Fair enough, and I see your point, but arguably the non-Apple apps will also include a flood of porn apps, hacking software, etc. That doesn't really concern me in that I doubt I will ever side-load an app. My worry is mission-critical apps leaving the Apple App Store and causing security problems as a result. I think if governments had burrs in their saddles to intervene, that they should have made Apple guarantee the apps offered in the App Store for security, utility, and quality. Just my two cents.
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Setapp Planning to Launch Alternative App Store for iOS in Europe
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This exactly. People are assuming that people buying iPhone means it’s a 100% perfect product. That is not the case at all.
I’ve had almost every iPhone, and have known many other iPhone owners from the beginning who are highly critical of the closed system. iPhone is a fantastic product. But it’s not perfect. In my opinion it’s the best product available but there’s still “make do” as you said.
Define 'constantly': I live there, I know the difference.
Fact is that the notion of collaborating transnationally with neighbours in the geographical region know as Europe was rejected by the majority of UK inhabitants (that is not a political statement, it is a fact). Not participating in the Union, accepting all laws and regulations that come with it, is probably fine but you should then not expect the benefits of participation to befall you, benefits such as e.g. an open App Store or anything else which, in an Anglo-American world view, is probably considered too 'leftist' (not to use the S-word).
That is called being an adult: out of all the options open to you, likely none are 'perfect'. In a modern democracy, you are free to make your own choices : buy the least imperfect product or buy none at all.
Nobody is forcing you to do anything: therefore the original notion that consumers buy the product they want still holds. The buying decision is not a measure of product quality and features in an absolute sense, at best it is a relative assessment.
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No it assumes people do their homework and fully assess if a product is worth purchasing. No product is perfect and you buy a product with downside to the purchaser .
Exactly. If you want a perfect product create it yourself. Don’t lobby the government to update the requirements of the product because you don’t like the functionality. Again EU nanny state excepted.
I see no issues here. I'm a security researcher so I often need to use hacking software in my line of work, it would be much more convenient to be able to use my iPhone for that rather than having to carry an extra Android just in case I need to do something as trivial as emulating or writing the UID of a MiFare Classic card.
And porn apps... honestly what's the issue with porn apps existing? If your particular morals take issue with it, don't use them, but that doesn't give you the right to deny others access to them.
Then you can stop worrying. Look at Android, they've had these abilities since day one, and it hasn't happened there.
The one thing I'm worried about personally is oppressive governments forcing denizens to install spyware on their phones. That's something that's happened to Android users occasionally over the years, and that will now be possible to do to iPhone users as well.
Since such governments could just have outlawed iPhones anyway I don't feel like that's enough of a justification to warrant keeping the status quo.
yeah and the user experience on those other devices sucks and thats why Apple have a dedicated user base. Windows and Linux are horrible with a lot of configuration and trouble shootings.
Saying “no” is not right as my point is perfectly valid. Of course we have to buy what’s available, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect and can’t change, which is exactly the issue at hand.
The issue at hand is unwanted governmental regulation. The issue is not changing as apple sees their user constituents want something different. And therefore having things move along due to changes wanted by their users.
Remains to be seen:
- if whatever feature Apple adds would be sufficient for an alternative App Store for most users.
- how apple will change their developer program to extract fees in lieu of in-app purchasing/subscriptions, as they have done in several other countries (including EU member countries) already.
Remember a few years ago when Facebook and Google were using their enterprise profile to ship apps outside the store, which routed all user traffic through them so they could do analytics on what services people were spending time on?
Those enterprise setups are allowed on the basis that you have a direct relationship with the employer and will blame them, both emotionally and legally, for abuses rather than blaming Apple.
That is a bit different than deciding to save some money by getting things through a Ukrainian App Store alternative. In particular, people don't expect those apps to be able to compromise other things on the phone.
Apple will refund those charges, and uses user reports to revoke those apps. It is difficult to reject without a quantitative policy against as you said is a "gray area".
Many of these supposedly have code where the in-app purchase behavior is changed post-launch - they become MUCH more aggressive post-review.
