[HN Gopher] iDOS 2 will be gone soon
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iDOS 2 will be gone soon
Author : taxyovio
Score : 98 points
Date : 2021-07-22 20:55 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (litchie.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (litchie.com)
| shkkmo wrote:
| Apple can't enforce such basic App Store rules consistently, even
| when violations are deliberately and clearly mentioned in the
| submission... and we are supposed to believe that Apple can't
| allow other stores on the decice because THAT would compromise
| security...
| spicybright wrote:
| Again?
|
| Any web browser based app runs executable code ffs.
| dabitude wrote:
| You are not allowed to submit a web browser to the app store
| with your own javascript interpreter.
| blahyawnblah wrote:
| There's no firefox on iOS?
| theshadowknows wrote:
| Apple let's you take the naked core of safari, stripped of
| chrome, and slap a skin on top.
| kjaleshire wrote:
| Firefox (and every other 3rd party browser) internally uses
| the same web rendering engine as Safari. Rolling your own
| renderer + JS engine is not allowed.
| wvenable wrote:
| No. But there is a "Firefox" shell around WKWebView.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| All iOS web browsers use a web view backed by Safari.
| benmmurphy wrote:
| These rules are applied selectively. I know very popular apps
| that are loading interpreted code over https and executing it.
| Also, these same apps are exploiting a flaw in iOS in order to
| track users across apps and using the interpreted code to hide
| this.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Those apps are definitely in direct violation of app store
| rules, and would be removed if they were detected. If they have
| not been removed, it is because they were successful in hiding
| their rule breaking.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Technically, this rule prevents the use of jsonp (remember
| that?)
| saagarjha wrote:
| Sigh, this is exactly the rule Apple once falsely rejected iSH
| for. It's disappointing to see that they're still applying their
| convoluted rationale to take down legitimate apps based on the
| actions their users take inside the app. As I wrote earlier:
|
| > For example, iSH was once rejected with the rationale that
| "During review, your app installed or launched executable code,
| which is not permitted on the App Store." The template itself
| clearly outlines the case it is meant to apply--an app that is
| installing code by itself, to bypass review--but in the case of
| iSH the reviewer chose to install code and then complained that
| the app did what they told it to do.
|
| I can see the arguments from
| https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/11/08/fixing-section-2-5-2/
| applying here.
| [deleted]
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This is a good example of how innovation, competition and small
| businesses are being stifled by the anticompetitive behavior of
| the mobile app distribution cartel.
|
| Consider contacting your state's Attorney General office, and the
| US Attorney General office. Many states' AG offices have
| antitrust divisions[1].
|
| The US Dept. of Justice also has an Antitrust Division[2], along
| with a page that details how and why[3] to get in touch with
| them:
|
| > _Information from the public is vital to the work of the
| Antitrust Division. Your e-mails, letters, and phone calls could
| be our first alert to a possible violation of antitrust laws and
| may provide the initial evidence needed to begin an
| investigation._
|
| The FTC has the Bureau of Competition[4], as well.
|
| [1] https://www.naag.org/issues/antitrust/
|
| [2] https://www.justice.gov/atr
|
| [3] https://www.justice.gov/atr/report-violations
|
| [4] https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-
| competi...
| withinboredom wrote:
| Yet another sad story of Apple's incompetence at running an app
| store.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Apple and Google have consistently shown that they are poor
| stewards of the mobile app distribution market, having kept an
| iron grip on the market for over a decade now.
|
| Consumers would benefit from real competition and disruption in
| this space, as competition increases efficiency and lowers
| costs.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| It's not incompetence if it's actually their rule. They are
| competently enforcing an arguably stupid rule.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Sure, if this was the first submission of the app, or the
| second. It isn't. It's had this feature and the intro
| explaining that it broke the rules from the get-go. But now,
| Apple suddenly backtracks it's decision to allow it AFTER the
| dev has already made sales based on the feature.
|
| Apple should (in theory) give refunds for this, or make the
| developer whole somehow, because the dev's reputation is
| screwed.
| shkkmo wrote:
| No, they are incompetently enforcing the rules because the
| "not allowed" functionality was added a while ago and
| explicitly mentioned to the reviewers. The update review that
| triggered the removal was just bug fixes.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| 643 billion dollars worth of incompetence over the year 2020.
| <https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/06/apple-developers-
| grow...>
| jhgb wrote:
| How large is the Big Mac market? Surely larger than Kobe beef
| market, right?
| rStar wrote:
| no soup(general computation) for you!
