I don't understand why there isn't appetite to simply regulate them out of controlling what software you put on your device.
I've been using Macs my whole life (since the early nineties) and I'm as loyal a user as anyone. I've given them probably enough money to put down a downpayment on a small house. Behavior like this will drive me away if it cannot be addressed, even if it means I have to go to china to find a better hardware vendor.
If Apple can block what's on "independent" third-party app stores, then the letter of the DMA may be violated or not, but its spirit is most certainly violated. Hope the EU cracks down on such malicious compliance.
This is such an obvious violation that I think Apple is testing it on purpose. They gain nothing by blocking this specific app. Maybe they just want to see what they can do.
They gain nothing by blocking this specific app.
I dunno, I think there's an obvious thing Apple would be worried about by allowing PC emulators on iOS (iPadOS specifically): the only thing that stops an iPad Pro from being the only computer of, say, a software engineer these days, is that iPadOS doesn't function as an non-inter-app-sandboxed parallel-multitasking development platform in the way that a desktop OS does.
But a (performant) PC emulator on iPadOS would fix that. You could buy an iPad Pro with a keyboard case, boot up a Windows or Linux (or maybe even macOS) VM, and work inside that — running shells, editors/IDEs, compilers, Docker containers, etc. And then swipe back over to (less-heavyweight) iPad apps when you're just taking notes / watching videos.
Honestly, it's something I've personally wanted for a long time. Despite loving my laptop, I'd love to be able to pack only an iPad when travelling to e.g. conferences. Right now I can't, because what if prod goes down and I need to investigate + develop a critical bugfix + deploy it? If I could run a PC VM on my iPad, I could do all that and more.
I don't understand this:
Would they rather someone buy a Thinkpad and run Linux on it, than someone buy an iPad and run Linux on it?
What's there to be scared of someone buying their own hardware?
They aren't all that scared of a small subset of geeks running Linux directly on their iPad and using that as a regular Linux-ey thing, I don't think. The number of people who want to do this is very small, and they don't expect any support for that. And that's not possible from the app store, anyway.
But they've always been scared of emulators in the IOS app stores, and the reason for that seems to be a combination of things:
1. The user experience with emulators can be awful, which is a contrast to the "It Just Works" way of doing things with IOS. This doesn't jive with the image they sell, or that they wish to support.
2. By letting anyone run real software easily on an iPad, this cuts into their sales of MacBooks. This is obviously not in their interest, since they'd rather sell two machines instead of one machine.
For point 1 I'm not sure how may people are going to fire up Window on an emulator, find it doesn't handle touch events very well, and go "iPads suck". However, there are a number of people who have gone "I'd like to do X on the iPad but there's no good way to do it, iPads suck", especially in the developer realm.
This is especially true on the "Pro" version of the iPad, where the OS feels like a major constraint on what would otherwise be a very capable device.
find it doesn't handle touch events very well
You don't need to touch your Windows VM. The iPad Magic Keyboard cases have trackpads on them; and iPads also support Bluetooth mice.
(And a user of iPadOS VM software probably wouldn't even be trying to touch the screen to interact with the software anyway. After all, why boot up such software if not for productivity? And who would attempt productivity on an iPad without putting it into its "productivity orientation", with the iPad docked onto a keyboard case?)
1) Things don't "Just Work" with IOS. I regularly have to help people figure out how to connect their i* to work network, install 2FA apps, find missing 2FA notifications, find freshly installed app icons..."It Just Works" if you have done it 100s of times before and know what to do. 2) That is just plain and simple user hostile behavior that is not tolerated in case of any other company except Apple by Apple users.
1. I don't have any trouble with IOS. My experience is very limited: I've got an old iPad Pro that runs the current IOS, and that I've had for a couple of years. It Just Works* -- it lets me watch dumb shit on YouTube, check the weather, and remotely operate a digital mixer, and that's all I really want from it. Previously, with a gap of about a decade, I had a minty-fresh OG iPod Touch that also Just Worked* (until it died a couple of years later during battery replacement surgery). Despite my limited experience, in both cases I've found the interface to be adequately intuitive and don't recall ever really seeking any guidance.
2. Some people like the walled garden. I'm not really amongst them, but I do tolerate the walls. (For those who absolutely abhor walls, there's rootable Android devices out there that can satisfy an itch to tinker with something in compact portable electronics. That's a lot of fun, too, but it's heading in the opposite opposite direction of Just Works.)
*: They "just work" within their limitations, which can be severe. It frustrates me that I can't install real Firefox on the iPad so I can use uBlock Origin, and it frustrated me that the iPod Touch didn't even come with the ability to install apps or even copy-and-paste text out of the box**. But in both cases, the devices behaved very well with the functions they were permitted to utilize.
**: I jailbroke the iPod Touch and went pretty far off the reservation with it (adding a clipboard, installable apps, multitasking, and a useful userland) because that was fun for me at that time, but by no means did I have to do any of that -- it was a very fine touchscreen music player with 802.11 and a web browser all by itself without any of that kind of help, and that's pretty much what it was promised to be able to do. And that was a long time ago; during the gap, I'd forgotten more about IOS than I ever knew.
They aren't all that scared of a small subset of geeks running Linux directly on their iPad and using that as a regular Linux-ey thing, I don't think.
I don't think they are worried about a few geeks running bash or docker. They should worry about Valve Software, and millions of non-geeks discovering that Steam works on iPads. Even if only a small subset of the Steam library works, that could be a collection of thousands of games going back decades that don't pay the App Store tax.
Unfettered PC emulation threatens billions of dollars of Apple revenue.
You forgot #3: By letting anyone run mouse software on iPad, they have to use a stylus to operate it, which made Steve Jobs mad at Microsoft's pen computing division back in 2001.
I honestly believe this to be way more important of a reason to Apple than anything else. The point of making you buy two computers is not to get twice as much money out of you, it's to get app developers to port their apps over to UIKit and make you re-buy all your apps twice.
I tried UTM SE a while back. Using it with the Magic Keyboard was almost the Real Deal Laptop Experience, but if I ever took my iPad out of its Magic Keyboard then I'd have to use some really annoying mouse and keyboard emulation to use the same software. Apple's the kind of company that will absolutely put guns to the heads of their users to force them to not have a bad computing experience.