Scammy companies are unfortunately still companies. They can still go cry to regulators about how App Store rules are a moving target because their business model is no longer viable.
The App Store safety is basically Apple acting as a de-facto regulator - going beyond technical platform restrictions by way of a revocable business relationship.
I don't think the EU has any system planned to deal with scammy or outright abusive apps, especially if they are authored by a person who doesn't have citizenship in a member state. Apple may very well decide policing such things themselves is a losing battle from a PR perspective and against their business interests anyway. For Mac app signing, they pretty much only step in if it is an active security exploit (e.g. Zoom remote exploits that persist even after uninstalling the software)
It’s the removal of Apple’s control as the regulator that’s most worrying. There are only so many bad behaviours that app developers can engage in that Apple can control through technical means. Apple can technically enforce an app to ‘ask app not to track’ but without control over where apps are installed from, Apple can’t terminate a developer’s access to iPhone users if that app developer engages in other fingerprinting techniques.
iPhone users are going to be exposed to new levels of risk. As consumers we want Apple to be able to enforce good behaviour by developers as we have no other meaningful protection.
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Legally yes, you're totally correct. But I'm talking in terms of technological implementation. Apple already has the ability to pull Enterprise apps using certificates. All of this "Side loading means the wild west" is completely untrue.
This is a very rose tinted view of how the App Store approval process works. In reality there are minimum wage employees in Indian putting through 100+ apps a day based on a checklist. A lot of issues slip through and are never dealt with - whilst legitimate apps have been denied for months because nobody actually looked at them (See the recent issues with Call Screen).
The App Store is absolutely filled with scam apps that are aimed at children and are "free" then give a $50 a week subscription for some coins in a kids game. Lets not pretend the App Store approval process is creating a safe haven. It's better than nothing, but it is extremely far from good.
I thought the whole point of the regulation was to remove Apple as a ‘gatekeeper’?
Is it better to not have those checks then? How does the level of scam apps compare to more permissible platforms like Android?
Yes, but not a complete blanket as that. This would allow other stores, which allows different App Store rules. So, for example, you could actually have a store that's more locked down if you wanted - no subscriptions (this forum would actually like that). Or SetApp, where everything in the store is covered under a single subscription. Or upgrade pricing, etc.
It doesn't stop Apple revoking developer certificates, as you will still need these to develop and publish applications. This is how the Enterprise distribution works. We still need a specific Enterprise account, and to justify its existence every year (I'm currently doing that this month at work), and Apple can kill it when they want which would revoke the certificates, which would kill the applications.
Apple still has the kill switch.
So if an app started to try and fingerprint a user after the user had specifically asked the app not to track, Apple would be able to flip the kill switch and have the app cease to function?
It is better to have those checks. The App Store policing is a good idea in theory. But the reality is it's very poorly implemented and far below the standard you'd expect from Apple. Apple products are exceptionally high quality and they pride themselves on the experience of using their products. However, that isn't the case in the developer side of things. It's better than Android/Google yeah, but it's far from a nice process. App Store submission should be easy - if you obey the rules it's fine. But Apple regularly rejects apps because the reviewer didn't understand what they were looking at, and regularly lets apps through the checks which are scams.
The best example of this was the old widget style. The ones that you load only onto that side screen to the left. Someone built a calculator for it (I think it was pCalc). Apple approved it then featured it in the App Store as an example of what you can do with the widgets. And then a week later they banned it for violating rules on interactivity in widgets. It was reallowed a few months later.
The App Store approval process is a mess, and does not protect users as much as people think it does, or Apple says it does. Apple needs to step up its game in that regard.
I agree, but when it’s a subjective evaluation, these things will always happen.
In theory yes. Apple knows what APIs you have declared, and through analytics can know which APIs you hit to see if you're telling the truth.
They pull the cert and away goes the app. They can even completely remove apps from devices. If you failed to update your Enterprise certificate in a timely fashion, your app goes away. This technology would need adapted to the public apps of course, but the hard bit is already done.
Great, as long as there’s a way for Apple to continue to police developers.