I absolutely love that people work on this kind of stuff, but it all feels like an incredibly hacky workaround (running a server to reinstall an app every 7 days...) for functionality that should really be present out of the box (install whatever software you please on hardware you paid a ton of money for) :-(
Apple's insistence on refusing users control of their devices is why I switched to Android for my phone years ago (though I will be overjoyed once GNU/Linux on phones reaches enough maturity to replace Android for me as well, though I sadly don't see that happening very soon).
This is truly a shame - I am not part of the extreme FOSS crowd who would only ever be satisfied with a top-to-bottom free device, and in fact I would happily use an iPhone if iOS was even just as "open" as macOS.
> functionality that should really be present out of the box (install whatever software you please on hardware you paid a ton of money for)
I know that this sentiment is going to resonate here, but I'm not sure it's representative of the overwhelming majority of the people actually paying for said hardware. The reality is that what tech people complain about in terms of lack of control over their devices has been a huge boon in device security for people who neither care about nor want such control.
A lot of this is just trying to decide what is best for other people, though; whenever we've managed to make it easy for people to quickly jailbreak their devices, we got a very large number of users installing complex system modifications so they can get something as inane as wallpaper or themed icons. People who don't know how to jailbreak their devices themselves see their friends phones and ask them for help or even bring their phone to phone repair shops to get them jailbroken and customized (in the same manner that you don't have to be a mechanic to modify your car: you simply need to have the money to pay a body shop for whatever you want; I gave a TEDx talk on this topic a while back called "Even Software Should Have Screws" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReKCp9K_Jqw). Honestly, I am not sure if I've ever heard an "end user" ask to be prevented from doing something they actually wanted to do... the only people who seem to have that particular kink are developers attempting to justify the bondage and control ecosystem they are a part of maintaining; everyone else either finds out after it is too late, had to accept it for some other reasonable (but entirely unrelated) tradeoff such as "I wanted a phone with a good camera and both of the top options from Apple/Samsung were locked down", or are "stuck" due to ecosystem lock-in and networking effects (it doesn't just cost you a new phone to escape the jail you are in: you will have to re-purchase all of the software you already own and even lose access entirely to some unique services... and again, all of this is entirely unrelated to the actual issue in question).
I don’t think it’s that end users explicitly ask to be prevented from doing things they want to do with their devices. I think it’s that they feel safer in a restricted environment that’s relatively free of the dangers of unrestricted environments, and they’re willing to accept that some lack of control is likely tied to that relative safety.
Heck, I’ll just speak for myself. I’m a software engineer. I pride myself on being able pull things apart, understand how they work, and put their pieces together in unintended ways. There are aspects of Apple’s control over their devices that I’ve accepted grudgingly... because even being familiar with the tradeoffs they’ve largely benefited me, and all that I’ve given up has been either moot (UI hacks that are better served with other apps or just not available anywhere anymore) or not a hindrance for my actual usage (it turns out blocking system modification has made clever things I use be more respectful of the integrity of my system!). The biggest thing I’ve lost as an Apple customer has been due to third party developers turning my whole computer into a web browser. Glad it isn’t full of security holes!
Yeah, but you aren't an "end user". I've never met an end user who, when presented with something they want to do--like change the Safari icon to a picture of a dog--who is like "I'm glad I'm not allowed to do that because X"... they pretty much couldn't possibly say that as they aren't in a position to understand X. It is only some vocal minority of admittedly-informed software developers attempting to analyze the tradeoffs of how all this stuff works that are making that decision, and to be a bit frank about it, it just seems like they (you) are either being a bit snooty about the feature in question (being able to have a photo of something you care deeply about as your wallpaper can bring someone immense joy, and to just discount that feels weird) or a bit unimaginative (as there are just so many things you could get: in the jailbreak community we would routinely take suggestions and throw something together for small handfuls of people because it brought us and them joy to do so) with respect to "what they are losing" :/. Even if you can't just can't fathom anyone like yourself benefiting, how about this: we had a blind high school student get involved in jailbreaking as a developer who then built a bunch of software to make his ability to live his life more practical... should we just say that people with niche problems can only get them solved if they are important enough to hit Apple's radar, because no one is ever allowed to solve problems for themselves "for their own good"? :/
Reading this again, I think your definition of “end user” is what’s actually judgmental here. You seem to think “end user” means people who don’t have the ability to figure out their technology and make it work for them, and need someone else to do it for them. You don’t have any room for a person who’s well versed in technology and willingly accepts certain product limitations and acknowledges how those limitations provide other benefits. Okay, if that’s your definition, I can’t be an end user, even though I consciously choose the Apple ecosystem so I can spend some of my time using technology being off the wheel and trust that the wheel has been taken over by a company whose judgement I trust.
But at the same time, if Apple opened iOS to the same freedoms macOS has, users could, in fact, make informed decisions about what they want to run just as companies could configure restrictions and mandate defaults. It doesn’t exactly feel either-or to me. Apple hasn’t actually locked down the device if users can jailbreak or side load. All we’re suggesting here is that there should be a setting advanced users can toggle on. Think of how users can turn on WSL in Windows by downloading an app - what would “Developer Mode” look like on an iOS device, and is there not a middle ground between completely unrestricted and completely sandboxed?