I would have also thought:
3. It lets users get software on to the ipad without going through the App Store (thereby escaping apples ability to clip the ticket on the way through).
Apple would rather people buy an iPad and a cheaper Mac, e.g. a Macbook Air. And many of their customers do — despite only needing the Mac for one or two things.
These customers, in my personal experience, mostly end up gravitating toward using the Mac more and the iPad less — despite often saying they enjoy using the iPad more. They try to use the iPad for more things, but when there's something they need to do on their laptop, they switch over to using it — and then forget to switch back. Eventually, they give up on the "iPad experiment", and the iPad sits there gathering dust.
But they still did buy it. And likely have had it for long enough that they can't just return it. And they might even (probably mistakenly) think they'll pick it up again someday, maybe when a new iPadOS update makes it more functional and solves their pain-points.
And that line of thinking makes Apple very, very happy. "Buying an iPad you don't end up using because you also bought a Mac" is a situation Apple emphatically does not want to help anyone avoid. In fact, they do everything they can in their advertising to subtly guide customers into bad expectations about iPadOS capabilities, so that they'll end up in that situation.
IPad is great for direct manipulation, such as drawing / painting / rearranging things visually. In this regard, it far outstrips any macbooks.
And outside of a very small portion of the user base, how much of most people's time is spent in those activities?
And of those people, how many of them would prefer full-fat Photoshop on a Surface Pro or drawing tablet?
Not many; the iPad Pro + Apple Pencil Pro is considered by many to be the best-in-class drawing tablet. And the Surface Pro frankly sucks for digital illustration — it's far less responsive, with far less control. The next-best option after an iPad Pro is a Wacom pad plugged into a PC.
Also, there's no point in using Photoshop for drawing on a tablet. (It's not impossible to use it for that, but it's not what I'd call a good experience.) You really want domain-specific digital-illustration software that puts the artist in direct control of brushes, color-mixing, and layers (either by direct-manipulation gestures, or in floating palettes, ring menus, etc); and then gets everything else out of the way (or doesn't include it at all.) You use such software to draw the things you want, as separate layer-groups or images — and then, when you're done, you throw those drawings into an app like Photoshop to clean them up, put them together, and otherwise transform your "drawings" into "artwork."
If you're familiar with audio production: think of Photoshop as a DAW, and illustration as a performance. Even a solo musician doesn't touch their DAW while they're playing an instrument; the only thing they're touching is their instrument. Digital-illustration software is an instrument.
FWIW, I have both a Wacom and a Surface Pro on-hand right now. The Wacom tablet is great (unbeaten latency-wise) but the Surface Pro has an equally nice digitizer and a perfectly usable screen. I took notes on it for a few years before moving to markdown and typing everything.
The point I'm trying to make is that this artificial product category distinction people want to illustrate doesn't exist. Both of these hardware platforms can do both tasks equally well; all Apple has to do is provide both and let their customers decide for themselves. As time goes on, it feels increasingly easy to reverse-engineer Apple's design philosophy:
- Identify a problem (I need to install apps; I need a heartrate monitor; I want to draw on my Mac)
- Design a best-path solution (What if there was an app for that? What if all your vitals were monitored? What if drawing was tactile?)
- Take that solution and engineer it into an expensive auxiliary product (App Store/Developer Program; Apple Watch; Apple Pencil/iPad)
- Deny competitors market access specifically so they can't fix self-imposed limitations (Still Apple refuses to sign benign apps; Apple Health is all-or-nothing without Apple Watch, competitors are scary and can't be trusted; touchscreen Macs are "impossible" and Apple Pencil can only be made by licensing our tech)
Maybe I'm being too creative and optimistic, but are there not thousands of people on this site that would readily give up their Mac for an iPad with decent Linux support? The only person stopping people from having their cake and eating it too is Apple. And you know it's not because the iPad is in some way different from the Macbook and shouldn't have an open bootloader. It's because that would stop people from buying Macs. For the love of God, I hate Steve Jobs like the devil but I would probably go get a used iPad Pro if Apple announced they were publishing Linux drivers for it.
You have drunk the Youtuber Kool-Aid way too much. Also, quit the Apple superiority complexe.
There are plenty of professional illustrators using tools other than iPad Pros, in fact most serious ones are still using Wacoms and the likes as you mentioned. The Surfaces devices and the likes are just as competent as iPads (if not more) they just don't have the same halo effect and there are people like you spitting a lot of bullshit to keep the superiority complexe alive.
Apple would like people to see the iPad Pro as the only good illustration tool, but the truth is, considering the price and software support it's actually not a great one. Since a "real" computer is going to be needed for work before delivery, if you don't need the extreme mobility, it's pretty stupid to buy an iPad instead of a traditional drawing surface.
But it doesn't matter, since Apple doesn't sell their devices to rational people, it's all about emotional marketing so whatever...
Exactly what happened to me. These bastards planned that. That’s why they’re one of the richest companies in the world, because they knew how to trip their customers into buying shit they didn’t need to buy. And pricing RAM and Storage way, way out of proportion to the cost.
iSH is already on the App Store and lets you run x86 Linux apps.
My guess is that the thing Apple is actually objecting to is graphical user output, specifically mouse software being utilized on a touchscreen. UTM (and iDOS) does that, iSH only gives you a terminal. Terminal software is touch-friendly, so it's allowed, even though iSH has to do the same threaded code dance UTM SE does.
(And of course there's also a-Shell which runs WASM/WASI binaries in Safari...)
My understanding was that iSH is the same kind of thing that e.g. Swift Playground for iPadOS is: both ship with an internal userland of binaries, including a compiler toolchain, embedded into the app (that Apple can audit); and both allow code to be compiled and executed locally. But in neither case can you download and install arbitrary non-Apple-audited third-party packages into the sandbox.
This is why iSH calls itself a "Linux-like environment." There's no package manager! If Apple allowed it, iSH would almost certainly just be a wrapped-up Debian VM. But it's not. (And this is why iSH has always been considered a toy by people wanting to do real software development, rather than being something anyone would recommend you use as part of your workflow.)
iSH has nothing stopping you, the user, from wgetting arbitrary scripts or binaries and running them in the VM[0]. It also exposes a file provider so you can drop arbitrary x86 binaries into it if you so choose.
