[HN Gopher] Discontinuing FlickType Keyboard for iPhone
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Discontinuing FlickType Keyboard for iPhone
Author : keleftheriou
Score : 185 points
Date : 2021-08-16 17:01 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| znpy wrote:
| I'm always happy to read this kind of stories.
|
| And I know that such things happen on Android too.
|
| The things is, apple/Google is a duopoly and the app market needs
| to be regulated.
|
| To people going through this kind of issue, I say: you chose to
| be in that position, bring Apple to court or just close your
| business.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Perhaps it might bring about change, but until that happens a
| lot of good developers are suffering...also, FWIW, the
| developer of this app _has_ filed a court case against Apple
| for exactly this.
| mdoms wrote:
| Apple will keep being Apple and you'll all keep buying shovelling
| money into their pocketbooks. There's nothing new under the sun.
| yarcob wrote:
| People who critizise Apple in public often seem to have trouble
| updating their apps.
|
| I'm sure Apple has their reasons for blocking this app, but I'd
| prefer a world where customer choices what apps they can use
| don't depend on the whims of a very secretive company.
| wsc981 wrote:
| _> I 'm sure Apple has their reasons for blocking this app ..._
|
| Perhaps, but I found this Tweet interesting:
|
| _> App Review problems & broken APIs isn't even all. The
| broader relationship Apple has with keyboard developers is
| hostile, as my decade of relevant experience can confirm. And
| it's not just my own assessment: the former head of keyboards
| at Apple has admitted to this hostility._
|
| I'd like to know more about Apple's hostility towards keyboard
| devs.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| This is such a standard apple developer experience. I've been
| rejected so many times without making changes related to the
| rejection reason. I've re-submitted the same app 3 or 4 times and
| eventually it just gets "approved" all of a sudden. Their review
| process is complete BS. It's all just luck of which off-shore
| vendor you got reviewing your app.
| mdoms wrote:
| And has any of this caused you to re-evaluate building software
| for Apple devices or purchasing Apple devices for either home
| or work? If so, what was the outcome of this re-evaluation?
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| It has for me. I've mentioned it before, but I had an app to
| help with D&D stuff rejected for describing how to harm
| someone in one of the descriptions of a spell somewhere.
|
| Some variation of this happened three times. Eventually the
| level of stupid was too much for me to handle, and on the
| third time, I just pulled the app rather than resubmit
| things.
| fatnoah wrote:
| It really is. A past company made an application that was in
| the app store for a couple years. Three different customers
| paid us to white-label the app for them, so we ended up with
| three additional versions that were new app packages and
| differed from the original only in fonts, colors, and logos.
| Two were approved after a short back and forth with different
| questions for each, and we eventually gave up on the third
| after 9 months of fruitless back and forth.
| weimerica wrote:
| Worked for a company with a similar approach (circa 2010) and
| we got rejected and had to just use the one. Can't say I feel
| Apple is wrong for fighting app spam, however.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| I also had random rejections, and a couple years ago, the
| review process took some days to a week, making oneself pretty
| anxious while waiting it out.
|
| These days I doubt I would create anything for iOS anymore,
| since the risk of getting banned over some nonsense without any
| recourse whatsoever is just too big and I just dont want to
| deal with losing my precious time and money. There are better
| alternatives, like the web, etc.
|
| Unfortunately macOS will be going down that path soon, once
| they remove the ability to install from any source (and they
| will do it, no doubt).
|
| It's a real shame.
| mthoms wrote:
| There's another angle to the App Store scam: Family Sharing.
|
| Most people don't know this but the "Parent" (read:credit card
| holder) of a family sharing account can't _see_ , let alone
| cancel, _any_ subscriptions a minor on the account has purchased.
|
| Let that sink in for a second. Apple will happily charge the
| parents' credit card a _weekly_ recurring fee but there is
| nowhere in their interface (on device nor on the web) where the
| parent can even _see_ that subscription.[0]
|
| Apple expects _the child_ to go into their interface and cancel
| the recurring subscription. Something many (most?) adults find
| confusing. In my case, the child just deleted the App when the
| trial was over. Which is of course perfectly logical thinking. No
| bueno.
