> , but I can sell, distribute, and install apps outside of it without giving Apple a cut.

I want this personally for me. But I paid extra money to get my mom and iPhone exactly because she won't be able to stuff like this.

I used to regularly have to fix her android phone and the last time she was tryinf to download an app for tracking hours at work, and somehow downloaded the wrong app with a similar name, this app loaded with 3 different pop ups telling her to install other ad filled apps with generic names like "PDF reader".

OP is right, it should be an explicit jailbreaking process that has a technical barrier to entry where my mom can't be talked into doing it over the phone but an enterprising young person could figure it out.

Apple has a setting in macOS that disables installing apps outside of the App Store. This would be a completely reasonable setting for iOS for less tech savvy people.

It's fine if it's the default honestly, as long as it exists as a setting you can change.

This is literally default Android setting, and it even shows scary dialog that sideloading can negatively impact your device.

Yet the EU got mad at android for ‘barriers’ to sideloading like this since it ‘unfairly’ makes it harder to install third party App Stores.

Agreed! macOS has really done a fantastic job balancing out the needs of security with usability.

They'll lock it down like an iPhone soon enough. The writing has been on the wall for years. Apple and Microsoft are frothing at the mouth to do this. But they have to do slowly boil the frog, because they know it's the only way people will accept these kind of changes.

> The writing has been on the wall for years

People have been saying this for more than a decade, but it still hasn’t happened; there are still zero restrictions about what you can and can’t install on macOS.

There are plenty of junk apps in the App Store now. Apple does a good job marketing trustworthiness, but having competing app stores may at least get them to put more effort into backing it up.

Please link to a single one that installs malware or does backgrounf popups as is possible in Android.

Are you suggesting your Mom has/would have the same experience on macOS? For whatever reason it doesn't seem to be as much of an issue.

It probably doesn't need to be as cumbersome as a jailbreak. Maybe it's just a "Allow apps not approved by Apple" toggle hidden deep in the settings. I actually would love the ability to set "IT administrator account" on device setup. Then mom can't even change the setting without notifying "dmix" :)

Apple app store has the exact same problems. There was even a post on HN last week about an scam app being the first result in the app store.

I urge you to ask anyone who provides technical support to the elderly or tech inept what the split is iOS to Android RE scams, malware etc. Nobody's arguing the app store is perfect, but "the exact same problems" is absolutely an incorrect statement.

You're either lying or not reading.

> but "the exact same problems" is absolutely an incorrect statement

> the last time she was trying to download an app for tracking hours at work, and somehow downloaded the wrong app with a similar name

> There was even a post on HN last week about an scam app being the first result in the app store

it's the _exact same problem_

Maybe there a language barrier here.

To me, for the problem to be "exactly" the same, it would need to occur at a similar level. I do not believe (based on my personal or professional experience) that this is occuring at a similar level on iOS or Android.

You're right the same specific style of problem happens at both, but if it's significantly more on one than the other then it's hard to honestly say they're the same.

Your mom would have to go out of her way to find and install a separate app store. You could make it give all sorts of warnings that would scare off a non-tech user like your mom.

IMO the issue is that people get tricked into doing stuff like this. Elderly people seem even more vulnerable.

Agreed. I primarily work as a sysadmin and the amount of people in my organization that fall for phishing is alarming. It’d be incredibly easy to get someone to turn on the “Allow third party apps” setting and install malicious software. People don’t read warnings, they’ll just click “ok” as many times as they need without reading.

That being said I don’t think that’s necessarily a valid reason to completely lock things down, but it definitely should be prohibitively difficult for a vulnerable-to-phishing person to enable.

As a heavy Linux user for most things I feel the same.

I love that I have all non tech savvy people in my life are using. Devices that just work, they all seem happy too. I get the idealistic nature of these lawsuits but people buy these phones for the fact they work and for the protected App Store. Including myself.

I used to regard myself highly as somewhat of an expert in tech, with my relatives and friends as a reference. I would spend days (cumulatively, weeks) customizing and locking down my Windows and Linux machines. I could not imagine paying for a closed product if an open alternative was available, even if it meant more ongoing hassle.

At first I got into Apple’s ecosystem because it ticked the boxes of being Unix-compatible yet very capable (perhaps rivaling Windows) of working with multimedia, which I did and do.