Also, iSH does have a package manager. It used to actually be modified to pull packages from the App Store but now they use a separate server. I don't remember if it's the Alpine Linux package repo or a custom thing for iSH.
[0] In fact, this was the excuse Apple used to ban it a few years ago
iSH has nothing stopping you, the user, from wgetting arbitrary scripts or binaries and running them in the VM[0]
"Nothing stopping you" in the same sense that there's nothing stopping someone from using a sequence of specific gamepad button-presses to turn Super Mario World into Flappy Bird.
In vulnerability-exploitation terms, sure, the attack surface is there.
But in "would anyone actually spend time doing this" terms: no. The advantages don't outweigh the labor costs. (Especially if you're doing this for work, in anger, and you want to install an app to let you solve a problem right now by popping open a Linux terminal, and installing all the packages you need — including some arbitrary non-packaged SDKs that depend on dev-dependencies from specific known Linux flavors.)
Mind you, in theory, someone could make it easier for everyone else to do this, by writing a bootstrap script that wgets a bunch of stuff and effectively turns your iSH environment into e.g. Debian. But nobody has done this.
Why? I can't say for sure, but I suspect it's precisely because the iSH "sandbox" isn't actually a VM containing a Linux kernel, but rather an older technique — I think involving a userland of binaries compiled to use Darwin libraries; or maybe more likely, a userland linked to some Linux-on-XNU virtualization layer (custom libc, libresolv, etc.) And that's just not a "flavor" of Linux that you can find Debian packages for, or even third-party APKs for. Even if you built up your own apt base-packages repo to allow debootstrap to work, that wouldn't magically enable you to then find install deb packages from arbitrary apt repos that weren't compiled for the iSH "arch".
And I think that iSH continuing to exist on iPadOS, but persisting in doing this complex kind of virtualization rather than switching over to being "just VM software hard-coded to use a specific Linux VM", is perhaps on purpose. I'm guessing that Apple wouldn't allow "just a Linux VM" on the App Store any more than they allow UTM — again, precisely because it would unlock the capability to efficiently utilize arbitrary third-party packages, and thereby to actually use the iPad "in anger" for software-development business productivity. It would be "enough" of a development environment that some businesses might consider buying their employees iPads instead of Macs. And Apple really wants to avoid that.
Also, iSH does have a package manager. It used to actually be modified to pull packages from the App Store but now they use a separate server. I don't remember if it's the Alpine Linux package repo or a custom thing for iSH.
It's a semi-custom thing for iSH, in that it's a custom "arch", with all the packages containing binaries compiled for the iSH virtualization layer. So you can't switch over/add on any third party repo; binaries from ordinary arm64 APKs wouldn't run. Third parties would need to create an iSH-arch release of their package specifically. And AFAIK there's no published infrastructure to enable third parties to do that.
In essence, though, the packages in this repo are still a "part of" the app. Despite being hosted on a third-party server, those packages still have to be signed — and I have a strong feeling that Apple, not the iSH dev, holds those signing keys. So Apple, not the iSH dev, gets final say over what APKs end up available in the iSH userland. (And that's why those APKs haven't been updated in a while — the iSH dev likely has to go back-and-forth with Apple when pushing out updates to their own repo — just as if they were publishing a new version of the app.)
If you're curious, iSH's source is public: https://github.com/ish-app/ish
You're correct that there is no Linux kernel emulation. They went with reimplementation for that. However, the userland is very much emulated x86 binaries. You can even compile your own C code inside iSH and run it. When you syscall, control passes from the threaded code[0] interpreter into the Linux reimplementation.
The reason why they aren't shipping Debian is that the threaded code technique being used as a JIT substitute in both iSH and UTM SE is far too slow to run a full Debian derivative. Believe me, I tried installing Ubuntu on UTM SE and it took literal hours and flattened my iPad battery in the process. iSH uses Alpine Linux because it's very lightweight[1].
As far as I'm aware there's no secret deal with Apple to lock iSH down. The only limitations I've ran into have to do with MySQL, which wants unaligned atomics, which you can't do on ARM64 without compromising the performance of the emulator. I actually had a discussion with the developer of iSH about this and put in a PR to make MySQL stop crashing iSH.
[0] return-oriented programming
[1] So lightweight it doesn't even ship anything GNU, making it one of the few genuine "Linux distros" with no slash or plus or "I would just like to interject"
iSH does allow you to download packages from the Alpine package repo, but they maintain their own mirror. The only issue is that they haven't updated it in a while, so its stuck at Alpine 3.14, and there's no (at least straightforward) option to upgrade to the later versions or to Alpine edge. I haven't yet tried updating the /etc/apk/ files to make Alpine upgrade though.
This isn't real "arbitrary package downloading", though — Apple still audits all the code that goes into these repos (which is why they can't just keep them up-to-date.) It's essentially just offloading of some of the app's packaged code into separate "DLC" modules, to make the base app download more lightweight.
I haven't yet tried updating the /etc/apk/ files to make Alpine upgrade though.
I would highly suspect that this wouldn't work.
Maybe it would have in some prior version, back when there was the technical barrier of it being very hard to cross-compile Linux binaries for arm64.
But I would guess, upon the popularization of things like the Raspberry Pi, that Apple required the developer of iSH to modify the version of apk(1) that ships with the tool to only work with APKs that have been signed by Apple.
False. I've been using iSH before it became available on the App Store. Downloading and executing arbitrary binaries is always possible. Just go install iSH and run any command-line binary to see for yourself.
The reason it's considered a toy is because of the sheer number of bugs in its Linux syscall simulation layer as well as in its implementation of Forth-style threaded code, not because of a package manager. After all its GitHub page says "This code is known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, and reproductive harm."
Would be very funny to see someone emulating a PC on an iPad to Linux so they can use Wine to run windows apps.
Use Wine to run Dolphin, running an SNES emulator, running the Gameboy player, playing Tetris
Or more specifically, Doom implemented in Tetris.
When Nintendo sues, do they start at the top or the bottom of the stack?
There are public domain Tetris versions for the GB.
Nintendo legal is massively concurrent, and sues all simultaneously.
You can already achieve the same workflow with Shadow PC, even though you need a permanent low latency network connection.
Sure, you can... but you never would.