Forget iPad replacing macOS, at this point I’m fascinated by the idea that an iPhone Pro might actually run macOS-like in the future for developers. It’s been a decade since the first jailbreaks were commonly available and we could run shells and other background apps—at the expense of battery life. Apple has built everything they need to keep things safe even if they open the sandbox... they could treat it like location permissions and continuously prompt, allow only some apps, spy or sandbox what function calls apps can make by default, etc. Yes, it could be abused, but they could cloud-scan files before running, or even require signing and submission. I know folks will keep pushing for fewer restrictions, and I know the business reasons that keep Apple from doing this. But this use case won’t ever actually go away...
> But at the same time, if Apple opened iOS to the same freedoms macOS has, users could, in fact, make informed decisions about what they want to run just as companies could configure restrictions and mandate defaults.
OP is just saying that deciding to do that has a usability and security cost that some users will perceive as a net negative.
I know it’s a toggle, but as soon as that toggle exists app developers will use it to provide unsigned copies of fortnite to the kids, it won’t just be for pro users.
This is the point of contention here, imo. Jailbreaking, sideloading, and turning on developer modes are not always informed decisions. I've personally serviced hundreds of iPhones that have had all these things done because someone followed a set of instructions without knowing what they were doing or had someone else turn the option on without informing them and then they were exposed.
I am a happy end user of Apple, and I vastly prefer the walled garden.
When I was younger, I preferred a Windows to a Mac as I liked to customize everything and make it look fun and cool and unique, and to be able to use many niche programs that only existed for Windows. I preferred Android to iOS for the same reason.
Now that I'm working most of the time, however, I just want something that works. I don't care about customizing all that much; I'll leave it to the (mostly) great designers Apple pays. I really value being less concerned about the legitimacy of things I download or view, knowing that Apple's choices to make a walled garden have protected me further.
Beyond myself, though, I'm immensely happy that my older, less tech-savvy parents have iPhones, and I bought my mother a MacBook which she has loved compared to her old desktop. All she wants to do are common tasks on it, and to accomplish them simply and quickly and without worrying about viruses.
I empathize with the jailbreaking community and honestly love how responsive you all are, and how you really make an effort to build things that bring people joy. I think there's millions of people in the world that prefer to have jailbroken phones and more customization and freedom, but there's also millions who prioritize as I do. There's a pro and con to every choice.
How am I not an end user? I buy Apple products, and I use them daily. I described ways I have accepted the limitations Apple has put on my usage of them. I could describe more? I can’t swap out RAM or storage, I’m no longer willing to risk the damage of swapping out batteries. I can’t install hacks that let me switch Safari tabs with my mouse wheel. These are my daily devices, I use them both for work and life. How am I not the end user? I don’t get it.
I think what's meant is that you aren't representative of an end user. That seems a sane interpretation of what saurik was trying to convey when put into the context of his other statements.
I don’t think that’s what they were saying to me. They saw that I represented myself as a software developer and determined that I was making decisions for someone other than myself, when I straight up said that I was knowledgeably making decisions for myself.
This is very nuanced because, to me, there is a difference between a "missing" feature and a feature that's intentionally "withheld". Things like changing icons, in my mind, are missing features. Things like being able to install whatever apps or scripts are available outside of the walled garden are intentional decisions made for security, privacy, etc.
I think what the OP is asking for in practice is clearly targeted at a niche hacker market which is very much a market which has not matured and is essentially sidelined as a matter of practice - to the OS vendors detriment (hear me out).
There are security implications of such freedoms which should be avoided of course for the regular users. The phones should be locked down as much as possible. But that doesn't have to be the only option.
This is way GrapheneOS [1] exploits Android flexibility and customization to try to improve fundamental OS security to the most modern standards and attempts to break the closesed walls of Google WHILE still shipping a fully locked down phone at the bootloader and OS levels [2].
The ideal world is Apple and Android does their normal security lockdowns for standard endusers for security's sake. Then they offer a separate hackable version where research and those crazy UI/UX hobbyists can do their thing.
In all technical senses this is entirely possible for a vendor to do. So it becomes a product question. And I'm convinced they will get ancillary benefits from the hackers doing expimentation in both security and UIs and whatever,\ from which to draw inspiration for their IRL produdcts. And possibly just as important - talent (developers, developers, ...) there are people who care about this stuff who just want to hack on their devices. These can be talented individuals and who knows some future leader within Google et al, the way the Napster guys are SV celebrities now.
I'm convinced there's enough ROI (yes commercially) for every OS platform to support this niche. They shouldn't be relegated to the ruffians and pirates on the fringes using risky circumvention techniques to achieve their goals.
> The ideal world is Apple and Android does their normal security lockdowns for standard endusers for security's sake. Then they offer a separate hackable version where research and those crazy UI/UX hobbyists can do their thing.
I'm not sure that this works, because you can't draw the line so easily.
If there was an easily obtained unlocked device, more people would choose it than currently jailbreak. More people would make improvements and share them. The ecosystem would improve. There would be more things you can only do with an unlocked device. Which would attract more people, and polynomially more developers to the growing market. You get a feedback loop that ends with everybody buying the open devices.
The only way you get a walled garden is by successfully suppressing open alternatives, because otherwise the benefits of openness outweigh the costs and people start to move. AOL loses to the web. Proprietary Unix loses to GNU/Linux. Windows RT loses to actual Windows.
You can't get everybody to choose something where the only difference is that it prevents them from doing something they want to do. They only choose that if the choice is bound up in several other things they want and they're really choosing the other things.
But the underlying question here is not actually whether to have curation or not. Linux package managers are curated. If you create an environment in which all the good things are in the store and none of the bad things are, ordinary people have no reason to install anything from outside the store, and can then be trained to look with suspicion at anything that isn't, even if it's still technically possible.
