Funny is this argument always exclusively pops up when it comes to Apple smartphones. Are we supposed to lock every desktop down too because mom and pop installed a wrong toolbar? It's like the reverse 'but think of the children', and people keep using it who would scoff at it in every other context, just to engage in this constant Apple apologia that has infected tech people who should know better but don't because they've grown up with macbooks with shitty stickers on it. The sort of brand influence that Apple exercises and the stuff it gets away with is truly astonishing.
iOS is just as confusing as Android. Its a matter of which one you use first or regularly. Just as Linux is confusing to non-linux users.
Also. Android works on the dodgiest mobile hardware available to mankind. Something not a lot of HN users seem to know - from tractors in farms to research equipment in the arctic. I dont know about space, but if we are going to use a modern OS on space craft - I'm willing to bet it will be an android fork.
This is not an inherent compromise. iPhones could be just as safe and issue-free if they were rootable, just as cars don't need hoods welded shut to prevent their owners from messing with the engine. If you find the compromise acceptable, simply don't root your phone.
This freaks builders out but shouldn’t, PCs are still a thing.
Citation needed? I don't believe this is true. Tunnelblick and qemu both exist on macOS independently of Apple's approval.
It boils down to someone's personal definition of "properly."
You are on HN. Your definition of using a device "properly" is very different from the vast majority of the other human beings on the planet. You're not Apple's target audience, and that's OK. The more of you there are, the more force there is for creating other options. But don't pretend that there is only one "proper" way to use a device.
No it’s not. It’s impossible if you don’t want to require your customers to change some security settings.
We can have a discussion about whether that’s practical for a developer, but either way, the user has control over their Mac. Completely different situation from iOS.
for now, because observing the current trends, they'll likely won't for much longer... all for the sake of safety and convenience.
If Apple were forced to allow multiple stores or sideloading, governments that right now have no leverage with Apple would force their citizens to install government stores and apps.
https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/16/russia-pre-install-iphone-app...
If you don’t like the product, don’t buy it. Don’t compel them to satisfy your whim via police power of the state.
Furthermore, I find it really frustrating how my desire for the ability to go a little bit outside of certain walled gardens is construed as me demanding you go outside the walled garden at all times. 95% of the walled garden is perfectly fine - it's the 5% of apps that won't fit inside of it that are the problem.
And who cares then...
I get fewer problems managing friends and family on Apple products vs Android/Microsoft products. I work in enterprise and am a lot happier managing macOS devices than PCs.
I get the whole “I own it and shouldn’t have to have it walled/leased/owned by the developer,” but the success for Apple when Jobs returned was simplifying the product lineup and making products that just work.
I agree I don’t like being locked into a hardware manufacturers box, but not everyone can build a kernel from source or use Gnome/KDE/whatever desktop manager there is out there. It should turn on, be easy to use, and be a safe experience for everyone.
Edit: To clarify, it was never locked or password protected before, and I would use it to look at pictures in the Photos app locally. I hadn't used it for several months.
In other words, why are you surprised that you can't hack into an Apple device?
I'm just lucky in that I didn't have any important data like pictures, passwords or 2FA apps on it. Sorry for your loss.
Since he bricked his iPad I had to submit a recovery through iCloud and that invokes a twenty four hour delay before it sends recovery information to his listed authentication device; as in his telephone.
So that comes in which directs you to apple.com/recover or such and when you put the id in you have the option to get a 2FA code back to the phone which we did. I then simply put my phone number into the account so all future recoveries would be simpler.
Apple will allow for more than one authentication method, use it for ANY gift you give to an elderly parent or such. Frankly the best option you have is to get yourself on their email account recovery page as well.
Its just common sense in this era of identity theft that you do your due diligence so you can protect those you care for.
If your iPad is asking for a passcode and you don't know it you are lost unless it was backed up which brings up the second point.
When giving gifts like these out make sure to help the recipient learn how to back it up to a computer or have them let you back it up to yours when they visit.
I've quite a bit of experience with consumer tech, but I did not anticipate this kind of issue happening. I don't think it's right that the iPad can just lock itself and require Apple's intervention to make usable and access the data stored.