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Ref (2012): https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
| api wrote:
| iOS devices are "consoles," not computers.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Seems like if you filled out the entitlements properly it should
| be allowed - informed consent.
|
| But that's messed up if you did that.
| ksec wrote:
| Ok, so if the customer bought it before they took it down. I
| could use it for as long as I could?
| nanoscopic wrote:
| I'd like to know this as well. My guess is that you may have to
| install it on your device before it gets dropped from the Apple
| store.
|
| Definitely have a cloud backup of your device enabled in case
| you need to ever reset your device so that you don't lose the
| app.
|
| If you want to install it on another device things become more
| complex...
| lixtra wrote:
| Yes, as long as you don't upgrade your phone. At some point an
| OS upgrade will break the app.
| yoavm wrote:
| Honest question - what do iOS users do in such situations? I'm
| using Android and we can always install things from outside the
| store, or even from alternative stores (eg. F-Droid). Is there
| any similar solution? If the app is open-source, can you at least
| build it yourself and sideload it as if you are the developer and
| you're testing your app? What solutions are there?
| meibo wrote:
| You can sign 7 apps a week for your own device with the
| tethered non-dev Apple ID. The certificates expire a week
| after, so you need to resign those 7 apps every week or they
| will stop working.
|
| All of the "alternative" stores and distribution methods work
| with this mechanism, there is no better way and it is
| completely at Apple's whims.
|
| Really, most interested users probably gave up at this point,
| looking at the decaying Jailbreak ecosystem.
| kjaleshire wrote:
| You can only have 3 apps + 3 extensions installed on one
| device simultaneously, however.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| They bow to the will of the true owners of the device they are
| renting.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| use Prompt or another mosh terminal emulator and ssh into
| wherever you want
| danShumway wrote:
| For a DOS emulator? Does Prompt stream graphics?
|
| Even just for coding, that sounds awful to me. iOS users
| bought a mobile device, and particularly if they're on an
| iPad Pro, a mobile device with a really good processor. For
| me, part of that would be being able to treat it like a
| mobile device, that it should keep working if I drive through
| a tunnel, that I should be able to use it on the go.
|
| Hard for me to wrap my head around people being satisfied
| with "ignore that you have a well-built device with
| interesting sensors in front of you, and instead just use it
| as a thin client to another functioning computer."
|
| There are cheaper thin clients out there than an iOS device
| if someone is OK ignoring their native hardware, doing all of
| their programming through a terminal, and having
| functionality break if their device goes offline.
| grishka wrote:
| iOS requires apps to be signed with a certificate that chains
| to an Apple root of trust. The only way around this is
| jailbreak.
|
| IMO this shouldn't be legal.
| Vanit wrote:
| The latter as you said, compile it yourself.
| marinhero wrote:
| Yes, like this https://altstore.io/
| heavyset_go wrote:
| They rationalize no longer being able to do something they used
| to be able to do, for no real practical or technical reason, as
| actually being a good thing.
| marinhero wrote:
| Gave up. I was wishing WWDC21 bring something like this due the
| M1 iPads but all I got was a refresh on Playgrounds... It's
| frustrating but I'm still inside the garden, and getting more
| tired by the day.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I don't do anything. It's a phone, not a PC.
|
| I got an iPhone because it does what it does well, and doesn't
| do other things at all.
|
| iPhones are slick, costly and secure, at the cost of not being
| malleable.
|
| It's a trade-off I made at purchase time and I know most users
| of both iPhone and Android never considered that tradeoff.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| If apple allowed me to install a different store or easily
| side load you wouldn't be negatively impacted
| user-the-name wrote:
| That is just not true, though. If Apple allowed different
| stores, then software would migrate to those different
| stores for various reasons, but probably because they had
| less restrictions. That would force you to install those
| less secure stores to use that software, and you would give
| up the security you gain from Apple taking a hard line on
| many kinds of bad behaviour on their own store.
| marinhero wrote:
| I partially agree with you but I think the iPad breaks this
| rationale. They argue it's a computer so why won't they let
| it be?