The problem we have right now is that the assumption is false. The platform stores reject things the user actually wants, or would drive them out with high fees if there was some viable alternative installation method available. Which then drives users to uncurated installation methods, if they exist, which the platforms consequently then try to stamp out.
The better solution is to have first class competing stores. The competition solves the problem. Stores that charge excessive fees lose developers to ones that don't. Stores that reject good apps or allow bad apps lose users to ones that don't. You end up with a couple of stores that have low fees and high quality apps, giving people no incentive to leave the garden even if there is no lock on the gate.
But you have to leave the gate unlocked or the user's ability to leave doesn't cause the garden to improve to the point that the user has no desire to exercise that ability.
I am always annoyed when i read "exponentially more" in a situation where there is no exponential dynamics.
I found it refreshing to read a different term although i somewhat doubt that the effect is truly a polynomial.
I am not sure how "logistically more" would sound.
>Honestly, I am not sure if I've ever heard an "end user" ask to be prevented from doing something they actually wanted to do...
I don't believe that typical end users are knowledgable enough about computers to know that they can or should ask for this in the first place.
Anecdotal example: My computer illiterate mother wants to download some random unscrupulous DMG onto her Mac, claiming to be a file conversion app. I catch her in the act, and tell her no, don't do download that.
Now did my mother ever ask to be prevented from doing this? No. Does she even understand why me preventing her from doing this was a good thing? No. But was it in her best interests overall? Yes. I view the gatekeeping functionality of iOS as largely replicating my role in this scenario.
I appreciate that; and yet, it isn't our place as software developers to just assume we are smarter and know more than everyone else in the entire world--including other competing software developers--and both build and cheer on the usage of technological locks that prevent people from taking control of their own destiny. Claiming that people are opting into this because it is for their own good is disingenuous, as it was forced on them as a tradeoff they didn't understand.
> and yet, it isn't our place as software developers to just assume we are smarter and know more than everyone else in the entire world
100x this - and Hacker News is really guilty of doing this.
How about we focus on making understanding the risks more accessible to users if we think there's a legitimate problem with users "not knowing what's good for them"?
Educating users on any topic not relevant to their immediate task flow is not going to have any traction. Safety controls in industries where accidents kill people are frequently bypassed, because it made their operations slower. If we want to protect users at all, we need to make security so transparent it doesn't get in the way of the user and so omnipresent it can't be bypassed - because once we put in toggles, those toggles get flipped for trivialities. Imagine disabling application integrity signing for a wallpaper.
You raise an interesting point about what our place as software developers is. We continue to deliver solutions that allow people to have their money, identities, etc, stolen. It’s not all of us, all the time, but our culture is not about building the most bulletproof of solutions (to put it nicely; some of us build things that actively bad for society). Other engineering cultures are much stricter with their quality control, and restrictions on use are part of that.
Is requiring certified electrical wiring that much different from a “walled garden”? Some people tinker at the edges of their home setup, but you’d probably be pretty worried if you found out your average neighbor had rewired their whole house on their own following some lifehack they found online. Computers are connected in a different way than neighboring houses, but it doesn’t mean you aren’t affected by the decisions of your digitally-close acquaintances (from worms and botnets down to simple email/contact harvesting).
That’s not to say the world hasn’t benefitted greatly from software choosing velocity over robustness; other technologies have followed similar early arcs, causing damage before they matured. Maybe we’re at the point where limiting choice is simply one of our least-bad strategies for most people? For what it’s worth, I am pretty confident that the vast majority of people want computing appliances and not tools (why would computers be any different from any other consumer good?), so I find it highly unlikely that the pro-tinkering arguments apply outside of a tiny proportion of users. I definitely don’t mean to imply that this is the only way, but it seems like there’s already a spectrum of choices for consumers and sometimes it feels like we’re arguing to narrow the less “open” end of that spectrum because we’re projecting ourselves onto the whole population.
>Is requiring certified electrical wiring that much different from a “walled garden”?
Yes it is very different, because those certifications are limited to basic safety whereas Apple's restrictions are a wild mix of security protections, paternalism (e.g the porn ban), protecting their business model, and staying in the good graces of authoritarian regimes.
If Apple really cares about security they should not blur the lines between security and unrelated issues.
Having regulations around electrical wiring or plumbing or medicine or whatever is a group decision to have a public body that provides such certifications that anyone can join. This is very very different from your architect saying that the only person who can ever provide electrical wiring for your home is them, because they designed your building and having someone else modify the wiring would be an unsafe violation of the terms of service on your home. Like, the argument here is kind of ridiculous as it means that you sometimes can't even get safe software because the one company authorized to provide software decided to lock everyone else out and then just didn't care. FWIW, I am actually very very PRO regulation of the software industry... but I'm very very ANTI companies deciding that they, alone, get to decide what everyone can do, whether it be build new features, fix bugs, or introspect behavior... in fact, I think that's one of the most important things that should be regulated AGAINST: everyone should have a right to repair, maintain, and understand the things they buy, and that right should allow them to outsource that to a third party (so they can hire a repairperson, a developer, or a security researcher).
I feel like I'm talking to royalty right now so let me express my gratitude and appreciation for everything you've done before I, respectfully, disagree with a major point of yours.
>I am not sure if I've ever heard an "end user" ask to be prevented from doing something they actually wanted to do
...until what they wanted to do exposed them to malware or an app that they didn't know how to use or put them in a situation where their phone was randomly restarting the springboard over and over.
