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App Store to Be 'Split in Two' Ahead of EU iPhone Sideloading Deadline
(www.macrumors.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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I have no idea why so many of those commenters are anti consumer rights. Android proves that it's not a security issue. Why are they so brain broken that they are actively against opening up their walled garden, like it compromise their apple product purchases in some way.
I'm an anti-Apple advocate and an Android user. And I'm against this law. What good does it bring? These are Apple's devices; let them do whatever they want with them. Don't like how Apple does business? Buy another brand. Advocate against Apple. Suggest alternatives. But do not force them to do things how you like. It's just toxic. I believe that the most anti-consumer thing is when governments try to decide what customers want or need. I hate it when they take me for an idiot (I might often be, but let me make my mistakes and learn from them).
But that's the thing - they aren't. Not once they're bought. At that point, they're my device, or your device.
Surely you can see how having a single supplier can be a bad thing, right? That supplier has no incentive to deliver quality. Why would they?
If you want to start baking cookies and sell them, you need to beat several bakers in your town and several companies in the rest of the country if you ever want to be successful and profitable. This is because there are already several well-established suppliers who have proven they make great cookies - why would anyone buy from you?
On the other hand if you're the only one selling - you can reduce cocoa content in half to save costs, you can replace quality ingredients with cheaper versions for the same reason, you can increase prices as much as you want - the cookie-seeking customer will still buy, because there are no other options.
Sure, you can also be the best baker in the world. You can put love and care into every cookie that leaves your shop. You can care about customers and make sure they get the best stuff, because you have a monopoly and you can enforce that view.
But in reality, what actually happens is that those decisions don't belong to you. They belong to the soulless company that only has one purpose: maximize profits. And you can be the best person ever, but if you're working for a publicly traded company you're at the mercy of shareholders.
Why would you want this? Forget about apple, why would you want this in any field?
Smart human.
Well, you may want it to be completely yours, but in fact, there are many things that you can't and sometimes don't want to control on your phone. But Apple never claimed that you can control everything. Apple never advertised their phones as having many application stores; quite the opposite, actually. You don't expect a satellite connection from a phone that doesn't have it; you don't expect a phone without water resistance to work underwater. I understand if some product does not meet your expectations, you're frustrated, but in this case, you received exactly what you asked for. Want something else? Buy from another company. Why force this company to do things your way?
Of course, I can see that having a single supplier can and will cause many issues. The problem for me is that I don't believe in monopolies. Monopolies are very unstable. Firstly, for a monopoly to form, a few things with low probability should happen: in your analogy, there should be no other cookie provider (neither now nor in the foreseeable future), and customers should be willing to buy cookies that I produce at any cost. In reality, there's always someone else who's willing to (or at least can) produce more cookies, and customers are not complete idiots. If I increase the price or lower the quality beyond their limit, very quickly I will be left with full warehouses and a bad reputation and go bankrupt. Secondly, you always have a choice. Present me with a situation, and I will tell you which choices you have (they all may be bad, but whatever they are, they are options). In the case of Apple, there are obviously plenty of choices. They're not the only company producing smartphones. And even on their phones, there's Cydia. So, what monopoly does Apple have? Well, they're the only corporation that can produce iPhones. Should we allow other companies to produce iPhones in this case?
Bill Gates would love you. Microsoft used its position to kill of Netscape. Could you imagine how rich they would be if they could strong arm everyone into only using their products?
To be honest, if Microsoft didn't give a shit about anti-trust laws and if they just let Apple die instead of investing in them, we wouldn't have Apple today. Which - to be clear: would be a great thing.
Maybe we should actually all strive to be more monopoly-oriented, the laws be damned.
This logic makes literally zero sense
In this case, the government isn't forcing the customer to do anything at all. If you don't care about it, then absolutely nothing will change for you. The only thing it does is provide more options for people who want more options.
I definitely like my computers (including my phone) being open to me, and I love having f-droid on Android.
Even so, I think there's a genuine case for security of a walled garden, even though I prefer the alternative.
Having the option to install 3rd party is another attack surface, and gives a chance for the market - or authoritarian control - to to veer towards not being vetted by that walled garden.
I.e. if a popular enough developer chooses not to publish through the app store, you either accept their personal guarantees or refuse to use that software. If your job or school decides not to... then what can you do, even if your school is not competent to keep up to date the security of their lowest-bidder bespoke app store?
But if you can't side-load, there is no option, which makes them use Apple's one with its protection.
I agree, that hasn't turned out that way on Android... except for phones that don't support Google Play. I hope it never does...
That would mean there's no malware on closed stores, which is simply not true. Besides, you can allow more than one store and still have high security. More to the point Apple doesn't care about protecting your rights, but their margins. More stores means lost profit and that's the only thing Apple cares about.