|
| So if the child is away at school (as in my case), or the phone
| gets left at a friend's house, or worse... stolen. The only way
| to get it cancelled is to call them.
|
| There's more to this story, including details on how the built in
| parental controls are intentionally crippled (IMHO) but I've got
| to run. In summary: The entire "Family Sharing" system is built
| to rip off people while still maintaining plausible deniability.
|
| [0] A senior Apple rep told me this is for privacy reasons. But
| two things: the minor should have no expectation of privacy when
| spending their parents money (how is that a _good_ thing?). And
| secondly, Apple _does_ email a receipt for the subscription to
| the card holder... so the privacy excuse was pure bullshit. In my
| case I missed the email because I have more than 6 or 7 recurring
| Apple subscriptions. I do take partial blame because of that. But
| I 've still not been given a good reason why a parent can't
| easily cancel a childs subscription.
| donmcronald wrote:
| The whole scheme is such an obvious dark pattern. You have 2
| options:
|
| 1. About 5 prompts every time a child wants to "buy" something
| including free stuff.
|
| 2. An absolute free for all where a child can have unlimited
| spend.
|
| Competing app stores would have a MUCH better family sharing
| setup with proper budgets and controls. Microsoft gets the
| money end of it right, but sucks at the actual app sharing.
| Google can't even make their gift cards work properly.
|
| We need app store competition.
| GoOnThenDoTell wrote:
| Then you get to learn 5 different systems with dark patterns
| dumpsterdiver wrote:
| > Apple does email a receipt for the subscription to the card
| holder... so the privacy excuse was pure bullshit.
|
| I called Apple support today for an unrelated issue and
| verified that what you say is true. That truly is egregious
| that they're hiding that information, and you have to notice it
| via your bank statement. At the very least the primary account
| holder should be able to see that an unspecified member of
| their family account has a subscription to an unspecified
| service, and have the ability to summarily cancel it. It's not
| unheard of to imagine that even with the "Ask me first" feature
| enabled to allow members to make purchases, you might
| accidentally click yes while trying to click something else -
| I've unintentionally answered incoming calls that way. Granted,
| there's likely a confirmation prompt, but between having your
| fingers fly across the screen from muscle memory, and having
| FaceID enabled - it seems like even with a confirmation prompt
| it would still be possible to inadvertently approve purchases.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Receive a photo that an AI thinks is porn? Your parents will
| now instantly receive a notification on their iPhone, for
| safety reasons.
|
| Spend $500 on in-app-purchases? Your parents aren't even
| allowed to know, since you're such a vulnerable little person.
| Privacy is a human right, you know!
|
| Leave it to Apple to find the most ironic contradictions.
| 73r7fudhdjduru wrote:
| Being competent and not giving your child access to your credit
| card or devices you can't also access seems like it solves this
| problem. I don't understand how it's 2021 but we're still
| giving parents a pass on being illiterate.
| 40four wrote:
| Thread reader version:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1427292830523744257.html
| tyingq wrote:
| This is a sort of interesting niche where it might open up Apple
| to some litigation from an end user of the app.
| AnonC wrote:
| The submitter of this story here on HN is the developer of
| FlickType. He had also filed a lawsuit against Apple for allowing
| apps that have been outright cheating people with incredibly high
| in-app purchases and has pointed out several instances of scammy
| apps.
|
| I thought larger companies keep tabs on the "noisy and popular"
| ones in media (and social media) and would take more care not to
| annoy them further. But this story makes it seem like Apple has
| decided to just keep pushing his buttons as some sort of
| punishment.
|
| I don't believe there's anyone capable in Apple top leadership
| who's spending any time in leading the App Store team
| appropriately. The scammy apps and the contrasting meaningless
| rejections of praiseworthy apps only tell one thing - the App
| Store is an abandoned space run by "bots" with almost no
| oversight.
|
| As an Apple iDevice user for long, this story (from the
| beginning) as well as others have made me wish for alternate app
| stores on iDevices enforced through regulation. The wait has been
| too long already, and Apple isn't being the steward it imagines
| itself to be or portrays itself in media to be.
| post_break wrote:
| The Appstore is just so broken. No support, no communication.