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Yeah, calling the iPad a PC is very short sighted by Apple.
|
| Where is the next generation of developers going to come
| from, if they grow up on iPads?
|
| But I feel the same towards Apples stance on server
| hardware, which they discontinued over a decade ago: Even
| if servers don't make a sizeable profit on their own, they
| help ensure that developers can build large scale stuff
| inside the apple ecosystem.
|
| Yet, that hasn't really been the hindrance I feel it ought
| to have been.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > Executing code [...] allows for downloading of content
| without licensing.
| prirai wrote:
| Termux
| Laforet wrote:
| Pretty much what you have just described, one needs to pay for
| the yearly premium of the iOS developer programme in order to
| run custom code on your own device. Bear in mind that iOS apps
| are compiled in Xcode so one also needs to own hardware that
| runs OSX.
|
| There are also people offering to sign you app with an
| enterprise certificate for a fee in the more dodgy corners of
| the internet but Apple is known to crack down on those once in
| a while as this obviously goes outside their ToS.
| bri3d wrote:
| You can sideload the app yourself - but the account can only
| have 3 devices, and the app expires and stops running weekly
| for a free account or every 90 days (iirc - it's been awhile
| since I entered this particular dumpster fire) for a paid
| account. This is to prevent you as a developer from using your
| provisioning profile to backdoor-distribute software to end-
| users.
|
| The largest loophole still is probably Enterprise Distribution,
| which allows high-limits (long time, many devices) signing
| associated with an Enterprise account.
| Shank wrote:
| It's a year for a paid account, 90 days through TestFlight.
| JonathonW wrote:
| If the app's open-source, you can build it yourself, with
| restrictions on how long the app will function on your device
| before you have to reinstall it (one year IIRC for paid
| developer accounts, but only 7 days if you're not enrolled in
| the paid program).
|
| If the app isn't open-source, you don't have any great options.
| Hypothetically, compiled apps from other developers can be re-
| signed just like apps you build yourself (see AltStore [1],
| which uses this technique), but those apps are still time-
| bombed and have to be periodically refreshed. The barrier to
| entry means you don't see a ton of apps around that do this; if
| something can't be compliant with App Store rules, it generally
| doesn't get made on iOS.
|
| (There's also jailbreaking, and there used to be a decently-
| large community of developers building applications and tweaks
| for jailbroken iOS devices. That's gotten smaller both as
| Apple's made jailbreaking more difficult to maintain, and as
| new features in iOS have made much of the functionality people
| used to jailbreak for redundant.)
|
| [1] https://altstore.io/
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I've had a couple of apps disappear (one I know Apple removed,
| the others I think just suffered from bit rot). I guess it's
| the same as if my grocery store stops stocking some brand I
| buy. I'm bummed about it, but life goes on.
| DCKing wrote:
| It is possible to sideload apps on iOS, it just requires
| jumping through hoops that you don't have on Android. Apple
| allows sideloading of apps signed by the same Apple account
| that you're signed into on your iDevice.
|
| Since this is really intended to make developing iOS apps more
| accessible, it requires resigning or rebuilding apps. Since
| iDOS is open source, that should be no problem here - you can
| compile and install your own copy, likely just by loading the
| upstream project in Xcode and deploying it your iDevice like
| app developers do. A usability problem is that apps installed
| this way are only runnable for a week [0], at which point the
| signature must be refreshed or iOS will refuse to open the app.
|
| AltStore [1] is a project that streamlines this ordeal as much
| as possible. It's an alternate app store that allows you to
| install a bunch of open source apps not allowed in the app
| store (e.g. apps using permissions that would be rejected, or
| game console emulators). It also comes with a server component
| that uses Apple's frameworks on Mac/Windows to refresh those
| apps' validity on iDevices on the same network. If you
| regularly connect your iDevice to a network with an AltServer
| of your own, the apps should continue to work.
|
| It's certainly not pretty, and very far removed from fare more
| open Android devices, but workarounds to run your own software
| on iDevices do exist. There's an entire subreddit,
| r/sideloaded, dedicated to this apparently mostly for piracy
| purposes.
|
| [0]: Unless you pay for the Apple Developer Program, which has
| much longer limits. This limit is for free accounts.
|
| [1]: https://altstore.io/
| saurik wrote:
| An additional limitation is that you can only have three such
| applications installed at a time. You also aren't going to be
| able to get access to functionality like push notifications
| (which might be obvious) or network extensions (which might
| not be: you have to have a paid developer account to
| develop/install a custom VPN for iOS; I find this limitation
| particularly frustrating, as it seems to mostly serve the
| purpose of helping authoritarian governments, and it isn't
| like Android has such a restriction so we know it isn't "par
| for the course": they are going above and beyond here).