Also, assuming big companies are more capable of doing proper security is just flawed way of thinking. Just look at Sony whose hacking and leaking credit card numbers is approaching annual levels. If anything I'd say some security nut will do a significantly better job than Apple, because no company does something if they really don't have to, especially Apple who will opt to glue piece of shoe rubber to push on GPU chip instead of losing a penny on changing soldering paste. And it's not an isolated case either, on iPhone Max series they removed a single drop of adhesive which made sure chips were strengthened when phone bent slightly. They saved pennies there but that caused user's phones to lose touch on displays.
Just repeating their PR statement doesn't mean that's the correct way to go.
Fair point, but,
Well, Apple and Google have a pretty good track record on that, as records go. Sure, a security nutjob might do better; and the FOSS community has done some amazing and well-trusted things, but not every contender is the same.
As a bit of a oblique example, I have games in Epic store. Now they (Epic) want to install kernel-level drivers, which I'm not sure I'm willing to accept. If they simply weren't able, they'd simply do without. I'd rather have Microsoft's malware than Microsoft's plus Epic's. (Side note, apparently I can use an alternative FOSS launcher so that's great!)
And still, I prefer it this way - I'd like to have kernel level control on my computer than for Microsoft to 'protect' me by disallowing it. But my non-techie friends? I'm not always sure. Especially those in more hostile environments.
(As another aside, anything that matters on my computer is in Linux and encrypted; but the recent exploit using a bios splash image opens up interesting new inter-platform vulnerabilities.)
Track record is all that matters. Not a guarantee but a good indicator. Still, Apple is opposing this not because of security but greed.
Authoritarians are always going to be prefer authoritarian app stores where any app that threatens them can be swifty removed.
Authoritarians rule in part via suppression of information. All governments can mandate that specific things be or not be installed on devices, it's typically only authoritarians that are afraid of unknown things being installed on devices.
You're forgetting that authorities don't always work together. Authority sometimes threatens authority.
It's true that Apple can swing their weight around in some markets. However, in places where the government is able to govern as they wish, e.g. China, the CCP gets their way every time in the end... And that's pretty much how it goes with private companies vs governments. You either play by their rules or you seize to be a business in their jurisdiction.
I wish I could simply tell you that you are ignorant and you would think for a moment and recognize it. It's not my crusade to educate you, and people don't like realizing they are wrong, but now it's out there for you to see, perhaps there is hope.
For me, security is really the only question here. If you want to, you can find a way to sideload things. But once you have an entire app store out there, suddenly a whole new avenue of attack has appeared that didn't exist prior.
Android already has had this for many years and it is not an issue. We don't need to deal with hypotheticals here, Android has put these things into practice for a long time already, and it's a non issue.
LOL this is not a hypothetical. there are already bad apps in the regular app store. now you have two.
also Android has nothing on the security posture of Apple.
So you admit having a walled garden doesn't protect you from malicious apps, but you still want on to...protect you from malicious apps?
I just want you to envision a moment where the opportunity for two bad things happening is worse than one.
Honestly I really don't get the anger here except that everyone has decided that opening the floodgates is the only way forward.
So then... continue using exclusively Apple's store then?
If you consider Apple to be the gold standard for security, you have just keep going as you are.
I don't see how giving other people the freedom to choose infringes on your security.
No you fool! Don't you see that because Wish exists buying from Best Buy is also a scam?!
Honestly I don't get people like this. Are they trying to protect other people? I've never seen it framed that way, but it's the only reasonable explanation.
what are you smoking lol
Less than you I guess?
You really need to explain this to me. Assuming apple provides a security benefit, then the same benefit still exist if you do not use the sideloading, except for apps that do not want to get checked by apple. But you only want apps that are secure also that are checked. How is the ability to get (maybe) less secure apps a danger to you, given thst you will still use the app store.
I can install any app I want on my Mac. How is this different?
except it is a security issue for those not tech savvy I had to enable parental controls on some family members phones cause they enabled side loading somehow and managed to royally fuck up their phone
Security is not there to safeguard you from stupidity.
Not really, it's not much of an issue on Android. iOS will probably do the same, but on Android if you sideload an app that could be malicious, the Play Store has play protect and scans malicious apks like an anti virus. But also phones are much better sandboxed and secured then desktop, so their security against malicious software is much stronger.
While not impossible, you have to try fairly hard to fuck up your phone like this. I'd be actively impressed if your story is true (particularly as you used the plural), and if so I'd like to know what they were specifically trying to install that fucked up their phones.
It's just statistically more likely they downloaded a malicious app from the Play Store than had any chaos side loading.
The plural is I just do it now cause i don't wanna have to deal with it again and I don't trust them but it was a obvious scam they clicked on and guy over a phone talked her through it