We want a simplistic, managed, fuss-free device that isn't another source of malware, viruses, dark patterns e.g. unsubscribing and where basic things like uninstalling requires a Terminal.
If you want a computer then there are plenty of companies that satisfy your requirements. So why not encourage and support them instead of trying to turn the iPhone into something a lot of people don't want.
Like the GP said, this is a false dichotomy. Something as simple as accessible sideloading or a "let me do unsafe things" switch buried deep in the preferences app can give people who want it greater control and let those who prefer the walled garden keep the benefits.
I'm torn on this, on the one hand I would love to be able to hack on iPhone hardware.
However, we have Epic. No matter how deep the option is buried, they will try to get people to enable it so they can install their games without going through the app store.
I wish I could agree with you, but the bad actors here are large corporations who are incentivised to make even those who want to be safe, unsafe.
My point being, that some companies will try to convince you to enable side loading and Epic is an example. They do it on Android now.
I don't mind having a hackable system, I think it should just be a little more complex than a hidden setting that Epic will try and get you to switch.
Perhaps a ROM which you have to download and wipe/reload your phone with, maybe it also removes the App Store so that it's obvious that you are moving to an unsupported model. I'm not sure, but just having a side loading toggle will lead to Epic abusing the matter.
If Epic wants to sell you a piece of software to run on your computer, and in order to do so you need to perform special actions (special with regards to all the other software you use on that computer), and you decide that the software is worth it so you perform those special actions, this is somehow a worse scenario than if nothing else changes but you're not able to perform those special actions because the computer doesn't allow you? How is Epic a bad actor? They're selling you a piece of software that (presumably) performs as advertised. If there's a bad actor, I'd think it's the manufacturer of the computer that doesn't let you use it however you prefer.
The point is that my parents have an iPhone because they are idiot proof.
Yes, they had the tool bars in Internet Explorer. Yes they had viruses.
I do not want a situation where I now have to support their phone because they followed some instructions to unlock side loading and installed Bonzai Buddy.
I suggested an alternative, something that would be just a bit too technical for idiots. A switch in iOS will generate support requests to Apple as the average user is an idiot.
> I'd think it's the manufacturer of the computer that doesn't let you use it however you prefer.
Are you this vocal on Sony for not letting you install your own homebrew on a Playstation or Nintendo on the Switch?
I still don't see the problem. So you enable side loading, install the apps you want, and then what's the problem? It's not like other apps will start installing themselves now. I think some people are working under the mistaken belief that a side loaded APK can bypass the OS permissions system, which is not true. Enabling sideloading is a far cry from rooting or a custom ROM
It’s that some companies will force most people into enabling sideloading to turn the phone into something useful, until the field is level again - effectively getting rid of the walled garden.
If every app you need requires sideloading; you’re going to enable it or be left in the dark.
And yet we don't see that happening on Android at all, where companies have literally all incentive to convince people to sideload their apps instead of getting them from the Play store. And yet....it just doesn't happen. There is literally zero reason to believe that this would happen on iOS either. Epic might want to try it with Fortnite because of its popularity, but anything else? No, far too much hassle and you know 99% of users wouldn't bother.
Google is more permissive in their app store (e.g. with tracking users or accepting out of band payments), Google developer accounts are a one time payment, etc., etc. Overall there's less incentive to push a separate app store on Android than there is on iOS.
There is the only incentive that matters - google, just like apple, takes 30% cut off every transaction in your app. Everything else is secondary. And yet even though pushing custom APKs would get you your 30% back, companies aren't doing this(with the exception of Epic). So no, it's not about permissions or tracking users. Even Amazon had to stop offering sales for their digital content in the app because Google is actually and in fact strict about this.
And also - as a simple matter of fact, alternative app stores do exist and they haven't caused the collapse of the ecosystem. You can still stay in your walled garden if you wish.
So no, it's not about permissions or tracking users
Based on what?
