Tell MacRumors it's Tim Cook's boot.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ios-26-2-to-allow-third...
Can’t even scroll right in the text editor. Trillion-dollar company.
1. Have Bluetooth on.
2. Turn it off from the menu option, but don’t close the menu.
3. The shortcut to lock the computer don’t work.
It’s been like this for 5+ years.
Funniest thing is if you’re quick enough it’s possible to close the menu using a Bluetooth mouse after BT has been turned off. It’s my daily challenge to pull that off.
It's really hard to be a publicly-traded corporation and user-first. Those goals are often at odds with each other.
Not being on the stock exchange, a company like Apple could be like, you know what, we make enough money from our hardware and services to both grow and pay our people well, so we will remove the 30% fee on apps and keep our developers happy and loyal, increase the cloud storage capacity for our customers, etc. But they simply can't do that, because it's all about YoY revenue growth to keep the shareholders happy.
You aren’t wrong, but I hate that you aren’t. It’s a shame there is so little regulation and that things are getting more and more expensive and complex to initially develop, that there just isn’t really a free market anymore for many important things.
Particularly since the 1980s, I feel like we've veered too far toward obtaining maximum profit at the expense of true innovation and developing products that truly serve the customer.
Ended up having to install a 3rd party mouse scroll reverser to get the behavior I want.
Has nothing to do with reality and more just a bunch of young kids who found another tech forum to perform their political whining on.
Eternal September wherever you go.
Especially in the context of idioms such as "boot licker" (which doesn't describe a person literally licking someone's boot! I know, shocking, right?)
I mean I didn't click on the linked thread, because frankly: who the hell cares what people on a forum called "Mac rumors" say... Even as a frequent apple user myself i wouldn't take anything seriously there. But the way you two addressed his sarcasm was just underwhelming.
Take a joke for what it is. Downvote if you don't see value in it - but if you're going to address it - do it properly and not by "misunderstanding" things on purpose.
Then that floor will be so clean you could do open heart surgery on it.
This goes against the spirit of the DMA, which was supposed to 'open up' 3rd party stores.
The European Commission does not seem to care atm that Apple is still the gatekeeper.
I think the European Commission is threading the needle, trying to find a path to uphold the DMA/DSA while not provoking another tariff war.
The EC is also under a lot of internal pressure from member states to calm down on the regulation, as it's considered one reason why Europe is such a bad place to do a tech startup right now.
Turns out then using private data for ads (Google) and acting like a middleman (Apple) are apparently lucrative and worth money?
(This isn't a critique to you OP or your comment, but rather a commentary on the 21st century.)
(You could maybe make a _vague_ argument based on podcast exclusives, but it seems like pushing it a bit.)
The really puzzling one to me is TikTok, which is included but feels like it barely meets the criteria.
Spotify has a much larger market share in streaming music than Apple has in smartphones in Europe.
Can I side load my own music in my Spotify library like I can with Apple Music? (True you either have to either use your computer or the iOS GarageBand hack)
Your start-up also won't get acquired by anyone "with a market cap >75bn EUR, or turnover in the EU >7.5bn EUR/annum." That may be fine with some folks. But it's an obvious downside if you're a start-up or backer thereof.
No. Nobody claimed that. Because it's a straw man.
"Your startup will be __fine__" implies there is no effect on a start-up. That's not true when one considers ecosystem effects.
Citation: https://www.jftc.go.jp/file/240612EN3.pdf (June 2024)
“Effective date — The Act shall come into force on the date to be set forth by a Cabinet order within one and a half years after the date of the promulgation of this Act”
Only Incredible Amazing Awesome Apple could manage to ship this change in a year and a half and totally weren't waiting for the last possible moment.
So you are saying that headline is funny because it is correct?
If anything it should be mentioned in the opposite way, calling out that Apple took as long as possible as an obvious way to spite the requirement, with the week-or-so wiggle room being a buffer in case of a disastrously bad release that might need to be recalled for some reason.
But the issue with the app stores is the app fees. Those must be lucrative enough to want to keep that gate for themselves.
They don’t even have to put in the effort of making it.
