[HN Gopher] Temptation of the Apple: Dolphin on macOS M1
___________________________________________________________________
Temptation of the Apple: Dolphin on macOS M1
Author : svenpeter
Score : 473 points
Date : 2021-05-24 10:58 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dolphin-emu.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (dolphin-emu.org)
| floatboth wrote:
| > [mapping memory WX] hasn't been forbidden on any of the prior
| platforms that Dolphin supports
|
| Well, rarely _completely_ forbidden, but e.g. I think OpenBSD has
| been W^X by default for quite some time (though IIRC with a WX
| allowed flag per... FS mount?). Now on FreeBSD it 's not default
| but it's there, and if you turn it on, you have to mark WX-
| mapping binaries by running `elfctl -e +wxneeded`.
|
| Firefox actually became W^X compliant all the way back in 2015:
| https://jandemooij.nl/blog/wx-jit-code-enabled-in-firefox/
| jolux wrote:
| I didn't realize SpiderMonkey was W^X compliant. Does that mean
| Apple's arguments about third party browser security on iOS are
| less well-founded than I had believed? My impression was that
| performant JITs were incompatible with W^X.
| voxic11 wrote:
| No the issue on ios isn't that W^X is enforced, its that you
| can't mark a page that _was_ writable as executable (whereas
| W^X just implies that a page can 't be both writable and
| executable at the _same time_ ). Firefox has been W^X
| compliant by default since 2016 as its considered more secure
| in general.
| jolux wrote:
| Ah I see. The iOS restriction makes sense, even though it's
| more aggressive.
| floatboth wrote:
| This Dolphin article is literally about making a performant
| JIT run on an OS that is, among other things, strictly W^X :)
|
| > arguments about third party browser security on iOS
|
| Well, W^X is just one mitigation technique. But also, the
| "security" arguments have always been kinda dubious. I don't
| think there's that much difference (at least philosophically)
| between an interpreter bug causing arbitrary crap to happen
| inside your app's sandbox and a JIT bug doing the same.
| jolux wrote:
| As the sibling comment mentions, apparently the iOS
| restriction is that you cannot execute pages that have ever
| been marked as writable, which is much stricter than W^X.
| tdonovic wrote:
| Incredible the perf they get out of it. Bit confused with the
| graph towards the end, is perf better under Rosetta than
| natively?!
| Macha wrote:
| The rosetta vs native vs 9900k vs 8559h graph?
|
| The only game rosetta is beating native on is rogue squadron 2.
| Since Dolphin is a JIT, this seems to be a case of where
| Rosetta's JIT is smarter than Dolphin's in terms of which ARM
| instructions are chosen when converting from the Intel
| instructions than Dolphin when converting from the emulated PPC
| instructions.
|
| Unless you're comparison is the 8559h and not the "native" bar.
| I mean, the 8559h is a mid range older Intel CPU and it's hard
| to understate how much Intel stagnated since Sandy Bridge (and
| especially since Skylake).
| leoetlino wrote:
| Rosetta is faster than native in that case because the
| AArch64 JIT has to fall back to the interpreter for memchecks
| (unlike the x86-64 JIT).
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > Since Dolphin is a JIT, this seems to be a case of where
| Rosetta's JIT is smarter than Dolphin's in terms of which ARM
| instructions are chosen when converting from the Intel
| instructions than Dolphin
|
| According to the article, the AArch64 JIT isn't as complete
| as the x86 one so some less common instructions are emulated,
| not JITed. I imagine a game that uses a lot of these is
| slower with the native ARM version.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| The real challenge is running F-Zero GX. I'd love to see some
| benchmarks for this game -- the hardest game to emulate.
| bri3d wrote:
| By what metric? AFAIK the Factor 5 games, especially Rogue
| Squadron III, are considered the most challenging, both due to
| their obscure tricks (iirc Rogue Squadron uploads an outdated
| audio microcode to get a "loop counter" feature back which no
| other games use, for example) and most complete use of the MMU
| mechanisms (I believe they even use the ARAM as swap
| transparently to the game engine, using some goofy allocator
| trick) - which is why Rogue Squadron III was chosen for this
| benchmark.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| > Rogue Squadron III
|
| Ok, never played that game. I'll better try not to play that
| on my ancient Intel powered laptop ...
|
| Different games run differently well on Dolphin if you got
| older hardware. While Mario Kart Double Dash runs perfectly
| fine in full screen, ,,F-Zero GX" suffers massive slowdown in
| some levels on my 7 years old CPU/GPU combination.
| Interestingly, both games employ the ,,heated air" effect on
| similarly looking levels -- but still I got 40 FPS vs. 60 FPS
| in that case. I wouldn't mind but the sound needs to be in
| sync with the graphics subsystem on the Game Cube -- audio is
| broken with even slightly slower frame rates, unfortunately.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Why's it hard to emulate that game in particular?
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| The heated air effect on the ,,Sand Ocean" course seems to
| make the emulator sweat. My 2013 Intel Core i7 with HD
| Graphics can't render that without massive slow down.
| xrd wrote:
| Where is the Linux ARM equivalent laptop? When I read about Pine
| laptops, it never seems like they tout the amazing performance
| like the M1.
| djrogers wrote:
| > Where is the Linux ARM equivalent laptop?
|
| There isn't one. Apple's silicon team is at least 1-2 years
| ahead of all the other ARM vendors when looking at mobile
| performance, and none of those vendors are even trying to do
| anything in the desktop space (yet).
| dstaley wrote:
| Qualcomm has released several ARM-powered Windows laptops,
| and just announced today a desktop-form-factor Windows Dev
| Kit powered by the new Snapdragon 7c platform.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| This is why I'm actually expecting Apple's laptops to become
| a fairly common choice for Linux users, once marcan's work
| gets further along!
| fulafel wrote:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/apple-m1-hardware-su...
| xrd wrote:
| That's interesting, but I don't want to buy apple hardware.
| When I buy an Apple product, I'm paying for the integration
| the software and all the other stuff in addition to the
| hardware. That's a steep tax. I just want an arm chip
| performance and free software on top of it
| djrogers wrote:
| The M1 doesn't smoke Intel chips just because it's ARM -
| the latest chips from Broadcom and Samsung don't even come
| close. The M1 is good because it's good.
| xrd wrote:
| That's what I'm a little confused about. It isn't just
| because it is RISC, it's Apple magic? It seems weird that
| you can emulate other instruction sets with RISC
| underneath and get the performance they do. I assumed if
| you could recompile to the native instruction set you
| would get a really optimized app, but it seems like the
| interesting work always operates at a different layer.
| Fascinating stuff.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| I am absolutely not an expert on microarchitecture, but
| I've had the same questions and tried my best to figure
| out answers. Here's my understanding of the situation:
|
| > It isn't just because it is RISC, it's Apple magic?
|
| It's both. We've known for decades that RISC was the
| "right" design, but x86 was so far ahead of everyone else
| that switching architectures was completely infeasible
| (even Intel themselves tried and failed with Itanium). It
| would have taken years to design a new CPU core that
| could match existing x86 designs, and breaking backwards
| compatibility is a non-starter in the Windows world. So
| we ended up with a 20-year-long status quo where ARM
| dominated the embedded world (due to its simplicity and
| efficiency) and x86 dominated the desktop world due to
| its market position.
|
| However, with Apple, all the stars lined up _perfectly_
| for them to be able to pull off this transition in a way
| that no other company was able to accomplish.
|
| - Apple sells both PCs and smartphones, and the
| smartphone market gave them a reason to justify spending
| 10 years and billions of dollars on a high-performance
| ARM core. The A series slowly evolved from a regular
| smartphone processor, into a high-end smartphone
| processor, and then into a desktop-class processor in a
| smartphone.
|
| - Apple (co-)founded ARM, giving them a huge amount of
| control over the architecture. IIRC they had a ton of
| influence on the design of AArch64 and beat ARM's own
| chips to market by a year.
|
| - Intel's troubles lately have given Apple a reason to
| look for an alternative source of processors.
|
| - Apple's vertical integration of hardware and software
| means they can transition the entire stack at once, and
| they don't have to coordinate with OEMs.
|
| - Apple does not have to worry about backwards
| compatibility very much compared to a Windows-based
| manufacturer. Apple has a history of successfully pulling
| off several architecture transitions, and all the
| software infrastructure was still in place to support
| another one. Mac users also tend to be less reliant on
| legacy or enterprise software.
|
| > It seems weird that you can emulate other instruction
| sets with RISC underneath and get the performance they
| do.
|
| As far as I understand it, the only major distinction
| between RISC and CISC is in the instruction decoder. CISC
| processors do not typically have any more advanced
| "hardware acceleration" or special-purpose instructions;
| the distinction between CISC and RISC is whether you
| support advanced addressing modes and prefix bytes that
| let you cram multiple hardware operations into a single
| software instruction.
|
| For instance, on x86 you can write an instruction like
| 'ADD [rax + 0x1234 + 8*rbx], rcx'. In one instruction
| you've performed a multi-step address calculation with
| two registers, read from memory, added a third register,
| and written the result back to memory. Whereas on a RISC,
| you would have to express the individual steps as 4 or 5
| separate instructions.
|
| Crucially, _you don't have to do any more actual hardware
| operations_ to execute the 4 or 5 RISC as compared to the
| one CISC instruction. All modern processors convert the
| incoming instruction stream into a RISCy microcode
| anyway, so the only performance difference between the
| two is how much work the processor has to spend decoding
| instructions. x86 requires a very complex decoder that is
| difficult to parallelize, whereas ARM uses a much more
| modern instruction set (AArch64 was designed in 2012)
| that is designed to maximize decoder throughput.
|
| So this helps us understand why Apple can emulate x86
| code so efficiently: the JIT/AOT translator is
| essentially just running the expensive x86 decode stage
| ahead of time and converting it to a RISC instruction
| stream that is easier for a processor to digest. You're
| right, though, that native code can always be more
| tightly optimized since the compiler knows much more
| about the program than the JIT does and can produce code
| bettor tailored to the quirks and features of the target
| processor.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| > We've known for decades that RISC was the "right"
| design, but x86 was so far ahead of everyone else that
| switching architectures was completely infeasible
|
| All the experts I listened or read to, they told that
| instruction set doesn't matter and it is the
| insignificant thing. The part that matters is branch and
| data prediction, and caching. Also, even intel transforms
| an instruction into RISC like microinstructions
| internally.
|
| > Apple does not have to worry about backwards
| compatibility very much compared to a Windows-based
| manufacturer
|
| Windows is literal shit in backwards compatibility too.
| Try to run any windows 7 or before program in windows 10
| and most of the time it won't work. Also, windows can
| also run in ARM and unlike mac the ARM windows didn't had
| emulation for years.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| > All the experts I listened or read to, they told that
| instruction set doesn't matter and it is the
| insignificant thing. The part that matters is branch and
| data prediction, and caching. Also, even intel transforms
| an instruction into RISC like microinstructions
| internally.
|
| I've heard this before, but I've also seen sources which
| indicate that x86 instruction decoding is definitely a
| bottleneck [1-5]. The M1 has a significantly wider
| pipeline/OoO window/reorder buffer than any other
| processor, and most sources seem to agree that this is
| because the simplicity of the ARM ISA allowed Apple to
| build an 8-wide instruction decoder (as compared to
| around 4-wide for x86 chips). [1] also mentions that
| Apple's impressive branch-prediction capabilities are at
| least partially because ARM's 4-byte-aligned instructions
| greatly simplify the design of the branch predictor.
|
| So yes, it's true that an x86 processor really runs RISC-
| like uops under the hood. However, the best out-of-order
| execution pipeline in the world is limited by how far
| ahead it can see, and that depends on how fast the
| instruction decoder can feed it instructions.
|
| Once again though, I am _not_ a microarchitecture expert.
| I just read bits of information from people who _do_ know
| what they 're talking about and try to form it into a
| coherent mental model. If you have knowledge or sources
| that disagree with me, I would be happy to be proven
| wrong :)
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25264384 [2]:
| https://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=25 [3]:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26782213 [4]:
| https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-intel-or-AMD-design-
| an-x86-CP... [5]:
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-
| silicon-m1-a14-de...
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Are you sure about that? Mac mini price is $700. Let's take
| ryzen 5600x for comparison which is worse on almost each
| metric than m1: Processor: $300
| Motherboard: $200 good 256 gb SSD: $100(doesn't seem
| to come close to apple's) 8 GB RAM: $40
| Case/cooling: $100
|
| Even in the configuration which is worse in each of the
| spec, you are hitting more than apple including apple tax.
|
| But yeah, I agree if you want an upgrade of RAM and SSD, it
| is much expensive than the part.
| nemothekid wrote:
| As far as I can tell, Apple is the only company out here who
| has a production chip with desktop class performance. I think
| the Pinebook's chip isn't even very high end. I personally
| wonder how long before we start seeing desktop SoCs from
| Samsung or Qualcomm (probably running Windows?)
| rvz wrote:
| > There's undeniable excitement for the next generation of
| AArch64 hardware to see how much further that this can go.
|
| This is what I am looking forward to. In the case for Apple
| Silicon, the next generation will be even better and is not far
| off from announcing the newer processors that will supersede M1
| in WWDC.
|
| The M1 only shows what's possible for Apple Silicon and the newer
| generation of ARM-based Macs will impress further. So will skip
| this one for now and wait what WWDC has to offer for the next
| generation.
| rationalData wrote:
| In 5 years there will be 1nm transistors. If you skip this
| generation, you might as well wait another year to get high end
| stuff and you won't have to deal with Apple's less than
| friendly practices.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| I traded in my inferior Intel based 2020 13 inch macbook pro
| for the M1 MBP and it only costed me 100 dollars, so I went
| ahead and pulled the trigger. The battery life was abysmal on
| the intel based and I was desperate. I love the form factor and
| the size, I just never could get into any real programming
| tasks without being strapped to a power source.
| faitswulff wrote:
| Your comment made me realize I'm waiting for the next
| generation Apple Silicon SoC as a second data point. Even if I
| don't buy it, it will tell us something about the expected
| performance trajectory.
| bombcar wrote:
| I'm waiting for it too, I want to see how they're going to
| scale (more processors? faster processors?) as some of the
| design decisions could be arbitrary or actually inherent (can
| they make an M2 with more PCI lanes?).