The whole point of an adult owning an iPad as a separate second device (besides using it as a drawing tablet or as a touch-control surface for professional production apps) is that it's a lightweight and more "rugged" portable computer than a laptop is, focused on enabling consumption and light computing tasks in situations where you either would worry about bringing a laptop, or just wouldn't care to deal with bringing a laptop.
The comparative advantage of an iPad over a laptop is found by just throwing it in your bag when you're going "out" and not planning to do work, and then pulling it out: in a coffee shop; at a park; on a beach; on a bus/train/plane; etc. Into, in other words, exactly the sorts of situations where you don't have a "permanent low latency network connection."
Any environment where relying on a remote desktop would make sense, is also an environment where the iPad has no comparative advantage. If you're in such an environment constantly, you'd just buy a laptop and never even consider an iPad!
Based on the horror stories I've heard about App Store reviews, this might literally just be a part of their review org that's not up to date on third-party EU app stores applying the wrong set of rules (or for that matter, any type of rules at all).
Doesn't make it any better, of course.
Lawyers don’t care about the spirit of any law, it’s the language that matters!
The DMA repeatedly requires gatekeepers to act in a "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" manner. The "spirit" is very much baked into the language.
Obligatory IANAL and speaking mainly from an American understanding.
"Fair", "reasonable", and "non-discriminatory" all have clearly defined legal definitions, which are not necessarily aligned with commonly understood or dictionary-defined definitions.
The only thing that ultimately matters is the letter of the law. If the letter is contrary to the spirit, the law should be rewritten.
Now you know why the USA* exists. Welcome to Europe, where you are both more free than the USA and less free at the same time.
* I assume you mean the USA when you say America, as both the North American and South American continents have many countries.
I mean, yes?
America exists because we couldn't stand Europe, and we've had to go back there at least several times to fix the mess y'all keep dispensing before we just said "Fuck it." after witnessing WW2 and made our presence permanent for the forseeable future.
Now that I got the snark out of my system, I personally prefer a legal system everyone will agree on even if not everyone will like it.
Heh, I’m from the US actually; moved to the Netherlands before shit got weird there. Every time I go back to visit friends and family, I get a reverse culture shock.
The legal system here is mind-blowing compared to the US. My son got beat up by some thug-teenager for being from the US (the teen was Afghan, so makes sense why he would feel that way, but to take it out on a 6 year old is kinda fucked up). Anyway, watching that play out was very interesting.
Even just dealing with employee background checks is interesting in that only certain crimes (relevant to the work you are asking them to do) show up. So if an embezzler wants to go into childcare, nothing would show up (probably, I haven’t actually done that, so I have no idea for this specific example, it’s just an example).
It’s so fascinating… but if you are ever looking for a way out of the US: Dutch-American Friendship Treaty is a way.
I'm Japanese-American, so I'd most likely move to Japan if I ever feel like changing my scenery. Thanks though. :P
Nazi laws were created and inspired from Canadian and US racist laws/eugenic acts.
So, guess which ideology generated that German/Austrian monster.
Thank Jim Crow for that.
What country do you say you are from, Kingdom of Normway? Federal Republic of Germany? Peoples Republic of China? Commonwealth of Australia?
Yes, the courts will lean on legal dictionaries such as Black's Law Dictionary and Ballentine's Law Dictionary.
reasonable. Not extreme. Not arbitrary, capricious, or confiscatory. Public Service Com, v Haverneyer, 296 US 506, 80 L Ed 357, 56 S Ct 360.
"What is reasonable depends upon a variety of considerations and circumstances. It is an elastic term which is of uncertain value in a definition." Sussex Land & Live Stock Co. v Midwest Refining Co. (CA8 Wyo) 294 F 597, 34 ALR 249, 257.
That's right. There's something I always say: "Lawyers are only purposivists when it benefits them, and textualists at any other avenue."
Doesn't that depend on the venue? I thought I had read that some European member states had more subjective intent based enforcement?
Yes US and European justice systems differ in this quite a bit.
EU is much more about the spirit of the law than American law
European courts often do.
Pretty clear anti-competitive activity
Yeah there's no way this is gonna fly.
Apple should be allowed to block whatever they want from their app store. And users should be allowed to run whatever software they wish on their devices not installed through Apple's store.
Show apple be able to block apps from third party stories like in the article?
Apple should allowed to block apps from third party app stores on devices they paid for.
Apple does not pay for devices. They sell them. The users pay.
Yes. The users pay for them, the users own them, the users are entitled to run whatever software they wish on devices they paid for, own, and control.
You stated the opposite above, which is what GP argued against.
It was a joke that Apple can control software on devices that they (Apple) paid for. Since it’s they user that pays money - they should be in charge of the software.
I believe I was consistent. Perhaps you believe that because apple had once paid for the devices that they should still be able to exercise control of them post sale to a user. This is a violation of ownership and of the first sale doctrine.
I assume there's just a "not be" missing somewhere
Not if the device is a ‘managed’ Apple’s employee’s
I think you mean: Apple the company should be able to block stuff on devices Apple the company paid for (for their internal employees). Not all of the ones Apple manufactured.
To be succinct, ownership implies control. This is a very old legal principle.
confusing way of stating your view imo, as the other thread shows
Only if Apple's app store doesn't have any special placement. Remember when the EU wouldn't let phone have default browsers? The first time you started the phone, it had to show you 5 browsers in a randomized order and you picked one.
It should not require you to even install one of five; if you do not want to install a browser at all (or if you wish to install one other than those five, possibly some time in future) then it should not be required.
Although, I think it would be better to just not install any browser by default and not even ask; you can install it yourself later if you wish to do so, and can install any one you want (or more than one, if you wish) instead of having to pick one from the provided list.
Those were Windows PCs, not phones.
Is a person* able to sell something while restricting how it can be used? This is before we even get into the issues of selling software vs. selling the right to use a copy of the software. Things like copyright laws, IP laws, and even ownership ends up getting complicated when deciding what is just or not. I think we mostly agree you shouldn't be able to resell copies of a book if you buy a book, but selling your own specific copy of a book is fine. But why does this distinction exist? Do you really own the book if you can't resell copies of it?
*or company. Perhaps part of the answer is that sometimes we say yes for people but no for companies.