| Just like the bug bounty program. It feels like throwing a
| message in a bottle into the ocean. They aren't alone, Google can
| do it too, but damn, this is an embarrassment. I always love the
| topics about how the iPhone would be a dumpster fire with
| sideloading, meanwhile Apple promotes apps that charge $10 a week
| known scams.
| qzw wrote:
| My theory of why the App Store sucks so much is that every
| manager at Apple is aware of the risk that antitrust action
| could kill its profitability at some point, therefore nobody
| good wants to be at the wheel when this particular titanic goes
| down. So it gets no real love or investment, even though it's
| still a major profit center right now.
| g_p wrote:
| To back up at least the outline hypothesis of this point,
| this is in Apple's 10-K SEC filing:
|
| > If developers reduce their use of the Company's platforms,
| including in-app purchases, then the volume of sales, and the
| commission that the Company earns on those sales, would
| decrease. If the rate of the commission that the Company
| retains on such sales is reduced, or if it is otherwise
| narrowed in scope or eliminated, the Company's financial
| condition and operating results could be materially adversely
| affected.
|
| This does feel like the kind of situation that few would want
| to be at the helm of, if blame was to be passed around in the
| event of an adverse approach being taken.
|
| There's now a number of international regulators all looking
| at Apple and the competition aspects of their App Store
| model, and legislators in the US seem to claim to have bi-
| partisan support as well on the point. If individuals feel
| they might be blamed, that might explain why nobody wants to
| step up and improve things.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| It's useful to look at Mac AppStore. You can use it to
| estimate how many apps will prefer alternative ways to reach
| users.
| Razengan wrote:
| But how many users would prefer to get all their apps from
| the MAS instead of elsewhere?
| bsder wrote:
| The anti-trust is just one more nail in the coffin.
|
| The primary issue is that _any_ solution to App Store
| "problems" means reduced profitability. So, quite simply,
| nobody is going to pass that up the management chain.
|
| Sure, Apple gets a PR bruise, but they know that everybody is
| locked into their iOS ecosystem, so who cares?
|
| "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company."
| https://vimeo.com/355556831
| passivate wrote:
| What makes this insidious is that Apple became successful on the
| backs of App developers, and now they're kicking down the ladder
| after reaching the top.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| I've been bearish on the Open App Markets bill because I just
| can't see a hyper-efficient, trillion-dollar company being
| defeated by our dysfunctional, infighting-plagued congress, but
| the more stories like this that reach senators and
| representatives, the less of a moonshot such legislation becomes.
| wsc981 wrote:
| I think a Steam managed AppStore on iOS would be great. I don't
| particularly like the Steam app with it's web based interface,
| but it's much more responsive than Apple's native app and
| features like wish lists, content discovery queues and such are
| really great and help apps and games reach a larger audience.
| qzw wrote:
| There are some players with fairly deep pockets on the other
| side as well. Nobody on the scale of Apple or Google, perhaps,
| but not mom-n-pop shops either. Plus if I were Microsoft or
| Amazon, I would be salivating at the chance to run an alternate
| store on iOS and Android, so there could be some dark money
| flowing through K Street lobbyists for all we know.
| jareds wrote:
| As a Voiceover user this is disappointing. If the law changes to
| allow third party app stores or side loading this is the app that
| would convince me to go down that road.
| klyrs wrote:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1427292830523744257.html
| MBCook wrote:
| As Miguel de Icaza said on Twitter today, this is exactly the
| kind of behavior that makes Apple look terrible to regulators.
| Big popular app that has been promoted in the past and Apple just
| seems to want to keep screwing with them.
| makecheck wrote:
| It's such a "perfect" circle of non-communication that benefits
| only the fruit company, isn't it?
|
| - Can I update my app _inside_ your store? Fruit company: No.
|
| - Can I find out why? Fruit company: No.
|
| - Can I find out who or what makes this decision? Fruit company:
| No.
|
| - Can I update my app _outside_ your store? Fruit company: No.
|
| - Can I contact my customers? Fruit company: No.
|
| - Can I even _identify_ my customers in order to help them? Fruit
| company: No.
|
| - Can I directly give my own customers a refund? Fruit company:
| No.