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| For anyone shocked that ARM chips could get this far, and for the
| Android users in the audience, remember that Apple cofounded ARM.
| mengineer wrote:
| I think android users are more aware that GPUs are where you'd
| spend money.
|
| No one was competing for fastest single thread because no one
| needs it.
|
| Well maybe marketers need it.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| It's clear AS is a great advancement in general computing, but
| every piece like this reads as "the hardware is amazing, and it's
| totally worth it to work around these arbitrary software
| restrictions".
|
| This performance would've been available on iPads years ago if it
| wasn't for Apple's blanket ban on JIT and the likes.
|
| Apple is one of those companies whose hardware I'd love to have
| if it wasn't for their software and general corporate decisions.
| Until I can run a proper version of Firefox on iPad, I'll have to
| stick with the objectively inferior hardware for the coming
| years.
| Gorbzel wrote:
| Guess what? No one does or should care about your opinion of
| Apple's software restrictions or corporate philosophy here.
|
| As per the article, those visiting the comments were primarily
| interested in discussion about JIT performance, comparisons
| between ARM and x64 instruction sets, GameCube/Wii emulation,
| etc.
|
| Instead, _every_ single post on HN even tangentially involving
| Apple is taken over by these self-important haters and their
| mindless takes, which are often full of false assertions
| anyhow.
|
| You are a platform war spammer and nothing more. It's a shame
| the admins won't put a stop to this, as it's turning Hacker
| News into a vehement cesspool for discussion.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| Totally agreed. It's kind of pathetic.
|
| The only reason apple was able to pull of the M1 transition
| the way they were able to is BECAUSE they have such control
| over their ecosystem.
|
| Windows / Microsoft tried with itanium and ARM with much less
| success.
|
| The platform war folks always take the most negative view
| possible, cannot even IMAGINE why apple might have chosen the
| approach they chose.
|
| Well, M1 is what happens when you control your platform.
| PowerPC / Intel / ARM -> this control has let apple evolve
| dramatically.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| Not to be contrary for being contrary, but for me it's pretty
| much he opposite. I've never had complaints about the software
| when I was an Apple customer (i.e. from 1992 to 2007) and don't
| have reasons that there is any particular software problem. But
| the hardware keeps me from buying macs. It doesn't matter how
| fast Apple's laptops become, as long as they don't have
| replaceable batteries, have insufficient RAM, and do not come
| with glare-free screens, I'm not going to become an Apple
| customer (or developer) ever again.
|
| The power cables are too short and the obsolescence is too
| planned in modern Apple hardware.
| jolux wrote:
| I'm definitely a little annoyed they don't bundle the
| extension cables with the MacBooks anymore. It feels like
| nickel-and-diming. That being said, MacBook displays do have
| antireflective coating, though it's been known to wear off
| historically. They have been pretty good about replacing it
| though.
|
| As for RAM, you can get 13" MacBook Pros with 32GB of RAM and
| 16" MacBook Pros with 64GB of RAM, and if that's not enough
| you're probably not going to have the easiest time finding
| options with more from other manufacturers, especially in a
| form factor that isn't a gigantic brick.
| foldr wrote:
| > do not come with glare-free screens
|
| Do you mean that you want a matte screen? If not, Mac screens
| are generally among the brightest on the market and have very
| good anti-reflective coatings. Almost any competing laptop in
| the same price bracket is likely to have a lower quality
| screen.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I can't speak for the GP, and I don't consider it a deal-
| breaker as they apparently do (my laptop is a Macbook Air),
| but yes, I really would like a matte screen! For all of
| Apple's engineering, matte screens are still far clearer in
| sunlight. The colors aren't quite as good, which is a
| shame, but I'll take the lack of reflections.
| mcphage wrote:
| > the obsolescence is too planned in modern Apple hardware
|
| I'm fairly confident Apple hardware has a much longer usable
| lifespan than competing products--that's why the maintain so
| much value in the second-hand market.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| And for the downvoters, is an iPhone, or an Android, the
| one that gets more software updates and maintenance over
| time?
| klelatti wrote:
| You can't separate the hardware from the software and corporate
| decisions though.
|
| The problem you've got here is that the iOS model has worked
| incredibly well for Apple. Without that you wouldn't have had
| the investment that has delivered the M1.
|
| I'd love to be able to run Firefox on the iPad. I also disagree
| strongly with some of Apple's decisions - especially on the App
| Store. However, where we are now is a better outcome than a
| hypothetical position where iOS is less successful and Apple is
| using inferior CPU designs. After all I can always buy an
| Android tablet if I want to run Firefox.
| [deleted]
| jtdev wrote:
| I run Firefox on iPad with zero problems...
| klelatti wrote:
| I'm sure you know but Firefox on the iPad uses Apple's
| rendering engine Webkit and not Mozilla's Gecko -so
| arguably it's more like Safari than desktop Firefox.
| jtdev wrote:
| Why should I care? It works beautifully... I have zero
| concern for what rendering engine Firefox on iPad uses.
| klelatti wrote:
| I didn't say you should care.
|
| If you used Firefox extensions - as many others do - then
| you probably would.
| ianai wrote:
| We'd all be spared confusion if you called it "Firefox
| sans WebKit". It probably is too much to expect everyone
| reading a comment to know about the rendering bit.
| klelatti wrote:
| Sorry no idea at all what you're saying here. If you know
| what WebKit is then you probably know what rendering
| means.
| intrasight wrote:
| They have amazing hardware because of the deep pockets that
| derive from their locked down hardware and software. I'm not
| putting a value judgement on that - there is plenty of open
| hardware and software. But here's my concern. What if Apple
| continues to pull ahead? How far ahead might they eventually
| be?
| CPLNTN wrote:
| This is interesting, often I've read the opposite point of
| view, people that would love MacOS on an XPS or iOS on a one
| plus. I guess that changed a lot in recent years, I remember in
| 2016 when the new MacBooks came out that they were a straight
| up bad deal. Nowadays, with the M1 is totally the opposite
| philistine wrote:
| It's undeniable that a whole class of ARM software was
| prevented from even being conceived because it has to pass the
| App Store's Byzantine set of rules.
|
| On the other hand, I see so many software developers vehemently
| refuse to notarize their Mac versions. Notarization is far less
| egregious and it pains me to see so many straight up refuse to
| even consider it as an alternative to the iron grip of the App
| Store.
| collaborative wrote:
| I tried notarizing, but gave up after 2 weeks of trying. I
| used to offer an app that wrapped an entirely java-based
| (shipped with its own JavaSE JRE) app within an Apple Script
| launcher. I used to be able to sign it, but the notarization
| tool simply won't accept my app's bundle. So had to drop it
| jeroenhd wrote:
| As a non-Mac developer, what does it mean to notarize a piece
| of software? Is that something you need to do in order to be
| able to run a piece of software these days?
| my123 wrote:
| It's used as part of Gatekeeper for software downloaded
| from the internet.
|
| See https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/nota
| rizin... for the notarisation process and
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202491 for the customer-
| facing documentation, which includes how to work around it
| when needed.
|
| Gatekeeper can be totally disabled via sudo spctl --master-
| disable.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I see. That's a pretty developer-hostile measure.
| Luckily, I don't intend to ever ship any software to
| Macs, so it's not a problem to me. If I did want to ship
| a Mac version of any tool I'd write, I'd pretty hesitant
| to jump through Apple's hoops, so I can understand why
| developers don't want to notarize their stuff.
| my123 wrote:
| For Windows, distribution without signing isn't exactly
| painless either, and the signing certificates for that
| are quite expensive.
|
| And there, it's not even deterministic, see
| https://www.digicert.com/dc/blog/ms-smartscreen-
| application-...
|
| The goal of the system is to authenticate which developer
| made a given piece of software, to be able to track the
| spread of malware. An option is always given for a user
| to opt-out.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Really? I find this hard to believe, because if this was
| true, why doesn't Android have a bunch of unique apps that
| couldn't exist on iPhone?
|
| Yes, Android does have some apps that can't exist on iPhone,
| but I wouldn't say that most people find them compelling or
| care about them. Those that do already have Android.
| phh wrote:
| Except emulators and actual web browsers you mean?
| m4rtink wrote:
| Not to mention various IDEs and a lot of specialized
| tools basically compiled from a Linux distro. Still it's
| far from ideal given that everything needs to be compiled
| against the bastardized Bionic c library using the wonky
| at best Android NDK. Not to mention issues the Termux
| project uncovered where newly introduced "security"
| features prevent you from running binaries that were not
| installed from an APK (breaking many Linux distro chrome
| usecases and IDEs).
|
| In short, a proper mobile Linux distro is needed, as
| Android is already far from perfect and getting worse.
| Hopefully some of the projects spawned around and related
| to PinePhone can cover that over time. :)
| saagarjha wrote:
| Android hardware is not very compelling as of late. Nor are
| the users, to be entirely honest.
| myko wrote:
| I assume this is meant as a joke but it is in very poor
| taste
| saagarjha wrote:
| Not sure what's wrong about it, it's fairly well known
| that Android users don't pay for software?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Most iOS users just don't know how much better it is on
| Android.
|
| As a developer, I can make apps for my own device without
| telling (or paying) anybody and use old devices like
| somebody else might use a Raspberry Pi.
|
| I can use real Firefox with real uBlock Origin.
|
| I can get free apps from Amazon App Store. I can get
| verified secure open source apps from F-Droid.
|
| I can use separate restricted accounts on my for kids and
| guests.
|
| I can use a separate launcher experience for driving
| without needing to purchase a head unit.
|
| I can watch videos (including the "GIFs with sound" that
| proliferate on Reddit) with the sound off and on-device
| generated captions. I can copy text from arbitrary screens,
| even if that text is in a picture.
|
| I can route all my calls through Google Voice or any other
| calling service. I can open map links in any mapping app I
| like.
|
| I can use emulators and native apps for game streaming
| services.
|
| I can have my photos automatically upload in the
| background.
|
| I can update my browser engine and a lot of other "system
| software" without a reboot.
|
| I can use headphones without ever charging them. I can
| unlock my phone while wearing a mask.
|
| I can filter notifications the same way I filter my mail.
|
| Using iOS would be a massive productivity drain as well as
| an entertainment drain and security loss. Most of the
| people I have demonstrated these things to have found one
| or more of these abilities compelling enough to have
| switched.
| VortexDream wrote:
| I used Android for a few years. Then I used iOS for a few
| years (iPhone and iPad). I switched back to Android two
| years ago.
|
| I liked a lot of things about iOS. Apps for Android
| tablets are still largely terrible and there is some
| bizarre behavior around SPens and multi-touch that I
| don't understand. But I could never go back.
|
| The biggest benefit is I have all my files automatically
| synced between my phone, tablet and laptop. I never have
| to manually push something to the right app, then figure
| out how to get that on my Windows laptop. It's just
| there. Whether it's emulator save files or ebooks or
| documents or photos or anything else.
| aptgetrekt wrote:
| I make a free mac utility and would be fine with notarizing
| it if it wasn't $100 a year. I don't want to pay $100 a year
| to give away something for free. And the message that pops up
| telling users to "contact the developer" because "the app
| needs to be updated" is just infuriating. To me it feels like
| Apple asking users of unnotarized apps to bug developers into
| paying Apple that $100 a year.
| fartcannon wrote:
| It's even worse when you consider the cost to humanity. They
| pay the brightest minds they can find to build walled gardens
| around knowledge.
|
| This is the same reason I don't use Microsoft or Google's stuff
| unless I have to. Knowledge wants to be free.
| coldcode wrote:
| Yes and people take advantage of that freedom to extract a
| terrible toll on society in lost privacy, freedom, money,
| terror and the like. There is no freedom for just the good
| people without also allowing freedom for those who prey on
| others.
|
| It's like arguing that we should have no laws whatsoever
| because they impact your freedom to do whatever you want--but
| no one wants to live in that society. If you don't like Apple
| or Google or Microsoft that is still your privilege but
| arguing that is what everyone should have is disingenuous.
|
| The Internet supports your freedom to say or do whatever but
| people every day show that without some limits everyone
| suffers. You might think you are smart enough to defeat all
| those who will try to take you out, but there are much
| smarter people than you or I out there and lots more of them,
| and many of them are evil.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Your comment reminds me of that Simpson's clip where they
| move and Bart is put in the remdial Leg Up Program: "Let me
| get this straight. We're behind the rest of our class and
| we're going to catch up to them by going slower than they
| are?"
| meepmorp wrote:
| This is a really unpopular take on Apple for HN, so I can see
| why you're getting downvoted.
| threeseed wrote:
| You are either being disingenuous or completely oblivious
| because the "I want a fully open iOS platform" is the most
| popular take on Apple.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| And also it is quite possible that we are in an echo
| chamber, because outside of hacker news and a few circles
| like it, there might be less support for this than we wish.
| meepmorp wrote:
| My god, you're right - it has to exactly one of the two
| options you posit!
| mengineer wrote:
| Given the 1 and 2nm transistors, this minor increase in
| performance on non multithreaded applications will be obsolete
| in a few years.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The Write XOR Execute restriction discussed in the article is a
| security feature, and it's greatly beneficial from a security
| standpoint.
|
| > Until I can run a proper version of Firefox on iPad
|
| FireFox for iOS works just fine. The Gecko vs WebKit difference
| doesn't really matter in practice.
|
| If you want general purpose computing, just get a Mac. You can
| run Firefox and any other program you'd like. It would be great
| if there was an opt-in developer mode on iOS that bypassed
| certain restrictions, but I also understand why Apple chose to
| go with security and simplicity as 99.9+% of their customers
| have no need nor desire to go beyond the security and platform
| restrictions.
|
| I have both an iPad Pro with keyboard case and a MacBook. Even
| if I could run whatever I wanted on the iPad, I'd still be
| reaching for the MacBook because it's just a better physical
| platform for doing anything other than simple touchscreen and
| stylus work.
| lostgame wrote:
| >> FireFox for iOS works just fine. The Gecko vs WebKit
| difference doesn't really matter in practice.
|
| Yeah; sorry - it _really_ does - I vastly prefer Gecko's
| rendering engine and notice it's considerably speedier and
| more responsive on my MacBook Pro side by side to the newest
| Safari. The app even opens faster.
|
| Not only that, but I imagine there are a _ton_ of web devs
| here in the comments who have a requirement testing on the
| _actual_ FireFox, not some light skin on top of the existing
| WebKit engine with bookmark sync support.
|
| FireFox for iOS is the _farthest_ thing from 'FireFox'. It's
| in name only.
| wffurr wrote:
| Comparing my iPad Pro with keyboard folio and a 2014 11"
| MacBook Air, I agree that the MacBook has a much better
| trackpad-and-keyboard experience.
|
| I do wonder how the 12" iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard would
| compare. I haven't used one yet, but I suspect it would be
| pretty good. The 12" display seems a little large for a
| tablet, though.
| sp332 wrote:
| Firefox on iOS is not Gecko. Like all other browsers on iOS,
| it is a skin on the OS-provided Webkit. This is because fast
| JS execution depends on operations that are illegal for apps
| to access.
| r00fus wrote:
| So we're talking about the M1 Macs, not iPhones - Firefox
| on Mac is Gecko. So the comparison of Webkit (iOS FF) vs.
| Gecko (Mac FF) is the comparison being made as you can
| download both if you want.
| sp332 wrote:
| W^X JIT seems to have been solved in Firefox in 2016. htt
| ps://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=W-XOR-E-
| ... So that's not the specific blocker for Gecko on iOS.
| wffurr wrote:
| There is an opt-in developer mode on iOS. You can compile and
| install any software you want on your own iPad; no paid Apple
| developer account needed.
|
| There's even a way to get W^X memory regions on iOS by
| abusing ptrace: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/02/23/jailed-
| just-in-time-co...
|
| It can't be submitted to the App Store or deployed with
| TestFlight, but you can build and install an app using that
| hack just fine on your own device.
|
| Open source browser vendors, like Firefox and Chromium, could
| provide builds that enable a full browser engine experience
| on iOS devices, were they to think it worth the effort.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| The apps you install expire after a week. You need to
| reconnect your device to a computer at least once every
| seven days and reinstall the custom app. Also, you're
| limited to three apps at a time.
|
| It's not actually usable for anything. It's also a
| completely arbitrary and needlessly-punitive restriction--
| if I've opted in to installing custom software, why limit
| me to three apps at a time, and why make them only last a
| week? What security benefit does that provide?
| wffurr wrote:
| https://altstore.io/faq/ is a pretty comprehensive way to
| make this actually work.
| r00fus wrote:
| Facebook has in the past asked users to deploy their
| Onavo app using this mechanism for their privacy invading
| VPN (2015-ish).