I think that copyright (and patents) is no good, and should be abolished. They should not restrict making copies of books, selling copies, and other stuff, by copyright. What you should not be allowed to do is to make an inexact copy and then sell it and then claim that the inexact copy is the same as the original, if it is not the same as the original; however, it can still be allowed if you do not make such invalid claims.
Is a person* able to sell something while restricting how it can be used?
Of course, this is the domain of contract law. Often car companies restrict how soon a desirable model can be resold and for how much.
edit: And robust anti trust enforcement keeps contract terms reasonable. Contracts are limited by unconscionability and superseded by legislation but otherwise fair game.
"Their devices"? The owner of the device is the one with root privileges.
"Their" is referring to the owner of the phone in that comment. Or perhaps that is what you mean?
Yes, that is exactly my point. Apple hardware users don't have root privileges on those devices; ergo, they do not own them.
Yes, I agree, with both.
It really is a simple as this. People often make it more complicated than this fundamental issue.
I'll go a step further and say that users should be able to distribute software without needing to get apple's approval. Instead we get the lie of "_ is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash."
Odd that Apple gets a veto over what can go into a third-party app store.
Why do you think it odd? It makes total sense to me that they decide what software is allowed on their device.
Whose device is it again? It doesn't belong to the person who paid for it? Are computers a subscription product now?
shhh, don't put it in writing like that.
their device.
Did you read this comment twice yourself to see the problem?
It makes total sense to me that they decide what software is allowed on their device.
What do you mean their device?
If they gift it to me for free, ok it is their device.
If I buy it, it is MINE and only I must be able to control what runs on it.
It stops being their device once they sell it to you.
It is not their device... Or at least it should not be.
I can't believe some people think this way. When did MY phone become THEIR device?
I don't like this PC as a service era.
It's not that odd considering that they made their approval aka notarization an explicit requirement for non-App Store apps. They also have that same veto power for all apps on macOS, although tech savvy users can bypass that veto.
they made their approval aka notarization an explicit requirement for non-App Store apps
I mean, okay, but that's just another thing that seems odd. I don't know why anyone is calling it a "third party" app store in that case.
Almost as if the third-party app store is not really an independent third party.
I remember the flash-in-the-pan moment where through some strange conflux of exploits and firmware features UTM on iOS was able to access full hardware virtualization support. It was a glorious glimpse into an alternate reality that we will likely never get to see again.
I don't have enough superlatives to express my disappointment when seeing all of that effort suppressed and restricted by Apple.
When the UTM authors say "it's not worth it" -- they may be onto something. Apple is slowly but surely beginning to be "not worth it" for me and for many other professional users. Happy WWDC everybody; enjoy getting fucked.
Apples not been worth it for pro users for a good decade. The only thing it's been good for is a litmus test of users care for ethics in computing.
The whole iPad will eat MacBook business so let's cuck its capabilities is insanely wasteful. Like should be illegal levels of wasteful given the current climate of consumption and climate change problems facing us.
Apple and their whole culture of product rollout and consumption is a massive part of our wasteful problem as a global society. Terrible company really.
Apples not been worth it for pro users for a good decade.
I'm curious what you mean by this. In my country, a large percentage of developers are often seen working on Macs, and these are not developers of iOS or macOS apps, they just like using linux tools but on a non-linux OS UI. Visit a Clojure conference, for example, and notice how many are using macs. Same is true in many other engineering communities.
Eh I see that amongst the IT world. But when I'm onsite at manufacturing businesses or industrial organizations it's all windows. Same with all the non-pro user but professional services I engage with like cafes or hotels.
MacOS is just a nightmare to run the basic infra these companies require. It often times doesn't even run the software that's required.
These industries don't want cloud apps. They want robust standalone systems than run for the better part of a decade with minimal inputs or maintenance. Apple and the cloud and working on vms or remote servers or using some web app is not that. Linux is also usually out of the question as setup and customisation is not something they want to pay for. They want apps they purchase and then install once, setup once and that's it.
I was naively hoping that with the M4 iPad the opposite of this would happen and they would let us unlock the power of this device so I could use it as my dev machine when I'm traveling.
Instead, no real improvements are coming to iPad OS and if you're not gaming or video editing, all you get to do is marveling at how powerful your YouTube player is in benchmarks.
Please Apple, let the Pro device finally be a Pro device and let us use virtualization.
The fact that the new $3k+ M4 iPad Pro cannot run regular OS X in some kind of VM or something is flat-out insulting.
surely it's coming. you don't keep maxing that thing out otherwise
The bright side is over the last couple of years I've been broken of my lust for every new device that comes out promising "newer and shinier." The reality is it's the same old locked down slab just a little faster with added bing bings and wahoos. So now I just save most of the cash and spend the rest on upgrading my PC.
the same old locked down slab
with more locks.
UTM is open source, so you can build it yourself for your own iOS device, if you really want to.
But you have to keep re-signing it every week or so, which is a major pain
Check out https://sideloadly.io to ease that pain
The loopholes it uses won't work for long, and it's not practical when traveling. Besides, this is an Apple-created problem that they could easily fix by allowing people to deploy apps to their own devices without any stupid limits.
That's not the same as being available as an easily installable executable and such a drawback for most people.
the whole point of the third-party stores currently is to help you avoid doing all of that
But you may not have access to API capabilities needed without an paid account.
Doesn't building an iOS app requires an Mac?
There should be very strict counter penalties for false claims in my opinion. I once received a dmca from a much larger (foreign) company than us. Result was complete loss of revenue for one month. We survived, but it felt like a mafia action. Unfair and powerless.
Isn't it your responsibility to sue them for that?
Suing a foreign company is something like 5-25x more expensive and less likely to be successful. It's a huge defect in the DMCA that they can do this - every lawyer I talked to for a similar problem told me not to bother.
It's almost crazy that someone hasn't come up with an insurance company for false DCMA claims. They'd probably be rolling in cash and it would put some serious pressure on people throwing their weight around.
I'm not sure the economics would work out. It seems like it would be tough to get the bad actors to pay out in court beyond getting your legal fees back. In many cases they're basically just little scam corporations without many real assets that exist to cause trouble on behalf of the real bad actors.
