Have we visited the same appstore? Just few days ago I tried to find a puzzle game for my kid and myself to play together. A whole bunch of them, from top results, resulted in games which had shady dark UI initial screens trying to get to $14.99 or similar monthly subscriptions. Eventually I caved in to arcade sub because I couldn't trust any of the results or find a normal paid one (once). Scammy at best.
The crApp Store is full of scams. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/06/apple-a...
https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-scams-apple-app-store-go...
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/pig-b...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2021/05/15/apple-ip...
https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/11/developer-exposes-another-mul...
There's practically endless proof and documentation for this.
The App Store is actually a honeypot for scammers. It's a single point of failure, because once you get past app review, which is easy, you're home free, and it's also relatively easy to manipulate App Store search, App Store ratings and reviews, and App Store Search Ads.
As a non-scam App Store developer, my biggest problem is discovery, i.e., getting my app in front of the eyeballs of potential customers. It's vastly easier to do that in the App Store than it is via so-called sideloading, especially if you have no ethics. (Unfortunately, I do have ethics, which significantly limits my options for discovery.)
Your logic states that because an app can occasionally slip through the review process, that we should remove -all- protections. That isn't better, that's worse.
A scam is also a relatively low bar to set for such drastic change, since scams also frequently occur over chat apps and the kinds of access that side-loading and 3rd party stores can avail opens the door to significantly more sophisticated malware. If you truly think the situation right now is bad, just wait until there are no protections for users.
You should also recognise that there is actual data for malware on these platforms. Every year Nokia drive home the same point for why Android has such an outsized share of malware: "...most smartphone malware is distributed as trojanized applications and since Android users can load application from just about anywhere, it’s much easier to trick them into installing applications that are infected with malware."
Since all experts point to the same sources of malware - perhaps that's not the change we should be legislating. How about we do something different.
I know that this system may be unattainable for some, namely children, the elderly and the intellectually disabled. But maybe we shouldn't be designing general purpose computers around the lowest common denominators of society, for the same reason you wouldn't design a car for the legally blind or a book for the illiterate.
The nature of smartphones and the internet has some pretty large consequences for the economy, politics, war, and global surveilance. I understand that some people don't know how to manage their own computer, but if you really think everyone's computers should be controlled by dictators and buerocrats maybe you should just go live in a third world country instead.
Then the consumer can make that decision for themselves.
Your position here seems to be that consumers are too dumb to make that decision, but clever enough to fend off sophisticated malware attacks. You are even so gracious to note that perhaps this might be out of reach for ordinary users (well done you! you nearly got there)
If only there was a large and popular platform of devices with side-loading and 3rd party app stores available for us to already see the consequences of what this change does to malware rates. Let's call this hypothetical platform "Android", and then a well respected security report, say by Nokia, could include statistics about this "Android" malware.
Well, you're in luck dear friend! Actual security experts state: "most smartphone malware is distributed as trojanized applications and since Android users can load application from just about anywhere, it’s much easier to trick them into installing applications that are infected with malware". (worth stating twice because I don't think it sunk in the first time.)
So real security experts are advising the opposite approach from you, funny that.
As for a 3rd world country, maybe you should run one since you have the ego of a dictator.
I think somehow Apple found a way to group both limited intellects and intellectually dishonest. This way the second group can pry on the first one and they seem very happy about that.
If you were to listen to them, every windows PC is infested with malware, yet even my grandma that is over 80 years old operates a windows PC without much trouble. She doesn't install nonsense and ask competent people about stuff. Which is exactly the kind of relation Apple wants to steal. So they can charge a lot of money for it, making people dependent so they are fragile. And when they have no other choice anymore, charge as much as you can. Classic sociopath behavior...
If you need to strawman the opposing point of discussion. Then you don't have an argument, instead you're the fanatic.
On top of the strawman nonsense, you attack me as naive. You said the previous poster he had the ego of a dictator. If there is someone who needs to rely on something else than reasonable argument (personal attacks) that's clearly you. It's rather funny because you illustrate exactly the point I alluded to before: intellectual dishonesty.
An insurer/ health insurer, employer, government, etc will require it, and just like that the "just don't use them" crowd will hold up their hands and pretend that no one could have imagined this disaster.
If the problem is truly Apple exhibiting favouritism or limiting competition through their app approval process: then the EU should have just forced them to spin it out into an independent entity for the EU stores, or even take control of it themselves - but they didn't and 2024/25 is going to be a shitshow for it.
Legislating for side loading and multiple app stores is the least imaginative and most obviously flawed approach to the competition problem and the sole reason why Android's share of malware is staggering in comparison to iOS.