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| I thought they used an enterprise certificate? Those are
| still available and easily can be used to distribute
| software without Apple review (but perhaps not for
| companies as high-profile as Facebook)
| neetdeth wrote:
| They are no longer easily available - presumably as a
| direct result of the Facebook incident. I'm sure there
| are companies still grandfathered in, but as a new
| entrant you'll be aggressively shunted toward either the
| B2B or consumer App Stores.
| sneak wrote:
| > _There is an opt-in developer mode on iOS. You can
| compile and install any software you want on your own iPad;
| no paid Apple developer account needed._
|
| However, an Apple ID is needed, which requires an email and
| working phone number to get, along with additional
| EULA/terms acceptance. It's not really a mode, but an
| additional network service with its own terms and
| conditions.
| easton wrote:
| From the link: "Preliminary testing on iOS 14 seems to
| indicate that Apple has changed the kernel so that this
| trick no longer works."
|
| This is why the iPad needs a way to disable SIP (and the
| additional security features) just like the Mac. I could
| give a heck about the iPhone, to be honest, there's maybe
| one time in my life being able to JIT Python or whatever
| would've been useful on my phone. But they advertise the
| iPad as a computer, and yet their software restrictions
| make it a portable TV.
| handrous wrote:
| > But they advertise the iPad as a computer, and yet
| their software restrictions make it a portable TV.
|
| That's not at all true. It's not useful for some subset
| of what certain geeks want to use it for. It's _very_
| useful for all the other things a highly portable
| computer hooked up to a bunch of really cool sensors and
| a very capable peripherals ecosystem is.
|
| Ordinarily I'm all for arguments that we, as an industry
| (software developers, that is) are laughable failures,
| but I don't think we've failed _so_ badly that computers
| are useless if you can 't--for any reason, including
| personal inability or lack of interest--run (e.g.) Python
| on them.
| easton wrote:
| I was speaking more generally than this specific issue,
| but things like not being able to mount file shares in a
| stable way (where the connection isn't dropped a bunch,
| although maybe that's a me issue and not a Files.app
| issue) are blockers to video editing with something like
| Premiere taking off on the iPad. No allowance of
| alternative browser engines means software like VSCode or
| Figma that rely on Electron would have to port bespoke
| versions to either entirely native apps or to Safari
| (which Microsoft has been doing with VSCode, but that's a
| lot of work for teams that chose to make their app an
| Electron app because it would save porting time). I'm
| more willing to excuse the second one because it has made
| it possible for a second browser engine that isn't built
| by Google, but it's still a factor.
|
| It's more of a death by a thousand cuts scenario at this
| point rather than major things being completely missing
| from iPadOS, which is why it's painful to watch as they
| sell extremely powerful hardware that could be used for
| something cool if not for the darned restrictions.
| nicolapcweek94 wrote:
| Besides, I don't get the whole "can't do geek things on
| an iPad". I have an iPad Pro 2017 and I've:
|
| - Run full linux on it (both emulated X86 and via WASM
| magic, via A-Shell and iSH, both on the App Store)
|
| - Coded Python, C#, Javascript and Lua on it (via
| Pythonista, Continuous, Scriptable and Codea) _and_ ran
| the code on the iPad itself
|
| - Wrote blog posts for my old static site and pushed them
| to a git repo to publish them (via iA Writer for writing
| and Working Copy for Git)
|
| - Connected via SSH and RDP to "real computers" (via the
| Remote Desktop app and Blink!, though there's many SSH
| clients on the AS)
|
| - Used SFTP to transfer files to/from said
| computers/servers (via Secure Shellfish)
|
| There's also an entire class of apps built upon the
| Shortcuts model, that allows you to extend and improve
| upon the Shortcuts (nee Workflow, third party now first
| party) "coding model", which is very powerful and heavily
| integrated with the device and Apple services - though
| very different from "traditional" coding.
|
| Is it a limited platform? Yes, absolutely.
|
| Is it a general purpose computer? Yes, most definitely.
|
| Can you do "geeky things" on it? Well, I've been doing
| them for years.
|
| Can you run a full UNIX-like dev environment on it? Well,
| yes, with tricks. But why would you want to, when there's
| plenty of options that do it 1) natively 2) better? Use
| an iPad for what its purpose is, not for what a Mac's
| purpose is.
| wffurr wrote:
| Doh, somehow I managed to not read that despite (or
| because?) being in a big callout box near the top of the
| page.
| wffurr wrote:
| Huh! They removed that hack in iOS 14 but added "extended
| virtual addressing entitlement" in iOS 14.2 that allows
| this for real!
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/06/ios-14-2-brings-jit-
| compilati...
| mmebane wrote:
| Unfortunately, the sideloaded-JIT support seems to have
| been an accident, as Apple killed it off in 14.4.
|
| https://twitter.com/altstoreio/status/1354096048650809349
| saagarjha wrote:
| Extended virtual addressing is exactly what it sounds
| like: you get more virtual memory, not the ability to
| JIT. The technique mentioned in that blog post is no
| longer possible.
| saagarjha wrote:
| It's useful for security if you're running arbitrary
| JavaScript you've downloaded from the internet. Its utility
| in sandboxing old games is (mostly) dubious.
| jtdev wrote:
| I quite appreciate Apple's software and general corporate
| decisions. Can you tell me about a better software/hardware
| vendor out there?
| nojito wrote:
| Apple doesn't sell hardware/software. They sell experiences.
|
| It's not in their interest to sell/provide and support an
| experience they didn't make. Their success shows that
| experiences are all that really matter despite what the vocal
| HN userbase routinely shares.
| threeseed wrote:
| I always laugh when I read comments saying they won't buy an
| iPad because it doesn't have custom browsing engines,
| terminals, network sniffers, emulators, VMs etc.
|
| As though Apple is an open source company selling to
| developers.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| So much for diversity and inclusion.
| kstenerud wrote:
| I see it this way: Apple played the part of trailblazer,
| demonstrating that it was possible to run circles around Intel
| with modern RISC designs. We'll be seeing many more entries
| into the marketplace over the next few years, and MUCH greater
| diversity and consumer choice as a result.
|
| Sure, Apple did it for selfish reasons and they'll keep their
| platforms locked up as much as they can get away with, but the
| end result is a benefit for all as powerful and open RISC
| systems proliferate.
| jorvi wrote:
| If that was true, Snapdragon, Kirin or Exynos designs would
| have caught up by now.
|
| The fact is that because Apple sells the iPhone for high
| profit margin _and_ earns from the services and software sold
| on each iPhone, they can afford to stick a big, expensive
| chip in there. In contrast, profit margins on most Android
| phones are razor thin. Qualcomm has to design a chip that
| performs relatively well for as 'expensive' as the market
| can bear, as when their top chip is too expensive, OEMs will
| just build their phone with one of the lower tier
| Snapdragons.
|
| Once you adjust for transistor count, Snapdragons et al are
| much closer to Apple's A-series than you'd think at first
| glance.
|
| As for the M1, what shouldn't be discounted is the fact that
| Apple controls the entire stack, which means they could build
| in special features into it that together with Rosetta 2 make
| running X86 relatively performant.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > e'll be seeing many more entries into the marketplace over
| the next few years
|
| No, not in the next _few_ years. In 10 years? Maybe.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26917136
| kstenerud wrote:
| This isn't a question of capability (which is already
| there), but rather of mindset. Now that the other companies
| know that it's possible to sell a $1000 ARM computer that's
| not a phone or a toy, they'll be falling all over
| themselves to join in on the gold rush. Lots of absolute
| crap will ensue as they mindlessly bumble their way through
| shitty designs, and then in a few years we'll see the first
| decent non-apple ARM desktop and laptop computers. And by
| that time, Microsoft will have dusted off their ARM code,
| major Linux distros will be giving real love to their ARM
| packacing.
| dmitriid wrote:
| It took Apple more than 10 years to get a CPU that
| performs same or better as Intel's CPUs and can be put
| into a laptop or a desktop computer.
|
| To produce a "decent non-apple ARM desktop and laptop
| computers" other companies need to have started
| developing such a CPU 5 years ago.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| This article isn't about the iPad, it's about the Mac. The Mac
| supports JITs. The only conformance change they had to make was
| marking memory as either write or execute, as opposed to both
| at the same time.
|
| You can execute whatever arbitrary code you want on an M1 Mac,
| up to and including completely custom kernels, if the user set
| their Mac to allow such code. It's not locked down and its not
| an iPad or an iPhone. I agree that the iPhone and iPad are
| unacceptably locked down, but the Mac is not, and there's
| absolutely no reason to group them together.
| Vrondi wrote:
| Yes.
| threeseed wrote:
| Apple's blanket ban on interpreted code is not arbitrary.
|
| It is there to prevent apps circumventing the review process
| and security model ie. apps pretending to do X during the
| review process and then doing Y when in use or obfuscating
| their use of private APIs. Now you can argue these restrictions
| are unreasonable but many of us don't want our iPads or iPhones
| to be like our computers.
| m463 wrote:
| What good is the security model if every app has unfettered
| network access?
| xxs wrote:
| > Apple's blanket ban on interpreted code is not arbitrary.
|
| Well, there is no ban on interpreted code but JIT -> just in
| time compilation, which in many cases produces high quality
| (gcc -o2) code.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| Fine, they aren't arbitrary (obviously a company worth that
| much isn't making any arbitrary decisions).
|
| But they still suck and degrade the performance for computing
| enthusiasts who most on this platform are (including me).
|
| I want to push hardware to it's limits because it's fun
| because there's fun things out there when you do that. Apple
| wants me to not bork my system or get confused when an app
| tricks me or have to show up at their Genius Bar with a
| problem they can't fix from a third party app they've never
| heard of.
|
| That's fine, but I won't get in that situation, so I don't
| want hardware locked down by software that worries I will.
| tw04 wrote:
| >Now you can argue these restrictions are unreasonable but
| many of us don't want our iPads or iPhones to be like our
| computers.
|
| It seems to me a rather simple fix: give users an
| "unrestricted mode" just like Android has the ability to
| install from third party. By default keep it locked down, but
| allow the USER to make that decision, with ample warnings all
| over the place about what they're about to do.
|
| Heck, for all I care make them go to an Apple store to have
| it "unlocked" so an employee can walk them through what it
| actually means and how dangerous it is so the average joe
| schmoe doesn't just click the button by accident.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| If you do that, guess what Fortnite would do right now.
| Guess what Facebook would do to get around Apple's privacy
| restrictions right now. Guess what a ex-boyfriend would do
| right now to install a blocked spying app.
|
| For better or worse, the App Store being the exclusive way
| into the iPhone forces third parties to deal. Otherwise,
| they just tell the user to make the choice for them.
|
| If you even listen to interviews with Apple engineers, it
| sounds like they are less afraid of willing and
| understanding people and locking their phones, as much as
| they are afraid of third parties essentially forcing their
| users to unlock their phone to install their products, and
| thus getting an unfair exemption from Apple's protections
| while smaller companies probably wouldn't have the clout to
| force users to do this, resulting in an uneven playing
| field.
|
| I do get the Apple Store one more, but as history has
| shown, people literally go to the Apple store to get iCloud
| theft locks removed by impersonating the owner and faking
| receipts.
| tw04 wrote:
| >If you do that, guess what Fortnite would do right now.
| Guess what Facebook would do to get around Apple's
| privacy restrictions right now. Guess what a ex-boyfriend
| would do right now to install a blocked spying app.
|
| I guess I don't get your point, if a user wants to
| sideload fortnite or facebook, good for them? If an ex-
| boyfriend has your phone and your password you've
| probably got bigger issues than whether or not he can
| click a button to sideload an app.
|
| >I do get the Apple Store one more, but as history has
| shown, people literally go to the Apple store to get
| iCloud theft locks removed by impersonating the owner and
| faking receipts.
|
| I still don't follow your point, what on earth does that
| have to do with someone being allowed to use their phone
| how they want? You think someone is going to steal your
| phone, go to an Apple store and pretend to be you to have
| sideload enabled, then return the phone to you? I'm not
| saying it would be impossible for that to happen, but I
| would say: why would ANYONE go to that trouble? If this
| is another "well ex-boyfriend" issue you're talking about
| 1/10th of 1% of all users in existence. I don't think
| that should be the demographic with which we base all of
| the decisions on what an iphone can and can't do...
| dnh44 wrote:
| >I guess I don't get your point, if a user wants to
| sideload fortnite or facebook, good for them?
|
| This will result in a few "must have" apps being side-
| loaded to start, and finish with people having to
| reinstall their phone operating systems every 6 months;
| to the detriment of the vast majority of users.
|
| Do you not remember what the computers of regular people
| were like in the late 90's and early 2000's? I remember
| pretty much everyone non-technical having at least a mild
| malware infestation and at least one extra toolbar in
| their browser.
|
| I'm quite happy that the free market created a solution
| that is more secure.
| novok wrote:
| You could do this with android phones for +10 years,
| android is ~+%80 of the smartphone market and this does
| not happen in practice.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I think their point is the users would not get the choice
| to "want" to sideload. Fornite, Facebook, etc would pull
| themselves from the App Store and be sideload-only.