That's not how insurance companies work. Basically, the amount of YouTubers out there paying a monthly fee to
1. continue getting income while a dispute is ongoing,
2. potential payout if it goes to court/settled.
Basically, the insurance company would probably very rarely go to court; they'd only do it if they knew they would win hands-down. Otherwise, they would probably just send threatening letters (which lawyers are good at) and take a token sum (if anything).
In reality, getting a false DCMA takedown is pretty rare (if the amount of YouTube content is anything to go by).
And lets not mention all the free publicity you'd get when a YouTuber does get one, because they all apparently, rant and rave about how they got their video taken down when it is taken down.
The investigation phase alone would have costed me arround 50,100k minimum. Serious money for a small business.
Is the "no JIT' policy somehow baked into the hardware/software of iOS devices, instead of something Apple finds by doing an app review?
I thought it was the latter (that running a JIT on iOS would be possible but not accepted on the app store), but then I'm left wondering why they seem to have submitted a JIT-less version on a third party app store.
Maybe the intent was ease development by having only one version to support for the first-party and also third-party app stores.
IIRC it's part of the sandbox apps run in, which, in turn, makes use of the hardware memory protection. To do JIT, you need to first write your dynamically generated code into the memory, and then execute it. The memory you obtain via e.g. malloc() doesn't allow execution, only reading and writing (this is controlled by permission flags, in the page table, on the memory pages your app is given by the kernel). To obtain memory that is both writable and executable, you call mmap() specifying corresponding flags. The kernel just refuses to allocate such memory for your app because it doesn't have necessary permissions, or "entitlements" in Apple speak.
Thank you for the insightful answer! That's nice to know. I hadn't considered that they had a system like that in place.
This leaves a market need open to Android and Windows tablets, but they haven't made anything nearly as good for the price. (Except for a short period where the Pixel tablet was less than $200)
It's so nice of them to act so openly maliciously so that not even the most naive person can believe they should have a say in which apps get published in third party stores.
Personally I care about this much more than whatever AI stuff happens at WWDC.
This is the real "developer" issue we are talking about.
Yes, we know. (from earlier:) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40627155 It's not surprising.
This is the reason I will never use the Apple ecosystem, even if the hardware is pretty good.
A hardware manufacturer has no business telling me what I may or may not run on hardware I have purchased, period.
It's really weird seeing Apple say "sure, we allowed a console emulator, but PC emulation is still banned". If anything I expected them to allow the latter before the former.
On the other hand, the reason why UTM got banned is completely obvious: it lets users operate desktop software with a finger. That's the same reason why iDOS 2 got banned[0], and if iSH shipped with a graphical output they wouldn't have unbanned that either. The whole reason why the iPad exists at all as a separate product line with a separate UI toolkit from Macs is purely because Apple - specifically, Steve Jobs - said so.
Apple's entire foray into multitouch was borne out of Steve Jobs wanting to spite a 'friend'[1] at the pen computing division of Microsoft. It can be summed up with the phrase "who wants a stylus"?[2] That's why they continue to saddle the iPad with inferior, buggier phone software, because they think it's literally the only way a tablet can be made. So literally anything that might let someone turn an iPhone or an iPad into a Windows tablet is considered the worst kind of heresy in the Apple religion.
Anyway, I hope the EU smacks Apple down on this, because Apple very clearly promised that EU DMA compliant Notarization would only filter for technical compatibility, not taste.
[0] Yes, Apple said a bunch of stuff about how it "allows content without licensing", but we saw with Delta how easily that concern crumbles away.
[1] I do not believe Jobs could have friends in the way we understand the word.
[2] The Apple Pencil doesn't count. A "stylus" is a physical tool intended to work around software not being designed for touch.
We need new anti trust legislation and harsh enforcement, enacted retroactively. Until executives have compensation clawed back and face jail time, this will continue.
doesn't it seem a bit strange that apple would allow emulation of game consoles which (for the most part) are used with pirated games but a pc emulator that is more easily can use legitimate copies is blocked for 'reasons'... its almost like apple is encouraging piracy...
btw, i think the top comment on that article nails it:
> This is clearly Apple just blocking anything that could allow the iPad to be used as a real computerHow tf can they block third parties app?
Maybe someone will. Either way, such a move would break their business model, and you'd end up with just another android which is not what the market wants (because if they did, Apple would have gone out of business already).
I was looking for an earlier thread (which also involved Nokia and Windows Mobile) which shows the sort of timelines/cascading effects you'd have where vendors generally either become overly generic or just outright fail (i.e. BlackBerry). When I'll find it I'll edit and add it here.
Edit: didn't find it yet, but there are variations on appliance vs. general purpose hardware where things like smart TVs and android phone bootloaders are used as similar examples. I wish I had a better timeline search for threads.
That is an interesting take, so basically in your opinion the main thing that makes iOS better than Android is that Apple has tighter control over the apps? What I've heard from most iOS users is other things like smoother interface, better battery life, great camera etc. I've never heard "I like iPhone because Apple moderates the App Store" from laymen (i.e. non-HN crowd).
I’ll chime in as one of them (and in every thread about this many more people do as well) - it’s one of the many things I like about an iPhone, the tighter control and gate keeping Apple does on the App Store. I like not having to worry so much on the App Store or wade through scams etc (I know there’s not none but seems less and it’s easy to find the apps I want) and for my parents and less tech savvy friends it’s great
But personally it comes down to it’s a phone not a computer to me and I don’t want to or care if I can run “anything” on it.
I love the tight control Apple keeps on the app store, just last week it forced an app update on me that deleted all my OTP keys, because the OTP app was bought by some malware vendor and I didn't get prompted that this prior personal project was now controlled by a literal scam artist company prior to them pushing an update. Their commitment to safety goes so far I can neither inspect the data saved by the app nor look at the app binary itself, can you help me understand how that makes the iPhone app store secure?
What app was this?
Probably Raivo, but it was acquired a year ago, not a week ago.
The lack of scam apps and crappy clones is the only real advantage that appeals to me. On the Play store you can type in the exact name of an app that someone has told you and it'll show you a whole page of fake and copycat apps.
I've never seen that. can you give me an example search term?
