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Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones
- ein0p 2y agoI wish Apple just made a dumb watch with really good battery life (a week+) and health tracking. I don't really use any "smart" functions in my watch anyway, and I find notifications annoying.
- bearjaws 2y agoIt's honestly amazing how Apple managed to dodge anti-trust in the United States. The fact you cannot build a competing watch is unacceptable and the idea that "well go build one for Android" is refusing to acknowledge that Apple is its own market in and of itself. Throw in the fact that even getting an app that isn't a game into the App store is not trivial, especially if it dares include some form of payment processing outside of the Apple-verse. The Floatplane Saga, where Linus Tech Tips didn't want to use Apple payment processor because they would have to charge 30% more is another example. It took months and dozens of app resubmissions, only to have to use their massive YouTuber influence to get into contact with someone at Apple should be proof enough that the App Store has gone too far.
- jjtheblunt 2y agoI think you’re overlooking Garmin who has a healthy business in smart watches and they’re compatible with Apple devices. Edit : more up to date and useful comments thankfully below
- james_pm 2y agoLong time Garmin watch user here and Garmins are also HORRIBLY crippled on iOS. Can I respond to a text message? No. I can clear the notification, but that is it. Apple Watch has far greater abilities than any other smart watch. That is the issue.
- Zagitta 2y agoAs someone who has a garmin watch and switched from android to iOS I can tell you it's exactly as crippled as the article spells out. So if anything garmin has a healthy smartwatch business in spite of apple trying their hardest to choke competition.
- do_not_redeem 2y agoThe limitations in the blog post apply for Garmin just as much as Pebble.
- kelnos 2y agoMy wife (iPhone user) has a Garmin watch that a friend of ours (Android user) recommended. The friend's experience is much much better, with many more features that work. Apple is definitely intentionally crippling the third-party smartwatch experience.
- roamerz 2y agoWith as much functionality as there is on an Apple Watch I can see how that would be huge endeavor to accomplish while maintaining the tight security and privacy model.
- eddieroger 2y agoI think the devil is in the details of how iOS and watchOS interact. Instead of sending and receiving texts from iOS, watchOS is running messages and only sharing data. I imagine this pattern works a large amount of the time in Apple's benefit. They make a notification API available for anyone to use, they just choose not to do it. They also make it so the watch can use the phone's data, and this they do use, but also it can use WiFi or Cellular on its own.
- roamerz 2y ago100% agree with those statements. It would be nice to have a more robust API and this more options but unless forced to I don’t see Apple doing that and honestly rightly so.
- jimt1234 2y ago> It's honestly amazing how Apple managed to dodge anti-trust in the United States. What's amazing to me is how much things have changed since the Microsoft antitrust saga: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
- Jtsummers 2y agoMS had a much larger market share than Apple does in any product category. They were something like 95% or more of the PC OS market. Apple has, in the US, around 50% of the smartphone market and around 15% of the PC market. MS also did a lot to curtail competition that Apple hasn't even come close to. Like how they crippled BeOS by threatening OEMs with higher Windows licensing costs (as a low-margin business this would have pushed any OEM prices too high to remain competitive).
- parsimo2010 2y agoObviously this is going to be up for debate, but in your comment you acknowledge that "go build one for Android" is an option. This is an indication that your complaint is not in Apple's behavior, but your regret that the competition sucks and it's not Apple's fault. Apple is not a market on their own from the perspective of smart phones and watches, every person making a purchasing decision has options (This is different from an app developer's perspective. See the last line for the explanation of why that's different). It's not like Apple started off letting third party watches work well and then suddenly locked them out (but you could argue from the article that they started off with minor handicaps and have increased the level of handicap over the years). Most people choose to buy iPhones knowing that only certain watch options work. It's not like anyone is suing Ford or Dodge for only making accessories that work on their own cars and trucks. It's not like anyone can legitimately complain that Ford is anticompetitive because they aren't making themselves compatible with Dodge oil filters. If Apple did something anticompetitive to keep Android options from being good, then you probably have a winnable legal case. But it seems like Google, Samsung, and the other Android players are losing on their own merits. Apple is its own market from the perspective of app developers. The app developers can only get to iPhone users through the Apple App Store, so restricting access and charging high fees is anti-trust.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago> It's not like anyone is suing Ford or Dodge for only making accessories that work on their own cars and trucks. It's not like anyone can legitimately complain that Ford is anticompetitive because they aren't making themselves compatible with Dodge oil filters. You're conflating two different things here. One is, are their oil filters compatible? That isn't a problem; they can be incompatible. They're often incompatible even with other vehicles from the same manufacturer. Larger engines need larger oil filters etc. The other is, does the company prohibit compatibility? If a new company wants to make engines but not oil filters, so they make a car engine compatible with existing Ford oil filters, or someone wants to make oil filters for Fords even though they're not Ford, does Ford do anything to inhibit this? In general they do not, and if they did, that very much should be an antitrust violation.
- hyperbovine 2y agoI don't see how you can be a monopoly with <30% market share.
- dismalaf 2y agoApple has majority share in the US.
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoYou're conflating two different markets. Apple has less than 100% market share for phones. Apps and phone accessories are not phones, they're separate products made by separate entities. If Apple phones and Android phones were compatible then the apps would be addressing the same market. For example, phones from Samsung and phones from Xiaomi both run the same apps, so they're in the same market. However, phones from Apple and phones from Samsung do not run the same apps. They're different markets. And Apple has a monopoly on the former.
- jobs_throwaway 2y agoYou don't see how you can be a monopoly with nearly 2/3 market share and 2.5x market size of your next-largest competitor? You must not be very imaginative
- hyperbovine 2y agoSome other companies with similar market share: - Coca Cola - DoorDash - Adobe - Tesla - Canon digital cameras I guess we should break all them up too.
- int_19h 2y agoIf they abuse their market dominance, we absolutely should.
- hyperbovine 2y agoPlease precisely quantify how none of these companies do that except Apple.
- jimbokun 2y ago> refusing to acknowledge that Apple is its own market in and of itself. Is the market iOS devices or smart phones? I think the definition of "market" is usually one of the most difficult questions to answer in anti-trust litigation.
- josefresco 2y agoI have a very capable smartwatch and it's ridiculously bad how hobbled it is on iOS. I'm glad to see this article specifically highlight the issues, and how it's 100% Apple's intention to make non-Apple wearables on iOS terrible.
- cm2012 2y agoThis is apple's modus operandi. Hobble competitors even if it's anti-customer. Fill the gap themselves for higher profits.
- diggan 2y agoDon't forget the classic "Oh, that 3rd party app/feature is so popular, I bet we could build a identical/slightly less useful thing ourselves so people don't have to use other things than Apple software ever"
- neilv 2y agoIf necessary, you can even retroactively ban the competitor's app from the App Store that you control. As pretext, you can say the competitor's app is doing something now considered insecure or not privacy-respecting, or is not compliant with some new user experience or quality curation that you do.
- rickdeckard 2y agoConveniently, Apple's App Store Review Guidelines also include several rules that restrict apps from duplicating features that the OS already provides. So if they detect a trend early enough, they implement it as first-party feature, dry out the existing competitors while restricting new competitors to enter based on the App Store Review...
- threeseed 2y agoThe guideline says: "Apps that copy basic iPhone or iPad functionality (including but not limited to its UI, gestures, core features) will be rejected unless the app provides a clearly different purpose or adds unique functionality." Note the "basic" line. And there are plenty of Photos, Notes, Streaming etc apps so not seeing where this is being used to exclude competitors.
- Fokamul 2y ago[flagged]
- shuckles 2y agoCitation?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- vrosas 2y agoYou'll one day hear Apple's lawyers argue in court that "security" never meant cybersecurity, only share price security.