And also - as a simple matter of fact, alternative app stores do exist
and they haven't caused the collapse of the ecosystem.
Sure, because the Play Store is already a colossal mess. Not even two weeks ago there was another high profile malware incident (SpinOk) with something like 30 million installs. I begrudgingly use an iPhone but I don't want the Google experience in any way shape or form.
Based on the simple fact that nearly all companies care about the money first and foremost. 30% of your sales is a larger motivator than being or not being able to track your users(and I'm not even sure that argument even holds with Android 12 and beyond, it's been really reined in). Or would you disagree?
>>Sure, because the Play Store is already a colossal mess.
I'm not sure I understand how that's related to what I said. Again, corporation like Amazon has all the incentive to push you towards their own app store, yet it just simply doesn't happen at all. If they don't do it, why would smaller companies do it?
>>I begrudgingly use an iPhone but I don't want the Google experience in any way shape or form.
I get the impression reading these comments that people seem to think that if you are on android you just randomly go on the Play Store and install stuff almost without thinking? Yes it's a problem that malware sometimes slips through. But 30 million installs is nothing compared to the userbase. And most people just get a phone, download the regular set of apps they use every day, and then they never ever open the play store again - why would they? The existence(or lack of) of 3rd party stores doesn't matter to majority of people on the platform, because they just never install any extra apps at all.
Yes, fortnite is the only exception of a major product. Amazon was forced by Google to halt the sales of any and all digital products through Android apps because they didn't want to give Google their 30% cut and I'm yet to see any push from them to install Kindle or Prime apps through a direct APK.
It seems to me that it can't both be true that (a) the appeal of the walled garden is wide and (b) sideloading or other uncurated channels are an irresistible force that will inevitably obliterate the walled garden. If people find value in it, they will not migrate to uncurated channels, so there will remain a population that's only reachable via the garden, so developers will have an incentive to continue to sell there.
And as far as I can tell, this is what's borne out by observable results in places where there are options. macOS has preferences which let you choose between (a) app store only and (b) app store + signed apps from other channels -- and lets you override both choices if you really really want (as well as having a unix command line from which you can run arbitrary things and the ability to acquire dev tools by which you can build and run untrusted source). Some people take safety into their own hands and use those things. Some people don't. This hasn't eliminated the Mac App Store as an option for people who want to rely on Apple's curation. It exists side-by-side with independent but still signed/trusted distribution, and both exist side-by-side with free-for-all. You can walk freely between the well-patrolled walls of the fortified city, the ring of civilization just outside it, and the wild west outside that. None of them stops the other from existing.
Are there any platforms where that's happened? If macOS isn't a place where that's happened, why would it happen to iOS?
I don’t want Apple to allow sideloading, that would be harmful to all the kids and grandmas. But allow booting another OS, there’s no way kids or grandma will want to flash Linux into their iPhone. I guess they just don’t want competition, maybe because some gaming company will make a gaming-OS for them.
> No matter how deep the option is buried, they will try to get people to enable it so they can install their games without going through the app store.
So you think the bad part is people being able to control their devices if they want to?
IMO, there isn't much importance to sideloading at personal levels. It's necessary for open and democratic society. I'm not realistically auditing the whole Debian package repository, and that makes it almost indistinguishable from App Store walled garden if viewed in a strictly personal scope, despite the reality being almost a polar opposite.
> IMO, there isn't much importance to sideloading at personal levels.
As someone who has jailbroken iOS devices in the distant past, the conveniences and user interactions supported by Activator and SBSettings more than a decade ago are still not on iOS yet (and will likely never be). I believe there is a lot of value to have sideloading while also recognizing that there could be a higher chance of malware and the lost.
Ah yes, "instead of getting a feature added for free that I won't need, and the presence of which would not impact me or anyone like me in any way, shape, or form, how about everyone just buys another $1500 phone?"
Maybe because getting a feature added for free that you won't need, and the presence of which would not impact you or anyone like you in any way, shape, or form, won't impact you or anyone like you in any way, shape, or form.