However, the older I get and the more I lurk here and elsewhere, the more I realize there is another reason: I am not an expert, the aforementioned weeks spent on securing my device are not substantially benefitting my life and are better spent on something else, and while no one should completely give up on keeping up-to-date with modern attack vectors paying someone to do that work more competently is worthwhile.

I still go to crazy lengths to avoid closed products in actual work I do, but I consider a base system that is maybe proprietary but just works, and securely enough, to be providing value in that way and enabling me to provide more value in turn.

And I still consider myself more knowledgeable than 95% of my friends and relatives, so there’s them to think about.

Now, everyone bow to dmix'es preferences about his mom.

If you want to child-lock you mom's phone, you should have the ability to do so. Default for adults getting any sort of hardware should be that they are in charge, and any nanny should be opt-in.

You can buy an android if you want. Nothing stops you.

I like how iOS works and I would prefer the government does not force Apple to change anything about it.

Imagine a car manufacturer (say Tesla, who has an edge over others much like Apple) could decide where you can go and who your passengers could be?

It's much safer! Just think what could happen to you in some ghetto! And that guy is completely creepy anyway.

That's pretty much what your argument sounds like to me. Hardware vendors (perhaps other than hardware preconfigured for a particular purpose, i.e. picture frame) should have no say in what runs on that hardware, full stop.

> Imagine a car manufacturer (say Tesla, who has an edge over others much like Apple) could decide where you can go and who your passengers could be?

That’s called public transit.

It would be if you couldn't buy a bus.

> Imagine a car manufacturer (say Tesla, who has an edge over others much like Apple) could decide where you can go and who your passengers could be?

I assume it is legally possibly to sell a car under those conditions, so I don’t even have to imagine. Nobody does it because it would be unpopular and serve no benefit to anyone, not because it’s illegal.

If the first manufacturer to offer decent cars did that and captured the market, it's quite possible that many would put up with it, just as they put up with iphones today.

Oh, and pay a 30% tax on all petrol purchases straight to Mr Ford, how's that?

If after 15 years people were still buying the car despite alternatives, maybe you need to accept that is what people want?

It’s awful twisted that the people trying to use government fiat to reduce consumer choice and narrow the range of acceptable business models try to cloak themselves in the language of rights and freedoms.

Just not the freedom to choose a walled garden (with its own set of - yes - positives). That choice needs to be taken away. For your freedom.

One might say - managed freedom.

Should this be judged against Apple, nothing prevents Apple from maintaining their walled garden, and nothing prevents you from staying in it. It's more freedom, not less.

If nothing would prevent Apple from doing what they're doing today, then what is this case all about? Apple's value proposition with iOS isn't just the app store. It's that the app store IS the only way to get something on to iOS. It has to go through them and their review process first. Their value claim is that if you can install it on an iPhone, then you can be assured that it goes through some review process that Apple controls and has been checked against some set of restrictions Apple has, and complies with various things Apple demands. Whether that value is sufficient for any individual consumer is up to them, but very clearly they can't make that same claim if they're required by law to allow apps to come from outside sources and bypass those restrictions.

"If you check the box 'only allow Apple store' on first startup and never uncheck it, you get only apps reviewed by Apple and giving up 30% of revenue".

There, problem solved.

Remind me again why "buy any other phone in the world" isn't sufficient for everyone else if this check box is supposed to be sufficient for current iPhone customers? If the only viable smart phone in the world was Apple's, there might be a point to all of this. But the market is almost exactly split right in half and there is nothing at all that you can't do in an Android phone that you would suddenly be able to do if only Apple allowed side loading on the iPhone. So why does Apple and their customer base have to give up things they seemingly want for the minority of people who want to install apks from websites?

> So why does Apple and their customer base have to give up things they seemingly want

Wrong, they are not giving anything up. They gain an option and lose nothing. Gaining a new opt-in feature is not a loss and is in fact the opposite. Nobody has to "give up" anything.

You appear to have decidedly ignored the key of the comment you replied to:

> Remind me again why "buy any other phone in the world" isn't sufficient for everyone else if this check box is supposed to be sufficient for current iPhone customers?

Also - whilst you're correct in spirit - people are giving up an element of safety. The concept of being able to install anything I want on my iPhone is appealing to me, but not to when I support the technology my 90 year old grandmother uses. Having a locked down device is appealing to me and a complete non-issue to her.