- singularity2001 2y agoor job security
- wffurr 2y agoIf only https://www.hrgrapevine.com/us/content/article/2024-08-29-tech-giant-shelves-books-workers-as-part-of-ongoing-strategic-shift https://www.hrgrapevine.com/us/content/article/2024-08-29-te...
- jisnsm 2y agoIf iOS only allows you to build a worse experience, then Apple customers will leave the platform for Android. The problem solves itself.
- Brainspackle 2y agoNo I won't, Android is not a good user experience. I'd rather buy an Apple Watch.
- kelnos 2y agoAnd this is exactly the problem. Apple presents many of their users with bad choices: either buy an Apple Watch and suffer from its downsides, or switch to Android, and suffer in other ways. Or stick with the iPhone, buy a third-party smartwatch, and suffer from and unnecessarily-crippled user experience. There's no technical reason it needs to be this way. Apple just prefers to be anti-competitive and increase their profits, than to give their users the as-close-to-ideal experience they want.
- giancarlostoro 2y agoYou couldn't pay me to go back to Android, having used Android from 2009-2020. Apple Watch is fantastic, I'm a little sad that they don't provide better integration capabilities to external devices. I can only assume that's another anti-competitive lawsuit brewing.
- Steve16384 2y agoIt doesn't if there are only two choices and consumers don't like either.
- shuckles 2y agoAnother company that would like Apple to donate R&D resources to them to add iOS API for free.
- JoshTriplett 2y agoAnother company that would like Apple to not expose functionality to their first-party ecosystem and refuse to expose it to third parties even with user consent. If the functionality isn't available to anyone, fine, so be it. If the functionality exists on the Apple Watch, it should be done through an API.
- shuckles 2y agoSurprised there are professional developers who seem to be clueless about the vast difference in the cost of developing 3p API versus internal only functions. The basic difference between public and private has been captured in language design for decades now.
- JoshTriplett 2y agoI'm well aware of the cost difference, but the cost of internal-only functions is potentially measured in antitrust actions. Microsoft, post-antitrust action, made a very careful point of ensuring new functionality in first-party products like Office only used things that had public APIs.
- shuckles 2y agoYeah it does seem like antitrust is the wedge employed by 3rd parties who would like Apple to do free R&D for them, most ironically by Spotify which holds are arguable monopoly on music streaming. I’m glad that antitrust enabled a rich ecosystem of Microsoft Office alternatives and competitors.
- JoshTriplett 2y agoApple certainly doesn't have to do free R&D for third parties. They could, instead, not ship features that work exclusively with other Apple products. Or, hey, there's also the other valid option of "don't be the exclusive gatekeeper of the platform", they're welcome to take that one too. When Apple goes up against governments over encryption, I'll cheer them on with everyone else. When Apple is engaging in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce) , I have zero sympathy for them.
- film42 2y agoiOS wearable integrations are bad, but somehow Meta Ray-Bans are very good. Voice assist to start a call, send a text, read a notification, etc. Did Meta get special access to do this?
- radlad 2y agoDoes it do anything that the linked article says it can't do?
- film42 2y ago> It’s impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to send text messages, or perform actions on notifications (like dismissing, muting, replying) and many, many other things. Unless I'm crazy, I think I've used my Meta Ray-Bans to do all of these things at some point. So is this a watch only limitation that Meta was able to avoid?
- nickthegreek 2y agoIt might be because Meta iOS app is handling some of that handoff and its not possible to do these action purely via the BT api? It seems like in the end they recognize if that had an iOS app they could accomplish some of their wishlist items. However, there are other valid critiques here.
- rickdeckard 2y agoSeems to be correct, according to [0] the user needs to link the Meta View app with WhatsApp, not sure if the link is then made on the cloud or on the local device...: "Use the Meta View app to connect Ray-Ban Stories and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses to WhatsApp on your phone." [0] https://faq.whatsapp.com/836703167795647?locale=en_US&cms_id=836703167795647 https://faq.whatsapp.com/836703167795647?locale=en_US&cms_id...
- kemayo 2y agoIt seems to say that it can do it: https://www.meta.com/help/ai-glasses/647079267216457/ https://www.meta.com/help/ai-glasses/647079267216457/
- sabellito 2y agoSome 6 years ago I bought new bluetooth headphones. Every time I'd put them on, my macbook would open apple music (I didn't even know it was installed). Every time. No way to disable it, I really tried. Stopped shy of doing some kernel stuff. Sold that laptop, and have never touched anything apple since. Probably never will. The hardware's good, everything else is an embarrassing mess. Sent from my Ubuntu.
- mrpippy 2y agoYour headphones were probably sending an AVRCP 'play' command every time they connect. This was a common problem with older car radios too.
- jandrese 2y agoNot only every time they connect, but every time they are paused or stopped too. My car has this problem. It was not possible to pause the music, it would always immediately restart play.
- CharlesW 2y agoIt's because your headphones were sending a Bluetooth "Play" command on connect (my Honda Odyssey does this as well). For anyone else with this problem, you can override this silly default in macOS using Privacy & Security > Bluetooth, adding Music, then turning off Bluetooth access for Music.
- jeremyjh 2y agoMusic isn't in the list of apps and I don't see any way to add it. I would love to fix this in my car radio.
- PokestarFan 2y agoThere should be a "+" button you can click and select any app. The Music app is located in the /Applications folder.
- seba_dos1 2y agoApple has been restricting iPhones from being awesome since 2007.
- bsimpson 2y agoRemembering the uproar when Apple said 3rd party apps would have to be web apps, but didn't ship the features needed to write good web apps on the first iPhone? The term PWA wasn't coined until 8 years later, and Apple has long been accused of hobbling its web stack to incite people to ship on the App Store and pay their 30% tithing.
- meatmanek 2y agoThe term PWA may not have been coined until 2015, but you could definitely save a webpage to your home screen on i(Pad)OS at least as early as 2010. Granted, it was pretty limited, but you could put an icon on your screen, have it open a web view that was somewhat separate from Safari, store data with localstorage, and generally look and feel kinda mostly like a native app.
- julianozen 2y agoi think this mightve been as early as 2008 even
- seba_dos1 2y ago2007 in fact, as this was the only way to write "apps" for the original iPhone.
- bfrog 2y agoI guess this is why their market share grows and grows, because the product is terrible and the competition is amazing. Or maybe reality is the opposite. That android phones that are supported by their vendor for maybe a year or two, have terrible battery life, allow any and all spyware, and generally suck aren't really comparable to the iPhone which effectively does the exact opposite? Or do you love being the product at Google?
- xyst 2y agoOne of the many reasons I have been exiting out of the Apple ecosystem. They are so damn hostile to any third party integration, reserve apis for first party usage, and give middle finger to developers with their abusive fee structure (Apple takes a 30% cut …). Only thing left is for my devices to age out (I am in deep with phone, watch, mbp, mba, and even Mac Studio M1 “ultra”)
- nehal3m 2y agoYou can always sell them, they hold their value pretty well.
- tmshapland 2y ago"So we’re going to make a damn iOS app." Love it.
- mns 2y agoSome of the things mentioned in the post seem to work just fine with Garmin watches. Maybe because Garmin is just bigger they have the resources to implement some of the things (like third party devs publishing various watch apps and faces that are in the Garmin store). Same with notifications, yes, you can't do actions from notifications, but I have notifications "hidden" or whatever that feature is if the phone is locked and they show up just fine on my Forerunner.
- nradov 2y agoReplying to text messages on Garmin watches doesn't work with iPhones. It works fine with Android. But Apple has restricted that messaging functionality to only their own watch in a monopolistic and consumer hostile move.