|
| - Can I be removed from your list of featured apps? Fruit
| company: No.
|
| - Can customers prevent this one app from being auto-updated into
| brokenness? Fruit company: No.
|
| - Can you tell customers that this new brokenness is _your_ fault
| and not the developer's? Fruit company: No.
|
| And on, and on, and on, and on.
|
| This is a completely absurd system that has never, ever, _ever_
| benefited customers _or_ developers nearly as much as fruit
| companies.
|
| Congress can't act soon enough.
| IlliOnato wrote:
| https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5675
|
| seems to be relevant
| [deleted]
| donmcronald wrote:
| It's such a nasty side effect of demand aggregation platforms
| which is what _everyone_ has been trying to build for the last
| decade+. It 's a real prisoner's dilemma too. Earlier adopting
| developers get to be "fart app millionaires", but there's a
| definite tipping point where the supply side becomes
| commoditized.
|
| I think Ballmer got unfairly criticized for laughing at the
| iPhone. I always thought he looked at it and thought it was
| such a ridiculously bad deal for both developers and users that
| no one would adopt it. His biggest mistake was underestimating
| the ability for people to act in their own long term self
| interest.
| cageface wrote:
| Don't forget - can I use common PWA features to build my app on
| the web instead? No because Apple doesn't allow that either.
| hexis wrote:
| Conquest's third law - "The behavior of any bureaucratic
| organization can best be understood by assuming that it is
| controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies."
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| The ability to sideload APKs is the single thing I appreciate
| most about Android vs iPhone. I don't use it often; the main app
| I sideload is Mendhak's GPS Logger. (He finally gave up trying to
| comply with the Google Play Store's changing restrictions on
| location trackers.) But it's nice to be able to install the
| software I choose to on my phone without having to have Apple or
| Google's approval.
|
| Unlike iOS there's no complicated jailbreak required, I can't
| remember if you even have to enable developer mode (an easy
| supported thing). And there's a reasonable ecosystem of safe
| alternative app stores. F-Droid mostly, APKMirror also comes in
| handy for things that have disappeared.
|
| I understand the value of a curated app store. I get the benefit
| of that too on Android! But it's nice to have an override in the
| cases it's needed.
| stefan_ wrote:
| What on earth is "curated" about the Google Play store? It is
| the most spyware ridden, spam filled "store" I've ever had the
| displeasure of using.
|
| If I need an utility app, I now just look for it on F-Droid.
| Need something to track AirPods charge? You can find the
| original open-source app for it on F-Droid, or download one of
| 100 ad-filled, GPL-breaking clones of it on Google Play.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Sadly Android is becoming more user-hostile all the time. For
| example there are fewer and fewer devices that will give you
| root access. Imagine buying a PC and finding the manufacturer
| decided you can't have access to an administrator account.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| To my knowledge every Samsung can be rooted with Magisk, but
| at the cost of losing Knox, which makes a _bunch_ of apps
| relying on biometrics go bonkers - Telegram, Chrome and the
| unlock screen work, but some banking apps outright crash or
| lose their data, even with "SafetyNet Fix" - they are
| expecting the presence and usability of Knox vault.
|
| For Google's Pixel lineup, the situation is similar.
|
| The _really_ problematic stuff are Huawei (which can 't be
| rooted at all with something trustable and open source such
| as Magisk), Xiaomi (these need to flash a custom recovery
| first, IIRC) and all the fly-by-night ops that don't have any
| kind of support other than hoping for a web/apk exploitable
| bug (I _believe_ KingoRoot is using that method, but since it
| 's closed source I wouldn't use it!).
| Causality1 wrote:
| Only Exynos-based Samsung handsets can be easily rooted,
| which requires unlocking their bootloader. An exploit
| exists for Snapdragon based devices running Android 10 and
| below but it's a paid service and isn't cheap. To
| complicate things, Exynos based galaxy devices will lose
| access to the AT&T network and every sub-carrier that
| operates on it in February when AT&T adopts a whitelist
| model.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Really? What about roaming travelers? Are they going to
| cut them all off? Here in Europe all Samsung phones are
| Exynos. Weird.
