Right, and they hate it. There's a reason why the iPhone and App Store were such a massive hit. People will choose convenience and security over freedom most of the time.
And before you argue against this, Apple fans use the exact same argument: Apple knows best, we don't want to think for ourselves.
Apple helped the masses, and the masses reward Apple by being the most valuable user base in the world
That's what Apple thinks, yes.
> Apple helped the masses, and the masses reward Apple by being the most valuable user base in the world
Yes, rich people buy (perceived) luxury products. Apple's greatest skill is positioning itself as a luxury product.
Let’s not pretend Apple isn’t building the best consumer silicon in the world and the most secure and user-friendly consumer operating systems in the world. That’s not even considering their supply chain innovations.
Apple devices are superior to their competition in just about every objective measure.
Apple was in shambles before the iPod/iPhone. You think the iPhone succeeded because of marketing? You don’t think the fact that they made multi-touch displays easy to use was relevant to their success?
Apple products are so desired that people get resentful when they can’t afford them. Then they post moronic takes on HN from their Samsungs
Their vehement success in Xserve proved that Apple does so well in low-margin markets. Wait a minute...
You seem to be ignoring this fact and blindly arguing that the Mac/Windows world of installing apps is superior.
Which many of us disagree with.
Citation needed. People hate that they can buy games from Steam rather than having to go through the Windows app store?
People will choose convenience and security over freedom most of the time.
And if that's their choice, fine. But it should actually be a choice.
So the Facebook app (and Instagram, WhatsApp, and whatever else Facebook owns these days) would be able to collect as much data as the OS itself allows, without any kind of warnings before install.
It could potentially even use private APIs of some sort to bypass Apple's OS-level permissions dialogs and collect data without even asking the user first—it's unclear, at this point, to what extent Apple would be able to police this sort of behavior from motivated bad actors like Facebook when they're not being distributed through Apple's App Store.
iOS is sandboxed so they can’t do anything outside of the context of that app. To use any APIs that would require a permission dialogue you have to make a request to get a handle on them which only happens after a user grants permission, you can’t just reach into these. This is baked into the OS. Apps like the ones you’re talking about already hoover up is much data as possible in this context.
iOS itself is actually really good at this and can be improved and hardened further, Apple wants you to believe it’s somehow their review process and strict distribution channel that makes this possible.
But beside that point, Facebook has been able to force side loading on Android for years and still distributes via the Play Store, so that’s probably at least some evidence that they believe that distribution channel to be worthwhile.
But this concern requires a few things to be true:
- An alternative app store is created that does not employ any form of restriction to protect users from this
- Legitimate apps that an end user needs see value in publishing themselves on this alternative app store
- There is a critical mass of users that prefer the alternative app store, such that the legitimate app publisher no longer sees value in publishing to Apple's app store
- As a result, those users who would have preferred the privacy and safety that Apple provides are now forced to use the new app store
This is a possible doomsday scenario, but it's not clear to me that enforcing and protecting a market in which Apple is effectively guaranteed a profit on everyone else's apps is the right solution? If this were to happen, perhaps we address those apps through direct legislation that targets user privacy, akin to what the EU has started to move on? Or a solution similar to this.