I will definitely never consider any Apple device as a gift to anyone ever again. I chose Apple for the same reason another commenter suggested, to reduce problems with support calls. But this eclipses all the times put together I would've had to help her with another device.
From previous experiences, it's my understanding that activation means resetting and erasing it.
If the device never had a passcode/fingerprint/face id before you certainly don't need one to unlock it even if it has auto-updated.
It looks like the device auto-updated, so you should be able to complete the activation.
Now if you are talking about accessing iCloud, then you may need the iCloud password.
Apple should be able to help you fix the issue if you can't fix it yourself.
I'm not saying this isn't a problem, but I am extremely skeptical it is a problem caused by Big Bad Evil Apple doing Big Bad Evil things.
Also, do you know if I could have prevented this by removing the SIM before it happened?
This the basically the summation of it all. Doesn't Apple require the ability to have anonymous logins too when creating accounts on iDevices?
Yet Apple is forcing them to give up 30% of their revenue, because they can.
Maybe Apple needs to make changes to allow apps that are only a part of a service instead of the main selling point of the service to bypass those rules? Seems like it would be tough to figure out what is and isn't covered though.
This is a bit disingenuous. Apple isn’t forcing them to give up 30% of their revenue, they are requiring they give users the option to sign up through the App Store.
If most of their customers come from outside the App Store, this won’t make much difference to them.
If they make less the $1m through the App Store, it will only be 15%.
The second is a bit of a niggle, but if most of their promotion and value comes from outside the App Store, this wouldn’t be a big problem.
What Librem are doing is the right thing though - go to the press, raise a big stink and Apple will back off. It's been proven to work time and time again.
I believe they do require this of large companies; it's been a while, but IIRC Netflix and Disney+ both allow you to sign up for the service in the app. The HBO app does, too.
You can log in with an existing account, but I thought the requirement was that you need to give a user the ability to sign up for a paid service account in app, and that signup needs to bill through Apple.
It's a moneymaker, no doubt; as a consumer, though, I appreciate not having to hand over credit card details to a random service I'm trying out for a month.
Apple did not lift this requirement for the Hey email app during the controversy over that last year. Instead, they reached a compromise where Hey would offer a free trial of their service inside the app, so they could be in compliance with the rule that an app must have some functionality without an account.
Well, for devices, its basically customer support via threat of class action lawsuit. I'm still a little miffed I had to pay $79 three times to "fix" the iPhone 6 and didn't get a refund after they finally acknowledged the issue.
They are literally doing the thing I think is the solution.
On the other hand, I oppose the generic bashing of Apple and Epic’s antitrust campaign, because these have nothing to do with creating an alternative. Indeed if Epic wins, iOS will become even more entrenched.
So, I can no longer recommend librem, and will only recommend Pine.
Hm, care to expand on that? I don't see why that would be.
A second app store inside of the walled garden still ends up being a walled garden, just one with more of an illusion of choice. That means that the users will have even less reason to leave.
I couldn’t agree more that people need to choose open ecosystems.
It’s the writing in support of Epic’s anti-trust suit that I dislike.
Supporting Epic’s anti-trust campaign has nothing to do with open source.
I think one of the most damaging things that could possibly happen to open source is that government starts to regulate how software is distributed.
This might damage Apple’s stock price and make a few more billions for Tim Sweeney, but it will make it much harder for an open free platform to succeed.
The only thing tired is extractive monopolies. Funnily enough, Apple could make a few small tweaks and not be in this category. They've chosen instead to double down on exerting their market power.
They already pay their Apple Developer Program yearly membership fees. If Apples deem this isn't enough, then they should raise the cost to properly take that into account.
Specifically, distribution on the app store denies "The freedom to... change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1)."
Distribution under the App Store's terms is a GPL violation itself.
In practice, this means you cannot actually put GPL applications on iOS unless you get a CLA from every developer on the project. This means a lot of perfectly good GPL-licensed applications will never actually get ported to iOS. You'll never see, say, Blender or Krita on iPad until and unless they CLA all their developers so that they can actually distribute the port legally.