| Forcing users to choose between the security of their
| device, or their favorite games and social media apps.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Epic tried that on Android. It didn't work so well, so
| now they're back on the App store.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I'm saying that if you add that choice, it isn't that
| technical users have more freedom and that's bad. It's
| that Apple users become pawns in a chess game against
| other tech Giants, who don't want to follow Apple's rules
| whether it be for privacy, IAP, or other reasons.
|
| Like I said with Facebook. If there was a private API
| that Apple doesn't allow them to use that would make
| tracking users easier, they would happily force users to
| sideload so that they could use it. Smaller companies
| would not have the power to force users to sideload, so
| they would have to follow Apple rules while tech giants
| would not.
|
| At this point, for better or worse, what started as
| sideloading has destroyed the App Store.
|
| Lastly, as for why anyone would go for the trouble, are
| you really sure that some government agency wouldn't
| force users to sideload an app someday? If it had to go
| through Apple approval, there would be a much bigger
| legal fight than if they could just force people to
| sideload it. There are other reasons than just ex-
| boyfriends, I'm just trying to come up with some
| examples.
| tw04 wrote:
| >I'm saying that if you add that choice, it isn't that
| technical users have more freedom and that's bad. It's
| that Apple users become pawns in a chess game against
| other tech Giants, who don't want to follow Apple's rules
| whether it be for privacy, IAP, or other reasons.
|
| Become "pawns" how? You're again saying that a user being
| allowed to load things on to their phone is Apple's
| responsibility. Literally nobody has said it would be
| Apple's responsibility and we've got a case in point:
| google. When you sideload an app, you're on your own.
|
| >Like I said with Facebook. If there was a private API
| that Apple doesn't allow them to use that would make
| tracking users easier, they would happily force users to
| sideload so that they could use it. Smaller companies
| would not have the power to force users to sideload, so
| they would have to follow Apple rules while tech giants
| would not.
|
| Again, not Apple's problem. If a user is warned that
| enabling side loading exposes them to tracking, and the
| user decides to do it anyway, that's their prerogative.
|
| >At this point, for better or worse, what started as
| sideloading has destroyed the App Store.
|
| Destroyed what app store? Google allows sideloading, I
| think most people would describe their app store as
| thriving, not "destroyed"
|
| >Lastly, as for why anyone would go for the trouble, are
| you really sure that some government agency wouldn't
| force users to sideload an app someday? If it had to go
| through Apple approval, there would be a much bigger
| legal fight than if they could just force people to
| sideload it. There are other reasons than just ex-
| boyfriends, I'm just trying to come up with some
| examples.
|
| They already force users to load apps directly,
| sideloading isn't necessary.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Right now, every developer will tell you that Apple is
| significantly more strict with what is allowed on the App
| Store than the Google Play store is. Not perfect, but
| more strict.
|
| This has caused tech giants like Facebook considerable
| hurt. For example, the fact that they have to have those
| embarrassing privacy labels on their app in the App
| Store. Or that they have to present that prompt asking
| for permission to use the advertising identifier.
|
| Right now, even though this hurts tech Giants, this
| benefits users. Google draws less than 1/10th of the data
| from an iPhone user as they do an Android user.
|
| If sideloading was enabled, this check on their privacy
| rules would no longer exist because they could force
| users to sideload, which means they would immediately do
| so, and users would lose the benefits that Apple's
| restrictions give them.
|
| If users want to sideload, They should buy an android
| where this check does not exist, and they can be on the
| less restrictive Google play store where it doesn't
| matter. If they want Apple to constrain the power of apps
| to spy on them, they buy an iPhone.
|
| Even though you might vehemently disagree with Apple, I
| respect the right of users to choose whether they want a
| restricted but more private experience, or less
| restricted but less private experience.
| hota_mazi wrote:
| > This has caused tech giants like Facebook considerable
| hurt. For example, the fact that they have to have those
| embarrassing privacy labels on their app in the App
| Store.
|
| They have the exact same embarrassing label on the Play
| store, and guess what, their Android app is also on that
| store. Even though they don't have to be.
|
| The reason is that they have a lot more reach on a store
| than as a sideload.
|
| The difference is that Google gives a lot more freedom to
| developers and businesses than Apple does.
|
| > Even though you might vehemently disagree with Apple, I
| respect the right of users to choose whether they want a
| restricted but more private experience, or less
| restricted but less private experience.
|
| That's a straw man. Nobody argued this.
|
| We're just calling Apple's monopolistic, hegemonic
| behavior for what it is. As is Epic as we speak.
| [deleted]
| danShumway wrote:
| By that same reasoning, should we be concerned about iOS-
| exclusive apps (ie, Apple Arcade)? Should we be concerned
| that you need an iPhone to sign up for an Apple credit
| card? Or that iMessage isn't available on other
| platforms?
|
| The situation between iOS and Android is very similar to
| the situation you're scared of with a theoretical 3rd-
| party app store. Consumers don't have a clean choice
| between device ownership and a managed device. They also
| have to consider hardware concerns, network effects,
| exclusive apps/games and services.
|
| It probably sounds dismissive to you if someone says that
| you can just choose not to use Facebook or Fortnite if
| they're not on the official Apple store. In the same way,
| it's a bit dismissive to say that I can just choose to
| ignore arguably the only privacy-respecting credit card
| on the entire market just because I want to use NewPipe
| on my phone. People often don't get to choose their phone
| based on one specific design aspect of that phone.
|
| > For better or worse, the App Store being the exclusive
| way into the iPhone forces third parties to deal.
|
| I do agree with this, and I think this is the heart of
| the conflict. A lot of people are arguing about whether
| iOS is a monopoly. That's not really the most important
| part of this conversation, the important question we
| should be asking is: "do we want iOS to be a monopoly?"
|
| Being a (semi) monopoly and gatekeeping access to a
| substantial portion of the mobile market allows Apple to
| force companies to do certain things. Some people _want_
| Apple to have that power, because they think Apple will
| force companies to be more private and to adapt more
| consumer-friendly policies. Some people don 't want Apple
| to have that power because they don't trust them with it,
| they don't trust them not to shut down technologies like
| game streaming or adblocking.
|
| Apple has used its monopoly power to do some great things
| with privacy, their stranglehold over browsers on iOS is
| one of the biggest reasons Chrome hasn't taken over
| already. But Apple has also hampered the open web and is
| stalling on PWA features, largely because those features
| compete with the App Store. They also (imo) almost
| single-handedly created a low-quality mobile games market
| by maintaining a strict position for years that games
| were not artistic statements and by locking serious games
| out of their platform entirely. Apple's privacy-
| preserving disposable email system is great, their severe
| neglect for adblocking is bad. Their requirements around
| accessibility are extremely helpful, their war against
| adult content is extremely harmful. It's a situation with
| both pros and cons.
|
| This debate is not really about whether or not Apple has
| power over the market, obviously they do. Facebook isn't
| just dropping iOS after its recent privacy changes. If
| Apple didn't have any kind of outsized control over the
| market, then companies wouldn't go along with their
| changes, they would just support Android instead. If the
| market allowed it, they would do exactly what you're
| afraid of with a 3rd-party app store -- they would
| abandon iOS and only support Android. But they don't,
| because they can't.
|
| So the debate isn't about what power Apple has, it's
| really about whether or not Apple _should_ have the power
| over the market that they obviously do have.
| flutas wrote:
| > Guess what Facebook would do to get around Apple's
| privacy restrictions right now.
|
| You mean the privacy features built in to the OS?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Some privacy features are in the OS, but others aren't.
| For example, Facebook probably doesn't like having users
| see the privacy label in the App Store. It's kind of
| embarrassing. Also, if Facebook could sideload, they
| could use restricted APIs and entitlements that the App
| Store would not permit.
| handrous wrote:
| Also, not being permitted to fingerprint users for
| tracking. The OS prevents _certain_ methods of doing
| that, but _can 't_ prevent all the methods that Apple's
| banned. The review process and threat of the banhammer
| are necessary to prevent those.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > Facebook probably doesn't like having users see the
| privacy label in the App Store. It's kind of
| embarrassing.
|
| What's more embarrassing, that label in the App Store, or
| a big scary warning that says something to the effect of
| "This software has not been confirmed safe by Apple. It
| is not guaranteed to work properly, and may be a SCAM,
| VIRUS, or other MALWARE. By installing this application
| YOU ARE PUTTING YOUR DEVICE AND PRIVACY AT RISK. Are you
| sure you want to proceed y/N?" when trying to install
| Facebook's app via sideloading?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| If your cousin or your friend or your techie son tell you
| that that app is just fine and then it tells you that
| warning for everything, it becomes the boy who cried
| Wolf.
|
| Plus, even that is less embarrassing than Facebook
| listing every single thing they track about you.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That restriction is already circumvented with e.g. React
| Native though, or any kind of webview - companies can change
| their whole apps without a re-review. They MIGHT get called
| out for it if someone reports it, but in theory it's very
| possible.
| lostgame wrote:
| Sure; but the WebView component is Apple's own secured
| little space, and it seems to be a fairly secure little
| sandbox.
| lxgr wrote:
| React Native does not run within a WebView and has access
| to the full iOS runtime.
| fouric wrote:
| Sure, it's not arbitrary, but you didn't nail the actual
| reason: to make money.
|
| If Apple was actually concerned about circumventing the App
| Store review process _for the purposes of security_ , they
| would implement OS-level sandboxing and security models (e.g.
| something capability-like) - this is both _far_ more secure
| _and_ allows for more freedom to make apps.
|
| But they don't, because it's not about security - it's about
| profit.
| povik wrote:
| Don't they, really? I was under the impression that they do
| implement OS-level sandboxing and the ban on JIT/arbitrary
| execute is another level of security.
| dataangel wrote:
| > It is there to prevent apps circumventing the review
| process and security model ie. apps pretending to do X during
| the review process and then doing Y when in use
|
| Doing this is still dead simple and in no way requires a JIT.
| robenkleene wrote:
| I'm not sure the reasons you listed, "X during the review
| process and then doing Y when in use or obfuscating their use
| of private APIs", are the best match for blocking all
| arbitrary code execution. E.g., there's no reason an app
| can't simply compile multiple use cases into a single binary
| to get past review (in fact, this happens all the time). And,
| it's _way_ too broad to be about blocking access to private
| APIs, e.g., they 're blocking all running of Ruby, Python,
| Node, etc... with this rule.
|
| I think the more specific match to what Apple is blocking
| with these rules is anything that resembles an App Store-like
| experience. Apple doesn't want anything that can download and
| run arbitrary apps, because that would dilute their platform
| control and other advantages. There's an excellent piece
| about why Apple is so afraid of this
| (https://stratechery.com/2013/why-doesnt-apple-enable-
| sustain...).
|
| This motivation provides a more specific match to preventing
| arbitrary code execution: An App Store-like experience is
| almost impossible without downloading and executing code. It
| also matches the exception that Apple provides for
| "educational apps designed to teach, develop, or allow
| students to test executable code may, in limited
| circumstances, download code provided that such code is not
| used for other purposes" (https://developer.apple.com/app-
| store/review/guidelines/#2.5...).
|
| Furthermore, this perspective is support by other policies as
| well:
|
| 1. This is why Apple doesn't allow third-party web rendering
| engines on the App Store. A third-party web engine could also
| be used to create an App Store-like experience.
|
| 2. See 4.2.7 (https://developer.apple.com/app-
| store/review/guidelines/#4.2...), the rules around what
| remote desktop apps can do. These restrictions seem
| specifically written to prevent remote desktop features from
| being used to create an App Store-like experience.
|
| So, while I think rule 2.4.2 does help with the goals you
| listed, if it were just about those goals, these rules would
| be written differently (e.g., allowing downloading and
| executing scripting languages). And I think there's more
| evidence that rule 2.4.2 is more about preventing third-
| parties from providing App Store-like experiences.
| jolux wrote:
| It's not even a blanket ban on interpreted code, React Native
| depends on dynamically generating views using JavaScriptCore.
| Something like this is how Epic originally got around the
| payment restrictions. Presumably you're still allowed to use
| it to push updates, as long as you don't use it to circumvent
| the App Store rules.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I'm surprised to see no one has pointed out you're mistaken.
| This hasn't been true in quite some time.
|
| You can run whatever code you want. Doesn't matter whether it
| has a JIT, or whether it loads all its code from a webserver
| dynamically, or anything else.
|
| The sole criteria is "thou shalt not circumvent the app store
| review process." That means, do not change the functionality
| after they've reviewed it.
| robenkleene wrote:
| Here's the relevant rule (https://developer.apple.com/app-
| store/review/guidelines/#2.5...):
|
| > Apps should be self-contained in their bundles, and may
| not read or write data outside the designated container
| area, nor may they download, install, or execute code which
| introduces or changes features or functionality of the app,
| including other apps. Educational apps designed to teach,
| develop, or allow students to test executable code may, in
| limited circumstances, download code provided that such
| code is not used for other purposes. Such apps must make
| the source code provided by the Application completely
| viewable and editable by the user.
|
| I'd say the post you were replying to uses the wrong word
| ("interpreted", I usually say it can't run "arbitrary"
| code), but the rule is more specific than your description
| as well.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| There are many, many apps that ship bug fixes with no app
| store review process via React Native. It loads code from
| a server each time you run it. And to my knowledge, Apple
| never has a problem with that as long as the app doesn't
| change functionality. Any functional change must be
| reviewed; everything else is allowed.
|
| I agree with you that the rule sounds specific, and I'm
| not sure how to reconcile that with the fact that so many
| apps ship with hotpatching.
| robenkleene wrote:
| My understanding is that hot reloading via React Native
| is explicitly forbidden by the App Store rules (i.e.,
| you're never supposed to download JavaScript and run it
| in JavaScriptCore).
|
| I think what you're describing is simply that the App
| Store rules are selectively enforced.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| > many of us don't want our iPads or iPhones to be like our
| computers.
|
| Thats completely irrelevant to anyone else's iPad, which has
| no impact on your iPad's security. Would you be in favor of
| Apple banning whatever Mac OS app you use because I don't
| want to use it?
|
| And what even is the point of having a secure iPad if you're
| also going to run an insecure computer?