- drewg123 2y agoThe notification feature that I miss most from Android+Garmin on iOS+Garmin is the ability filter what apps notifications can go to my watch. Its apparently possible, as Coros seems to have done it. But after hearing repebble's complaints about not being able to do things that Garmin can do, I almost wonder if different vendors may be given different private api exceptions or something (just guessing, not an ios dev).
- dmitrygr 2y agoThis article is 100% weapons-grade FUD > It’s impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to [...] or perform actions on notifications (like dismissing, muting REALLY? Why not RTFM? https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/CoreBluetooth/Reference/AppleNotificationCenterServiceSpecification/Specification/Specification.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co... >Notification Actions > Starting with iOS 8.0, the NP can inform the NC of potential > actions that are associated with iOS notifications. On the > user’s behalf, the NC can then request the NP to perform an > action associated with a specific iOS notification. These API have exited for over a decade and plenty of other wearables use them. Yes there are some limits, but many fewer than the original article implies to create outrage
- croes 2y agoWhere is the part where you can reply to a message?
- etchalon 2y agoI'd assume it would be a notification action?
- croes 2y agoSeems there are only two actions: positive and negative. Hardly useable for a message reply.
- dmitrygr 2y agoOP said “ cannot do A or B”. I demonstrated how to do B, proving the original statement to be a lie. The fact that you still cannot do A irrelevant. Hyperbole has no place in technical discourse.
- croes 2y agoYou didn’t demonstrate that because >The NC must neither assume nor try to guess in advance the exact action performed on an iOS Notification, because these actions are based upon information unavailable to it, as well as other factors such as the ANCS version implemented by the NP. The NP guarantees that positive and negative actions are associated with results that do not surprise the user. So pebble app can’t explicitly say dismiss or mute but has to hope that the phone does that action on a given notification. Imagine the app says dismiss but the phone‘s real action is just a snooze. Press X to maybe dismiss doesn’t sound like a great functionality, does it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- wafflemaker 2y agoLol, you're asking for it by using apple. I'm still recommending Apple to family members (less support needed from me, and I can always say I have Android and can't use apple so I can't help). But you have to go all in. If you want non apple stuff, just use something else. And if you can use Linux etc., why are you using Apple? Other then being lazy, which is totally ok.
- infecto 2y agoI guess you could call it lazy, I value my time and have zero desire to tinker with the daily products I use. I am sure some enjoy it but I do not.
- layer8 2y agoAnd GP is saying that that’s totally okay.
- infecto 2y agoI am saying folks who use Linux do not know how to utilize their time well. It’s tongue in cheek at the commentary to the GP but hope that makes more sense to you.
- consteval 2y agoPeople say this about Linux but it’s not been my experience. Granted I’m 10 years deep now, but everything just works always and is exactly how I like it. Even basic things like menus changing doesn’t happen on Debian. I’m good to go. Windows? Provided it doesn’t shit the bed, which it often does, things change randomly for no reason and beyond your control. One day you boot up and boom - the UI for x, y, z is different. And there goes 10 hours spread over the next month while you relearn. iOS is fairly decent about this too.
- bigyabai 2y ago[flagged]
- mate143 2y ago[dead]
- rickdeckard 2y agoIf there's a case to make on Apple hindering a competitive landscape, then it would possibly be a case of violation of the European Union's DMA (Digital Markets Act), as Apple is not allowed to favor their own services over those of competitors in visibility, functionality, or integration within iOS. But the EU is a blunt instrument that needs to be sharpened sufficiently with explicit facts. And then still, possibly a very slow instrument... As for the US justice system.....not sure whether there is any interest to pursue such a case these days...
- bsimpson 2y agoApple has also shown its not shy about geofencing the remedies to only help people physically located in the EU's jurisdiction, with a billing address to match.
- rickdeckard 2y agoIndeed. But i.e. India followed with similar demands based on EU's DMA Regulation, and so could other countries then. In a ideal world US would lead the way, as it's the most influential market especially for US companies. But I don't expect this to happen...
- tacker2000 2y agoSimilar thing is going on with the Spotify Apple Watch app, probably so that people migrate to Apple Music... see this discussion, for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/1h6qmrw/spotify_music_app_is_so_so_so_bad/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/1h6qmrw/spotify...
- snotrockets 2y agoWith Spotify app, some issues seem to be due to Spotify themselves. For example, even when you explicitly download music to your watch, the app needs network connection to start playing. This seems to be explicit design decision on Spotify's part.
- coolspot 2y agoLikely a condition from IP holders to make sure the play is counted and paid for.
- kevincox 2y agoPennywise pound foolish and harming UX at the same time. They could just require that Spotify logs the plays and uploads them on the next connection. Resulting in more plays and more money. But instead they block it for the 0.1% of the time that the watch is lost, destroyed or reinstalled before that sync happens. And people wonder why piracy happens.
- _2d30 2y ago> Pennywise pound foolish and harming UX at the same time. They could just require that Spotify logs the plays and uploads them on the next connection. Resulting in more plays and more money. But instead they block it for the 0.1% of the time that the watch is lost, destroyed or reinstalled before that sync happens. Why are you just blindly accepting their vapid evidenceless postulation lol
- crwll 2y agoGarmin watches can start Spotify playback offline just fine. You need to have synced your playlist within last 30 days, IIRC, and that's it.
- mafuyu 2y agoANCS gang rise up
- rickdeckard 2y ago> "Apple’s “Watch Policy” annoys me, but not enough to switch to Android. I hope Apple will be forced to improve their compatibility with other watches." The conundrum of "[xyz] annoys me, but not enough to [do anything about it], yet I hope [Company] will be forced to improve [xyz]" So where is that 'force' expected to come from...?
- wlesieutre 2y agoIf there are effectively two choices and both of them do things you don’t like, “it’s your fault for not switching to the other one” isn’t a very useful argument
- rickdeckard 2y agoThe question is more, where is that 'force' expected to come from which should make them change their way? Just hopes and prayers?
- Nextgrid 2y agoRegulation? When a market is stuck in a local maximum, an external force would be beneficial to push it out of it.
- rickdeckard 2y agoExactly. But who should drive such regulation then, elected representatives which represent constituents who can't be bothered to push for it..? THAT'S the conundrum. The market urgently requires regulation, but it also became so convenient so fast and affects end-users only indirectly, so there is no sufficient momentum to drive this change...
- briandear 2y agoI don’t want Chuck Schumer dictating how tech should work. Most elected officials are idiots outside of the domain of politics.
- bsaul 2y agoThe whole iOS extension mechanism should be illegal. It's such a clear advantage to apple's own apps, i don't understand how nobody has every sued Apple about it.
- dcchambers 2y agoStuff like this is the reason iOS/iPadOS will never be serious general purpose computing platforms.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rahkiin 2y agoWhich they never advertised it to be. Nor is my toaster and my oven or my xbox
- bhelkey 2y ago~70% of the 8 billion people in this world use a smartphone [1]. It is the primary computer for a huge percentage of these people [2]. Comparing mobile phones to toasters, ovens and gaming consoles is disingenuous. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203734/global-smartphone-penetration-per-capita-since-2005/#:~:text=The%20global%20smartphone%20penet https://www.statista.com/statistics/203734/global-smartphone... [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-mobile-tablet https://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-mob...
- sbuk 2y agoIt's equally disingenuous to compare them to "general purpose computers" too, in that case. A primary computing device doesn't have to be a "general purpose computer".
- rahkiin 2y agoIt might be the primary communications device. So maybe we should look at our definition of computer in this context. As almost everything contains software programmable controllers these days, that cannot be the definition.
- _emacsomancer_ 2y ago(Though only in a small percentage of the world are those smartphones primarily iOS devices....)