Just go "I'd never need that, but power to you if Apple ever adds it. Which we can be pretty sure of they won't". Don't hate on folks for wanting things that you don't want, but also won't affect your life in any way if they got it.
> Maybe because getting a feature added for free that you won't need, and the presence of which would not impact you or anyone like you in any way, shape, or form, won't impact you or anyone like you in any way, shape, or form.
How do you know that allowing sideloading does’t effectively mean opening a bunch of backdoors on the device? What if the the tight grip over the hardware + software is the best way to ensure that millions of users stay reasonably safe? Isn’t this basically a way to prevent supply chain attacks? I don’t know… do you know? How can you say such things with so much confidence?
Sideloading means that apps can (and will) migrate from appstore to other store with relaxed taxes, privacy and security, and all users will face app serp hijacking and permission extortion. Not only those who want their android experience on iphone for some bizarre reason.
It is entirely plausible that iOS cannot remove all the security restrictions that would be necessary for a useful sideloading, without exposing attack vectors.
I would love to hear some ideas about how it could be implemented without jeopardizing the security. A technical analysis, without words like "probably", "maybe". I'm fairly technical and ready to be enlightened.
Allowing sideloading means allowing third party developers and large corporations to make their app force sideloading. If large companies like Uber, Facebook, et al require sideloading it will make it more acceptable for smaller companies and developers to do so. Pretty soon everyone would just say "sideload", including unscrupulous smaller developers. At that point since everyone is sideloading, no one would bat an eye to yet another sideloaded app. Not to mention why would anyone not choose to sideload to avoid the Apple tax?
But there's something to be said of getting a phone that specifically can't do certain things, whether that be for privacy (Facebook says: download the FB App Store to get Instagram!), security (evil maid attacks), or giving it to my great grandparent who just needs to use some social media apps and the phone app.
No, this doesn't enable evil maid attacks. If your evil maid has the means to unlock your phone in order to enable sideloading, then it's already game over, because with that same access they can get your passwords and your 2FA second factor. Please stop trying to suggest that evil maid attacks are a concern here.
One time opportunistic and potentially brief access to the phone is different to installing spyware (during that brief access) which reports all activity forever more or allows Mitm on your data.
An APK is an APK. It's beholden to the same mandatory permissions system and has no extra abilities whether sideloaded or from the Play store. Sideloading != rooting
Since about iOS 6, iOS exploits have started with a sandbox escape exploit, since the attack surface is so large with native code running on the device (only one since then, the Checkm8 exploit, used a USB exploit instead). Getting native code on a user's device for "free fortnite vbucks" is step one to silently jailbreaking phones and running adware/malware/spyware.
We’re over a decade into having smart phones. At this point, you’re going to have to weigh up what your priorities are and get the phone that does what you want.
Not argue on the internet about the way things should be.
I want a phone that is as fast as a flagship phone like an iPhone, with a keyboard, daylong or better battery life running fullblown Debian. What shall I buy? It doesn’t exist. Nor can I put Debian on most flagship phones; takes time for them to get rooted if they ever do. And then they don’t support half of the hardware. So best option is Android. Or anything, including iOS, with vnc. Now that 5g is everywhere here and I have fiber to my house, I opt for VNC; ideal, it is not.
>I want a phone that is as fast as a flagship phone like an iPhone, with a keyboard, daylong or better battery life running fullblown Debian. What shall I buy? It doesn’t exist.
Have you ever paused to consider why your mobile unicorn doesn't exist?
You’ll find that virtually everything you buy does not meet your exact specifications. If you are not filthy rich your home will not be to your exact specifications, your furniture, your clothes, your car, your luggage, your kitchen.
What most people do is work out what they can afford, prioritise features, and try to buy they can afford and maximises the features they want the most. Maybe they decide, it’s not worth it and get nothing at all.