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| > many of us don't want our iPads or iPhones to be like our
| computers
|
| And many of us _do_. I would never buy a locked-down piece of
| hardware like that. But I don 't think it matters either way
| what either side wants, because it's what Apple wants that
| matters. They want to keep their walled garden's walls air
| tight, and there are apparently enough people that are OK
| living in that garden that it works.
|
| I'm positive that they have done the calculus that they'll
| make more money in the long/short term by behaving this way.
| Google did a similar calculus, with a different set of values
| (if not an entirely different set of variables altogether)
| and came up with a different answer. Although it's
| interesting to see how their position has shifted over the
| years to be a bit more like Apple in some regards.
| Regardless, the point is they don't care what you want once
| they've gotten to the point of getting your money. Past that,
| they only care about maximizing their profit.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Google did a similar calculus, with a different set of
| values (if not an entirely different set of variables
| altogether) and came up with a different answer. Although
| it's interesting to see how their position has shifted over
| the years to be a bit more like Apple in some regards.
|
| It didn't shift. Google had the same calculus with the same
| answers. Only Google never had the hardware, so AOSP was a
| way to make sure Android is everywhere.
|
| There's a great Ars Technica article about this:
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/09/owning-the-
| stack... They all want to own the smartphone stack.
| jezfromfuture wrote:
| Yes Google calculated that users privacy means jack , users
| security means jack but as long as you can do what you want
| on ur phone and they can siphon off your data it's all
| good.
|
| Hate apple as much as u like but I'm very happy they lock
| the shit down and don't turn it into my pc , my phone is
| for calls an texts privacy is important running bullshit is
| not.
| threeseed wrote:
| Apple sells $20-30 billion worth of iPads each year.
|
| I think they might just survive without your business. And
| pretty sure it demonstrates that their formula of security
| and privacy over openness is the right one for them.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I think what you mean to say is that their marketing with
| regards to their security is working. Do you think all of
| those people with iPads really spend more than 20 seconds
| investigating the security of iOS?
| caddybox wrote:
| > Apple sells $20-30 billion worth of iPads each year.
|
| > I think they might just survive without your business.
|
| The parent post makes some the argument that the
| restrictive nature of iOS makes it unappealing to certain
| users. You counter that with a discussion-ending argument
| about how much money Apple makes.
|
| Not everything that makes billions of dollars is immune
| to criticism. Especially since Apple markets the iPad as
| a "computer", a term that traditionally referred to
| unrestricted computing devices.
| jeromegv wrote:
| The money is about showing that there is a market for
| people who do NOT want what this other user finds
| appealing. Saying "no" is as important as saying "yes"
| when it comes to adding features to a platform.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I think a broader point is that iPhones will never be the
| choice of people who want openness, and if the OP had a
| chance to talk to an Apple engineer, the engineer would
| probably tell him to use Android because the iPhone isn't
| meant for people who need openness, but for those who
| want to trade freedom for an experience that mostly "just
| works" as they would say.
|
| Also, Apple knows as much as anyone that terms change
| over time. Last week the RSA experts were angry that
| "crypto" now meant "cryptocurrency" instead of the
| historical "cryptography".
| judge2020 wrote:
| > Especially since Apple markets the iPad as a "computer"
|
| Except when it's not a computer https://youtu.be/pI-
| iJcC9JUc (/s)
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| > makes it unappealing to certain users. You counter that
| with a discussion-ending argument about how much money
| Apple makes.
|
| For a business that makes it's money from consumer
| spending habits, I think this is a perfectly valid
| argument. Apple isn't a utility company or something the
| users are locked in to. If they decided openness was more
| important, why are they still buying so many iPhones?
| r00f wrote:
| Obviously I don't have exact numbers, but I am absolutely
| sure the huge majority of people buy iPhone because it is
| iPhone, and they have zero idea about this whole openness
| vs security debate. Apple won the market with marketing,
| not with proving that openness doesn't matter
| xvector wrote:
| > You counter that with a discussion-ending argument
| about how much money Apple makes.
|
| The implication is that Apple's design decision favors
| far more users than it doesn't.
|
| In other words, the same design decisions that cost Apple
| one HNer nets them general consumers - so Apple can
| definitely survive without the HNer's business.
| casmclas wrote:
| That's certainly the implication of their text. It is not
| a legitimate conclusion. Given the premises "Apple has
| made a decision X" and "Apple has made billions of
| dollars since making that decision", you cannot conclude
| "the decision has made Apple billions of dollars". We
| cannot accept "All wood burns, therefore all that burns
| is wood" but "All of Alma Cogan is dead, but only some of
| the class of dead people are Alma Cogan".
|
| Lots of people disapprove of Facebook's data practices,
| yet they still run several of the overwhelmingly most
| popular social networks. Apple could be in a similar
| position: producing an otherwise excellent product that
| has a limitation people tolerate.
|
| The fact that Apple makes billions of dollars is not
| evidence that every single decision of theirs is the best
| decision for their profitability. In order for their
| profit to be used against the argument and comfort of a
| certain Hacker News commentator, we need some evidence
| that the revenue is because of, not despite (or
| unaffected by), the decisions that made the random Hacker
| News commentator unhappy. At best we can conclude that
| the decision is not such a howler that it's cost them
| their market viability, but perhaps if they'd made a
| different decision they could have owned the entire
| smartphone market in a way that Windows used to own the
| desktop OS market.
|
| (Another logical fallacy implicit in the argument is that
| a decision made by a powerful person is more worthy of
| respect than another decision. I must admit these kinds
| of reactionary values are extremely far from me, and I am
| shocked and uncomfortable to find how common they are.)
| merdadicapra wrote:
| > The implication is that Apple's design decision favors
| far more users than it doesn't.
|
| That's some serious spurious correlation.
|
| https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
|
| Globally in the tablet segment Apple has a 31% market
| share (https://cdnen.soyacincau.com/2021/05/210503-tablet
| s.jpg), so the number say that <<Apple's design decision
| upsets far more users than it doesn't>>
|
| Many companies could <<definitely survive without the
| HNer's business>>, the question is wether the HNer's
| opinions hold more value technically speaking or not.
|
| I mean, Saudi Aramco makes much more money than Apple,
| could <<definitely survive without the HNer's business>>,
| but I guess nobody would say that their <<design decision
| favors far more users than it doesn't>>.
| Someone wrote:
| > Especially since Apple markets the iPad as a "computer"
|
| Do they? I don't follow their ads closely, but I can't
| find the word "computer" on https://www.apple.com/ipad-
| pro/ (given the 8tneractivity on that page, it still may
| be there, but I tried looking hard, and couldn't find
| it), and they have an explicit ad saying "iPad Pro --
| Your next computer is not a computer"
| (https://youtube.com/watch?v=09_QxCcBEyU)
|
| Can you point to that marketing?
| anoncake wrote:
| If an iPad Pro can be your next computer, it must be a
| computer.
| bigfudge wrote:
| I think that quote actually emphasises that Apple
| describes iPads as not really computers... it only works
| as an ad line if it's counter intuitive
| anoncake wrote:
| What's a computer?
|
| 1. A device with a screen, a keyboard and some kind of
| pointing device.
|
| 2. A device that can be used for every purpose a computer
| can be used for.
|
| The Ipad is obviously not 1, so Apple must be claiming it
| is/will be 2.
| myrandomcomment wrote:
| We to be fair their argument is 100% valid. Apple is very
| successful in selling their HW as is without the feature
| certain users want. The reality is that adding that
| feature would have a great deal of cost behind it for
| very little growth on their already impressive numbers.
| Everyone here on HN likes to criticize Apple for not
| allowing 3rd party stores, but in general wants their HW.
| This community is self selecting for the tech people so
| they think this is reasonable. My wife and kid and my
| friends that are not in tech do not care about 3rd party
| at all, and when I have asked them the answer is "I buy
| Apple because it just works and I do not have to think
| about it. That would add complexity I do not want!" This
| is Apples market, not HN were this is the norm:
|
| Me: "Great, do not buy an Apple protect." HN: "But I like
| their HW." Me: "Well then you have to deal with their SW
| restrictions." HN: "But I do not want to, why cannot they
| not just do this for me, it's just SW."
|
| Wash, rinse, repeat on every story on AppleHW. I would
| really love to be able to read the comments on the
| interesting aspect of the story without 80% of the
| comments going back to this debate for once.
|
| Apple is NOT a monopoly, therefor you cannot force them
| to change this. You can buy another device that allows
| you to install 3rd party stuff. Do that.
| swiley wrote:
| >Apple is NOT a monopoly... you can buy another device
|
| They're a monopoly on imessage which most people who own
| iphones think is just more advanced text messaging.
| You'll get left out of groups if you do this.
|
| All we want is to be able to run our own binaries, I
| can't believe this is even controversial _especially_ on
| a forum full of software developers.
| threeseed wrote:
| There's also a monopoly on Slack, Google Docs, Fortnite
| etc.
|
| In fact by that ridiculous definition everything in life
| is a monopoly.
| swiley wrote:
| This is anti-trust (extreme abuse of the monopoly.)
|
| Slack, Google Docs, and Fortnite don't force you to use
| their brand of computer to participate in group chats
| with your friends.
|
| Slack and Google Docs even work on my pinephone.
|
| If Google forced you to buy an Android if you wanted to
| use Google Docs with whatever group of people you need to
| work with you'd probably be upset too.
| myrandomcomment wrote:
| WhatsApp has 2B users vs. 1.6B for Apple. Of the 1.6B for
| Apple there is a group that would not use iMessage, but
| any other 3rd party application, like Whatsapp.
|
| The fact that you are left of a chat does not make Apple
| a monopoly. The people in your group could choose to all
| switch to the same application, of which most of are
| closed source. I spent a ton of time in APAC and while
| each country has different most popular chat apps, the
| group of us that have spent years working together on and
| off at different companies all agreed on a common chat
| app. It's just not hard.
|
| I have a few long term friend groups where a member has
| an Android and the text is green. No issues sending them
| text at all. The MMS stuff can be broken but that is not
| Apples fault.
|
| Your argument is Apple once again the same as everyones
| else, and appeal to everyone be open because it is your
| philosophical view of things and it would make your life
| simpler.
|
| Apple is a for profit company. They are not a monopoly on
| chat because they choose to offer their users a better
| experience over the standard SMS (which they supported).
|
| I am frustrated with all the people that miss that
| distinction. They are a private entity and can do what
| they way within the outline of the law. You can vote with
| your pocketbook, or run for office and get the laws
| changed.
|
| Also, the OSS vs non-OSS comment: you cannot take for
| granted that everyone here comes down on the side of the
| GPL 100%. There are a ton of us that work/worked at
| companies that did priority software because that is what
| made sense for the business model. We do not write
| software for free - ie, there has to be a method to pay
| our bills. I personally have major issues with GPL3 when
| it comes to creating works for a profit company. No major
| ones with GPL2, Apache, MIT, etc.
| zepto wrote:
| The term 'computer' has not historically made reference
| to 'unrestricted' in any way, and the early history is
| rife with examples of restrictive licenses and hardware.
| derekjhunt wrote:
| Source on this please. I'm skeptical that they sell
| enough iPads to equal half of all clothing sold on the
| planet, or they have a larger market or 20% of movies or
| gaming worldwide.
| catblast01 wrote:
| This is really low effort to look up from reputable
| sources if you don't believe it. Electronics have far
| higher sales prices than clothing, I can't even begin to
| fathom why that is a relevant benchmark.
| zepto wrote:
| Please don't ask for sources on things you can easily
| Google.
|
| It looks like you are trying to discredit the poster or
| accuse them of dishonesty without adding new information
| to the thread.
|
| If they are wrong, you can trivially demonstrate that
| with a link of your own.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Please don't ask people to do a web search for support
| for your claims.
| zepto wrote:
| For easily verifiable claims, it's absurd and frankly
| dishonest to expect people to provide links.
|
| If you want to accuse them of lying or being mistaken,
| you can provide a link. If their claim is implausible,
| you can comment on why.
|
| Just asking for a link without adding one of these
| doesn't add anything to the conversation except a demand
| they do work.
| spullara wrote:
| Maybe you don't know what the size of the clothing market
| is because it isn't $40-60B. If you just look at
| ecommerce for clothing:
|
| The global fashion ecommerce industry was expected to
| decline from $531.25 billion in 2019 to $485.62 billion
| in 2020. The negative compound annual growth rate (CAGR)
| of -8.59% is largely due to the coronavirus pandemic.
| However, the market is set to recover and hit $672.71
| billion by 2023
|
| The general clothing market is even bigger, obviously:
|
| In 2019, global retail sales of apparel and footwear
| reached 1.9 trillion U.S. dollars, and were expected to
| rise to above three trillion U.S. dollars by 2030.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Don't buy an iPhone then. I used to be all about
| customizing my phone, but when the "Phone" app on my
| android crashed repeatedly while trying to call 911 in an
| emergency, I now only want a locked-down and stable piece
| of hardware as my phone.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| Well as the main comment pointed out. The lament is that
| the strongest mobile hardware out there at the moment is
| also locked down. Would be nice to have the option for a
| not locked down piece of that hardware, and we do not
| wish that you don't have the option for a locked down
| stable piece of hardware.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >I would never buy a locked-down piece of hardware like
| that
|
| Do you own an Xbox or Playstation? Do you own a SmartTV?
| vcxy wrote:
| I'm not who you replied to, but I find this interesting.
| It seems like you're asking rhetorically, but the answer
| for me is no. I expect I'm not alone.
|
| I do own an old Kindle Paperwhite, which I assume is
| fairly locked down? I'm not actually sure.
| pwinnski wrote:
| The Paperwhite is indeed locked down.
| vcxy wrote:
| Figured as much. It's been in airplane mode the entire
| time I've owned it and I just put books on it with
| calibre. I guess this somehow mirrors how some people
| feel about their Apple devices? They don't notice it
| being locked down because it already does what they want?
|
| The other alternative is what I can't relate to at all:
| the device doesn't do what they want due to being locked
| down, but they're ok with the trade-off. I don't have a
| problem with it, but I can't relate.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This is what I don't get as well. The limitations of the
| devices are well known. Why would you drop the money on a
| thing that doesn't do what you want it to do? Just
| because someone feels a device has the ability to do
| something other than what it is actually doing doesn't
| mean the vendor has to allow it to do that thing. It was
| designed and tested against what the vendor wants it to
| do. Allowing it to do other untested thing just means
| more support headaches down the road.
| pwinnski wrote:
| I use both an iPhone and a Kindle Paperwhite. Like yours,
| my Paperwhite has been in airplane mode since I bought
| it, and I've never cared about missing anything on iOS
| either.
|
| I am well aware that of the choice I'm making, and will
| continue to make the same choice in both cases.
| m_a_g wrote:
| Considering the average user, I think you are in the
| minority. Still, I don't think there has to be a choice
| between one and the other.
| reledi wrote:
| > They want to keep their walled garden's walls air tight,
| and there are apparently enough people that are OK living
| in that garden that it works.
|
| For many, including me, it's not some inconvenience that we
| are okay with. We see it as a selling point.
|
| I've tried them all and Apple's balance of
| openness/security/quality is the best I've experienced. If
| they follow the direction of others, I'd probably jump
| ship.
| judge2020 wrote:
| There are many other devices locked down much more than iOS
| devices and this argument would apply to them as well. The
| only reason apple is the subject is because people want to
| take advantage of the massive, expensive engineering work
| that has happened over the past 15 years (in both hardware
| and software) without any of the limitations that go
| towards actually paying for that engineering effort (and
| enable many high-security use cases). If apple's product
| sucked and had horrible UX nobody would care.