Of course no one would ever ask to be prevented from doing what they want to do but most people using these devices don't know exactly what "what they want to do" entails and the consequences of that. It's the same thing as Internet Explorer and all those toolbars that it's now known for in meme history. Of course people would want a toolbar that lets them automatically search for coupons or whatever it is they want to be notified of. Do they know that the same toolbar is also injecting ads or collecting data and keystrokes? Probably not.
I agree with your sentiment 100% (and my issues may be addressed in your TED talk which I'm going to watch right now) but there needs to be some way to acknowledge what the consequences of those actions are and, for me, I think a technical barrier or entry is the only realistic way to do that. Anything simpler will be taken advantage of.
Wait you are the creator of Cydia
I just want to take a moment and appreciate your work. I really loved Cydia and the way It allowed me to customize my first iPhone 2G
- Apples walled garden has nothing to do with security - demonstrated extensively by their policy, latest example being banning stuff like streaming game service and such - that has 0 security impact. It's all about getting a cut of every revenue stream they can on the platform and preventing alternatives
- casual users do care about this stuff - just the other day for example my wife wanted to play some GBA game from her childhood - you can get that on play store easily, and even if you couldn't it's on other stores and in OSS. That's just not an option on iOS unless you're a technical user. Or more broadly recent Epic and Fortnite situation. Plenty of scenarios where Apple will decide what you can or cannot get and it won't work for everyone - you don't need to be a power user to be excluded
Apple has best products, HW and software wise, and they are milking that advantage as much as they can - not necessarily judging them but this arguing that it's in user interest is ridiculous, they are optimising for number of users affected vs profit they can extract - for example they had to buckle with big players like Amazon and Netflix because that would alienate too many users, but they will enforce their grip on the ecosystem if that means limiting a small number of users - and that has nothing to do with security.
Red light cameras are ostensibly for safety, but the incentives are bad. What should save lives is compromised by the profit motivation to increase citation issuance. My feeling is that Apple’s behavior is analogous to reducing yellow light durations. It’s strong enough that I regularly check in on https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ in the hope that the switch will soon be practical.
I once saved a non-technical person from installing a fake banking app on their Android phone and losing all the savings they had. If I wasn't there, our whole family would probably be in financial trouble. Being able to do whatever you want with your own device is great if you're tech savvy. Most people will either not use that power at all, or use it to do something they didn't actually intend to do.
A good compromise here would be an ability to enable developer mode, perhaps with some quiz or test that checks if you have the right skills to handle such a responsibility.
Most people don't want this freedom, I agree with you; heck, often I even don't want it; I want machines that always work and are fast. iPads fall in that categories for many years already. Because it's walled off, I cannot mess stuff up so much. Ofcourse I wish the device ran Linux but with the same container tech which freezes/thaws/kills/reloads apps so it keeps my system fast safe.
Then, on the other hand, when the majority of people see their favorite app, album, book, movie, show disappear from their because the 'big company' decided they can't have it anymore, they do get upset, they just don't know what happened or why or what they can do to help it.
Android is a weird middleground; it's both too walled off and too open; you can get yourself pwned (without rooting) while you still don't have enough freedom to do whatever you want (without rooting). I like it's more open but then I prefer a laptop with full blown Linux (which is what I use most).
Well, they can buy an Android, thus I think they have chosen.
I like Apple's walled garden. I'm a developer for 20 years professionally and 10 more as a hobby. Writing this on a MacBook Pro, with an Apple Watch on my wrist and my iPhone next to me (I left the iPad at home).
I care that Apple's has this control over their ecosystem that I feel 100% confident on leaving my iPhone or iPad with my kid and know he won't follow some weird website instructions and brick/compromise it for example.
It is worth pointing out that this only works because to date Apple has not heavily abused their position of trust. It would be extremely naive to believe they will not take advantage of this control to do things people wont like if/when the situation changes. If the walled garden starts to collapse, make sure you have a way out.
So where is the problem. Apple should just allow other app stores.
The people who prefer the "safety" of a walled garden can stick to Apple's AppStore.
It's just about having choice.
I don’t think the “choice” is that simple. If I only want to trust Apple with my credit card data, right now I can do that and buy any app on the iPhone. In a multi-store world, I might then have to give my card info to other vendors because an app (Fortnite, say) decides to be alt-store exclusive. That would eliminate my choice to have a single trusted payment processor. If that current experience is part of _why_ I might like an iPhone, wouldn’t a multi-store world be limiting my choice since now both major vendors would be providing the same experience in that realm?
(I don’t mean to imply that one choice is necessarily more valuable than the other, just that they both exist.)
If Apple really cares about security, they'll allow these alt stores to use Apple Pay's APIs, even if this specific payment mean adds 30% to the price.
The vast majority of iOS users appreciate the security, safety, and stability provided by Apple’s restrictions.
In fact, at this point I strongly dislike MacOS for how poorly it manages resources and security- even tho it does an outstanding job for a desktop app.
There’s a reason Apple tops satisfaction scores.
So while I see the above sentiment on HN frequently, the perspective lacks an understanding of the enormous benefits of Apple’s restrictions.
Honestly the apple app store has been hot garbage since it took off. I remember when it crossed 100,000 apps. And discoverability really didn't happen and really it hasn't improved. It's a shame, really. All the developers just had to put up with what they got - which was mostly luck based.
So what you've gotten is an app store with compliant developers mostly afraid of pissing off apple.
What you don't have is competition and all the benefits it brings both developers and consumers.