You’re making a very simple issue way more complicated than it needs to be. Having Apple spin out EU specific new corporate entities with unclear relationships to its parent company sounds extremely complex.
Requiring Apple to allow people to install apps they want on their own device is pretty simple and should be a fundamental expectation of a free society.
If normal user wants the walled garden Apple experience, that’s fine. Make it unintuitive to install third party apps. Require checking a big red disclaimer that you might brick your phone. But just have some sort of path where if party A made an app and party B wants it on the device they paid a lot of money for, they can do that without some unqualified drone in Cupertino blocking it .
Countless examples of the App Store review being broken , and just on principle, Apple has what’s effectively a monopoly on mobile phones in that you can’t make a mobile app and ignore iPhone and for them to unilaterally decide all software that’s allowed is way too much power.
Somehow Microsoft went to the Supreme Court for putting IE on the desktop but Apple is off the hook for a complete lockdown. At least you could download Netscape on Windows 95! What Apple is doing is like if AOL and AOL keywords became the only entry point to the web. Then you go on Hacker News and people say that’s s good thing because AOL only allows quality websites and otherwise people make malware and scam websites. It doesn’t matter, it’s too much power for one company and mobile phones are more critical to society in 2023 than the web was in the 90s. Mobile phones are not appliances.
It’s still unfathomable to me this is even a conversation on this website. Apples complete lockdown of the most important computing devices is plainly bad for consumers and society.
It's interesting to me that your core argument is about making a choice whether or not to embrace side-loading and 3rd party app stores. However aren't users making this choice when they buy the phone to begin with. Side loading and 3rd party app stores aren't a secret, many Android manufacturers use this as a selling point and include their own stores baked-in.
I'm somehow to believe that users are simultaneously clever and dumb - and I'm not buying it.
Or how else do you claim there is two sides here?
Pretending that Apple is protecting consumers is silly, they have repeatedly said internally the lock is for revenue alone. No claim of security protection has lasted past "wouldn't sideloaded apps be sandboxed the same as App Store apps and thus have the same security overall"? (Apple failed to counter that point)
That's clearly not what is written, don't invent a false narrative with your lack of comprehension skills.
Also going to need a citation for this beauty:
>"they [apple] have repeatedly said internally the lock is for revenue alone"
But judging from your reading skills earlier, I don't have confidence in it being forthcoming.
The reality is the author dismissed Apple supporting side loading as fundamentally impossible in a thread talking about how Apple should offer more choices.
Calling users dumb for wanting side loading on Apple is ridiculous on its face. Users didn't choose Apple to side load they might have sacrificed side loading to get Apple but calling them dumb for making a choice is ridiculous.
Apple makes $86 billion from the App Store a year. That is a quarter of their revenue from iPhone sales. No shot a 25% increase in revenue with phenomenally higher margins isn't of extreme importance to Apple.
They got in their head that users were stupid for choosing Apple when they wanted side loading but that isn't stupid in the context of "should Apple allow sideloading".
I'll support any sideloading regulation that includes all of these protections. As it stands this is only a law in some countries/regions and certainly not something everyone will be protected by if they happen to be outside of EU (and maybe US) jurisdiction.
If my company is mandating the installation of software on my devices, I'll request a corporate device and assume the company has root access on said device.
Employer installed apps is a use case Apple officially support.
On Android where alternate storefronts are a possibility, I have yet to be made aware of a single instance of this happening. Not even Epic in their crusade against established mobile stores made its' own platform.
1. You're not looking very hard, surveillance ware exists for employment, examinations and so on. It's not available on iOS, but is available on Android via side loading. Both Facebook and Google used iOS certificates to side load tracking apps onto iOS for regular consumers. Even rental cars brands have utilised surveillance software to track speed and apply fines. The more you dig here the more you find: it's not some outlandish concept.
2. The inability to run such types of software on iOS prevents these approaches from moving forward across the industry. Much the same way that QR codes weren't widely utilised until both Android and iOS supported it.
That's doing a lot of work. There's "... to be usable" but also "... to be automatically and unfilterably merged".
They are very different situations. What specifically are you concerned about? I'd guess that latter but you seem to be defending the former as though it is the latter.
If you bought an iPhone because you wanted protection from the purported dangers of third-party apps, then ... just don't install any...?
Android allows third party app stores and it is not a significant cause of problems. I am sure there must be some bad app stores out there, but the well known ones like F-Droid are probably better curated than Google's own.
Linux has always allowed third party repositories. Again, rarely a source of problems - again, there must be some bad things out there but the percentage of users affected is tiny.
Refusing other users the freedom to run the apps they want without Apple's permission just because you might get mildly inconvenienced by it seems very immoral to me.