Essentially the same as giving alcohol to kids at home. That's the parents fault first and foremost.
Is it? A bottle of vodka, rum, wine, beer, is very obviously what it is.
A lot of these gambling games are disguised as games, that just happen to have elements that are heavily disguised to not be obviously and immediately shown to be gambling.
You and I both know what loot boxes are, but does everyone? There's nothing obviously gambling about a loot box, until you dig into it.
Have you never searched for a credit card detail generator? Browsed the dark web for stolen card details? Used e-sims?
A common misconception that people have is that age is not a limiting barrier to a great mind and doesn't require enabling by others to achieve the goals they set out.
iPhones are not, and in fact your child will eventually need a smartphone for legitimate reasons. Currently isn't not possible to buy a smartphone that can be used legitimately but doesn't come bundled with gambling and pornography.
That doesn't make much sense, XNU and the layers above it are very portable, they went PowerPC -> x86 -> x86_64 -> ARM64 after all. They also supported multiple different GPUs in the Intel era.
If the entire OS stack was open sourced today, we would have forks running on standard Intel/AMD CPUs in a week. They wouldn't have the same optimized power management, etc. But I think it would have a good chance of wiping out desktop Linux within a brief period.
macOS/iOS are part of the moat.
Given how polished the Linux desktop experience has become and how much software is available (gaming on Proton in particular), I don't think this is true.
I'm still hoping some other integrated software/hardware company will stand up and offer the same attention to detail as Apple did. Instead of that everybody's actively enshittifying their own products and complaining Apple is earning so much...
I doubt a knockoff MBP would happen initially but it would absolutely encroach on the Mac Mini.
Doubt. I couldn't figure out how to do windows management under macOS to save my life. This is so needlessly obscure and inconsistent.
(I wouldn't call it obscure though, it's pretty much standard WIMP with some differences compared to Windows.)
Their genuine services, other than maybe iCloud storage, are small businesses. Consider this: Apple reports $28.7B in quarterly services revenue. Spotify reported $3.8B in quarterly revenue directly from their 281M premium subscribers ($4.3B total) (AM has no free tier). Spotify is, in all likelihood, quite far ahead of AM in subscriber counts; estimates put AM at ~100M. AM also gives away a ton of subscriptions likely at a bulk discount (its included with some Chase credit cards, Verizon Wireless plans, etc); it would surprise me if total AM revenue is higher than $1.5B/q.
And how does that freedom help anyone? If your grandparent just uses their phone to make calls, texts and playing Candy Crush then how is software freedom making their experience better? Or are we just imprinting our priorities and desires onto others?
For one, it prevents criminal companies like Google and Facebook from exfiltrating massive amounts of usage data from grandpa. This includes, but is not limited to, places the phone has been, what networks it interacts with, DNS lookups, phone numbers called, etc. That's on top of the tracking done by third-party apps like Whatsapp, that share with the mothership absolutely everything except perhaps the content of messages (they claim it's encrypted, but the client is almost certainly backdoored).
As a user I like Apple’s App Store for security personally, but I wonder how multiple app stores turn out in other regions. I see the EU already allows alternative app marketplaces — has anyone used one and can share their experience?
> Apple’s App Store for security
The App Store doesn’t do anything to protect you in that sense. It’s easy to circumvent and these days it’s cheaper to just buy an iOS exploit than go through the trouble of making a shady app.
Even for web distribution in the EU (which they allowed some time ago) they require you to have had an Apple Developer account for at least 2 years and at least one App with more than 1m annunal downloads in the App Store.
So they're forcing you to have a very successful app in their own store before you can distribute yourself, basically making this impossible to actually use. It's such a blatant case of malicious compliance, it's insane.
Interesting, their marketing has customers believe otherwise, so I wouldn't have thought that as a noob in cybersecurity.
I've submitted an app to the iOS App Store in the past, and the process is tedious and doesn't seem superficial (unlike the Play Store process, which was completely autonomous at the time), so that's another reason why I wouldn't have thought it.
I know of multiple apps that have malicious ad networks in them, don’t disclose their ad networks, and have no mechanisms to report the ads inside the ad networks or any of the content to them, they just say the ads are “served by one of our partners”.