Maybe look at it this way - apple makes hardware and apart from the confusion of charging 30% they really want the price of software to be zero so phone sales stay high.
There is competence, and then there is tyranny. Apple was quite high on the competence slider, but the tyranny dial has been slowly ramping up. It’s nice to have security features until it’s not.
Apps are sandboxed already. The security of your OS and other apps is still protected even while sideloading. The only possible benefit is preventing sideloaded apps from using dodgy payment processors but thats hardly more of a risk than apps telling you to pay via their website which they currently do.
Sure, but a lot of them do not understand vendor lock and having to fear the whims of Apple. When Apple decided that an app simply can't reside on their platform, then that's basically how it is.
When I buy a phone, I actually want to buy it and not just rent and have someone else setting the rules for me.
I've been using an Android for my entire life And I've never felt the need to switch because my friends use iMessage, despite almost all of my friends and family using iPhones (which I recommend to them, because most of them aren't very tech savvy).
Honestly, I don't even know how that would be an argument for locking you into an ecosystem. It's not like text messages are an ancient technology that modern iPhones will not support.
Yeah, I don't know anyone like that and I am skeptical that a significant amount of people exist who do. This article is pretty lacking in substance. I certainly know people who strongly prefer iOS personally and frequently remind everyone of said preferences, but you could say that about video game consoles.
I know multiple people who refuse to communicate unless it's on an app like Signal or Telegram, but I don't know anyone over the age of 17 who cares that my bubbles are green instead of blue. And even if I did happen to know people like that, I still don't see "well some people will find literally any excuse to be exclusionary" as a good argument for iMessage locking users into their ecosystem.
Of course they understand vendor lock-in. Whenever the subject of switching from/to iPhone from/to Android, the issue of "but this app doesn't exist on <target>" comes up.
When you run your own code, compiled on your own computer with your own copy of XCode for nobody but yourself, the only applicable measure of software quality is whatever is good enough for you.
Even if you choose to run flaky code, there are very little security benefits and no stability implications from restricting an app to run for only 7 days. The 7 day rule is obviously meant to interfere with homebrewing and make hobby developers with no App store aspirations pay $99.
Sorry to be so patronising, but your perspective obviously lacks understanding. The vast majority of iOS users never even tried making something themselves, they just want to be safe while looking up the solution. That's okay, but off-topic.
From Apple's POV, a completely unlocked system that allows the user can do anything is like selling a solid cube of untouched marble. It's the default. The Apple ecosystem on the other hand is a completed sculpture. They removed parts to craft a very specific vision. Yes you get less marble, but most people aren't sculptors, and they're not buying it for the marble. They're buying Apple's vision.
>From Apple's POV, a completely unlocked system that allows the user can do anything is like selling a car you can drive on all passable roads. It's the default. The Apple ecosystem on the other hand is a artificially restricted environment. They removed parts like the steering wheel to craft a very specific vision. Yes you get less freedom, but most people aren't technically literate, and they're not buying it for general purpose computing. They're buying Apple's monopolistic, user subjugating vision. Which includes as many ways as possible for Apple to capitalize on their monopoly.
Is there anything you wanted to contribute, or were you just fishing for upvotes here? There are about a million different ways to make any of the points you made that would actually merit a response, but you really took the ball and ran with it.
Do you think anyone is going to read your snarky response to someone who was making a reasonable point and think "this seems like someone who wants to have a conversation"?
I'm not usually a fan of repeat-the-comment's-argument-but-replace-it-with-analagous-terms-type comments, I thought it was at least a decent comparison, especially considering that phones and cars are pretty general-purpose devices.
I think I've come up with a reasonable solution for Apple to implement that MacOS style of openness: the iPhone Developer Edition. "Developer" is being used here as a byword for "power user", since "Pro" has been diluted.
The Developer Edition requires you to register for a now-free developer account. There's big friendly letters that say, "Welcome, developer! We know that you'll enjoy getting the most of your hardware and not clogging up our forums and support lines with complaints about things that are broken due to the unreviewed apps, because you're a developer, and you know how to fix things when they break. Here's your unwalled garden. Enjoy."
Then there can be that Dev Store where Advanced stuff goes, and if there's ever any hacks / vulnerabilities / bad stuff Apple can point to the Dev Edition and say "That's what they signed up for, but for normal folks the walled garden awaits."
iPhone Developer Edition and iPhone Customer Editions are identical in hardware. You can buy a Customer Edition and convert it to a Developer Edition phone by simply registering as a developer and signing away your right to bitch and moan if apps contain spam, porn, scams, or brick your device. iPhone Developer Edition can be turned back into a Customer edition through a setting, all ready to be sold.
>Were the OP's suggestions/observations really that outlandish?!
I wouldn't call them outlandish. I think there's merit in the ability to install whatever software you want. But I also think there's merit in making sure there's a robust, unfragmented market of apps that work with the last 6 years of iPhones, and restrictions that Apple has in place ensure that.
I think the Dev Store is a reasonable compromise to ensure that average users don't have to run AVG AntiVirus on their phones. That situation is absurdly anti-user.
>why is there no strict walled garden for Macs?
There is, and it's annoying: GateKeeper, which if I recall correctly requires you to basically outsmart your OS to install software using the GUI.
This is why I'm happy the iPad Pro is getting more desktop-like, hopefully bridging the gap between people who want a laptop to do weird stuff and people who want a device that will work no matter what you do to it.
> which if I recall correctly requires you to basically outsmart your OS to install software using the GUI.
