inspection? We have health code inspections for restaurants, car safety and emissions inspections, IAEA inspectors visiting nuclear facilities… Should we throw all those out too? What replaces them, the goodwill and word of people?

The ostrich is saying that the technical sandbox controls of the is will still be present.

Those will never be good enough to overcome social engineering.

The OP... The technical controls of the OS...

Autocorrect and a lack of editing are a bad combo.

In this analogy, getting to design the system on which the apps run is something like being able to alter the local laws of physics so that car exhaust simply can't contain pollution.

What I mean is, the OS should not allow apps to do these things. Rather than inspecting the code and strictly banning any dynamic code (one of the reasons emulators are not allowed), the apps should just not be allowed to do things like call hidden APIs at OS level.

They don’t read the code afaik; they prevent memory page being marked both write and execute (with an exception for javascriptcore specifically).

W^X pages are one of the most widespread sources of RCE bugs, and banning them by default is a good idea.

> If the ecosystem relies on app inspections that much it simply needs to be secured better.

How likely is this when Apple aren't getting paid for apps any more? Who should pay for it?

No what I mean is that regardless of the apps that run, there should be no way to circumvent it. The OS should enforce this.

It's not always that simple. What if I make an app that asks for some data from you "for it to function", and then posts that data to somewhere it shouldn't, there's not a lot to be done about that from an OS enforcement perspective.

If you're posting on Hacker News you're not likely the one most vulnerable to Meta's tactics.