Look up any popular game, although a lot of the bigger ones are good about reporting their clones and getting them removed. An immediate example I can think of is 2048, the original by Gabriele Cirulli, is published by Solebon LLC on the Play store, when you look for 2048 using the search, it's not even the first result that comes up. Although to be fair to them, it's not the first that comes up on the apple store either.
Why do you think the battery life is better?! Do people not get cause and effect? Ability to deny crap apps and ability to control what can run in background surely helps!
You say that as if deleting crapware isn't possible on any other platform. We've been doing it for decades.
GMS is most of power waste in android. Deleting it makes the phone borderline useless.
I'd argue that your latter point (optimizing background apps) is majority of the improvement and this is something you can do in the OS regardless of where an app comes from (excluding rooted/jailbroken devices from scope). This would've been a reasonable argument if Apple only ever denied apps because they did stupid things, not because they offered a payment gateway that did not pay Apple commission. Lets not pretend that Apple's control is only about curating an experience for the user, it is very significantly about maximizing profit as well.
As a side note, I've always understood that just stock iOS is way more optimized than stock Android simply because of better engineering. However, this is anecdotal and I don't have any references as such.
Its also a myth. Apple has so much trash in app store… including scams and direct decompiled copies of apps. Its probably better than Google Play but lets not pretend they care about the app quality - otherwise they wouldnt be banning and kicking high quality apps left and right.
It’s not a myth. Every week my parents or children request I’d remove malware or adware from their android device that they installed. On my other children’s tablet or family iPhone this has never been a problem once.
Doubt. This sounds like an Apple commercial from the early 00's talking about Windows malware.
iOS frankly has a ton of scam apps that ask for weekly subscriptions to resize a picture or other crap like that.
I love that Apple has a tight control over the App Store, but I would love to just shove whatever I want on a device I own and if it blows up on me, more the fool I.
I think we’d have to ask some non-technical people about this really, but I think there’s a nebulous perception that the Apple App Store is, like, somehow safer and good, while the Google one is somehow less safe and not good. The specific details, not so well understood.
What Apple loves to make us believe is that Vendor, AppStore and ContentFilter are not three entirely orthogonal concepts that can be totaly separated from each other.
You can have:
- Company A be the hardware Vendor
- Company B host the App Store
- Company C be the provider of the ContentFilter
Non-technical iOS users probably don't give a flying crap and would not even know if it was possible to download a PC emulator from a third party app store. The iPhone does lots of things right, and having some obscure options which only the technical crowd cares about will not change that.
To become another Android iOS would have to be licensed to other vendors and appear on cheaply made devices dragging its name through the mud.
What's your point? If nobody cares about it then let the app on the app store.
If you want to be able to run your software, on your device, buy an Android or Linux or even Windows device. Anything but Apple. The dollars don't lie: for some reason, people want to be controlled.
What the hell are you talking about? I buy iPhone despite it being locked-down piece of shit garden, not because of it.
Being a walled garden is the main differentiator between iPhones and every other phone. You chose the walled garden over the non-walled non-garden.
I already bought an iPhone dude. I'm not dishing out another grand just to install Android.
Except they don't. Some might and they seem intent on telling everybody else how it's the best option for them. Just let me install whatever I want. My choice if it explodes.
Tight control isn't the only thing that defines iOS. I hate Google (and on my android phones i don't log in with a Google account). I would go with apple for more privacy. But their strict control of the platform is unacceptable for me.
This is the problem with the current duopoly. Both options are pretty terrible.
I think it's great what the EU is doing though they're leaving too many loopholes for Apple to weasel through. And I think they should be attacking Google much harder.
There are other reasons to buy an iPhone. I loathe the App Store’s restrictions, and this is a showstopper for me regarding the iPad, which would’ve been Alan Kay’s Dynabook if it weren’t for being limited to the App Store. However, I’m willing to tolerate a restricted app environment on a phone, though I wouldn’t mind a less restrictive experience. Ignoring the App Store, I find iOS to be more polished than Android, and I also like how Apple provides OS updates for its iPhones for roughly five years. I’m on my third iPhone (a 14 Pro) after using an SE and a 7; I switched to the iPhone SE after two years of using a Google Nexus, which I loved and was disappointed when Google discontinued it.
I'm sure the market wants more than two providers.
The market of "low hanging fruit."
AT&T made a deal with Apple which should have been stopped by regulators.
I'm having trouble finding the perfect way to articulate the idea, so here's the half-assed version.
Whatever it is that I, and everyone, likes about iPhones/iPads, it has absolutely nothing to do with Apple deciding that I'm too stupid to get to override what software to install on it.
(I'm an American speaking about Americans)
Because to non-technical people, iPhones are a sparkling clean oasis in deceitful confusing crime ridden cryptic hell-hole.
You might think I am simping for Apple, but my stance is identical to yours. However I have the situation in my life of being surrounded primarily regular people. I don't live in a tech bubble or work in a tech job. My rants against apple are notorious, and I have largely stopped, because I can see how ignorant yet still apathetic people are about it.
Just a short story to encapsulate it:
On a recent trip with lots of friends we ended using my phone for most group shots and other nice pictures. The Pixel's camera really does shine.
However when it came time to share those pictures, I informed everyone it would be best to get google photos where we could all dump the hundreds of pictures into one communal album. This was quickly met with "What? I don't want to deal with that, why don't we just share them the regular way?" (imessage).
The greatest thing I ever did to help non technical people is to make sure they all have adblockers. I can only install ublock on android firefox and this is why I never recommend iphones. Too much malvertisement crap that apple won't let me block.
iOS has had ad blocking for years now. This was true quite a while ago, yeah.
"Acceptable ads" is such a crock. In terms of trust it's ublock or nothing.
??? I don’t think my ad blocker has an “acceptable ads” list.
I don’t mean something from Apple—maybe they have one, but that’s not what I’m using.
I will naively assume you are commenting in earnest and have missed the (old) news, which is most certainly what GP is referring to: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/cre...
Examples of content blockers (not just ad blocking):
- AdGuard: https://apps.apple.com/app/adguard-adblock-privacy/id1047223...
- Hush: https://apps.apple.com/app/hush-nag-blocker/id1544743900
- Wipr: https://apps.apple.com/app/wipr/id1030595027
- Vinegar: https://apps.apple.com/app/vinegar-tube-cleaner/id1591303229
I felt the same way but Orion browser (made by the Kagi people) can run android extensions including Ublock!