Same thing with your phone, you may be forced to buy something, but you can get the minimum thing to get by. Maybe you are a rich tech worker and you can run a separate phone that aligns best with your needs and wants.
What will 100% not get you what you want, is complaining, giving the company you don’t like $1500, and then giving the company that might one day live up to your dreams $0.
Yes, I am in the waiting list. It does come close. I have the previous version which is a great keyboard, but just not there yet in the mix between phone and ultra-portable. I have high hopes.
Don’t make it sound that Android is “iOS without walled garden”. I want ecosystem without bloat, that doesn’t spy on me and where I’m not the product that’s not the state of Android at the moment (unless you’re willing to bother with custom ROMs).
I’ve paid 1,5k for this thing and have every right to complain.
But the companies involved show no signs of changing, and you keep handing them money and your complaints are toothless. And you won’t support a project that is more aligned with your goals.
> I’ve paid 1,5k for this thing and have every right to complain
I agree that removing freedoms from the users is unethical and counterproductive. But at this point the only reasonable action is to give money to companies intentionally respecting your freedom.
Apple has no incentive to listen to anything at all at this point. The only reasonable action is to give money to those who do, i.e., support good alternatives.
Oh dear, heaven forbid we keep wanting features that should have been there from day one after the ten year cutoff! Good thing you reminded us of that expiration date.
People are happy with the way things are. Why are you trying to mess with their things? If they want to use a phone that’s restricted to a walled garden App Store, that’s none of your business.
Will you be taking responsibility if there are unforeseen consequences to side loading?
There plenty of other phones out there that allow side loading. Go use one of those if it’s that important to you.
P.S. My pet theory why Apple is so controlling about what kind of apps are allowed is to prevent “embrace, extend, extinguish” tactics. Imagine if MS created dev tools for iOS that produce apps that use a specific runtime and it gets super popular. Now MS has a say in iOS’s ecosystem, Apple has to maintain compatibility with that runtime (and will need MS’s cooperation) and if MS decides to cripple support for those dev tools it will impact iOS app creation.
That explains the JIT ban and not much else. It doesn't explain the obnoxious morality clause, the ban on entire classes of applications, and so forth.
What part of the phrase “unforeseen consequences” did you fail to understand?
I really don’t get it. So this particular product doesn’t meet your wants. Big deal. They are millions of products that don’t mean my wants, you don’t see me crusading on the bloody internet asking for them all to be changed. I just don’t buy them.
> What part of the phrase “unforeseen consequences” did you fail to understand?
Sorry, I didn’t see need to address paranoid fears.
> I really don’t get it. So this particular product doesn’t meet your wants. Big deal. They are millions of products that don’t mean my wants, you don’t see me crusading on the bloody internet asking for them all to be changed. I just don’t buy them.
I really don’t get why me wanting product improved mobilizes internet on a crusade against my valid complaints about absurd limitations of platform.
Except, of course, there aren't millions of phones. There are two. So yeah, complaining that there are features missing for a large part of the target audience is rather perfectly rational behaviour for a customer base.
Honestly, if you think this is in any way a reasonable response to the layers of commentary above elaborating on why this isn't a zero-sum game and doesn't have to take anything from you, maybe someone should take your iPhone.
The exact reason being unable to do something you weren't going to do anyway, rendering the difference moot? You're not required to leave the garden because the wall has been removed. How is an extra option harming you?
> If such a switch exists, EVERYTHING will use it.
The switch exists on macOS already, and this is not true. Software is available from the app store. People can and do choose it. Signed software is available outside the app store. People can and do choose that. And those who want to ignore warnings or flip the switch can install unsigned software and it doesn't take any option away from those who prefer not to.
These options exist alongside one another on macOS. There's no reason to believe that iOS wouldn't remain the same, and good reason to believe that via force of habit the dominant "culture"/practice around iOS apps would remain much like it is today.