- resource_waste 2y agoI read Darwin recently and he talks about how weak insects will use deception methods to compensate for their lack of strength and it reminded me of Apple. They arent the best, they are never 1st, they are 2nd or third or beyond. Instead they found niches in marketing. Read the word "Security" or "Privacy" in white and black text in their commercials, no actual claims on either. Just the words. They have stylish products with their celebrities, dancing people, and blue bubbles. None add to the strength to the product. In the LLM world, they've tricked people into thinking 'unified RAM' and integrated video cards are equivalent to an Nvidia GPU. Specifically on topic, iPhones seemed to always under perform in features. This is yet another example. Their track record makes it obvious, but most consumers won't notice. That is why the deception works. I used to be an Android Zealot who preached the immorality of Apple, but I genuinely stopped caring that other people were making mistakes and Apple was exploiting them. If anything, I take notes personally how to be more like Apple, save my strength and get positive outcomes.
- liuliu 2y agoI think, we fundamentally lack a mechanism to enforce secure / privacy aware APIs without resorting to trusted inner-circle type of things. I am already not comfortable with Apple picking winners (such as giving Zoom special entitlement but not the VOIP apps you want to distribute by your own). Apple trusting their own apps more than other apps is another symptom of this and it is not helping their anti-trust situation even if it is with good-will. And "giving people choice" won't work neither because people will just tap whatever checkbox you give them (the internet should never forget that Facebook SDK just forces to accept "The App is Tracking You" notification and most users tapped yes).
- wpm 2y agoQuicktime Player.app gets an entitlement called `com.apple.private.tcc.allow`, giving it unprompted access to the Camera, Microphone, and Screen Capture. An MDM administrator, managing a computer or device owned by an organization, cannot grant those permissions to anything without user consent. For good reason! So why the *fuck* does Apple think they're entitled to?
- judge2020 2y agoReplace MDM administrator with ‘malware author’ or ‘spy software’ to get your answer. There is functionally no difference between a regular company doing MDM wanting to bypass camera permission prompts and a hacker who has tricked/forced the user into enrolling into MDM. Now, replace ‘Apple’ with ‘malware author’. What’s the difference? Well, for one, a hacker has nothing to lose and everything to gain from snooping on your webcam. Meanwhile, if Apple mishandles this permission or used it to beam video data to HQ, there’s a high likelihood hundreds of millions of dollars of iPhone or Mac customers are lost, resulting in billions of dollars in stock value loss.
- Avamander 2y agoIt's not very trivial to manage an Apple device and Apple would shut down those ABM tenants real quick. Not to mention, supervision requires enrollment pre-setup, which is really difficult. So "just replace x with y" does not really work in this context, MDM is vastly more effort than you think and OP-s point still stands.
- m3kw9 2y agoIt’s likely a priority issue. They have limited software resources but have so many products to support and develop, they will like any company weight what fits their future roadmap and strategy. Saying they purposely hobble watch devs isn’t really true
- pat_space 2y agoMy Garmin Fenix 6 refused to stay connected to my iPhone without deleting the bluetooth device and re-adding it, until I enabled location services for Garmin Connect to Always Allow. This contradicts documentation but is the only way I could get it to work.
- m3kw9 2y agoApple: “It seems letting other watch devices have access to all the capabilities the Apple Watch has will commodize it. But it will make them happy. Let’s do it anyways, our shareholder shouldn’t mind us allowing our watch to get cannabalized”.
- sergiotapia 2y agoThe best decision I made was to switch to Linux Mint and Samsung Z Fold 6. I can't believe I was ever a fan of apple products. Hobbled walled garden products. If you're in tech you should not use apple products. Unless you're building an iphone app.
- skydhash 2y agoI got on the apple train on Mojave. Before that I was enticed by iOS 6. It was a good platform. But now it just have too much restrictions and other weirdness like not being able to delete apple’s apps, writing files on network shares, not able to adjust system fonts (like the menu bar). While I still keep the Mac for professional purpose, I move over to fedora.
- vultour 2y agoI've had iPhones since the 3GS and not once have I seen a convincing argument for why I should switch. I need my phone to make calls, send text messages, and to be a 2FA device. The secure "hobbled walled garden" you're talking about is a selling point.
- sergiotapia 2y ago1. i can install any apk i want 2. i can transfer files by just plugging in my phone to any usb 3. better battery, i can go to 0% plug in and in 30 seconds turn my phone on. on iphone i have to wait at least 30 minutes. 4. actual innovation in hardware like a foldable
- vessenes 2y agoI guess I’ll take the contra here on messages integration — moving a message over BLE to untrusted hardware and worse accepting them back into iMessage is a massive, massive change in the security boundary and therefore security architecture and therefore security promises that apple makes on iMessage. I do not believe average smartwatch users understand what they’d be doing if they got this. I do not believe vendors integrating with such a thing can do it safely, or even that all vendors integrating are good actors. One reason iMessage is less of a total cesspit than SMS is that the ecosystem is closed, and makes automation difficult. It used to be impossible nearly, and in that era we had almost no iMessage spam. Now it’s difficult, and we have moderate iMessage spam. But adding hooks to make this automation easy, and worse, leave the trust environment as a feature is just wrong.
- frollogaston 2y agoThe only hard part of automating either iMessage or SMS spam is getting a clean account to spam with. The input source is easy.
- tadfisher 2y agoOpening up a BLE API for iMessages is not going to impact iMessage spam whatsoever. It will impact Apple Watch sales though.
- agloe_dreams 2y agoHey, there we are. That's exactly it. You've always been able to use Applescript to send iMessages on a Mac.
- Nextgrid 2y ago> moving a message over BLE to untrusted hardware and worse accepting them back into iMessage is a massive, massive change in the security boundary Anyone can already screenshot iMessages and move them out of the "security boundary"... which btw doesn't exist much, as if you have any Mac connected to your iCloud account then those messages are being synced to an SQLite DB any process running under your user can access.
- etchalon 2y agoI have a hard time sorting out the difference between a "restriction" and an "unwillingness to devote resources to making easy".
- kennysoona 2y agoRestricting something isn't the opposite of devoting resources to make something easy. This is a false, and very strange, dichotomy.
- etchalon 2y agoI never said it was the opposite?
- closetohome 2y agoI can't help but feel echoes of the 2015-era Pebble trying to compete with the Apple Watch, and the lessons learned from that. I have an Apple Watch, I've been wearing one for ten years at this point. All I use it for is notifications, time, weather, and music control. I'm more than happy to buy a tinker-friendly smartwatch that does just that, and I don't think I'm alone. I hope these guys don't kill themselves trying to feature-match, and just lean into the inherent advantages of their platform.
- pcdoodle 2y agoAdding a comment in support. This seems like a really cool product and it sucks that Apple is gatekeeping features they use in their own crappy watch that needs to be charged all the time...
- mentalgear 2y agoanother illegal walled garden method
- jms703 2y agoI do not get smartwatches after having 2 of them. Back to a simple digital dumb watch.
- abhinavsharma 2y agobetween the restrictions, apple dropping the ball on AI, and Gemini slowly improving, the idea of Google significantly leapfrogging Apple in end-user experience is not that unfathomable any more.
- rednafi 2y agoThere's nothing new here. From AirDrop to AirPods, Apple's MO is to lock you into their ecosystem and be as belligerent as possible toward any non-Apple gizmo. Couple that with social and network effects, and you have a perfect formula for monopolizing a market without continuously improving the tech.
- briandear 2y agoI like the ecosystem. If you don’t, choose another ecosystem.
- csours 2y ago"Love it or leave it" - why not make it better?
- shuckles 2y agoAllowing support for a rich ecosystem of mediocre smart watches does not move the needle on making it better for me personally. And Apple probably has done the market research to confirm most of their customers are like me and not like Pebble users.