If it's chromium based have they committed to supporting manifest v2 after chrome kills it?
My understanding from Brave is that this year Google is essentially disabling v2 add-ons, but the code will still be in Chromium (for other things Google does), so Brave can just re-enable it.
But Brave expects that Google will actually pull the code out of Chromium next year -- when that happens, it is unlikely anyone else will have the time to maintain patches to put it back in.
Orion browser for iOS allows both chrome and firefox extensions to be installed on iphones. (for now anyway, I'm sure apple will yeet them whenever they find out about it)
You need to change some settings first, but it worked when I put the firefox version of ublock origin on a phone.
I have my DNS on my android phone set to dns.adguard.com, which has the benefit of blocking ads in even "free" apps/games that are littered with them. This works even on mobile data, so it's better than even a pihole.
I wanted to do the same to my boyfriend's iPhone after seeing him sit through probably a dozen ads in one sitting with all the free games he has downloaded, but I found out that Apple literally does not allow you to change your DNS for mobile networks, and you have to manually change it for each wifi network. Weird for a company that claims to prioritize "privacy".
My family, including myself, all have iPhones. We’ve done exactly this for our family trips to the Black Hills and Ozarks over the last couple years, but we just share them with Apple’s shared albums. It works exactly the same as Google’s shared albums but with the iMessage and other iOS/macOS integration niceties. That could be why your family didn’t want to download another app to do what’s “already built in” to the phone, so to speak.
Just speculating, you know your family better than I ever could obviously.
They are not even aware that iMessage or Apple shared albums are even an iPhone exclusive feature. They don't even know what iMessage is. The whole iPhone experience is so seamless that for me to suggest alternate apps doesn't even make sense. Like telling someone they need to get a coffee maker when they have a brand new keurig right in front of them. The statement is more confusing than informative to them.
To them, the reason I can't send them pictures is because Android phones suck. Which they complain about with "Anytime an android sends me a picture it looks like shit".
Weren't they literally like this since the first iphone?
In 2007, you couldn't run more than one app at a time on the puny 128MB of RAM the iPhone came with.
Today, iPhones are now more powerful than a lot of computers, yet those computers can run rings around iOS in terms of doing actual computer stuff.
They were like this from the first Mac. Woz wanted the Mac to be open like the Apple II, but Jobs wanted it closed. Jobs won. That's how Apple has been ever since. The crazy days of Mac clones got shut down quick upon Jobs' return. It is just not in the Jobs' Apple's DNA to be open. Why this is confusing to anyone is just a sign of not understanding history. If you want open, Apple is not your platform. That's fine, move along. It's a dead horse.
Because media and game console publishers don't want you to be able to run games they haven't distributed (because they force game developers to work with game publishers, and game publishers to agree to all sorts of terms), or programs that can access media and games in a way they don't want you to.
If you think Apple is bad, wait until you see Sony's terms for publishing a crossplatform game on Playstation (Xbox is a bit better.) The agreement they force publishers to sign has all sorts of stipulations, including rules that require payments when PSN users spend more on the PC version of a game than they do the Playstation version, and a prohibition on moving purchased cosmetics to accounts on other platforms.
Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft - all of them would be dead set against third party stores. So would all the media conglomerates (that Sony doesn't own.)
Many software developers would also be against it. If you sell an app on the iOS store, you're virtually guaranteed it won't be pirated. That guarantee goes away the second iOS devices can use third party stores and run any app.
That TPM chip in every x86 system? That isn't there for you, friend (although now it can be used to store FDE keys.) TPM was for storing the keys to decrypt media files.
People seem to keep forgetting that many of the security systems in MacOS and Windows aren't designed for your security, but the security of licensed content.
if you have to distribute via website or alternative app store, everybody can always have a known person to be responsible for piracy, in addition, it is just as easy to block as apps in apple's app store
sony is not yet a gatekeeper, might be in the future... apple does not have to sell in Europe, if it does, and big enough (no need to be monopoly) to be a gatekeeper, law and rules say they operate a critical infrastructure/platform in the EU economy and hence they cannot tax developers (a country has such powers)
the question is not whether Apple has to change but a question might be why? this is the field of monopolistic power and competition law... monopoly profit is not inherently bad, can help innovation but along the way we figured out it is probably best to curb this power in the long run
Apple had its time of their life and to be honest, I see little meaningful innovation in the last 5+ years, however, they suppress competition and innovation in the economy, controlling a gateway between innovative developers and users
another aspect is consumer prices... should consumers get lower prices or let apple take monopolistic tax from them? of course lower prices seems to be better nd it is one goal... however, we should and we do allow success and monopolistic profit by each and every big innovation, in the beginning and Apple has already had that
it is a bit like an economy supports patent law and competition law at the same time
most people are motivated by financial success and most company pay research and innovation for potential monopolistic profit and this works and it is protected! however, competition law or new forms of it like DMA kicks in later on
it is like you innovate, use patents, get big money but if you grow big you are not allowed to become like all companies become if not controlled: shifting from competitive innovative power to a country like taxing power
I think it is correct that we need competition law too, if we really think about our past, economics, history, and what motivates people
Will it though? It's not like it's new behavior from them.
I think this is what the EU is basically doing but Apple is trying to work around that by minimally implementing 3rd party app stores in a way that still gives them control to see if they can get away with that (they probably won't be able to).
That's exactly what the EU's DMA does. It tends to get a lot of flak here for some reason.
With trust, trade is unrestricted.
But when you don't have trust, trade doesn't happen.
It's ironic. When apple first introduced the ios app store (decades ago) I thought "wow, they will protect me from the nonsense". But over time I learned, they don't really protect, there is still nonsense, and further they remove the ability to protect myself from the nonsense (you can't firewall your phone or detect/prevent network access by apps)
The DOJ is suing Apple in an antitrust lawsuit for this very reason (among many other anticompetitive reasons)
EU DMA was supposed to do exactly that, which is why they're talking about Notarization, but Apple is maliciously half-complying. The good news is that the DMA also has specific legal penalties for this kind of half-compliance[0], the bad news is that the EU is a slow and bureaucratic organization so who knows when that will actually be enforced.
[0] oddly enough called "anti-circumvention provisions", which is fucking hilarious