There is not literally zero software on the macOS app store, but it's pretty close. I don't think I've ever installed a non-Apple program via it, and I would do so if given the option. The iOS app store being reduced to the state of the macOS app store would make the iPhone significantly worse.
All the teenagers will be doing it. They'll say you get the first hit of sideloading for free... It starts just playing a simple game. Next thing you know you'll be mapping pages as writable and executable.
You'll think you can just use a little JIT at a party and it's no harm, but you won't be able to stop.
The scene: street corner. "Hey kid, you want to load some third party code?" Just say no!!
Thankfully Apple only sends tasteful ads, like the pop-up Apple Music modal when you put on headphones or that friendly perennial reminder to Try The New Safari. Then there's the total non-advertisement at the top of Settings encouraging you to try iCloud, along with the native and beautiful builtins like Apple News and TV+ that totally don't exist to upsell you on more services.
> Because for Meta at least it literally cost them $10b in revenue each year.
Is there any reason to believe Apple cannot stop them at an OS-level rather than a store-level?
> Then there's the total non-advertisement at the top of Settings encouraging you to try iCloud.
Just looked at the settings on my phone, can’t see any ‘ads’ for iCloud at all. Am I doing something wrong? And since I had to open the settings app to check, if there are ads, are they modal and stopping me doing what I wanted to do? Do they force some kind of call to action to get past? A action blocking modal? I’m genuinely asking because I have literally never seen what you are describing.
> …along with the native and beautiful builtins like Apple News and TV+ that totally don't exist to upsell you on more services.
Never knowingly opened them so I can’t comment, but what is wrong with upselling services? Is it any different to YouTube being native on Android devices? I mean, if I use YouTube in my browser, iPhone or otherwise, I literally get a modal on any new tab I open with YouTube pushing me to subscribe to the premium feature - even with an ad blocker. Does this happen on Google’s own devices or platforms? Again, I genuinely don’t know.
The thing that I see everytime this comes up is that “advertising bad m’kay, silly little Apple user”, which was never the argument. User tracking and identification is what is bad. Targeting ads based on this in places like the settings app would be bad. Is there any evidence that this is happening? The same goes for telemetry from apps. I have no problem with Apple, Google or anybody else gathering telemetry about how an app is used, just so long as they don’t identify me based on it and use the data to sell me shit. There is nothing inherently wrong with advertising services, what is wrong is the how, when and where that takes place, and what the advertisers are basing it on. The condescending tone that is employed by the anti-lobby here doesn’t help the discussion either, but that is the whole “I know better” Orange Site phenomenon.
> Just looked at the settings on my phone, can’t see any ‘ads’ for iCloud at all. Am I doing something wrong?
For one, it's on macOS and shows up for anyone who doesn't log into the App Store with an Apple ID. It will be a red notification badge in Settings that does not go away unless you log in.
> if there are ads, are they modal and stopping me doing what I wanted to do?
I mean, yeah. This is the default behavior for Apple Music on Mac - when you put on your headphones, it auto-launches Apple Music with a modal blocking the app and asking you to try subscribing to Apple Music. I haven't seen default system behavior this sycophantic or contrived since Windows 8 came out.
> but what is wrong with upselling services? Is it any different to YouTube being native on Android devices?
No, it's not. Both fucking suck.
When people pay for a device (especially a premium experience) they expect that cost to get recouped somehow. I used to daily-drive Mac because I expected a premium experience, but you cannot look at the past decade of Mac releases and say there have been less advertisements. The desire for you to pay for more services is now an intrinsic part of MacOS like it is on Windows, and honestly that's the worst.
> what is wrong is the how, when and where that takes place, and what the advertisers are basing it on.
What a shockingly vague and nonspecific example of what "wrong" looks like.
Hitchen's Razor. If we cannot hold either company accountable for their data usage (we cannot), then we're fighting over which fairytale we like better.
Only a fraction as much malware on the iOS App Store, where xcodeghost infected hundreds of millions of users out of a smaller number of total devices.