- csours 2y ago> And Apple probably has done the market research to confirm most of their customers are like me and not like Pebble users. I'm sure. The customers they do not have are like Pebble users, and they don't want customers like Pebble users. They want customers like Apple Watch users. It is a bit 'masque of the red death' to defend anti-competitive practices, is all I'm saying.
- shuckles 2y agoHow is it anti-competitive for Apple to pick its own customers? A decade ago, Android used to argue that open was better. Now, people seem to argue that closed should be illegal.
- kmeisthax 2y ago> It’s very difficult to enable other iOS apps to work with Pebble. Basically iOS does not have the concept of ‘interprocess communication’(IPC) like on Android. Actually, let me make this worse. iOS has plenty of IPC, you're just not allowed to define your own IPC protocols. IPC is solely for your app to talk to Apple's code, not for apps to talk to each other.
- vladcodes 2y agoI completely get the point, and it's a shame. Apple is bad because it doesn't clearly announce this kind of limitation for third-party hardware and software before selling their phones. And I don't think Pebble or Garmin will either. Why not just limit your market to a platform that fits well? That would be the fairest solution for a customer.
- tech234a 2y agoAs a side note: Phone Link on Windows does allow replying to texts/iMessages on a connected iPhone. However, group messages are not handled properly, and message history from before the connection started isn't available. I believe it's available on an API that is only available on an older version of Bluetooth that is not low-energy. It can also sync contacts and do phone calls. Over BLE, it is possible to receive and delete notifications, as well as view and control media playback/volume/metadata.
- peter_vukovic 2y agoApple is simply continuing to do what Apple does best - building strong products and protecting their ecosystem. Does that mean some vendors will be treated unfairly? Of course. Does it mean Apple users will remain happy? Absolutely. If there is one OS that is anti-tinkering by design it is iOS, and yet people keep criticizing this intentional design decision that forms a large part of Apple’s moat.
- Osiris 2y agoClearly not ALL users are happy because users of non-Apple watches are unhappy that their watch can do things with Android it's not allowed to do on iOS. It's not reasonable to make a blanket absolutist statement like that.
- mulderc 2y agoI guess I don't see why Pebble, or any smart watch, should need a phone at all. The watch should be able to connect to wifi and/or cellular by itself. We should be able to run full apps on the watch itself.
- Majromax 2y agoBattery life. Radios are energy-intensive, and the processing required to run "full apps" is also often pretty steep. In the meantime, while battery chemistries are getting better space is very much at a premium on one's wrist. From the other recently-posted article, the new Pebble watches are targeting 30-day battery lives between charges. That would be unthinkable for a watch that manages its own wifi/cellular connections.
- mulderc 2y agoI had a pebble and the limitations of the device drove me insane. I don't care if my smart watch has 30 days of battery, I care about what it does and that I can do the things I want to do on it. The Apple watch has wifi and celluar and I can do tons of things on it without my phone around. Many of the apps I use have essentially full apps on device which allows me a lot more freedom from my phone and flexibility with my watch.
- bhelkey 2y agoTwo reasons: One, adding hardware to connect to WiFi and cellular increases size and power requirements. Notably, the new Pebble 's battery is projected to last 30 days. Two, people use phones. They want their watch to work with their phone instead of around it.
- mulderc 2y agoWiFi and Cellular are avialble on the smallest of apple watches. I don't care if my smartwatch can go 30 days between a charge, none of that matters if it can't do what I want it to do. I had a pebble back in the day and I thought it was useless as it was such a limited device and it sounds like they want to replicate that experience. I'm happy the people that want such a device are getting it, but I don't get the appeal and want a device that can do thing.
- TMWNN 2y agoAs I wrote on Reddit <https://np.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1jea1k6/apple_restricts_pebble_from_being_awesome_with/mih6w6q/?context=3 https://np.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1jea1k6/apple_restric...> to someone else critiquing the post: ---- > he’s going to opine about how Apple is “anti-competitive,” and “evil,” Complete with obligatory Trump mention. I haven't owned a Pebble but have long heard how nice they are. That said, this is wrong: >It’s impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to send text messages, or perform actions on notifications (like dismissing, muting, replying) and many, many other things. My Amazfit Balance lets me dismiss iOS notifications. I don't know how Amazfit's Zepp app enables this functionality; all I know is that it works. Its integration with iOS is not ideal or complete; for example, although I can take and make phone calls with its mic and speaker, I can't talk to Siri through it despite my ancient $20 running headset being able to do so. But Balance's other advantages are more than enough for me to go with it over an Apple Watch.
- sod 2y agoI used an apple watch since the first one, updated twice, but stopped using it a few months ago. Siri got slower an more unreliable. Automatic sport detection became annoying. And still having to charge it every single day became pretty old. I miss being able to pay with my watch without having to unlock my phone. But thats about it. Anything else about that product just became annoying. I'm 100% certain that if 3rd party watches could integrate like apple watch could, that apple watch could be way better. But the lack of alternatives conceals how mediocre of a product it became. I wish apple wasn't such a control freak.
- lukevp 2y agoThe ultra only needs to be charged for like 45 mins every couple days. It’s nice for the “find my phone” button and for getting alerts when my phone is in my pocket.
- pipeline_peak 2y agoThey don't even offer the same support with BT headphones as their AirPods. Why on earth would they support something that could be a threat to their watches? What type of company do you people think Apple is, one that pleases hackers at the expense of their competition?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- manmal 2y ago> Some features will appear first on our Android app, and then eventually we’ll add them to the iOS app. This is because the majority of our development team uses Android phones, and generally we’re building things for ourselves, so naturally Android comes first. Up to that paragraph I sympathized. Sometimes it does feel like Apple doesn’t care one bit about me, an iOS developer. But, as a user, I really don’t care what phones the devs use. I use an iPhone and now I feel like I‘d be a second class citizen because of this paragraph. Not because Apple’s restrictions are unnecessarily bad, but because the devs just care less. I guess I‘d go for an Apple Watch instead. (Was a first gen Pebble owner btw)
- bhelkey 2y agoApple creates significant roadblocks for 3rd party accessories. Android does not. Is it really surprising that developers who love building third party accessories would choose Android?
- manmal 2y agoThey chose to make an iOS app though, and, it seems to be a second class citizen.
- bhelkey 2y agoThe US Department of Justice is currently suing Apple for this exact reason [1]. They claim that Apple imposes restrictions on every non-Apple watch. Users then prefer the Apple Watch not because Apple made it better but because Apple made all other watches worse. If you are frustrated that Pebble takes longer to develop around artificial restrictions, I would direct those frustrations at the company creating the restrictions not at Pebble. [1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-apple-monopolizing-smartphone-markets https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...
- manmal 2y agoHave you even read my original comment? I‘m criticizing their internal stance towards the iOS platform, and not the feature set.
- gxs 2y ago> I don’t want to see any tweets or blog posts or complaints or whatever later on about this. I’m publishing this now so you can make an informed decision about whether to buy a new watch or not. If you’re worried about this, the easiest solution is to buy an Android phone. Agree or disagree with what he's saying, he sounds like a petulant child
- briandear 2y ago> If you’re worried about this, the easiest solution is to buy an Android phone. The easiest solution is to buy Apple Watch.
- gslepak 2y ago> If you’re worried about this, the easiest solution is to buy an Android phone. Readers might be interested in our Ultimate iOS to GrapheneOS Migration Guide and Review: https://blog.okturtles.org/2024/06/the-ultimate-ios-to-grapheneos-migration-guide-and-review/ https://blog.okturtles.org/2024/06/the-ultimate-ios-to-graph...
- piyuv 2y agoNice guide! Immich should be added for Photos imo
- _emacsomancer_ 2y ago(this is excellent!)