| roofwellhams wrote:
| You already paying 1000usd for an iphone. How much more
| is it worth?
| [deleted]
| valuearb wrote:
| The market has spoken. iPad revenues are higher than all
| the other tablets combined.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Like everything in technology, you have a choice. If you
| want openness at the expense of security and privacy, you
| can purchase an Android or Windows device. If you want
| security and privacy more than openness, you buy an iPhone.
| The Hacker News crowd is unique in that we want to have our
| cake and eat it too by making the iPhone work more like
| Android and expressing outrage that such a choice exists.
|
| So even though I wish iPhone would become more open, I find
| it strange that people are saying that we must break the
| iPhones App Store requirement to increase choice, even
| though that removes the choice to have a safer but locked
| down experience from the market.
| daveidol wrote:
| > _Like everything in technology, you have a choice. If
| you want openness [...] you can purchase an Android or
| Windows device._
|
| Windows Phone is dead. And what happens if Android
| decides to be like Apple and lock down sideloading more?
| There is nothing forcing them to continue allowing this
| "freedom of choice" for consumers if they decide it would
| be better for their bottom line.
|
| So, what would be the next best choice after Android in
| that scenario? Basically nothing, because smartphone
| operating systems are a duopoly.
|
| > _So even though I wish iPhone would become more open, I
| find it strange that people are saying that we must break
| the iPhones App Store requirement to increase choice,
| even though that removes the choice to have a safer but
| locked down experience from the market._
|
| I know many people (including Apple) prefer the iPhone
| ecosystem to be more locked down, but given the market
| realities (monopoly) it seems like a compromise would
| make more sense than forcing everyone to pay 30% and lose
| out on things like cloud gaming, emulation,
| "objectionable" content, etc. to cater to the lowest
| common denominator.
|
| A few possible compromises that Apple likely will never
| agree to without being forced to via regulation:
|
| - Apple could probably keep the singular App Store model,
| but lower their fee to closer to cost, add more types of
| parental controls and/or special "expert only" areas of
| the store. This way they are more of a neutral hosting
| platform that still enforces security via app review
| (frankly, if they had done this to begin with, people
| probably would have let the whole singular App Store
| thing slide).
|
| - Apple could allow alternate payment processors and let
| the user decide if they want the convenience of Apple Pay
| vs alternatives. This would let the market dictate the
| _real_ value of their IAP infra. (Hell - at least let
| subscription apps link to their web site to purchase if
| they don 't want to do IAP! This seems highly anti-
| competitive.)
|
| - Apple could allow federated third party app stores to
| enforce certain levels of spam and security prevention
| (even off the App Store) - if one of these trusted third
| party app stores falls short in terms of security they
| get removed.
|
| - Apple could just go the Android route and allow
| sideloading, but put it behind a ton of warnings etc.
| Continued investment in app sandboxing and permission
| prompts for each and every app would already do a lot to
| cut down on straight-up malware. Phishing, scams, etc.
| are already an issue for iPhone users in the browser or
| email clients (plus we've seen these kinds of things on
| the App Store as well), so user education on how to deal
| with these things is already unavoidable.
|
| I think it's fair for us as consumers to demand more from
| Apple and want both security _and_ freedom with
| reasonable tradeoffs.
| realusername wrote:
| What if you got a used phone or tablet though? Are you
| just supposed to throw it away to the trash and get
| another one because the manufacturer doesn't approve you
| using it? And what about devices which aren't supported
| anymore?
| bombcar wrote:
| I think an interesting attack on this loophole would be a
| law that requires that the relevant signing
| keys/bootloader access be opened 1-3 years after official
| support for the hardware ends.
|
| Sure this would complicate things a bit (Apple would have
| to have different keys for different hardware revisions),
| but it would allow devices to be "officially" jailbroken
| after support ends.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Like this, I would really support this. However, Apple
| would probably point out the Third World countries might
| have more obsolete devices coupled with more oppressive
| governments and that puts them at more risk or something.
| realusername wrote:
| obsolete devices aren't maintained anymore, the only
| security you get against known attacks is provided by the
| community, not from Apple.
| zepto wrote:
| I would support opening it as soon as the first
| unsupported software release is made available.
| temac wrote:
| I don't understand why anybody would consider to be at
| risk if an alternate store, that nobody would be forced
| to use, and which could even be subject to identical or
| even better rules, exists.
|
| And I'm not even talking about transforming an iPhone
| into a potentially open computer, but here too the same
| principle can be applied: if it is optional, it is
| something more, not less. The UX can be made good enough
| to actually have your cake and eat it, see Chromebooks.
| massysett wrote:
| Options drive up support costs for Apple and for
| carriers, with no corresponding benefit for people who
| were uninterested in these options.
| Vvector wrote:
| An alternate app store would be a risk for tricking
| people to download and install all kinds of malware.
|
| "Your iPhone is out of date. Tap here to install the
| latest security tools to stop hackers from stealing your
| bank account"
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Who is to say an alternative App Store wouldn't have
| better security than the Apple App Store? Lots of things
| with terrible privacy and security practices have made it
| past the mostly automated review process. With a 3rd
| party paid App Store, you could pay a subscription to
| ensure that every app is reviewed by a human, doesn't
| violate privacy, and is free of malware.
| Gaelan wrote:
| Right, but the scammers aren't going to tell you to go
| there to install your Important Software Update, they're
| gonna point you towards the store with no restrictions at
| all, possibly one they run.
| PandawanFr wrote:
| The issue is other factors may force you to use an
| alternate store. My college uses Proctorio for online
| test-taking. I am required to use this for the class. The
| issue is, the extension is only available for Chrome
| (I've tried other Chromium browsers and those don't seem
| to work as well). As a Firefox user, I don't really like
| having to switch to Chrome just to use an app that I
| never wanted to use but am forced to.
|
| The same could apply with app stores--if a company,
| school, or other requires that you use an app that is
| only available on a less privacy-friendly or perhaps more
| intrusive app store, that doesn't sound like an
| optional/risk-free alternative to me. Once you open the
| walls there's no going back.
| temac wrote:
| Maybe Apple could display a prominent warning that this
| _may_ put your personal data at risk, if you choose to
| enable alternate stores, and remind that regularly
| (including during each boot, when using the apple store,
| etc.), giving leverage for users who actually do not want
| that to refuse forced installations by third parties.
| headmelted wrote:
| Philosophically I agree with you, but I also have kids,
| and I've seen the wild west that is the Play Store.
|
| Admittedly, the same problems exist on the App Store, but
| not to the same why-even-try level of anything goes.
|
| The amount of kids apps, that are marketed as kids apps,
| certified as age appropriate, then contain ads for zombie
| gorefest horror was enough to make me give up trying with
| Android entirely.
|
| I have every confidence Google will eventually address
| this (if they haven't already in the intervening years).
|
| In the meantime while I dislike how restrictive iOS is
| I've begrudgingly come to accept that I need it that way,
| at least until my kids are older.
|
| That said, it's not clear if Apple will win or lose this
| Epic suit, so who knows what happens after that if they
| do?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I'm surprised you think that Apple is going to lose the
| epic lawsuit, because if you look at any legal commentary
| (I'm following Hoeg Law's _extensive_ coverage of the
| case), the odds of the App Store being broken from this
| lawsuit or even sideloading being allowed appears to be
| extremely unlikely.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > the odds of the App Store being broken from this
| lawsuit or even sideloading being allowed appears to be
| extremely unlikely.
|
| From what I've seen, Epic's primary intention is to get
| Apple to publicly admit the compromises they make to
| maintain their ecosystem, and then use that to drive a
| wedge between the court's interpretation of the situation
| and Apple's defense.
| [deleted]
| smoldesu wrote:
| The issue isn't with one platform being more open or
| closed than the other; if you kids want, they can watch
| pretty much anything they want. They have YouTube and a
| browser, how are you going to stop them? I sympathize
| with your distaste for crude advertising, but every
| platform has it's fair share of people abusing it. Just a
| few months ago, developers were coming out en masse to
| denounce Apple's weak regulation in the app store,
| filtering obscenities but completely missing predatory
| pricing structures, ponzi schemes, stolen code and
| frequent double standards/unequal ruling.
|
| The bottom line is that the internet is scary, and your
| kids are growing up faster than any generation before.
| The more you try to interfere with stuff like this, the
| more animosity they'll perceive in your relationship.
| anoncake wrote:
| I don't think anyone would mind if Apple offered two --
| otherwise identical -- versions of each Iphone: One
| locked down and one not. Or Iphones could be unlocked by
| default but you can pay extra to have them permanently
| locked. People would pay for that if locking down their
| phones actually provides value to them.
| myrandomcomment wrote:
| Why would they? It is more work. It is 2 code paths to
| write, to test and plan for. There is a cost associated
| with this that will not likely be recovered in any
| reasonable price difference on the phone versions.
| bpye wrote:
| I would be surprised if Apple don't already have
| something like this internally...
| saagarjha wrote:
| They do.
| myrandomcomment wrote:
| I do not think that Apple is maintaining a full GA level
| release cycle testing and release planning for a version
| of IOS that can allow 3rd party apps. The key here is the
| RELEASE TO GA.
|
| Of course they have internal builds that are signed and
| allow you to do whatever they want internally, but having
| a shipping GA with the normal protects and support for
| all the work and validations that would go into
| supporting 3rd party installations.
|
| Your resume says you where an Intern at Apple, so I am
| sure you are correct in the fact that they have an
| unlocked internal build, however my points are valid
| about the difference between that and a GA PRODUCTION
| release.
|
| Note, Apple has some pretty strict NDAs so...
| saagarjha wrote:
| Apple ships a build with the ability to sideload to the
| SRD as well. It's of course not quite the same as a
| production release, but I think it's the closest you'll
| get to that.
| swiley wrote:
| It's public.[1]
|
| They're just asses about it.
|
| [1] https://developer.apple.com/programs/security-
| research-devic...
| ActorNightly wrote:
| I still dont get how people pretend Apple cares about
| privacy.
|
| By default Apple devices phone home and collect data on
| you, and this is not optional, and they will hand that
| data to law enforcement. They also have the ability to
| change their data handling policieson a whim since there
| is nobody holding them accountable. THIS IS NOT PRIVACY.
|
| Not that windows or android devices are better as they
| come out of the box, but at least any computer that runs
| windows can run linux where you have full control, and
| certain android phones can be rooted/unlocked and flashed
| with custom roms without google or run firewall apps to
| block outgoing data.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| You're in an echo chamber. By default, iPhones do send
| diagnostic data, but that data can be disabled in
| Settings. They also upload your files in an encrypted
| connection (but without end to end encryption) into your
| iCloud backup, and that can be handed over with a
| subpoena, but you can disable iCloud backup or simply not
| pay for it.
| saagarjha wrote:
| > By default, iPhones do send diagnostic data
|
| Doesn't Apple ask you whether you want to enable this
| when you set up the device?
| vlunkr wrote:
| Nothing you said contradicts anything they said. By
| default, Apple collects all this data.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Read it closely, the poster said it wasn't optional.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| He said it can be disabled in settings, which is not
| true.
|
| Anyone can repeat this experiment at home with a laptop
| and 2 usb to ethernet adaptors.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Nope. There is data that it sends that is non optional.
|
| Proof: go into settings and disable every tracking
| options, and then capture traffic from the device through
| a router with openwrt running tcpdump or wireshark on a
| computer with a bridge setup with ip forwarding and
| iptables rule.
|
| Did this experiment already twice to prove to people that
| Apple device do phone home plenty. Then I repeat the same
| experiment with my rooted android phone running a custom
| rom, and people watch the sparse wireshark trace with the
| only packets being sent are dns then ntp to the android
| ntp server.
| threeseed wrote:
| Did you also disable iCloud, Find My network, App Store
| updates etc.
|
| What data are you claiming Apple is sending ?
| kergonath wrote:
| > By default, iPhones do send diagnostic data, but that
| data can be disabled in Settings.
|
| They also ask during setup and regularly after major
| updates. I know because I refuse every time. Also, quite
| often it is opt in, with the box to send information
| unticked by default.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| This is a lot of FUD. Yes, Apple devices do collect some
| data and phone it home (mostly diagnostic, and iCloud,
| both of which can be turned off). However, unlike their
| competitors, Apple does not sell this data to
| advertisers. And they are just as likely to refuse to
| work with law enforcement as they are likely to
| cooperate. How many times has LE demanded that Apple
| break the encryption on the iPhone of a crime suspect?
| How many times has LE demanded that Apple install
| backdoors and hand them the keys, only to be told to
| screw off?
|
| Yes, Windows and Android devices give users more control.
| But that is because their business models are totally
| different. We all know that Google is primarily an ad-
| tech company, and that Android is how they collect the
| data for those ads. And while a technically savvy person
| may be able to lock down their devices, that's just a
| minority of users we're talking about.
|
| Apple's data collection is a murmur compared to the
| deafening screech of that of Google.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Apple could start selling ads tomorrow and simply change
| the terms of service, which they have a right to. In that
| case the last N years of data they have been collecting
| on you is fair game to sell to third parties.
|
| Is Google a worse example, sure. But plenty of us have
| been around long enough to remember when Google was
| restructured into Alphabet and the "Don't be evil" motto
| was wiped from their corporate code of conduct. All it
| takes is a new CEO or a change of leadership and all of
| these corporate platitudes aren't worth the paper they
| are printed on.
| selectodude wrote:
| But the key thing is that with Apple, you're generally
| the customer. I pay a huge amount of money for an iPhone
| and Apple wants me to pay a huge amount of money for
| another iPhone in the future. Google develops Android for
| free and as such, I, the consumer, am not Google's
| customer. It's simply a different business model. Apple
| could change their approach and in response I can change
| mine. Google could also set up a method for me to
| purchase Android.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I paid a lot for cable TV and they still showed me ads
| despite being the customer. I also pay a lot for my
| internet connection as a customer, but guess what my
| ISP's privacy policy allows them to do? Share my data.
|
| Like any other profit driven company, Apple is
| incentivized to generate revenue from their customers'
| data and to advertise to them.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Apple is incentivized to generate revenue from their
| customers' data and to advertise to them.
|
| Apple is equally incentivised not to generate revenue in
| this way since they would lose hardware sales.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Not spreading FUD, just pointing out inconsistency.
|
| "Yes, Apple devices do collect some data" should be the
| end of that sentence. Any data that is collected on the
| device and sent to apple is not private. It doesn't
| matter if Apple doesn't share it with other advertisers.
| Apple does advertising itself. There is no difference
| between it an a 3d party advertiser in terms of data they
| have access to.
|
| Once you get past that point and accept that there is no
| privacy, then its just a matter of how much you trust
| companies with your data. If you wanna claim that you
| trust Apple with your data, that is your own personal
| choice.
|
| As far as what Apple does or doesn't with that data, it's
| laughable that the argument for privacy is them refusing
| to unlock a phone. Security isn't determined by what
| computers/users/companies do or don't do, its determined
| by what is possible. And when it comes to data, its very
| possible, as proven by real life events, for them to turn
| over your data to law enforcement.
|
| Again, whether or not you care, thats a personal choice.
| But saying that Apple cares about privacy is just dead
| wrong, you have either ironically fallen victim to the
| Apple adverting about privacy, or you have an intrinsic
| bias towards Apple because you like their products which
| leads you to discount basic facts.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Any data that is collected on the device and sent to
| apple is not private
|
| Please providence evidence of this claim and specify
| which data is not private.
|
| Apple uses differential privacy and removes PII which has
| been documented in the iOS Security Guide.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Apple handed the keys to the castle to the Chinese
| government. Google collects data from iPhones as well as
| Android devices (including non-Google Android devices
| like Amazon's and Huawei's). The difference is that on
| Android, you can turn off any data collection you don't
| like. On iOS, if you want to install an app, you have to
| tell Apple. If you want to get your location, you have to
| tell Apple. If you want to build an app _for your own
| device_ , you have to tell Apple a lot of things about
| yourself.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| So what's the deal? Any company that makes users opt out
| of diagnostic data is just as bad as the companies whose
| entire business model is predicated around collecting as
| much data as possible about you and selling it to people
| whose sole ambition is to manipulate you? Are these two
| things really equally bad? We can't acknowledge that one
| of those is considerably more in favor of privacy than
| the other--they must both be labeled "NOT PRIVACY" with
| all nuance eliminated? Is that where we are in our
| discourse?