And then repeat that every few months.
The protection is in the permission system and sandboxing, which is active regardless of the source of the code.
The marketing is a lie, Apple's manual review process has failed to catch extremely high-profile trojan horse attacks: https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-imper...
That's the point of marketing. Making yourself look good, not stating facts.
But why is that easier? And is it inevitably so or a result of the fact that the boundaries of the one place to install apps from is aggressively policed?
Different threat models. If you're the mossad and want to go after someone in particular, yes the exploit is the way to go, but if you're running some run of the mill scam, you're certainly not going to spend 6+ figures on a ios 0day that'll get patched within days.
is this any different from Macs also prompting the user when a downloaded binary is suspicious/not signed properly? or windows when installing it'd flash a screen about trusting what you're installing?
"Look, you do not need a front door, and definitely not one with a lock on it. After all anybody could machine-gun you down through your windows."
Basically the market is still in an alpha stage. My next app will be on Alt just because I want to support the idea. Hopefully more apps gets on these stores, for now it's mostly nice to have for games, emulators, and some dev tools.
Apple didn't make it friction-free either, but it seems the issue is lack of user demand and/or lack of supply.
I should try Alt out again with you reminding me.
Requires an EU apple account, a faraday bag, two esp32 boards (or other way to spoof hotspots), a VPN with an endpoint in the EU, and an iOS device with a supported OS version.
I've considered an iPhone due to the recent Google announcement w.r.t. code signing but it's still too walled off for me. They need to open up access to third party stores and third party browser engines.
EDIT: yes I understand that we live in a capitalist system that is maximizing profit. My argument is that long term they're going to lose this battle seeing as the EU and Japan have already forced them to play ball. There are two options: remain stagnant and collect app store rent as long as possible or learn to be competitive in this new environment.
By this point it seems pretty clear that they will, at least while Tim Cook is in charge. Other higher ups, specifically Phil Schiller, knew this was a bad idea but were overruled.
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/02/25/apples-phil-schiller-co...
You can set a different email client globally, but a different default Messages or Maps app? That only works in some regions. In-App payments? You can now basically do whatever you want in the US, in the EU you can opt-in into a different regime, in other regions it's staying the same but who knows for how long.
By fighting this everywhere they're basically losing control over the outcomes and will end up with lot's of different regulations everywhere. Instead of doing the sensible thing and opening up their platform before they're being forced to do so.
1. Apple potentially loses giving ground to regulators before the regulators ask for something. They don't want to allow alternative app stores and then have a regulator say they are also not allowed to mandate royalties for digital good/service sales in their own store. Apple is likely nudging regulators to go a particular way, but is effectively trying to barter.
2. Likewise, individual regulatory bodies solving the issues they see in different ways has and will continue to create complexity in app developers, in some cases meaning their app needs different business models in different countries to take advantage of the individual regulated changes. That is a consequence of regulators pushing Apple to themselves have different business models to fund the App Store in different countries.
3. If Apple doesn't want a feature to be used or thinks the feature is actively harmful, they aren't going to encourage its use by making it available in jurisdictions where it isn't required.
4. Some of these features (such as default maps app) are semi-baked and without industry consensus, but rolled out because they were required for regulatory timelines. I can emphasize with not wanting to roll out broken features where you aren't being required to.
Apple can fix this issue without excess complexity. They are the ones demanding fragmentation and disparity as a result, allowing alternative app storefronts has always been a one-size-fits-all solution.
Is Apple going to kill the golden goose unless it is literally forced to? Of course not.
Apple, together with Google, get a cut of 15% to 30% of all mobile app revenue. They have the entire market captured. They will only give that up when they're forced to.
For me personally, it is mostly an escape hatch for developers and users. It will keep Apple honest, because if they really mess up the platform, people have the possibility to go elsewhere.
I think the bigger risk for Apple is allowing other payment options within apps that are distributed through the App Store (which I believe is now allowed in the EU among other places)? I think the app store is very sticky, but a lot of people would pick another payment option if is ~30% cheaper.