- conradev 2y agoReminds me of the time I wrote a jailbreak tweak for iPhone to send more types of notifications to Pebble back in 2013: https://www.engadget.com/2013-02-14-hack-brings-all-iphone-notifications-to-pebble-watch.html https://www.engadget.com/2013-02-14-hack-brings-all-iphone-n... https://github.com/conradev/btnotificationenabler https://github.com/conradev/btnotificationenabler This has been a problem for a long time.
- Nifty3929 2y agoI think people forget that Apple is not making devices for the Hackernews community. They are making devices for people that just want something that works pretty well and has reasonable security - even to the extent of protecting them from themselves. They have other things to do with their time than learn about security vulnerabilities and how to avoid them. They want to just click 'yes' on every popup and expect things to keep working. Because they know that they are not qualified to answer that yes/no popup question. And those people do not care much about lock-in and walled gardens. They are not interested in jailbreaking and sideloading apps. They've never heard of Pebble or have any interest in it. This is 90% of humanity, including people we all know and love. Apple serves these people pretty well.
- zamadatix 2y agoThe post has a section regarding these concepts and why the author disagrees, why not respond to that directly instead? I tend to side somewhat with what the author is saying: they can be both relatively true statements and a way to abuse market power at the same time so identifying it as fitting the mold of one or the other is only the start of the conversation. People against the practices tend to care more about the latter and I think that's why we've seen the EU, Japan, and now Brazil regulate the behavior based on that rather than asking "what's Apple's target usage type".
- ketzo 2y ago> Apple claims their restrictions on competitors are only about security, privacy, crafting a better experience etc etc. At least that’s what they tell you as they tuck you into bed. Ah, yes, the author is clearly interested in an in-depth discussion of the tradeoffs in allowing 3rd-party users access to data that you tell your customers is 100% always encrypted.
- zamadatix 2y agoThe HN comments are for our discussion. If you choose to latch on to portions of initial posts or comments like the latter for swipes than that's the kind of discussion we get to have. If you choose to focus most of the discussion on other lines like: > I personally don’t agree - they’re clearly using their market power to lock consumers into their walled ecosystem. This causes there to be less competition, which increases prices and reduces innovation. DOJ seems to agree. instead then the quality of discussion here will match.
- freddydumont 2y agoI wonder what people mean here by "security promises" made by Apple. There is no such thing. iMessage has been targeted for years with zero click exploits, most notably by the NSO group. Apple’s restrictions aren’t meant to protect consumers, their purpose is to protect Apple’s profits.
- teekert 2y agoMy current iPhone 12 mini was my first iPhone. Before they it was a OnePlus3, before that a Lumia 800. I tasted it all. I think it’s back to Android after this, specifically a GrapheneOS Pixel. It’s the sweet spot for the modern hacker. And I’m gonna have a great Pebble experience or some other cool watch via GadgetBridge.
- MPSFounder 2y agoI like Apple. But this is exactly why regulation is needed. I often meet people (including knowledgeable engineers etc) who think companies will do the best thing. Just like Flint did the best thing by poisoning their own people. Apple is a for profit company, and it will debilitate any 3rd party device. That is because by killing its market, profit is to be made by buying it for cheap. It's that simple folks. The end user can go and screw themselves, as far as they are concerned.
- firefax 2y agoThis sounds noncompetitive, and bad, but can I just say I don't see the appeal of these watches? I much prefer a simple casio. I got around Europe with a CA-53W. I did currency conversion, and had an alarm so I didn't have to leave my phone unattended in a 10 bed hostel. I find my mind is clearer not using these things, not constantly bombarded with pings, and instead mindfully checking the phone occasionally to see if I missed any texts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_CA-53W https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_CA-53W
- jdalgetty 2y agoCouldn’t something like blue bubbles solve this issue?
- Aachen 2y agoSay what? What's blue bubbles? Edit: wait, is this this imessage thing about coloring messages by transport method? I never used/saw it so didn't immediately recognise what you meant, if this is what you meant
- xenodium 2y ago> It’s impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to send text messages From Apple's docs: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102842 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102842 "Message Access Profile (MAP 1.4) This profile is compatible with iPhone 5s and later. Message Access Profile allows devices to exchange messages. It's used to receive incoming message notifications on connected vehicles. iOS and iPadOS support these MAP functions on connected vehicles: - Receive incoming message notifications - Reply to incoming messages - Compose new messages - Browse message inbox - Mark messages as read" The documentation talks about "connected vehicles", but can totally be implemented by any Bluetooth accessory.
- alphan0n 2y ago> Every accessory that is compatible with a device and supports MAP must: >•.. >•.. >•Not provide a user interface for sending messages. Devices do not support sending messages using MAP. From: “Accessory Design Guidelines for Apple Devices” [0] [0] https://www.bluetooth.com/wp-content/uploads/attachments/BluetoothDesignGuidelines.pdf https://www.bluetooth.com/wp-content/uploads/attachments/Blu...
- xenodium 2y agoIt's been a little while since I've worked in the space, but it's worth checking a newer revision as this wording may no longer be present https://developer.apple.com/accessories/Accessory-Design-Guidelines.pdf https://developer.apple.com/accessories/Accessory-Design-Gui... From a technical standpoint, there is no limitation for an accessory to implement the profile.
- otikik 2y agoFrequent iPhone user here. Don’t care about iMessage a little bit.
- johnisgood 2y agoRelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43400989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43400989
- legitster 2y agoNot too long ago it was revealed that Apple's supposedly secure protocol for their Airpods entirely relied on plaintext keys locked to the hardware. Based on the quality of their software products, I am not surprised. The Apple razor: "Never attribute to security that which can be adequately be explained by incompetence."
- standardUser 2y agoI know people love Apple products, as do I, but at a certain point it must get exhausting arguing that the wealthiest company with the largest market share is also, somehow, the one that should be exempt from anti-trust action and/or exempt from developing simple 3rd party integrations.
- captainmuon 2y agoI wonder how much of this is policy, and how much is actually a technical limitation. For example, could you build an app that would not pass app store review, that would be able to send SMS or manipulate notifications? If so you could just "install" it yourself with Xcode.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- incanus77 2y agoWhenever I go to this one restaurant, they insist on feeding me the bread that they make. I bring my own dough, but they won't let me into the kitchen to use their equipment. It's a hobbled experience and they are doing it entirely in the name of increased profits. The bread could be awesome! The problem is, I want to eat at this restaurant. They are ruining my bread experience.
- bigyabai 2y agoThis is more like shopping for bread, selecting the bread you want, taking it home, slicing off a piece and being told you can't eat it since it didn't come from the right store. It's all just software. You can download IPA files onto your iPhone, just not install them without an arbitrary feature-flag enabled.
- tonymet 2y agoin the 90s there were no APIs you would just debug resident memory and network buffers to reverse engineer the API & IPC Am I old or do people have higher expectations now?
- ferbivore 2y agoThe author of this article was also the CEO of Beeper. They did just that and released an iMessage client for Android in December 2023. Apple proceeded to ban users of that client, launched a smear campaign against the company and implemented countermeasures until Beeper gave up on the whole endeavour. Apple has lots of options at their disposal to frustrate any attempts to reverse engineer their APIs, and have shown they're willing to go above and beyond in defending their walled garden. If all else fails, every Apple device newer than 2018 has a secure enclave and verified boot, so they could just enforce an encrypted channel between the enclave - which will be able to attest that the device is running latest iOS or macOS with all DRM measures enabled - and iMessage servers. The only reason they don't do that already is the number of users on older devices, but that number gets lower and lower each year.
- tonymet 2y agoi wasn't aware of the Beeper affiliation that's helpful context. a good college try.
- omneity 2y agoFirst with Beeper and now with Pebble. I see a pattern here.