This makes sense because the Play Store applies the same review that the App Store does and has additional automated checks on top. Meanwhile, no devices have been infected with malware from F-droid, which Apple will not let you use.
No it hasn't. Play store is still utterly dominant, and very very very few apps are only available through other channels (I couldn't name any, but there probably are some open-source ones on F-Droid that didn't want to bother with the Google processes, and maybe some vendor has some exclusive apps on their store?). Side-loading is very much a niche thing.
There used to be a significant enterprise "Bespoke iOS app for inventory management/POS" market but I think that pretty much all migrated to Android in the past few years.
> It is not a false dichotomy, it's called herd immunity.
> If such a switch exists, EVERYTHING will use it. Absolutely everything. There will be some "cool thing you can do" that requires sideloading, like pirating games, and at that point every fucking teenager on the planet will be sideloading. At that point it's not the "weird minority usage"; it's the real API everyone uses.
> This is exactly how you get a tragedy of the commons.
> Your decisions do affect me, and I hold you in hostility for the same reason anti-vaxxers get held in hostility. I have had family members get hacked and have their drives ransomwared because they're on an insecure-by-default platform, and using the equivalent of root access is the default way to do anything (windows + run as admin). Those who consistently advocated for "libertarian computing" brought this tragedy on me by proxy. It doesn't matter how careful I am, and how disciplined I keep my own stuff — other people I care about exist and I cannot protect them from what SHOULD be harmless actions.
I hate the logical end state that such a decision ends up at, as it demonizes the exploration of a device THAT YOU OWN. I SHOULD be able to learn how my devices work. I SHOULD be able to repair it by my own efforts. I SHOULDN'T have to rely on the manufacturer as the sole source for repairs & maintenance of something that I SHOULD OWN.
Just like how you demonize that my stances on "libertarian computing" brought this tragedy onto you by proxy, your stances on walling off such access brought upon me the tragedy of the manufacturer being the ONLY WAY that I could fix something THAT I OWN. Your stances against self-repairability, *as a consequence of wanting such access walled off*, contributed to the unrepairability of modern appliances & the tech landfills that have ballooned from such a decision.
> Network. Effects. MATTER.
Yes, they do matter. Including yours. What's being signaled from your network is that you don't want repairability, even if you say otherwise.
Why are you so desperate to break the iPhone experience? Because you can have that. You can have a Pine phone, you can have an Android device, you can have Sailfin. Why are you unhappy with all the choices for phones that provide everything you say you want?
Except every large player in the space is then incentivised to drag their audience out of the walled garden.
"Want the Facebook app? Follow these three easy steps to sideload our app." -> Now the rest of the iOS users lose the nice payment rails that Apple setup which result in higher privacy and lower fraud.
"Want to play Fortnite or any other Epic game? Get it in 3 simple steps."
>Facebook doesn't use sideloading on the android platform, neither does any of the other big companies.
1. Epic.
2. Unlike Google, Apple each year pours thousands of hours of developer effort into making it harder for Facebook to track users without their consent. The difference between "what is allowed in the store" and "what is possible on the device" is greater on iOS.
In the case of epic it was not about the privacy settings but about the percentage they had to pay for on every transaction which is a different issue.
I do think that it is a rare case that a company decides to not use the official appstore and the risk of all companies switching to their own appstore is minor.
Android does restrict more and more things you can do and there seems to be no strong movement to alternative appstores, which makes it difficult to know what impact the strong privacy settings on ios would be with an alternative appstore.
I kind of agree that less privacy protection this is a concern, but I think that should be solved by additional privacy laws.
>In the case of epic it was not about the privacy settings but about the percentage they had to pay for on every transaction which is a different issue.
The claim wasn't that nobody was sideloading for privacy settings. The claim was "Facebook doesn't use sideloading on the android platform, neither does any of the other big companies."
>I kind of agree that less privacy protection this is a concern, but I think that should be solved by additional privacy laws.
