Apple Executive Says Users Who Want App Sideloading Already Have That Option With Other Platforms

[donguevas]

Senior Tech at the fruity computer company here and in IT for 30 years.

I would be down with side loading if the first time you activated the ability for your IOS device you would get a minimum of three pop ups that you were opting in to it. Then you would be texted or emailed a passcode you had to enter to continue the process. And then the last one would be that you agreed you were opting out of Apple Tech support and any Icloud services other than mail, contacts, calendars, and message syncing.

The problem is that every "power" user tends to be someone who follows directions they found on Google and Apple has to clean up the mess.

So here is my normal work flow for mac.

1.Front line guy cannot figure something out it gets escalated to me.
2.I poke around and see some funky application. I asked to temporarily uninstall it. User refuses.
3.I create a test user without that app. Things work fine.
4.User refuses to try without the app installed.
5.I have the user gather time stamps, logs, and host of other information.
6.I get it up to an engineer.
7.Engineer says"yeah, it was the funky app, get rid of it.

Not everyone has a Mac, but tons have Iphones. Support calls would go up exponentially.

So I tell the user. "You are going to have to either get rid of it or contact the developer." Developer has no phone number and does not answer their emails.

Or it can be a large company that says "Have Apple sort it out."

People call Apple because they know someone will pick up the phone.

 

[sirdir]

It‘s all about control and money. Apple wants to control what I can install on my iPhone. This may actually drive me away from them one day. I love the ecosystem but this is taking it too far.

 

[phantom13]

Lmao he really said giving people choices eliminates choice. "Sideloading in this case is actually eliminating choice” the explanation he gives doesn’t help me understand any better.

 

[dwaite]

I guess I just consider that technological darwinism

If you're following random instruction to toggle security settings on your phone and clicking through warnings around dangers to install XXXCasino, you're going to have other problems than side-loading risking your security.

It would likely be Facebook and Spotify and Fortnite, not XXXCasino.

In some respects I'd trust XXXCasino more.

 

[T-R-S]

People grip so much about iPhones if you dislike them that much - buy a Windows Phone ....

 

[FrozenInferno]

Sideloading means that Apple needs to build a door into a wall. A wall that currently has no doors. Apple is worried that people may be able to break into that door. This is the issue that affects everyone.

Anone who thinks that sideloading only affects people who want to sideload is naive.

Fair point.

 

[djphat2000]

Would you do it to bring the price of apps down for all of us? The big issue as I see it is that Apple has complete control over how much it costs to sell an App. It's 30% of revenue. There's no other option. Competition between markets is what brings that price down. There's no one competing with the App Store which is a problem.

Moreover, these are not mutually exclusive. Don't trust anything AppStore apps? Don't use them.

Physical stores have a higher cut then the App Stores do. And that is with many stores selling the same product.
Apple sets the 70/30 rule as do all other app stores. It's not just Apple. There is zero assurances you or I will pay less than the current advertised price if the rule was say 80/20 or 90/10. Or even 99/1, as the developer sets the price. If they want to make $10 on an app, they can and sell it for $12.99 on the app store. Developers can also sell it for say, nothing and Apple makes NOTHING. Which the lion share of apps on the store are FREE. How much cheaper can we get?

 

[mngdew]

What privacy when a subpoena and gag order can negate that?

 

[djphat2000]

Customizing and stealing apps has been around on iOS for more than a decade through jailbreaking.

But the government wants to remove the jailbreaking part and somehow have it still be "safe".

 

[mi7chy]

There's zero reason for blocking sideloading of reputable open source community apps like Retroarch emulation other than control to maximize their profit. Any other excuse is just lip service.

 

[Hajj.david]

I think he is speaking to wrong crowd. The users do not care about side-loading as much as developers. He can talk about privacy and security all day, but that is not going to change the majority of developer opinions to side load their apps like on a Mac or pc or Android or other browser equipped devices.

As a developer why on earth would I want sideloading, that makes piracy ridiculously easy.

 

[djphat2000]

What privacy when a subpoena and gag order can negate that?

They can only give what they have. Which in many cases is fully encrypted data. Unless they have the password of the person they have a subpoena for.

 

[Ethosik]

But sideloading does lower the security bar. You're basically sneaking past the lifeguard, and swimming in the pool, or maybe it's you are jumping the fence and swimming outside the roped off area IN THE SAME OCEAN. So whatever is lurking outside of that area is able to 'get you'. And just try blaming it on the lifeguard for your right leg being bitten off. But I'm sure people would react negatively for a nefarious sideload someone experienced.

Light sockets are always around. I just choose not to stick my finger in one. I feel safer, and AM safer because of it. If someone else demands the right to be able to stick their digits into light sockets, that's their deal, and I wish them luck but don't come to me with your story of how bad the experience was. A friend of a friend was chatting with me at a party a decade ago, probably longer, and he was lamenting about how his 'droid' phone had consumed his address book 'again'. He said something along the lines of 'I know you are a tech savvy person, what phone do you use?' and I whipped out my iPhone. He seemed kind of floored that I had an iPhone. 'Oh, you use an iPhone? Why?' Because it works. My previous phone was a 'Windows Phone', and it really sucked. I lost my address book several times, the calendar never seemed to work right, I couldn't send email, or text messages for some reason, and the camera really sucked. Not the iPhone does all that, but the camera sucks too. *shrug* Tradeoffs. It works. He said he was so burned by that early droid his next phone with me an iPhone.