| Causality1 wrote:
| As far as I can tell, yes. They're dropping their 3G
| network and anything not on their VoLTE whitelist will no
| longer be usable.
|
| https://www.att.com/idpassets/images/support/wireless/Dev
| ice...
| phh wrote:
| I'm looking at Wikipedia page of most sold Android devices (
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-
| selling_mobile_... ). We've got Samsung, Xiaomi and Huawei
| devices. Samsung and Xiaomi are root able (as far as I know
| without issue, having 4 Samsung devices in my collection,
| though sibling says otherwise). Only Huawei isn't (and it's
| actually much lower than Samsung and Xiaomi). I'm speaking
| only of root ability without security flaw (Huawei had
| some.), Since we're discussing user hostility
|
| That being said, there is one feature that is user hostile
| with regard to owning your software, it's contactless
| payment. Contactless payments all require stupid security
| requirements, that the community well knows how to circumvent
| (so it doesn't provide any actual security), but are pretty
| annoying for the user. I would guess Google isn't to blame
| there (even though GPay does have this anti-feature just like
| all other services, and Google being more monopolistic manage
| to make it even more annoying. But still insecure)
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| As someone who is beginning to really dislike both Google and
| Apple, is it possible to buy/use an Android phone without the
| Google store where you _only_ sideload software?
| NathanielK wrote:
| Yes, but it may require you update things manually. You can
| disable the Play store and any other apps and only use
| F-Droid.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| With one or two exceptions, I only install Google software on
| my Android phone. Since I'm already on their platform, I
| don't guess that makes me any more open to their data
| gathering. And I don't trust any of the other apps.
| ttctciyf wrote:
| There's a few different approaches to this.
|
| Here's one page about it, I'm sure there are plenty more.
|
| https://fsfe.org/activities/android/liberate.en.html
| donmcronald wrote:
| This is why I don't understand how Microsoft can't compete in
| the mobile market. They could be successful just by using
| AOSP with Office and an alternate app store that doesn't
| screw developers and users.
| rchaud wrote:
| Look for Android models that have been confirmed to work with
| LineageOS or E-foundation OS. Both are de-Googled, I believe.
| boudin wrote:
| It is definitely possible with some limitations.
|
| Totally ungoogled you won't have the google service layer, if
| you still want to use some proprietary apps, it is possible
| but some won't work. The biggest constraint is often push
| notifications not working.
|
| As an alternative you can use microg [1] which is a client
| side re-implementation of google services. Some part uses
| alternative service as backend, some will use google though,
| like push notifications.
|
| Side loading can have its limitations has you need to find
| sources for APK that you can trust.
|
| The best non google store is f-droid [2] in my opinion, all
| open source and build reproducible.
|
| If you need some proprietary apps from google store, you can
| use the client Aurora Store [3] which still sources app from
| google play store.
|
| In term of buying a phone with most of that, /e/ does sell
| phones with android + microg + their own store [4]
|
| Otherwise plenty of phones allow to easily replace the
| operating system. You can look for phones supported by
| lineageos which comes with no google apps. [5]
|
| [1] https://github.com/microg [2] https://f-droid.org/ [3]
| https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore [4]
| https://e.foundation/ [5] https://lineageos.org/
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Another option: you can choose not to sign in to Google
| play. And just use other app stores. This limits Google's
| data collection somewhat as they don't know your account.
|
| It's not as good as micro g or a completely ungoogled phone
| but the benefit is you can use manufacturer roms with all
| security features like bootloader locking turned on.
|
| I do this with my OnePlus as I don't like leaving the
| bootloader unlocked. Anyone can pull a disk image off it
| through recovery then.
|
| Another benefit of this is that Google play services like
| location and push still work, they don't require an
| account. But you do give up extra privacy compared to the
| other options.
|
| There are grapheneos and calyx which do allow bootloader
| locking but they only work on pixel phones and those are
| really poor value for money IMO (expensive but still having
| fingerprint on the back, midrange soc etc). And really hard
| to get in Europe now. The 5a 5G is not coming here and
| probably the 6 isn't either.
|
| So this is why I ended up with this option. At least
| Android has a wide spectrum of choices. With Apple it's
| take it or leave it.
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(page generated 2021-08-16 23:00 UTC)