- _atyler_ 2y agoThis makes sense for large-scale deployments where cost control is paramount, but I wonder how it holds up in environments with unpredictable traffic patterns. Have you found any practical workarounds for the lag introduced by dynamic scaling? In my experience, the trade-off between cost efficiency and real-time performance isn’t always worth it.
- fudged71 2y agoDidn't Eric run into the same thing at Beeper?
- xfz 2y agoThis is why the only Apple device I'll buy is a MacBook Pro, and even then if they wall it off as badly as their other products I'll reconsider.
- timwis 2y agoI degoogled my life out of principle—that one was about privacy. I feel strongly about this one too (in fact I just migrated from kindle to kobo for similar reasons), but where else is there to go? Some rooted android phone with Google play services disabled, where lots of apps aren't available and it's a struggle to get everything to work? (Genuine question!)
- _emacsomancer_ 2y agoAn answer with a catch: I ran rooted android phones for a long time, but have for the past few years been on GrapheneOS, which doesn't require Google Play, but allows you to use it while sandboxing it (so, harm reduction), and it's much less of a struggle now than it used to be. The catch is that, at least currently, GrapheneOS only works on (Google) Pixel phones. [On Kobos:— I agree on Kobo vs Kindle, and like Kobos a lot: but partially because I don't actually have to use Kobo's software if I don't want to. (See KOReader[0] and NickelMenu[1].) [0:] https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/koreader/koreader [1:] https://github.com/pgaskin/NickelMenu https://github.com/pgaskin/NickelMenu ]
- umbra07 2y agoMy Kindle Paperwhite 5th gen is rooted and runs KOReader. It's not a great solution - you still have very little freedom, Amazon frequently patches root methods - and you might be waiting months for someone to find a working root method, and if you accidentally update - bye bye, root/KOReader. But it is a solution.
- _emacsomancer_ 2y agoYeah, I think KOReader started out for Kindle first, and then added Kobo (and then other things - works on Android for one, and KOReader is typically what I use if I'm reading on my phone too). I just went with Kobos from the start because it seemed like there were fewer problems with Kobos w.r.t. getting locked in/out of things than with Kindles, though Kobos are harder to get hold of (outside of Canada, I suppose) than Kindles.
- bfrog 2y agoMore like Apple restricts data being shared with 3rd party devices as it then loses all hope of curtailing abuse. As someone who uses Apple because of their MO is not selling everything about me to advertisers this is great news.
- bigyabai 2y agoYet Apple is fine letting users browse Safari with an unfiltered internet. If their APIs can't facilitate safe permissions for user data, maybe they need to re-configure their security model to look more like the Mac. UNIX solved this decades ago.
- kemayo 2y agoApple supports content-blockers for Safari. They have since 2015. Would it have been better if they did it sooner? Sure! But the iPhone has currently had officially supported content-blocking for longer than it lacked it.
- bigyabai 2y agoYou have misread my comment.
- bfrog 2y agoI wasn't aware safari allowed unfettered access to my phone and provided that to completely untrustworthy web apps and javascript. You have a source for this information? Would love to read more.
- bigyabai 2y agoI wasn't aware that Apple could design a privacy model that doesn't depend on their direct curation. If Safari, iMessage and YouTube are acceptable services, why is an alternative App Store not?
- skurilyak 2y agoFor iOS compatibility, consider this architecture: - Swift UI layer for Apple-compliant UI/UX - Zig core library (as XCFramework) for watch communication - Data processing WebAssembly runtime for watchface interpretation This avoids Pebble's original JS compiler workaround while still enabling customizable watchfaces within Apple's restrictions The WASM engine stays within App Store guidelines by interpreting watchfaces as data rather than executable code TL;DR to avoid this: iOS App (Swift UI) <-> Zig Core Library (XCFramework) <-> WebAssembly Runtime (for watchfaces)
- JaggerJo 2y agoIn Europe Apple was forced to allow side loading + alternative app stores. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/117767 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/117767 Might be possible to do more (like call private apis) when apps don't need to pass app review.
- TheDong 2y ago"side loading" in the EU still requires you to have your app reviewed and notarized by apple, which means you can't call private APIs. You also still need to pay $100/year developer fee for your app to continue to be side-loadable (otherwise they revoke the notarization), and need to pay the €0.50 "core technology fee" per side-load to apple after a free allowance of side-loads. I doubt it's going to help pebble since they'll have to pay more for users to side-load the app than to install it from the app store. https://doesioshavesideloadingyet.com/ https://doesioshavesideloadingyet.com/
- JaggerJo 2y agoHah, I'm not so sure about what happens during automatic notarisation. Sideloading would at least allow JIT compilation. The fee only applies to alternative app stores, not simple apps.
- rambambram 2y agoThere's something about the title that irks me the wrong way. X restricts Y from being awesome. Apple also restricts me from being awesome because they didn't give me a million dollar. I get what the message is and I think I agree with Pebble on the iPhone being more closed off, but putting the blame on some outside thing for yourself not being awesome just feels immature. It's just as easy to turn it around: by developing the iPhone in the first place and getting it in the hands of a lot of people, Apple makes it possible for Pebble to be at least close to awesome.
- burnte 2y ago> Apple also restricts me from being awesome because they didn't give me a million dollar. This is a disingenuous argument. The two are nothing alike. One is about how they artificially limit their platform for their own dominance, and the other is literally just giving away money. One hurts consumers and competitors, the other is a nonsense expectation that no reasonable person has.
- rambambram 2y agoThat disingenuous argument is an example, of course. I already put that inside my argument. It's the chosen words that irk me. Apple does things, yes. But it not only restricts Pebble, as they make it seem, it restricts everybody.
- bitpush 2y agoI dont fault Apple. A company exists to make maximum money. Most monopolistic actions look like normal business decision, dare I say, even obvious. In this case, Apple is 100% exhibiting those tendencies. They are not acting maliciously, but their actions have that effect.
- bitpush 2y agoSometimes I wonder whether people are willfully ignorant, or just simply trying to pick a fight. Please read what you wrote yourself, and put yourself in the shoes of someone who might actually be affected. If you cant think of any failure cases ("edge cases", in programming parlance), please read on - You've essentially reduced every monopolistic tendancies companies exhibit into a positive thing. - Amazon restricting smaller third-party vendors - according to you, not a problem - Microsoft ensuring their favored browser (IE) is successful unfairly - according to you, not a problem. Those are just 2 examples I could think of at the top of my head.
- IceHegel 2y agoFeels like we’re getting all the downsides of Jobs’ Apple without the upsides. They aren’t innovating inside the walled garden anymore. Privacy is a real issue and Tim Cook deserves credit for his stance, but if apple gave devs good apis security and privacy could actually be enhanced throughout the ecosystem.
- yalogin 2y agoI empathize with both Pebble and Apple here. We all understand the issue from Pebble's point of view. For Apple though, security will be lost by allowing one bad actor. To allow an external watch they need to set up a full org for interoperability. Every app/service on the phone or for that matter anywhere in their ecosystem must be designed and potentially reimplemented to allow for outside interaction. That puts a whole new spin on security and privacy requirements. Yeah regulation is one way to force them to prioritize, but outside of that I cannot see them supporting these.
- gkoberger 2y agoI feel like Eric's full-time mission has become fighting Apple's propriety bend. His last company, Beeper, was basically also built on reverse engineering Apple's system very much against its will.
- ocdtrekkie 2y agoGenerally speaking I agree and accept everything here, except the idea that 40% of the respondents "still" use an iPhone: I switched to one, because Android is absolutely atrocious for privacy and security, and running a hacked up custom OS is no longer something I have spoons for. I long for a better alternative, but until then, yeah, here I am accepting my current PineTime is... a little bit worse, until Tim Sweeney manages to bust up Tim Cook's little garden.
- hnlurker22 2y agoI'm not a big fan of Apple, but this has to be the sleaziest marketing technique. Poor product. Poor marketing. Founders stuck in 2010.