Oh, that's a great idea. We should definitely rely on laws alone for this. VC-backed technology firms are well-known for willingly abiding by the spirit of laws—especially privacy laws. They definitely aren't filled with people whose entire job is finding the slimist things they can get away with.
Or—and I'm just spitballing here—we could have both the additional privacy laws and also a competitive marketplace where at least one vendor decides to use privacy as a market differentiator while leaving people free to choose to buy from other vendors with other priorities.
You should have multiple options, but third parties should not be required to provide you with an option that gives you 100% of what you'd like to have.
"I get to choose" does not mean "I get to have a bespoke solution."
Epic miserably failed on Android and you think they will somehow succeed on iPhone? Are you out of your mind? If it’s not in AppStore it might as well not exist.
> Except every large player in the space is then incentivised to drag their audience out of the walled garden.
That's an interesting point. I wonder what other levers Apple would then adjust to keep them in? Maybe lower the Apple tax a bit, maybe something else. Probably a few possibilities that we haven't thought of too. :)
Allowing sideloading increases the potential for exploits in IOS to be found, that could then exploit other IOS users.
If I had a well designed bank vault I still wouldn't want would-be burglars unrestricted access to probe the lock design which could then be used to exploit other vaults of the same design. In this model, I would put a cage or bars or say, a walled garden around the lock mechanism to prevent unwanted hacking or characterization.
With nukes I don't have the device in my hand, or a hotline on which to try every possible launch code.
I can purchase an iPhone and a developer account and find the same exploits I could if sideloading was enabled. The "obscurity" doesn't exist to begin with.
> I can purchase an iPhone and a developer account and find the same exploits I could if sideloading was enabled. The "obscurity" doesn't exist to begin with.
Obscurity DID exist - you said yourself that you have to get a developer account. That's a barrier to entry, which is defense in depth. Dev accounts are a tiny proportion of iOS users.
Also, if alternate app stores were permitted, any exploits discovered via sideload could be deployed at scale. By not having alternate app stores the risk is reduced.
As well, assuming no alternate app stores exist and you managed to deploy your 0-day in an app on the original App store, Apple could discover it and have the means to remove the app quickly to mitigate damage. If alternate app stores existed, it adds additional red tape to get the exploit app removed and potentially allowing more damage to occur.
While I personally agree that defensive in depth does have it's real world uses, I'd be really surprised if having an Apple dev account is a real world barrier for anyone doing iOS exploit development.
Maybe script kiddies wouldn't, but they're not the kind of thing to be worried about anyway.
Ahhh. Sounds like it's mostly fear of potential loss rather than something easy to pin down and fix.
Yeah, I'm not aware of any good way to counter that kind of fear unless Apple wants to do so.
Unfortunately, countering that fear is 100% the opposite of what Apple want, so they're likely going to try and amplify it to the maximum extent instead.
My business depends on my phone. If I can’t call clients or pull google maps up, I’m screwed. I have both an iPhone and an Android. I’ve never had an iPhone die for no good reason. Every single android phone I’ve owned prior to my OP 8T has died in under a year. I got hit with the LG bootloop bug on my first android phone and it just went from there.
And that’s just hardware. The other day I realized my 8T had bricked itself. I hadn’t used it in a few days, and an OTA update broke something. Wouldn’t flash back the normal way either, I had to go and dig up specialized software and a copy of the ROM from XDA. I’ve never had an iPhone have a bug that a simple reboot wouldn’t fix.
The same thing extends to computers too. I think macOS is an abomination, but the hardware they put out it leaps and bounds ahead of pretty much every other manufacturer. In comparison, my surface book 2 has been a steaming pile of shit from day 1. I built my desktop, but my laptop is a MBP. I’d get 3-4 hours of battery on the SB2 with brightness all the way down. The MBP will literally last all day unless I’m running Thinkorswim. Whoever thought that its performance was acceptable should be shot. Even on my desktop it will routinely use 5gb+ RAM alone.