This feels a little overstated to me; the first time I run a GUI app that was downloaded from somewhere other than the App Store, I get asked "this was downloaded from foobar.com, are you sure you want to run it?" and click "Yes". I definitely wouldn't call that a "strict walled garden" comparable to the iOS App Store; if anything, I wish Gatekeeper existed on iOS the way it does on the Mac. (A few years ago I was half-expecting that to happen, as naive as it might sound: it seemed like it was a great solution to allowing sideloading while still letting Apple maintain some level of control, but it's become clear Apple still looks at iOS devices as more like game consoles than general purpose computers. It's possible it might yet happen to stave off antitrust concerns, I suppose.)
There is a developer mode on macOS to disable that though, you just boot into recovery and do “csrutil disable”. And even without that I can still install binaries I get from outside the App Store as long as the developer self signed them at some point (and the signature lasts for as long as they want). We need that on the iPad at least, and maybe the iPhone, as you mention.
I'm an Android user for the same reasons. I don't understand the argument that locking down the iPhone somehow makes it more secure. If you like the locked down model, you can use Android and buy from the Play Store and I'm sure the vast majority of Android users (in western countries) do just this.
See... and I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum here. I love that this has a high enough barrier of entry that I can easily set it up and take advantage of it while never having to worry about any one of my friends or family that aren't tech-savvy "accidentally" or even "unintentionally" setting this up and getting adware, malware, scams, etc. set up on their phones. For me, it's never been enough to just have an option in the settings because I've been around long enough to know that scammers will just start including instructions for how to bypass those things and access developer modes and unwilling and uninformed users will follow those as long as the instructions look trustworthy enough.
I'm all for installing whatever software you want on the hardware you paid for but there is definitely a balance that needs to be struck for the majority of users and I can tell you that the majority of users aren't informed enough to know the drawbacks of an alternate App Store.
Source: I was an early jailbreaker and remember when, as soon as the jailbreak became an app that you just installed and ran with the phone hooked up to a computer, my business exponentially increased. People would jailbreak phones for their friends and families without explaining anything and then I'd have to service their devices to un-brick them and get them back to stock.
I wholeheartedly agree, and I think when it comes to Apple holding the keys to their own platform, we have that balance: you don’t like Apple’s management, you go to Android instead, and there’s competition.
Plenty other areas I’d like to see Apple’s control weakened where it impacts the user experience, but running arbitrary code on iOS devices isn’t one of them, for me.
To me it feels incredibly wasteful as this is addressing artificial problem and then will have to catch up with Apple moving goal posts. Sure the authors can gather some experience with software development, but other than that it sounds like a huge time sink for no real benefit as Apple can always shut it down one way or another.
I would rather see people working on an open fork of Android and address real issues like the fact that Google removed call recording API from Android, to help insurance and other phone sale companies scam their customers, as they can no longer record telemarketers lying to them.
If you care about not having a Google account, then start talking about custom ROMs. Not really a relevant complaint since custom ROMs exist.
And it'd be trivial to compile the latest kernel and load it on your device. Someone who really cares and needs features or fixes from a newer kernel could do it if they wanted.
Because people don't want just another android phone. They want their desktop on a phone. They want to use desktop GUI toolkits, desktop package managers and all the rest. Android also contains a mountain of anti features that are hard to remove. Its also missing a lot of critical features without the GApps so maintaining a fork of android is almost as much work as making GTK work on a phone.
I have Android apps that do whatever I need, similarly to desktop application, including programming on the go, eventually one needs to come to the understanding that we don't need UNIX clones with bash everywhere.
PureOS was already shipped on their laptops. Debian (what it's based on) already supports ARM as well as many other architectures. Lots of software works with basically no needed change because of their decision. The only changes really happening are to make things work better on a small touchscreen, but no one's stopping you from running the desktop version of mpv and plugging in a keyboard. (or using any terminal programs, which all seem to work great)
I even saw recently someone was running openmw (morrowind) on the Librem 5. Stuff doesn't have to be ported to Android this way. There are so many more exciting possibilities.
They've got support similar to a Raspberry Pi or other SBC out of the gate in addition to being a phone. It's like a real computer.
It strikes me as simple impatience to want Android on one of these phones. By taking the time to make a better base to build on, we can be free of the current ecosystem and its problems, it may just take a bit longer, or maybe not every average Joe will want to be a part of it, but the end result should be much better.
If you really do want an aosp base, though, there's glodroid[0], which supports the PinePhone. I haven't seen any reviews or tried it myself, though.
note: I do not own a Librem 5 or any other Purism product, nor do I plan to get one in the near future, but I have a PinePhone and I'm very on-board with the direction things are going.
i think it is possible to pay for an apple developer license and then youd be able to create a certificate for a year. not sure if that would be possible since i am too lazy to do any research today on my off day ;)
The permission system on Android is still severely broken.
Any app can access the clipboard at any time. There are many permissions that are not controllable by an end user. A combination of gyroscope and microphone data can be used to "keylog" everything one is typing.
Any app also has access to a lot of information that is not covered by the permission system, such as Android ID, IMEI, SSID, etc.
This system resigns app with your developer signature, and to work around the expiration leaves a server running on your computer that periodically resigns apps and updates them over the air on your iPhone.
I think this is simple yet genius. I wonder if it works on AppleTV as well?
Apple allows anyone with an Apple ID to install apps they’ve built themselves onto their devices for testing. AltStore uses your Apple ID to communicate with Apple's servers on your behalf and perform the necessary steps to prepare your account for installing apps onto your device.
Why does it say my apps will expire in 7 days?