We (in my country, I assume yours has similar rules) don't allow children to buy alcohol, cigarettes, knives or spraypaint, don't allow people to drive without seatbelts, don't allow guns without a license, don't allow cars to be sold without minimal safety ratings etc. These restrictions are annoying for a few but are a positive for most of society.

And unlike most of the above examples, you can easily and legally purchase another smart phone without the guard rails in place. This is for sure a loss for the consumer market as a whole.

Your grandma being scammed is not dependent on being able to install software. The vast majority of phone scams are reliant on browser-based phishing pages, convincing the victim to send a bank transfer, or getting a gift card code from the victim. If you believe it is an issue regardless then safeguards can be implemented such as child safety features or simply allowing you to opt-out (or even not opt-in) when you're setting up your grandma's iPhone for her or whatever.

Yes, you can buy a different phone, but Apple still has a serious hold on the market that affects its competitors, especially when it acts in a way that is anti-competitive. If Apple locking down their store in a way that is extremely user-hostile makes them a billion dollars and they walk away unpunished, how long will its competitors refrain from doing the same for? Apple is large enough that they affect me personally even if I do not use their products.

> Your grandma being scammed is not dependent on being able to install software.

Agreed. But just because there are multiple potential vectors doesn't mean we should ignore them.

> If you believe it is an issue regardless then safeguards can be implemented such as child safety features or simply allowing you to opt-out (or even not opt-in) when you're setting up your grandma's iPhone for her or whatever.

You can MDM lock an iPhone (and I assume Android), but only from initial setup. This also requires a technical skillset and a backend or paid subscription. I agree opt-in safeguards are more appropriate. However until those are a simple option, taking away the alternative is not great.

> If Apple locking down their store in a way that is extremely user-hostile makes them a billion dollars and they walk away unpunished, how long will its competitors refrain from doing the same for? > Apple is large enough that they affect me personally even if I do not use their products.

How? I genuinely don't understand this rationale, it always seems so vague.

If a vendor acts in a way you don't like, you purchase from elsewhere. If an Android vendor decided to follow suit, another would choose not to and you could stick with them.

If bizarrely they all chose to, ColourOS, Graphine etc are all options, significantly easier than in the past.

Even Linux phones and KaiOS are potentially viable alternative to fill the needs of the average user.

How does Apple having a walled garden have any impact on you at all, aside from a theoretical house of cards that consumers wouldn't tolerate?

Some ways I wrote about elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39784683

Open source store would be nice. Apple reviews the release ($$$), builds on their server and guarantees it does what it says it does.

This would be lovely. As far as I know, right now its entirely possible for an app developer to show clean, trustworthy code on github. And then ship an app bundle on the app store which contains malware.

I'd love it if Apple provided a way to protect against this sort of thing.

It’s reasonably secure because no one has bothered to write malware for it.

But there was nothing on the Mac stopping Zoom from putting a backdoor web server on Macs.

Apple could revoke Zoom's signing certificate, if they were discovered to be doing this.

That's the thing: they were. Apple did act, but not by revoking the certificate.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20689644/apple-zoom-web-s...

The thing is, Zoom was not being malicious, and weren’t any exploits hypothetical? That server was a good idea, because it allowed launching Zoom calls without the constant warning popups that Apple injected into the process of launching of a custom URI scheme, which was what it used before and after that era. With the local server it was one click to join. Calling it “a web server” was a scare tactic to get people to think Zoom was serving a site to the public, or hosting your public files.

No, I don’t want Apple to set the precedent that they will delete your whole business if you make an architecture choice they feel is not perfect.

> macOS has proven for decades that a reasonably proprietary OS can be distributed and kept reasonably secure when apps are installed on it outside of an App Store.

That’s not really true. Despite the dangers of centralized app censorship, the state of security on iOS is far beyond that of macOS.

iOS also has even more security threats, because a phone is in your pocket and has GPS, and your laptop isn't.

Also, macOS has like 13% market share vs 60% for iOS - in USA.

This seems reasonable and I like the idea of unlocking the capabilities the hardware already has. What makes iPhone different from Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo Switch?

We should be forcing game consoles to open up as well. As well as every other computing device that you can purchase.

This is Hacker News; maximizing the freedom to hack our own property is an inviolable position.

This is mostly as simple as striking out DMCA 1201. The device maker need not bless the activity so long as they do not have a cudgel with which to threaten users from modifying their own devices they bought.

I agree we should force platforms to be more.open and interoperable, but we can get at least part way there by not allowing them to sue innovators.