This started with my LG g3. That was a flagship when I got it. My HTC M8 also died. I had a galaxy s3, s4, s6, and a note. The note 8 was the only one that survived longer than a year.
Meanwhile, my iPhone 7+ was in service for 6 years. I owned it until I upgraded to an XS, and a family member used it up until last year. I used the XS until I got a free upgrade to the 13.
I wasn’t sure if your comment meant that you look forward to owning it or you look forward to Lenovo making one but there is already an ARM thinkpad, the x13s
A couple years back, my $3000 MBP randomly died. It was around a year old. I had to take it to the Apple Store. They couldn't fix it. They had to ship it some place else for repair. I was out $600 and a week with no work computer. If you depend on a computer for work and can't afford to be without for extended periods of time, it seems to me that you'd want one that was actually repairable.
Nobody knows how to build a non-computer that does what people expect phones to do. It's going to have to be a computer or nothing. The only question is whether it's your computer or someone else's.
Yea. That's the problem all along with walled gardens. Twenty years will go by and you'll find yourself unable to do the most basic thing becaused corporate control over an environment is a slow creep.
>To get a blue bubble you must give up control over your mobile life to Apple.
As someone who has never used Apple products (well, except for the OS on an Apple II I built from a kit as a high school project in 1983), I don't understand why a "blue bubble" is important.
Would you mind explaining that to me? Not being snarky here, I just really don't understand what value there is in a "blue bubble."
It is a huge status symbol among the youth. Kids will discriminate against and even sometimes bully people for not having it. And there are certain features that only apple users can use over messaging that has no reasonable excuse for not allowing other mobile platforms to participate in other than to push kids into buying iphones so they aren't excluded. Effectively pushing kids into buying devices far more expensive and powerful than they actually have any usage for. And for kids of poorer families buying an iphone is a fairly large financial burden.
Wow. I never knew as the rest of the world uses WhatsApp. That's the most stupid thing I've heard in a while, I can't believe people give it any kind of importance. I've never owned an iPhone, stuff like this makes me even less likely to.
They will find another status symbol, like e.g. does their prey’s phone have an actual apple logo on it. Or see it on a screenshot, in clothing, accessories. This blue bubble argument is utter nonsense, fix your youth, not the phone.
To a first approximation, no one pays full price for a phone up front. They buy it through a carrier.
Even the low end carriers like Metro give you a “free” iPhone with a contract. Even if that’s not the case, the price of a iPhone SE over two years is not that much higher than an Android.
You can get a perfectly functional used iPhone that runs the current OS for under $200. One only has to spend a lot if one wants the latest and greatest.
That still doesn't solve the issue that to get a blue bubble you must give up control over your mobile life to Apple. Almost nobody carries around two phones.
Why is it important? The world communicates through whatsapp, signal, telegram and some other stuff in China. The blue bubble argument is a red herring.
It's not the color of the message bubble, that's just a shorthand for the actual problem: it's that iMessage has more functionality than SMS, and inviting a SMS user to a iMessage chat works but degrades the experience for all participants.
It is both awkward (for instance, using a reaction generates a "so and so liked your thing" message) and insecure (now every word in a chat gets blasted out over the known-insecure medium).
Those reactions seem to work for me in Aus., on Android.
And as for group chats, you should understand that if you start one on iMessage, you shouldn't be surprised that it doesn't work cross-platform. It could, but Apple deliberately doesn't want to make an iMessage app for Android.
Understand the implications of using a proprietary system.
Its getting to the point now where I'm never going to buy an iPhone simply because getting excluded over a green bubble seems like a good way to filter stupid people out of your life.
We want a simplistic, managed, fuss-free device that isn't another source of malware, viruses, dark patterns e.g. unsubscribing and where basic things like uninstalling requires a Terminal.
If you want a computer then there are plenty of companies that satisfy your requirements. So why not encourage and support them instead of trying to turn the iPhone into something a lot of people don't want.