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Once you get past the fact that any data you don't
| explicitly control is by definition not private, the next
| conversation is about how much you are able to trust a
| particular company with the data they collect, and that
| is really an individuals choice.
|
| Niven stuff like iCloud leaks, and Apple bending over to
| appease China by removing the protest app from the app
| store (which completely makes it unable to be installed
| on any non jailbroken device btw), I personally don't
| really see a reason to trust them any more than Facebook
| or Google.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| So an emphatic "yes" on all accounts then? Am I
| interpreting you correctly?
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Sure if you want to boil it down to a simple yes or no
| answer.
| kergonath wrote:
| It seems like it is. It's like the relativity of wrong
| all over again. Two things being wrong does not mean that
| one of them is not better than the other. I am so tired
| of this fallacy, particularly in an otherwise well read
| community like here.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| >openness at the expense of security
|
| This is a false dilemma. You can have both.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| I think you're right when it comes to security, but in
| order for that to work Apple would have to admit that
| checking apps for security issues is not inseparable from
| imposing rules that are supposed to benefit their own
| business model.
|
| That said, here's a challenge for everybody (including
| myself) who doesn't like Apple's app store monopoly and
| side-loading ban:
|
| Apple now requires apps to ask for permission before
| tracking users. Facebook is _very_ unhappy about that.
| Imagine what would have happened if alternative app
| stores were allowed on iOS.
|
| How long would it take before a Facebook/Google sponsored
| app store would emerge that would carry all ad funded
| apps? How would you prevent this from happening?
| swiley wrote:
| The security comes from the sandbox, Apple's curation is
| pretty mediocre and they only remove malware once it's
| popular or if it's extremely obvious during the short
| review.
|
| iOS malware authors tend to publish their binaries as
| unsigned dylibs and don't need Apple ID accounts so they
| aren't even banned when they're caught. instead they
| convince other developers to ship it in seperate apps
| (there are various ways, money, convenient APIs, both in
| the case of Facebook.)
| gbanfalvi wrote:
| I can guarantee you that the sandbox can be circumvented
| if you can just run an IPA on the device. iOS has a
| humongous set of APIs and that attack surface is
| impossible to protect properly.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have an iPhone I can
| install anything on - but there is _no_ way I would ever
| install anything from the open internet on the same
| device use to read my email or log in to my bank.
| swiley wrote:
| Most of us don't want to run everything we find on the
| internet, we want to be able to run one or two apps that
| Apple doesn't like.
| fouric wrote:
| > How would you prevent this from happening?
|
| Very simply - enforce security permissions at the OS
| level, rather than the app store level.
|
| There's no technical reason an app store also has to
| handle permissions. Leave the
| discoverability/reviews/curation functionality in the app
| store, and then just move the app installation
| functionality into the OS - the app store delivers an app
| package which the OS accepts, parses the manifest file,
| prompts user for permissions.
|
| Put APIs behind a sane, capabilities-like model where the
| OS has to approve everything.
|
| Facebook and Google can make their own app stores - but
| they still won't be able to spy on you by using
| privileged APIs without your consent.
|
| (yes, they'll still be able to spy on you using data
| collection and aggregation - but then Apple's App Store
| privacy labels becomes a differentiating feature that
| build user trust and add value to the system, and Apple
| could add a warning when you install another App Store
| "privacy labels don't transfer, etc.")
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| I don't think it's that simple, and relegating the main
| issue to a bracketed footnote doesn't make it so.
|
| I agree with you that permissions and a sandbox that
| actually works would have to be part of any solution.
|
| But you can rest assured that Facebook wouldn't have made
| such a fuss if all that was at stake is losing access to
| IDFA and getting slapped with some unenforceable privacy
| warning.
|
| What's creating a real problem for Facebook is the
| enforceable legal obligation that Apple has put in place
| as a precondition for being allowed on iOS devices at
| all.
|
| It works exactly because it is not a technology based
| solution. It has created a choice that we didn't
| previously have.
|
| So I wonder how we can keep this choice without making
| Apple this all powerful, rent seeking, patronising
| overlord that also happens to be an ideal attack vector
| for censorship happy authoritarian governments all over
| the world.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I think they do have a point though. If Apple's primary
| concern was security, they would be approaching this from
| a fundamentally different perspective; their current
| solution is a pretty dubious stopgap that bridges "human
| consent" and "your app". A fundamentally secure approach
| would ultimately let the user audit and manually control
| their API interfaces to prevent abuse, instead of just
| hoping Apple has your best intentions at mind.
| CountSessine wrote:
| "Facebook wants access to your address book:
|
| In order to view your facebook timeline and newsfeed, we
| need access to your address book. Please allow access.
|
| Allow/Deny"
|
| There's no automated capabilities-based OS-level
| permissions model that can protect against this.
| Accessing the address book is a legitimate app request -
| just not for Facebook Inc. in my opinion. But they can
| gate access to your timeline and friends by demanding it.
| And I guarantee you that 9/10 smartphone users will grant
| it. This is why you need curation and app store rules.
| swiley wrote:
| Deny shouldn't break the API, it just means the app gets
| garbage data instead.
| haswell wrote:
| And this is an oversimplification. Will you share some
| thoughts on how you can have both in an ecosystem like
| Apple's?
| zepto wrote:
| Although I totally think open source should attempt to
| produce an ecosystem with the security of Apple's
| ecosystem, there is no evidence that this is even
| theoretically possible.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| According to Gartner and the exploit markets, open source
| has surpassed iOS's security for a few years now.
| zepto wrote:
| You're not talking about how end users are protected
| against installing malicious applications, so at best
| this is irrelevant.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| At least half a billion malicious app installs on iOS and
| none from F-Droid. It does seem like open source wins
| there too.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I would ERB surprised if F-Droid even had half a billion
| installs total.
| zepto wrote:
| > At least half a billion malicious app installs on iOS
| and none from F-Droid. It does seem like open source wins
| there too.
|
| You must realize that this is a meaningless comparison,
| since F-droid is barely used and not a target comparable
| to iOS.
|
| I'm quite sure you are aware of the relative sizes of the
| stores. If that is a mistaken assumption, please say.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| I am well aware of the sizes of the stores. Are you aware
| that the relative amount of malware is is not merely
| proportionally less? Are you aware that F-Droid-style
| reproducible builds are not possible on iOS? People using
| an iOS device can never be sure they are installing the
| secure app they wanted to install or some switcheroo.
|
| On the other hand, Google's and Amazon's app stores are
| not open source but built for an open source platform,
| together have far more users than the Apple App Store and
| far fewer malware installations. Discovery in the Epic
| case dug up some documents showing that Apple had no
| dynamic analysis for App Store apps at all. Google and
| Amazon both run Android VMs in their datacenters to catch
| fishy behavior that can't be found via static analysis.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| This is an opinion, and Apple does not believe this
| opinion, nor do they have to. Furthermore, I think that
| if you look at the comparison of malware prevalence on
| Android and iOS, the claim that you can have security and
| openness simultaneously does not appear to be true.
| daveidol wrote:
| > _Apple does not believe this opinion, nor do they have
| to_
|
| Hopefully if they lose this case (due to the market
| reality of being a duopoly) then they will be forced to
| at least entertain it.
|
| Android's way of handling sideloading or multiple app
| stores is far from the only way to do it. I'm sure Apple
| could find a better middle ground between what we have
| now (incredibly locked down, anti-competitive, with
| arbitrary rules and Mafia-like enforcement of prices) and
| a total free-for-all.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Furthermore, I think that if you look at the
| comparison of malware prevalence on Android and iOS_
|
| iOS exploits are cheaper than Android exploits because
| iOS exploits are so plentiful[1][2].
|
| [1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/14/zerodium_ios_f
| laws/
|
| [2] http://zerodium.com/program.html
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2020/12/an-ios-
| zero-c...
|
| https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/a-very-
| deep-d...
|
| https://www.tomsguide.com/news/police-say-android-phones-
| are...
| haswell wrote:
| Apple's goals with a highly curated app marketplace and
| the existence of exploits are orthogonal to each other.
|
| Nor is security just about "can the device be exploited
| or not?".
|
| What are you trying to explain with these articles? How
| does the existence of iOS exploits support your thesis
| that Security and Openness can co-exist?
| [deleted]
| epanchin wrote:
| I gave my grandmother a iPad because I felt confident that
| she could not install anything nasty, nor could be tricked
| into installing anything nasty.
|
| If Apple allowed you to unlock your iPad, they would also
| be allowing my grandmother to be scammed into unlocking
| hers.
|
| Building a walled garden was a great decision for consumers
| by Apple, and if it was profit driven then that's +1 for
| capitalism.
| tisFine wrote:
| I keep hearing about walled gardens, and not how it's
| merely a choice among many. Linux works on tablets and
| phones. What's that? It's a janky mess?
|
| Maybe developers could stop looking at the green grass on
| Apples side of the fence and bring that polish to open-
| source.
|
| But I imagine that will simply devolve into the mess it
| already is, with flame wars, and figurative genital
| punching to prove how hardcore one is for the obfuscated C
| they cobbled together.
|
| There was time when Linux distributions were thought of as
| walled gardens. Cobble together just the right collection
| of source for you! Don't let Red Hat control your mind!
| SystemD is a cage for your soul!
|
| Meanwhile, Apple just got the damn job done and moved on.
|
| If it's a choice between masochistic elitism or filtered
| content. Hmmm...
| rcoveson wrote:
| > There was time when Linux distributions were thought of
| as walled gardens. Cobble together just the right
| collection of source for you! Don't let Red Hat control
| your mind!
|
| No, that's just a garden. A garden is where a single
| trusted entity cultivates the plants it wants in the way
| it wants. It has boundaries, but not necessarily walls.
|
| Walled gardens are a strict subset of gardens. A walled
| garden doesn't let you go out and forage from the wilds
| to augment the produce of the garden.
| tisFine wrote:
| Neither does Apple's App Store; users can pick Linux.
|
| Anyone pushing into the App Store specifically then
| complaining has their own initial choice to blame. But of
| course that can't be right...
| rcoveson wrote:
| Linux distros offer a lower-case "app store", a "garden",
| while _also_ allowing you to straddle the line between
| the garden and the outside. On the same device, at your
| own discretion. They don 't make it any more difficult
| than it has to be.
|
| iOS is a "walled garden" because it requires you to be in
| or out. Like you say, you can "pick Linux", but that's
| not tearing down walls. That's just leaving the walled
| area.
|
| The frustration with Apple isn't the fact that they're
| forcing anybody to use their stuff. It's that they make a
| lot of cool stuff, and then they go out of their way to
| make it difficult to use anything not Apple-sanctioned on
| their stuff. Most OSes don't do this. I like the Linux
| distro approach better: Provide a garden, but also allow
| the installation of stuff from other gardens, or from the
| wilds.
|
| I don't know why you're being derisive of people who have
| only "their own initial choice to blame". I choose to
| live in the city where I live, and that has downsides. I
| even knew those downsides going in! But that doesn't mean
| I have no right to complain about the downsides. Maybe
| the upsides still make it worth it to me, and I'm just
| pushing for a world where I can have those while also
| fixing what I think is wrong with the place.
| rmah wrote:
| Hey, don't hold back, tell us what you really think!
| tisFine wrote:
| Apologies. Next time I will police the thoughts I post to
| the "open internet" to spare your sensibilities.
|
| You're an Apple App Store fan, I take it. Love living
| behind walls?