| Joeri wrote:
| iOS users have mostly chosen to accept the walled garden. If
| they hadn't, they would be android users.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| This assumes that users understand the implications of the
| garden they're buying into. For many there may be a strong
| bandwagon effect, and they don't fully grasp what they are
| losing.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| What I don't understand is why so many devs choose to
| accept Apple's rules. These devs know full well that they
| will likely be f***** over like this in the end. Yet they
| still give Apple their business.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I have an iPhone simply to facetime with my parents, who
| refuse to talk to anyone with a green bubble. You can't
| make this up. If I could use iMessage on any other device,
| I wouldn't have an iPhone. Apple knows this, and it
| probably scares the shit out of them.
| FabHK wrote:
| I think I largely understand the implications of the garden
| I chose, and I doubt there will be much anguish among my
| less technical family/friends about their loss when they
| fully grasp that they will never be able to run a DOS
| emulator on their iPhones.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| The only reason we're talking about something as obscure
| as DOS is because it wasn't threatening. Now that people
| have raised awareness of the inconstency they're blocking
| it, like many other general purpose emulators.
| amelius wrote:
| Great hackers know when to give up.
| opheliate wrote:
| When I was younger, my family couldn't afford a laptop, but I
| have the distinct memory of wanting to learn to code on the iPads
| at my school, and being unable to find any app which would let me
| just write and execute programs. Looking around the App Store
| now, there do seem to be a couple of apps which would allow this,
| but it's still really disappointing to see this kind of removal.
| The majority of kids these days will likely use a phone lots more
| than they use a laptop. For those who want to learn to code, why
| doesn't Apple make it easier?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Because if the iPad can be used as a computer, there's very
| little reason to buy a Macbook. It makes no financial sense.
|
| It'd also allow apps to dynamically load external software,
| which could be used as a bypass for Apple's stringent app store
| requirements.
| devwastaken wrote:
| If macbooks were gone tomorrow, the ipad would not replace
| it. Very different use cases. Sure, if you took an ipad, put
| OSX on it, and glued it to the hinges of a macbook as the
| screen - then maybe it'd be very similiar. Not great
| performance or battery life, but similiar. But in no way am I
| getting work done on an ipad touchscreen with a little flimsy
| foldable keyboard and kickstand.
| handrous wrote:
| As an iOS (and Android) user and developer since about the
| iPad2, iPads interest me less the more iOS shifts toward
| being a general-purpose OS. I wouldn't buy one with macOS
| or equivalent on it, even if it'd been modified to work
| well on touch screens. At that point I'd probably get the
| cheapest large Android tablet I could find as a PDF reader,
| and just... not do the other stuff I do with iPads at all,
| I guess.
| foxpurple wrote:
| This is outdated info. The latest iPad Pro has the M1 chip,
| exactly the same as the MacBook. And it comes in 8/16gb
| ram.
|
| The magic keyboard accessory apple sells for the iPad also
| turns it in to the same form factor as a laptop.
|
| You very realistically could replace a MacBook with an iPad
| Pro and magic keyboard if apple let people run macOS on it.
| foxpurple wrote:
| The iPad Pro and magic keyboard costs more than the MacBook
| Air. So apple would be doing pretty well if they could get
| MacBook users to buy an iPad.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| There is Swift Playgrounds, along with a host of web-based
| tools. Not ideal for sure, but someone like you could still
| _learn_ coding from an iPad.
| anthk wrote:
| Kids can get a Pinebook for $100, and a rpi+power
| source+keyboard+cheap touch display for less than $50.
| opheliate wrote:
| Absolutely, this is what we eventually did, and I'm immensely
| grateful for the current ubiquity of low-cost hardware :)
| it's just discouraging to me that Apple takes such a hard
| line on this
| anthk wrote:
| Apple's tablet/phone branch and social media people want
| customers and "sharers", not producers.
| handrous wrote:
| Their iOS and i-thingy announcement videos pretty much
| always feature "producers" very heavily, and the features
| and software they release and maintain often focus on
| making things. What's the deal with that?
| anthk wrote:
| In my case, I've got a random 30 eur (~$25?) Chinese
| netbook over Ali-whatever with Android and 1GB. Totally
| outdated specs, but with Fdroid (huge repo off libre apps)
| and Termux (tmux, Perl, clang, lynx...LOTS of CLI libre
| tools) it makes an amazing machine for the price of two
| hard-cover books.
|
| EDIT: mocp under Termux works, so is not as limited as I
| tought.
| kjaleshire wrote:
| The next update to Swift Playgrounds is supposed to allow full
| iOS app development and submission to the App Store with no Mac
| involved.
|
| Look also at Pythonista and a-shell for useful, if limited,
| programming environments. Both work by translating code into JS
| or wasm.
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(page generated 2021-07-22 23:00 UTC)