Unfortunately, apps that have been installed using non-developer Apple IDs (in other words, Apple IDs not tied to a $99/year Apple developer account) are only valid for 7 days, at which point they will no longer open. To compensate for this, AltStore will periodically attempt to refresh your apps in the background, and you can always manually refresh your apps from within AltStore.
Yeah, in fact, if you have the $99 account you don't even really need AltStore, you can just download the IPA files you want and sign them manually (with Xcode or if you want a less clunkly solution, iOSAppSigner or AltDeploy or a tool like that) and they will last for a year, which is certainly not too much of a hassle to have to resign.
I can imagine this will lead to having your dev account blocked as likely it will violate the T&C and if it doesn't, then Apple could easily update it.
It's been a bit more than a year and it's still active. The developer was even granted a Developer Transition Kit for the new Apple Silicon, to test his new apps (despite, AFAIK, only having made apps that aren't available on the App Store). The app also takes advantage of the free 7-day development deployment rule, which is something I can't see Apple being able to change without alienating new devs from their platform. It would also be a bad move, anti-trust wise.
Actually, for Apple, this might just be in the sweet spot of placating techy FOSS people who want more freedom, and being cumbersome enough that almost no one outside this group will use it.
I didn't expect it to last either, but it's been around a while. I eventually dug into this and realized that there is a limit of 3 apps, one of which is AltStore itself.
I think the developer is wasting his time, but it's his call. Maybe he's doing it for learning and exposure, but it seems like there must be more valuable and durable projects that would scratch that itch.
Apple keeps adding restrictions to what free developers can do, which makes this less and less viable. They also made a major change to their authentication mechanism for these free developer accounts last year, which (to avoid a lot of reverse engineering of highly obfuscated--and notably "well" obfuscated--Apple code) required a pretty obtuse workaround from AltStore on macOS where it injects into Mail.app as a plug-in... I am shocked Apple hasn't figured out some way to restrict this yet (it could be that it didn't occur to them there is still work to be done upping the ante here?).
> required a pretty obtuse workaround from AltStore on macOS where it injects into Mail.app as a plug-in
Why are people still putting up with Apple? People who can figure out such tricks are smart. Why are they still customer to a company that has shown to be hostile to the freedom they want to assert? GNU/Linux is getting better by the day.
Honestly? The average person had a different value system.
The freedom some developers want isn’t something the majority of users want.
Personally, I haven’t been significantly limited by Apple’s rules. I like that Apple controls the billing, so I don’t have to deal with credit cards being stolen or companies making unsubscribing difficult. I like that they at least have some review process and will pull bad apps.
I like that I can go to my local Apple store for support. Google? They are possibly the most user hostile company I know.
I like that someone actually gives a damn about privacy and security when online services are getting hacked left and right.
Apple is far from perfect but they will fight a big companies and governments for violating their rules or endangering user privacy. They’ve told publicly EA, Facebook, and the US government to pound sand. (China is a no-win situation, Apple decided to play ball to keep that market.)
So yes, I’ll happily trade some freedom for safety and security.
Because the market of users has macOS (and Windows, where the workaround isn't as "obtuse" as nothing is locking you out of doing it, but is still ridiculous: I think he injects code into iTunes), and apps that don't have users are kind of pointless (if not high quality ;P)? You don't get to choose the platform used by your users, and the people choosing that platform are often doing it for reasons that aren't even necessarily in their own best interests (as they aren't fully informed of the consequences).
A question for the ages. A guess would be they really really really love the hardware, as it's the only thing that rationalizes how many of these groups are doing amazing things for free under Apple's severe watch.
The hardware is great, but most of macOS and iOS is pretty great, too.
For the low hanging fruit: font rendering on macOS/iOS looks better than any type I’ve ever seen on any other OS or platform, right out of the box, and still looks better even when those other platforms are tweaked with additional fonts and rendering settings.
I’m dreading my impending switch to Android and/or a mobile Linux next summer for this reason.
As someone who works all day, every day with text on my screen, I care about this as much as I care about my bed, chair, or keyboard.
No question that it is, but it still has far enough to go that it's an acquired taste at best. Switching platforms also means switching apps in many use cases. Combine those two and it becomes easy to see why individuals who aren't compelled by the ideology behind GNU/Linux might not see it as a particularly appealing option.
AFAIK they did block that with the Big Sur rewrite of the Mail app--the Big Sur-ready beta of AltStore requires you to temporarily disable SIP/AMFI and patch the operating system to get access to the account.
Considering that iSH is about to be removed from the App Store[0] and that the beta can only hold 10,000 people[1], using AltStore is one of the easiest ways to get iSH on iOS now.
The only downside here is that you have to have a Mac (or some hackintosh, I guess) to do this. Anyone have any idea on the state of the art for running an OSX virtual machine?
Thanks. The page mentions transfering the image to QEMU + KVM with hardware passthrough for good performance. Is there a script or guide on how to set that up?
If it works on windows why does it need the server at all? If it is just making requests to Apple can't you do the signing on the phone? (Other than the bootstrap procedure)
You can do the signing on the phone (though there is some nuance here as logging in to the account is hard and the techniques used by AltStore involve injection into other Apple software; this is at least theoretically fixable, but does mean that it wouldn't be trivial), but you can't do the installation from another app on the phone in any obvious way (at least without restricted entitlements). AltStore is acting like Xcode doing over-the-network installs from AltServer (and then also happens to do the signing there, but that's again simply to make it easier to develop it).