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Google probably didn't do any real calculus, and I strongly
| doubt it was anything like a principled decision. They
| probably just realized that it simply wasn't an option.
| Android lacks the vertical integration that iOS has. It
| would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, for
| Google to get Android licensees to accept such a heavily
| walled garden.
|
| Remember that this decision was made over a decade ago,
| back when there were many competitors - both software and
| hardware vendors - vying for a foothold in the smartphone
| market. Google trying to flex its muscles too much would
| have sent its licensees scurrying toward competitors.
| jsight wrote:
| IDK, AT&T used to lock out third party apps on their
| Android phones. It didn't go over well and was eventually
| reversed.
|
| I think they stayed in that state for a few years,
| though.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| It's probably better to think of that as AT&T trying to
| continue the thing they were already doing with feature
| phones, than as Google trying to make Android as locked
| down as iOS is.
|
| For starters, it's something AT&T did with just the
| phones they were selling, not something Google did with
| the Android platform or Android phone makers like LG and
| Samsung did with their phones.
| jsight wrote:
| True, and more specifically it was AT&T making their
| early Android phones into Android iPhones. This was still
| pretty close to the era when the iPhone was an AT&T
| exclusive. It was terrible and I believe they sold pretty
| poorly.
|
| My point is that the mumblemumble seemed to think that
| Google had no choice in the matter. I think they clearly
| did and for the most part clearly opted to keep the third
| party door open at the time.
|
| Granted, Android was much more open back then overall.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| My point wasn't exactly that they had no choice, so much
| as it was a choice they quite understandably weren't
| going to make.
|
| The AT&T analogy is kind of weak here because they
| weren't operating in the same business environment. AT&T
| was doing it in a B2C context, Google's Android business
| at the time was 100% B2B. It's easier to take this kind
| of risk as a major telecom operating in a B2C context,
| because consumers, as a body, aren't going to punish you
| that badly. Case in point was that, while these Android
| phones sold poorly, it hasn't actually tanked AT&T's
| business.
|
| Whereas, if Google had sent Samsung, LG, Huawei, etc over
| to WebOS or wherever, the impact to Google's Android
| business would have been large and permanent.
| api wrote:
| > Google did a similar calculus, with a different set of
| values (if not an entirely different set of variables
| altogether) and came up with a different answer.
|
| Their answer isn't openness, it's surveillance. Google is a
| surveillance driven ad company.
| danShumway wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand how FDroid makes it easier for
| Google to survey me.
|
| I don't see how Google, which controls the default apps,
| which can give them whatever privileges it wants at an
| OS-level, needs an Open platform to monitor me. If
| anything, wouldn't Google have more incentive than iOS to
| lock the platform down, since it doesn't want the
| competition from apps like Facebook that are competing in
| the same data-driven ad space?
|
| _Edit: Not sure why people are taking offense at this.
| Google doesn 't need the web to be open, that's a talking
| point that comes up every time we talk about Chrome --
| Google only needs its own ad network to function. Android
| is the same; why does Google need Android to be Open?
| They don't need the ability to sideload apps. Google Maps
| is installed by default, all of their apps are
| contractually required to be installed by default if you
| want access to the Play Store. If Google removed the
| ability to sideload today, none of their apps would get
| removed from your phone._
| api wrote:
| > many of us don't want our iPads or iPhones to be like our
| computers.
|
| This nails it. I want full control and the ability to run
| anything on my computer. I want my phone to "just work" and I
| never want to fuck with it or worry about what's on it. They
| are different devices with different roles.
|
| What I do wish for is open ARM hardware with similar
| performance. I am totally certain that it is coming now that
| Apple has demonstrated just what is possible. Ampere,
| Samsung, Marvell, etc. are surely working on high performance
| designs now if they weren't already.
|
| There is nothing magic about what Apple did with the M1. They
| built a really high performance ARM core by applying a lot of
| the same things that have been done for high performance in
| the X86 world but without the X86 dead elephant strapped to
| their back. The M1 can be duplicated if not exceeded.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I mean, there is nothing stopping you from using your phone
| in that way even if it was open like your computer is...
| kalleboo wrote:
| > _The M1 can be duplicated if not exceeded_
|
| The obvious question is why has Qualcomm failed so hard at
| even keeping up with the A series? They're untouchable for
| radio stuff but their CPUs are very average. Samsung are
| also trying very hard with average results.
|
| The M1 isn't Apple's first crack at this that is some fluke
| which will quickly be overtaken by someone else. Everyone
| else has already been in a race to beat their A-series
| chips and failed miserably. The M1 is just the first time
| we've been able to benchmark it on a real OS. If someone
| beats it, it will be AMD retooling their cores and doing it
| in 3-5 years (Zen was originally battling an ARM variant
| internally at AMD)
| api wrote:
| There hasn't been enough of a market so they have not
| made the investment.
|
| Android occupies the lower-end side of the phone market,
| so there's less of a drive for the absolute highest
| performance. There has until very recently been almost
| zero desktop or laptop ARM market or server ARM market.
|
| Apple also has a ridiculous amount of cash sitting around
| and could afford to fund R&D ahead of market demand and
| develop a truly killer ARM architecture. Everyone else is
| now behind, but what I'm saying is that there's not much
| in the M1 that is secret. It's just well-understood
| performance CPU engineering techniques deployed well on
| an ARM chip and the added efficiency is largely due to
| the lack of X86 cruft overhead and the 5nm node.
| fartcannon wrote:
| You don't have to fuck around with it! You CAN just use it
| like a regular locked down device, and throw it into a
| landfill when youre done.
|
| The rest of us can get on with using the otherwise wasted
| power of all these tiny computers.
|
| Think of the waste caused by Apples profiteering.
| klelatti wrote:
| The real waste comes from inadequately powered devices
| that have to be retired early because they are no longer
| fast enough. I think Apple have a decent record on this
| front although right to repair is another matter.
| shsizbz wrote:
| Im posting this comment on an iPhone SE (1st gen) I got
| in mid 2016. I still get OS updates, not just security
| patches.
|
| Whats that about Apple waste? Its _people_ that waste and
| drive waste.
|
| Id love it if I could load my own OS and do whatever on
| this little phone, but only if iOS itself was still
| locked up. I dont need to add even more worry about the
| safety of my "phone" (really portfolio of everything Ive
| done since Ive been online)
| fartcannon wrote:
| Try that with an iPhone 6. Apple's position on right to
| repair and planned obsolescence is well known:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate
| smichel17 wrote:
| Many years ago, Apple removed all apps for the 1st gen
| iPod touch from the app store, with no warning. I found
| out about this when I did a factory reset (ironically,
| this was to un-jailbreak my iPod touch, since the
| jailbreak slowed it down a little and I wasn't using any
| of its features). Imagine my surprise and frustration
| when all the apps I was using moments before - Spotify,
| Fruit Ninja, Opera Mini (the only browser that was
| acceptably fast on that device) - were suddenly gone with
| no recourse.. except to upgrade. Which I did -- away from
| an ecosystem where a company has that kind of control
| over me.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| >How to download old versions of apps from the App Store
|
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/02/08/how-to-
| download-o...
| smichel17 wrote:
| Not available in 2011.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| It was available starting in 2010.
|
| It was also possible to backup and restore apps
| individually through iTunes.
| smichel17 wrote:
| Perhaps I have the date wrong, then?
|
| I do remember the individual app backup+restore, which I
| would have done if I'd known that I was going to need it.
| But I didn't have any data I cared about (just my music,
| which was already in iTunes), so I figured I'd just
| reinstall the apps. I remember re-jailbreaking my iPod
| afterwards and trying to find an old version of Spotify
| to install online, but being unable to find a
| _trustworthy_ source.
| Siira wrote:
| Of course it's not _arbitrary_ ; It is a direct enforcer of
| their gatekeeping. Instead of bullshitting, they can just
| sell two kinds of devices, one with this restriction and one
| without. The market will show you how many people really want
| this. Heck, they could do annual voting for each year's new
| versions, if they can't bother to create two types of phones
| (which they obviously can). We have seen all the bullshit
| before in governments, and big tech is not that different.
| Big anything needs some kinds of democratic checks and
| balances to keep it from exploiting its users to the very
| end.
| conradev wrote:
| Anything a JIT can circumvent an interpreter can circumvent
| just fine (albeit slower)
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| I agree. I prefer these restrictions exist but also a
| nontrivial way to bypass it.
| captainmuon wrote:
| _Malicious_ apps can already do that. There is nothing
| (technically) that stops you from e.g. receiving a JSON file
| and enabling secret features.
|
| The ban on third party browsers and JIT is so that you cannot
| make _fully-featured_ or _competitive_ apps that don 't go
| through the store. Microsoft tried something similar in
| Windows 8 (certain DirectX features only available for Metro
| apps, strict guidelines what a Metro browser can do, ...).
| This is the reason Safari on iOS is lacking certain features
| wrt. PWAs, and the reason Flash was banned outright (instead
| of saying e.g. it has to be made more reliable).
|
| If web apps were as powerful on iOS as they are on Chrome or
| ChromeOS, then many iOS apps including games would be written
| as web apps, and Apple would not get their 30% share. If
| someone would port a JVM or .NET CLR to iOS, then you could
| sideload those apps and circumvent the app store, too.
| georgestephanis wrote:
| Best excerpt of the post:
|
| > We really didn't expect this to work or we probably would have
| tried it sooner.
| marsven_422 wrote:
| This reads like a native ad.
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| I wonder if there are any gains to be had on the M1 because it
| uses shared memory between the CPU and GPU - much like the actual
| Gamecube architecture.
|
| From reading this blog, Gamecube games often made heavy usage of
| the memory-sharing capability of the hardware - which made
| emulation on PCs a performance challenge.
| NaN1352 wrote:
| As an aside I'm thinking voxel based games, and generally games
| that render via CPU should do really well with a native M1 port,
| right? (with scaling, because the 4.5k resolution gotta hurt :))
| jchw wrote:
| It's always nice to see Dolphin news. I dunno why they're so
| surprised over the JITs syncing in some games, though. I suppose
| a lot _could_ go wrong, but only a few games seemed to have
| especially strong reliance on floating point behaviors to begin
| with, and I sort of expect the behavior of JITs to be influenced
| by the interpreter a bit due to the way things are laid out in
| dolphin.
|
| I tried porting a much simpler JIT to M1 and ran into the problem
| that Rosetta 2 was simply better at translating an AMD64 JIT than
| my attempt at a JIT. It could've been related to W^X performance,
| but I actually suspect the real answer is that Rosetta's
| optimization passes were doing things the JIT did not do
| natively. I don't know how to debug that, though, because from
| the debugger's PoV, emulated processes look just like native
| Intel processes.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Wow, that frames per watt graph is an eye opener for sure. What
| an incredible advancement in mobile computing.
| pdpi wrote:
| It's a petty thing, but that chart annoys me to no end. The
| numerator is FPS, not frames, so frames / watt should've been
| labeled frames / joule (or, well, FPS / watt, but that's
| nowhere near as fun).
| jchw wrote:
| The frames / joule suggestion is pretty funny. I forwarded
| along your comment and it appears to be fixed now, though.
| moolcool wrote:
| Not just mobile computing, but computing in general.
| ninjinxo wrote:
| Whilst very impressive, it's a bit exaggerated, they should
| have been locked to the same framerate for comparison:
|
| * 9900k is boosting to 5ghz which is sacrificing efficiency.
|
| * 9900k PC is delivering a much higher framerate, so it'd also
| have much higher GPU utilisation.
|
| * Afaik RTX3090 will have high power draw even at low
| utilisation (large card, lots of memory).
|
| From anandtech:
|
| >Should users be interested, in our testing at 4C/4T and 3.0
| GHz, the Core i9-9900K only hit 23W power. Doubling the cores
| and adding another 50%+ to the frequency causes an almost 7x
| increase in power consumption.
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-core-i9-9...
|
| Look at the 3090s power consumption during media playback:
| https://www.techpowerup.com/review/zotac-geforce-rtx-3090-tr...
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Well that actually shows how impressive the M1 is because it
| hits faster CPU than the 9900k at 5ghz using only 10W-20W
| total.
|
| And GPU it's much faster than the Intel integrated.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Except it didn't. The 9900K was in a completely different
| performance category from the M1 in these dolphin tests.
|
| To compare efficiency you need to control for performance.
| What Dolphin did here would be like trying to compare CPU
| coolers without controlling for power consumption.
|
| What makes the M1 impressive is its performance relative to
| other CPUs in its power category (eg, the M1 vs. the
| i7-1185G7 in this chart:
| https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph16680/117493.png
| ), or when it manages to be both faster _and_ use less
| power. That 's impressive.
|
| But using less power while also being _significantly_
| slower (which is what Dolphin 's comparison is saying)?
| That's... not impressive or interesting. That's some "no
| shit sherlock" level stuff - just compare literally any
| mobile CPU from Intel or AMD vs. the desktop equivalent in
| the same generation. You'll see a chart that looks
| basically the same, with the mobile CPU many times more
| power efficient while also being a lot slower. Especially
| when you're taking the top-end desktop CPU for the
| comparison, the CPU where power efficiency isn't even
| remotely a design goal.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| As I understand it, OP is annoyed by the graph because they
| are comparing different things at different scale.
|
| I will use another John Deere metaphor: a Prius can cover a
| much longer distance on the same amount of fuel, but if I
| need a John Deere it's because the Prius can't do the same
| job and I am willing to sacrifice fuel efficiency for raw
| power.
|
| In other words: how much more does the i9 consumes to
| produce the same FPS of an M1?
|
| We don't know, but we know power consumption increase on
| these CPUs is non linear, meaning that the 60-65% of the
| frame rate could potentially lead to 5-6 times less energy
| used.
| skavi wrote:
| these are both general purpose CPUs. They do the same
| job. Maybe if you were comparing a server chip.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| Probabky I should have re-quoted what OP posted to make
| my point clearer
|
| _From anandtech: <<Should users be interested, in our
| testing at 4C /4T and 3.0 GHz, the Core i9-9900K only hit
| 23W power. Doubling the cores and adding another 50%+ to
| the frequency causes an almost 7x increase in power
| consumption>>_
|
| The i9 4C/4T 3Ghz consumes 23 watt
|
| how many FPS can that produce?
|
| the one benchmarked consumes more than 7 times that (it's
| a 5 GHz 8C/16T), and it's sure it's not 7 times faster
| (not even close)
|
| They are actually not doing the same job, they ate trying
| to go as fast as they can.
|
| But what if they measured how much energy each one uses
| to produce the _same_ score?
| Shadonototro wrote:
| efficiency test speaks for itself
|
| the m1 is the renaissance of laptops
| afavour wrote:
| A renaissance would be a revival, surely? Laptops have been
| dominant for a long time now.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| Laptops have dominated personal computing (by the mildly
| unintuitive definition of "PC"), but you could certainly
| argue that smartphones and tablets have eaten their lunch in
| the overall computing space.
| toyg wrote:
| Ftr, this is Dolphin the games emulator, not Dolphin the KDE file
| manager.
| amelius wrote:
| And also not Dolphin, the MySQL logo.
| agustif wrote:
| Also not Delphi, for the dyslexics like myself out there
| drrotmos wrote:
| And also not Ecco the Dolphin (the game).
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Nor Flipper -- the cult TV show that featured a crime
| fighting dolphin (I kid you not).
| [deleted]
| xvector wrote:
| Nor Flipper, the tamogatchi-like hacking device [1].
|
| [1]: https://flipperzero.one/
| Andrex wrote:
| Nor Flipper, the GameCube's GPU [1].
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameCube_technical_speci
| ficati...
|
| But I guess it's somewhat related. :P
| [deleted]
| djhonovak wrote:
| Also not Dolph Lundgrin.
| hotpickles wrote:
| And also not Dolph Lundgren (the actor and chemical
| engineer).
| ihuman wrote:
| Although you might be able play the the Wii virtual console
| version using the Dolphin emulator
| elondaits wrote:
| Not Dolphin Smalltalk :-(
| MonkeyIsNull wrote:
| Yup, sad -- that's EXACTLY what I thought it was as well.
| Macha wrote:
| Although I would love to replace Finder with Dolphin.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| Also not Dolphin, a web browser for Android.
| pantulis wrote:
| I truly came here thinking about Dolphin the mobile browser.
| [deleted]
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