So lowering the bar, and the potential of it being demanded by a court somewhere, is just damned insane. So, should Apple have two different models of the iPhone? An 'Open' and a 'Closed'? What a disaster... I would seriously think of swapping to a 'dumb phone' in that case...

I agree with Apple. No one is holding a gun to your head to choose Apple over a different manufacturer. If you want to be able to run with scissors, go somewhere else. 'Choice' is part of 'freedom'. You can't get filet mignon at McDonald's. If you want that, go somewhere else...

And this is the thing that people don’t realize. I don’t want to be at risk due to a friend wanting to side load and got their address book stolen. Now MY DATA is out there. Name, phone number, maybe address, emails. And more. All because a friend sideloaded an app.

People need to stop thinking in isolation. Are you tired of hundreds of spam emails? Well so am I. And I KNOW, some family members have had their AOL email address book compromised which is how my email address got to spammers.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Sideloading only lowers the security bar if, (A) you choose to sideload AND (B) you sideload a nefarious app. If I do (A) and (B) on my iPhone, it doesn't expose you to any increased security risk.

But it opens the potential for mischief. Even I know that if a user is presented with a popup question with a yes or no answer, an embarrassingly large number will click 'yes' without reading the message. THAT is a danger to users and potentially anyone connected to them...

 

[djphat2000]

There's zero reason for blocking sideloading of reputable open source community apps like Retroarch emulation other than control to maximize their profit. Any other excuse is just lip service.

How do you propose they do that? "ah listen up hackers. this way in is ONLY for these guys OK. Not you hacker guys and bad government guys ok. ONLY THE GOOD GUYS that we SAY are GOOD GUYS! Don't go hacking in OK, I see you!"

There, solved....

 

[Wildkraut]

It‘s all about control and money. Apple wants to control what I can install on my iPhone. This may actually drive me away from them one day. I love the ecosystem but this is taking it too far.

Not only your iPhone anymore, they are slowly dragging macOS into the same direction, e.g. they just decided to exclude Ruby, Perl Python, Php from future macOS releases, making the installation of terminal stuff like brew.sh harder.

It's really time to get a general worldwide law that protects customers from filthy corporate lockins on any platform.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Apple you created some of this yourself,

They created ALL of it themselves. If they didn’t create the iPhone and made it something that folks wanted to buy, then they wouldn’t have this problem.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Done. Switched to Android so no more Apple shackles. Have already traded one iPad for Galaxy Tab S7+. Have one iPad left that I'll probably use for Galaxy Tab S8 trade in.

Congratulations. We will be here when you come back.

 

[Ethosik]

But Safari allows scams, maybe apple should curate the web pages that you can see through safari? That would make your iPhone experience more safe.

That is a straw man argument. Apple doesn’t control every website, so they can’t do anything there. Apple DOES control the App Store, so they can do something.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

imagine saying this with a straight face.

Imagine thinking that ONLY employees at Apple are such GODS, that it’s impossible for any company to do better.

 

[Ethosik]

So you prefer the app store being the only one, not the best one?

Surely if other companies did add their own stores that were available on the iPhone it would only serve to push the Apple App store up in quality / down in price.

The comment was a reply about not using side loading if you don’t want to. But as I pointed out, it’s that that easy.

 

[mi7chy]

How do you propose they do that? "ah listen up hackers. this way in is ONLY for these guys OK. Not you hacker guys and bad government guys ok. ONLY THE GOOD GUYS that we SAY are GOOD GUYS! Don't go hacking in OK, I see you!"

There, solved....

It's not rocket science. Every app has a unique checksum. White list vetted checksums while yellow flag unknown checksums and let the user decide if they want to take the risk just like on MacOS. And, red flag known malware.

 

[Ethosik]

So a Mac may have the private data of not only you, but your mum, dad, sister and dog. Not to mention your employer.
Ignoring cost, I'd much prefer to have my phone compromised than my Mac.

Sorry, but it’s quite common to have more personal data on your phone than computer. I don’t do my finances on my computer, but I have my banks app on my phone. I record my health on my phone, my computer does not know about my health. I call and text people, sometimes have very private conversation. My computer does not have my call log. I take my phone when I leave my house so my location is known. My computer does not know where I went and it might be embarrassing if that got out.

My computers just know I use Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro on Mac, gaming and visual studio on Windows. Yeah real private info there.

 

[_Spinn_]

Makes sense to me. I picked iOS because I didn’t want to be on Android.

 

[spinedoc77]

That is a straw man argument. Apple doesn’t control every website, so they can’t do anything there. Apple DOES control the App Store, so they can do something.

Apple controls the apps that they want to be on the app store, so why couldn't Apple say that only websites it vets are allowed on Safari? Of course it's not feasible, but I'm not questioning feasibility, just the position that it's a strawman argument. I think while it's far fetched, it's a perfectly reasonable argument.