AltStore is based on the signing code I developed and also used in my Cydia Impactor (which lets you install apps over USB); I actually did develop another tool called Cydia Extender, which would run on your phone, but I dropped the effort when I couldn't get stuff to install on the phone (the technique I came up with relied on an entitlement that was only able to be installed by users with developer accounts; I even somehow failed to notice this until after I released it, which was awkward: I still can't believe I messed up my testing that badly). (Actually... maybe I have a way to pull this off now? It is a long shot, and somewhat risky ;P.)
Could you use a VPN on the device to make a remote server appear as a local server for network installs? If so, could you loop back an on device “server” through a remote proxy?
So, this is actually how Cydia Extender "worked" (aka, "failed" ;P)--though I wasn't using the Xcode protocol but instead did an ad hoc install (which turned out to also separately not work for non-developer signed IPA files, TWO issues I had failed to notice before release ;P)--but Apple restricts usage of the Network Extension (VPN) API using an entitlement only available to paid developers (which I will strongly assert is to help the CCP's censorship of Chinese citizens as part of Apple's continual unfortunate collaboration). (I now happen to work on semi-programmable VPN tech that is in the App Store, so I might have options; a bit risky, though ;P.)
This will have limitations on notifications and features like icloud sync I guess?
And while not very likely as it will be hard to differentiate a real developer from this, Apple could still revoke Apple IDs or developer accounts whenever they want.
edit: also no way to have updates suggestion? (an app can be updated, but the AltStore app can't know which app is installed or which version?)
I haven’t tested with another app that might have notifications ( I’m only running AltStore and Unc0ver ).
AltStore does send regular notifications reminding you if the certificate is about to expire, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
I have been using this since it was launched on a free developer account. Prior to this I used the same account with Cydia Impactor too. I personally never got revoked
I don’t understand your last point, the AltStore app can be updated through the app itself. Also, there was a feature preview for Patreon subscribers which allowed the user to add repositories to the AltStore app. I haven’t tested this feature but I believe it would be able to tell when an update has come for the apps.
I think by default Altstore comes with game emulators and jailbreak apps, with the ability to modify it so you can install any app. It may have changed as I tried it several months ago.
With the extension (may be native by now, idk) You can install pretty much any app as long as you can obtain an ipa. They're not too hard to obtain from 3rd party sites. Also easy to pirate paid apps this way
It's incredible the lengths people will go to to 'hack' the system.
It's almost as if we could be living in near paradise if we switch-a-roo-ed existing people in power for the robin hoods who do this kind of thankless work.
It makes me think of the people who rip movies and post them online, at the risk of getting caught and suffering who knows what sorts of consequences. What motivates this entire underground network of people who do this? I feel like this should be studied or something - it strikes me as a separate set of morals that these people hold that aren't spelled out anywhere (or are they?) and no matter the number of times the powers that be try to squash them, they seem to pop right back up in one form or another.
A leaderless resistance to power hungry assholes or something, so cool :)
(FWIW, the person--me--who actually developed and maintained all of the open source application signing code that AltStore continues to use was making negative thousands of dollars a month from just hosting AltStore's predecessor, due to... and this is clearly on me... having no revenue model from it, and so had to largely stop working on it and get a "day job" outside of the jailbreak ecosystem. I'm really am OK with Riley making money for the AltServer and Mail.app hacks, but $13k/mo feels somewhat extreme? edit: OK, someone else in a sibling comment to this one noted that he also has emulators as a big part of his Patreon. I'm much happier mentally modelling that the vast majority of the people giving him money are interested in those ;P.)
I hope they support Raspberry Pi someday. I have one running Pi-Hole (it has other stuff installed, but not running) and it has plenty of resources left over.
Apologies to the author but this seems like a pointless effort. Buyers of iPad/iPhone have renounced by contract their desire to run general purpose software, and have accepted an application jukebox with a vendor-approved catalogue. They do not won own general purpose computers and have not purchased such devices.
Just like no-one writes an appstore for the computer in the microwave oven, that has a fixed and very limited fixed set of "apps", it similarly makes no sense to create an alternative appstore for a locked platform.
I use apple devices because I like receiving security updates after the first year, I also like not having my phone loaded with google spyware. I do not like the inability to sideload apps which makes this tool useful to me.
The app store has almost everything I want but its missing stuff I used to sideload on android like an ad free youtube app and the app to send the payload to boot my nintendo switch with homebrew.
Up until this very moment, I've followed these sorts of developments and do admire the ingenuity to pull it off. I've also been dismissive of greenfield phone platforms as being 'not ready for daily use' without having actually trying them.
I'm generally more of a computer user than a 'mobile/phone' one, not spending any time scrolling in social media apps. Perhaps I could live with the sub-par experience of an open/free phone. Good phone and plain text messaging features with a great web browser might get most of the way there. I realized that I only needed apps for work (2FA), Slack/PagerDuty and Spotify--and now working from home don't even need Spotify. Carrying a small old iPhone (or iPod Touch) seems acceptable for a few apps Uber/Lyft, etc. I used to carry an iPod Touch along with my phone and using it felt so great--to have the rest of the world in my pocket rather than a tap away.
Apple's insistence on refusing users control of their devices is why I switched to Android for my phone years ago (though I will be overjoyed once GNU/Linux on phones reaches enough maturity to replace Android for me as well, though I sadly don't see that happening very soon).
This is truly a shame - I am not part of the extreme FOSS crowd who would only ever be satisfied with a top-to-bottom free device, and in fact I would happily use an iPhone if iOS was even just as "open" as macOS.