- sidcool 2y agoThere has to be an anti competitive angle to this.
- nullbio 2y agoHopefully, AI generation will get to a point where people can very easily generate a strong (secure) open-source competitor to iOS with equally good UX and ease of use.
- lou1306 2y agoLeast pipe-dreamy AI comment on HN
- michaelsshaw 2y agoI genuinely don't see a reason to use apple products, particularly professionally, other than developing slop for Apple consumers Their absolute lockdown nature simply makes them inferior devices, and sorry but, any excuse for non-free general purpose computers and (esp.)phones is seriously asinine.
- lasergyro 2y agoBluetooth does not inspire trust, but neither does Apple closed source software; iMessage has failed pretty badly for me, in that it I can’t send a SMS to a previously registered with iMessage phone number.
- pyrale 2y agoThe technical illiteracy of comments defending apple here with remarks about spam is staggering for hn. Ble is a type of network communication that is only used for short distances, in order to save energy. We’re talking about a few meters, here. The goal of the feature would be for people to pair their device with their iphone, something which users can do explicitly, ensuring that only their device works with their iphone. Pairing an iphone with a third party device is already something that apple does, for instance in the case of personal hotspot.
- dzogchen 2y agoWhat Apple is doing should be illegal.
- maxehmookau 2y agoSecurity arguments aside (apple has infinite money, they can solve any problem that they want to and they regularly solve harder technical problems than this when it's financially prudent for them to do so), this is hugely anti-competitive. My wife loves her Garmin as it's just a better sports watch than an Apple Watch, no matter what Apple say, but the integration with the iPhone is poor. It's about time Apple opened up integration with 3rd party watches. They could still vet it with human-reviewed capabilities, the same as they do with Tap to Pay with iPhone and Family Sharing APIs, but they choose not to.
- HexPhantom 2y agoApple's approach to 3rd-party smartwatches feels like watching someone build a beautiful bridge and then pulling up the drawbridge so no one else can cross
- amelius 2y agoBreak them open like we did with Bell telephony. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System PS, why keep people defending this locked down consumer brand?
- uni_baconcat 2y agoBut Apple is neither monopoly nor infrastructure company. Bell telephony has no relevance in this case.
- amelius 2y agoThey run infrastructure (iMessages is communication infrastructure). And you don't need to be a strict monopoly to be subject to antitrust law.
- danielenick89 2y agoI've bought a Mac for the first time in my life after 15 or more years on Linux because the hardware is superior than pcs. Software sucks, not sure how people can live with that, especially tech people. I suffer every day poor and weird design decisions. Phone side, I'm an Android user and I've been living with iphone users in the last 10 years, and I must say the software in iphones is getting comparatively worse and worse. I believe avg app (probably developers) quality is a bit higher, but they usually fall behind functionality wise, and you pay well for that small quality gap. Friends who switched to iphone recently are now switching back. I'm not an average user, but I can see how software quality in apple is going down and affecting real users. Even iphone aficionados are starting to notice, which says a lot.
- michpoch 2y ago> Software sucks, not sure how people can live with that, especially tech people. Like, what in particular? I use Macs for both personal and work activities (software eng) and MacOS has been vastly superior to both Ubuntu and Windows I used before. 0 blue screen type of issues, zero hardware incompatibility, zero issues after system updates (looking at you Ubuntu!).
- yapyap 2y ago“ You can’t easily side load apps onto an iPhone. That means we have to publish the app on the iPhone appstore. This is a gigantic pain because Apple. Every update comes with the risk that a random app reviewer could make up some BS excuse and block the update” eh. nowadays it’s easier, at least in the EU
- lou1306 2y agoGood to point out the anti-competitive practices by Apple, but some of the complaints are a bit far-fetched and do not really help the point the author is making, and/or they do not seem to match my experience with wearables. For instance, I understand Pebble is targeted to hackers, but how is lack of sideloading such a big pain point? How come my Fitbit (that I absolutely long to exchange for a new Pebble when its time comes) _can_ display my Whatsapp notifications even without full lockscreen previews? Also: > As an aside, back at Pebble, we went to crazy lengths to find a way to let Pebble users to send text messages from Pebble. Why would you... Do that? No 3rd party can do that: you are on a level playing field. A kludge like the one described is not going to give you an edge over the competition. And it is exactly the kind of kludge that may rub App Store reviewers the wrong way. Much pain, no gain. Just invest your limited resources on making Pebble the best 3rd-party watch on the market, and pray/lobby for Apple to open up its APIs.
- zevon 2y agoCan anybody explain to me in simple terms the argument about opening the floodgates for spam on iMessage if Apple would lower their restrictions? I just don't get it. If true, wouldn't this mean that every other messenger app with fewer restrictions or even alternative clients would have a massive spam problem? Anecdotally, I can't really confirm that.
- dns_snek 2y agoStart with the conclusion that Apple's actions are necessary and morally good, find a reasonable-sounding but ultimately weak technical explanation and confidently present it as the only solution, then fearmonger less technical users into accepting the preconceived solution with all of its drawbacks using anecdotes and hyperbole. Lastly, ignore or dismiss any evidence that invalidates your preconceived conclusions, like the fact that these "floodgates" have always been open [1] and yet people credit non-existent floodgates for solving the spam problem. Anecdotally, the amount of spam I receive across Signal and Telegram is zero, and SMS is very close to 0, maybe one SMS every few weeks. [1] https://documenter.getpostman.com/view/765844/UV5RnfwM#0d8e0e67-fa3b-4446-aa2c-062dca2ce4cd https://documenter.getpostman.com/view/765844/UV5RnfwM#0d8e0...
- Razengan 2y ago> we have to publish the app on the iPhone appstore. Every update comes with the risk that a random app reviewer could make up some BS excuse and block the update. uhhh and if there wasn't any reviewing, every update would come with a risk of malware to the users.
- madeofpalk 2y agoApp Store reviews does not reduce malware - things slip through Apple's review process all the time. The iOS security features such as the sandbox is what makes iOS safe to run third party apps.
- Razengan 2y agoYes, but that opposing argument could be made, and it's better to have some gate than none, even if it allows everything by default. For example, apps that are found to be malicious could be revoked later.
- randall 2y agoit’s funny that i actually want a pebble with fewer features than the apple watch. i got an oura and haven’t been wearing one in forever… and i actually just miss the watch part. 30 day battery life is amazing.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tgtweak 2y agoThis is pretty much the hallmark of antitrust/monopolistic behavior - apple watch (and airpods) are a significant contribution to Apple's bottom line - by restricting these functions under the guise of security or optimization, and offering them only via privileged abi, and by controlling a sizeable share of the smartphone market, they can effectively kill and stifle competition - even to devices that aren't under Apple's control which is a key case to understanding why this behavior is harmful. If Pebble can't make a functional product work for 40% of their addressable market, it may make their business model impossible. It's impossible to argue that this isn't intentional and to make the case that this isn't impacting competition, innovation and consumer choice here. Hopefully someone takes Apple to task over this. If it can be done on Android without jeopardizing the security or optimizations of the phone - it can be done on iOS.
- CrossVR 2y agoI feel sorry for Apple users who advocate for a more open ecosystem as they are always met with outright hostility and told they should stop using Apple. As if you don't deserve to use Apple hardware if you don't agree with everything that Apple does.
- skue 2y agoIronically, I’ve read through many of the top comments and although there are many different opinions, I hadn’t seen any that came across as hostile until I read your comment.
- hackburg 2y ago[dead]
- moi2388 1y agoI buy Apple products specifically because they don’t allow random third parties access to features like this. I don’t want crap, I don’t want spyware, I don’t want spam. If I did, id buy the insecure cheap plastic crap that the android ecosystem is.