These alternative app stores will be infinitely more trust worthy than apple, amazon, google etc
If there is no payment or the trial is canceled one could use the digital id.
Apple could even gather some simple statistics. Opening the app and using it for 1 minute would be a special kind of review. You wouldn't count 1 star reviews like that until manual review-review confirms the app is really that bad.
Well no, the appstore is as full of scams, malware and adware as everywhere else.
They managed somehow to convince people it's a safe space though, not sure how but I consider it a bad thing since people are more likely to trust it blindly.
> such as people at higher risks of being targeted by nation state actors
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/absher-%D8%A3%D8%A8%D8%B4%D8%B...
The Saudi Arabian app to track what your wife is doing is still on the appstore, no need for a thirdparty store.
While I usually don't like the saudi system but this app in particular is about making it easy to manage official government paperwork online [1]. This applies for all residents (citizens or not) and people really like it. So it is not an app to track females movements. While you can disagree or agree on the male approval requirements for a female to travel (I disagree) but it is not like it tracks movements using GPS or any invasive data. It just make it easier to manage the permits and all other interactions with the government without having to drive long distances and wait in lines.
Well as a complete outsider in another country who probably never went to Saudi Arabia like yourself, I would be more careful.
I'm open to some kind of argument like "apple has no choice in such dictatorship" but this argument is contradictory with the argument that its protecting from nation states.
And since we mentioned Saudi arabia, we can also mention China where icloud is dodgy, it's not a unique case. I'm sure they are others I don't know about.
This is one service among all other government interactions services that the app provide. If the app is not here. Women still need to get male guardian approval because this is local law. You can disagree on that matter (I am not defending or debating it). I was just clarifying.
And yes, apple has to follow local laws. The app doesn't collect privacy invasive information used to track movements as your comment suggested. And it is not required to be on your phone.
No stores. Web install. Web first class. No "only Safari/webkit engine" limitation.
If Apple is so genius, they can solve malware with all of those engineering minds and dollars they have. They don't need to hind behind a store to do that. The tools and techniques are readily available and accessible for a company of their size and stature.
Permission layer, app runtime heuristics, and fingerprints are a start. They can do this. They just don't want to / have to, because they're currently Gods of the Phone Universe with unfettered and completely unfair control over "their domain".
How does that work? If it's open web download and install with no notarization (because that's also gatekeeping) then we're back to the good ol' days of the 90's and early 00's. In other words, anything goes and it's up to the user to keep themselves secure, which in practice means rampant security failures and users getting scammed and hit with ransomware at every turn.
I don't like Apple having so much control over everything. I really preferred the old days of the web and the anything goes, full control over my computers I had back then. But the web is absolutely way nastier today. It's jam packed with scammers and ransomware gangs and botnets. It's really quite sad and frustrating for anyone who grew up with the full potential of computing.
A lot of the solution is just not to install random shit out of app stores, and to install software that has a good reputation (and use adblockers on search engines like google so you don't click on trojan ads).
If you scroll down to the 10th page of the listings for 2048-clone games and install something at random you're probably going to get hacked.
They installed some kind of DNS redirector, so, when he thought he was contacting Apple, he was actually talking to a scammer.
Their customer service was great, which I told him, should have been a red flag.
In any case, he was able to extricate himself from the scammers, but not before they had grabbed a bunch of PiD, so he’s still dealing with the whole identity theft issue.
Not sure how he got owned. Likely, some drive-by malware on a Web site. He basically uses Safari as his operating system.
And the threat surface of the iOS sandbox is so large that it’s impossible to secure everything everywhere the first time. Every iOS jailbreak since at least iOS 10 starts with a sandbox escape exploit and executed via a sideloaded app (besides the single hardware exploit found in recent years, checkm8)
An App Store with a human review process is one tool in the toolbox.
> Permission layer, app runtime heuristics, and fingerprints are a start. They can do this.
I think this is Google’s approach. How’s that been going?
People could pay Apple to vette sources to indicate that software therein isn't malware even if it doesn't follow other Apple standards.
Anyone maximally concerned would just only use Apple sources. If Apple was less onerous about trying to get a cut most major software would be in the official store. Say a 5% cut.
Remember at one time the manufacturer trying to get a cut of the action on a device was rightfully absurd.
Your oven doesn't refuse to bake a pie unless Betty Crocker cut in GE nor did Magnavox require a cut from blockbuster.
Both could be implimented for your protection and both would have been protection rackets. Apple's arrangement is as well it's just that the mob actually oversees permits too and charges on the way in.
If you could trivially use only official apps and most apps would be available as such how would you be harmed?