If Blender Foundation or whoever runs Krita does have a CLA requirement for contributors, then consider that particular example corrected, but my point still stands: You should be able to distribute GPL software on the App Store and have the GPL terms supercede the App Store TOS.
Also, one of the examples that always comes up in these discussions is how Internet Explorer came to be dominant in the 90s and 00s stifling innovation in the web, but if you look at how it was dethroned, it wasn’t dethroned because of government regulation; IE was dethroned because more innovative products entered the market, i.e. Firefox and Chrome, and this all happened under the framework of free market capitalism. What, then, is the argument for regulating Apple, and what exactly is the expected outcome?
Apple has the right to decide who they do business with, but app developers shouldn't be forced to do business with Apple at all. That's the asymmetric part of the relationship. App developers should be allowed to distribute/sell apps directly to people. Specifically, the expected outcome is either that the App Store becomes optional (sideloading is allowed) or that the App Store becomes a neutral utility where everything is allowed.
What’s preventing people from buying an Android, though?
This really is just a story of two businesses who can’t agree with the terms of engagement: Apple requires subscription-based services to use their payment system if the services want to be available in their platform, and Librem doesn’t want to share their profits. I’m struggling to see why Apple’s terms are unreasonable here. Any business that has an ecosystem of products isn’t and shouldn’t be legally required to support competing ecosystems/platforms—and Apple already does have Google’s and Facebook’s apps in the App Store, by the way.
It's sort of like net neutrality and your ISP.
You pay your ISP for access to the internet.
If your ISP is also charging others for access to you, then either:
- you will pay more for those services, or
- the services available to you will be diminished
same for apps.
There is no such right. There is a right to free association, but incorporation is a privilege granted by the state. It comes with many benefits, such as being able to walk away from the business if it goes bankrupt. It also comes with some responsibilities, such as not violating civil rights and antitrust laws.
In practice, some businesses start exerting too much power and start harming other entities, so they have it reduced.
There's been plenty written about antitrust. Check out some of the works of Lina Khan, who's slated to join the FTC soon: https://www.wired.com/story/lina-khan-ftc-antitrust-biden-ad...
PIA (and others I'm sure)offers a zip of .ovpn files for their endpoints that Linux users can import to use with openVPN without using their app.
Obviously, this is a proposed solution to having the app on iOS, no dealing with Apple's access monopoly.
I wish more developers could afford to do that.
App store guidelines on this topic are:
> 3.1.3(f) Free Stand-alone Apps: Free apps acting as a stand-alone companion to a paid web based tool (eg. VOIP, Cloud Storage, Email Services, Web Hosting) do not need to use in-app purchase, provided there is no purchasing inside the app, or calls to action for purchase outside of the app.
So are they offering purchase inside the app? I downloaded it, and there's a bare login prompt with no mention of purchasing outside the app that might get them in trouble.
"Even though Librem Tunnel is just part of the overall Librem One offering, because it’s part of a subscription service, Apple is requiring us to add the ability to sign up and pay for Librem One subscriptions within the Librem Tunnel app before they will allow updated versions into the App Store."
However, what you show seems to contradict that?
EDIT: If I were to guess, the flagging was an automated process, i.e. Apple flagged it and sent an automated email to Purism. Whether or not Purism tried to respond or not I do not know, but in the end they decided not to deal with it and pulled their app.
This way you can still pay for Librem One outside the app, and thereby circumvent the 30% toll, and continue to serve your iOS users.
If so, I think there are likely multiple motivations here. Apple has long been willing to force certain standardizations in the name of simple and uniform user experiences (they’re not perfect but the intent is clearly there). Having to drop out of an app experience to do something isn’t good UX - so enforcing the option to do it in app makes for a simpler experience - as much as it also adds to Apple’s bottom line. To be honest, the issue seems more to be just how big of a cut they want to take - but that’s even harder to fight against (capitalism and all) so this is the easier target.
My experience seeing parent control apps, are that they likely leak private data either intentionally or unintentionally. These apps, would have access to all sorts of data, and unless the developers are both very scrupulous and very competent, it is easy for private info to be leaked. I am far more comfortable with Apple handling that, than a third party.
I feel like the tide is turning and change is coming.