That’s not the argument at all. I don’t understand the point of your response, it has nothing to do with the points made in my comment. I’m not defending Apple, I’m doing the opposite.
Perhaps you haven’t been following Apple for long? There was definitely a period, not that long ago, where they had a lot of goodwill from third-party developers, especially indies, and that has steadily been eroded under Tim Cook.
They also took stances that were (or appeared to be) principled, which again placed them at a high degree of trust and goodwill (deserved or not isn’t the point, they had it) when compared to competitors.
> And if people started having issues with their phones because of side loading
I’m not talking about or suggesting side loading at all. That’s an entirely orthogonal matter.
> Vision Pro as a test of hardware capabilities seems to be going as one would expect at the current price points.
Vision Pro is not a “a test of hardware capabilities”. It’s not an SDK, it’s a product marketed and sold at regular people, it’s described by Apple as a product you can use for enterntainment and work, not an experiment. And it had essentially no adherence from companies and developers, there’s not even an official YouTube app, for a device where one of the major use cases is watching video.
The enshittification ceiling is pretty damn high but I get the intuitive sense the profit at all cost model's long term downsides are going to start showing up for dinner soon.
You might want to get informed about the hurdles Apple puts in your way first.
I make apps both as an indie and during my day job. The App Store review doesn’t do anything to protect the privacy or security of iPhone users. Most of the review is focused on ensuring Apple doesn’t get sued and that you as a developer don’t try to advertise something Apple doesn’t like. The whole idea that the App Store is safer is a marketing thing.
While not perfect, they claim to do security checks and verify some privacy choices. So they do something at least.
As a consumer I can see value in Apple forcing itself in an arbiter role for app payments so they can step in when I have a conflict with an app developer.
Every technical safeguard is part of the operating system anyway, so that’s what’s really protecting you and it will still protect you when you install an app from another source. Just like computers have worked since forever.
As they should be. iOS was already paid for when the user bought their device. Mandating a 30% cut on all in-app purchases is double-billing.
Tim Kulak[0] calls this "forcing Apple to give away its technology for free", which is asshole logic. In no sane world would a court consider application developers to be making a derivative work of the OS they port to, so the OS vendor has no legal entitlement to application developers' revenue. The only world in which this stupid 30% cut was even tolerated was, ironically for Epic, games development.
As for privacy and security concerns, I would like to note that Apple has very specific definitions of those words that only marginally interact with your own understanding. To be clear, if you were to modify an iOS app to, say, remove tracking code from it, Apple would consider that a security breach. Even though this is a common thing that we do in web browsers all the time. Because users have their hands tied on iOS in ways that they don't on macOS, they can't fight back against tracking on their phones like they can on their computers.
[0] Term used by the Soviet government to refer to "any rural landowner that didn't cooperate with their disastrous attempts at land collectivization". I'm using it here mainly because it almost-rhymes.
I agree with this assuming what Epic Games wants is to be able to distribute their software themselves without Apple being in the loop
And they’re just the most visible
Everything banned in the US is still offered as soon as you step across a border, every gross visual warning mandated in those countries is not implemented in the US
Here in EU they did allow third party stores and all we got were shovelware sites with subscriptions. It added even more friction an shadiness to acquiring apps.
We need to sop pretending iOS third party stores are anything like what we envisioned them to be. They are not f-droid or anything even half as good. Apple complies with this impotent law because the law changes absolutely nothing for end user.
Hardly. They did everything they could to make it completely pointless. Your apps still need to be blessed by apple and you still need to pay them. It's embarrassing the EU is allowing this sham.
How the table has turned.
What prevents an end user to either buy a japanese vpn and use that to connect to the app store.
I doubt that a vpn running itself inside an ios phone itself would work out of the box but what about if its running at a router level or lets say I use a vpn on another phone and use it to create a hotspot to connect to in an ios phone.
Don't things like these basically allow these rules to effectively break the ios monopoly.
Or think about it this way, lets say I go to japan and install an third party app store and then go back to some other country, would the 3rd party app store still work?
I am also wondering about what mechanism can be used which can make a third party store work in the first place, I know of IOS jailbreaks so would it be similar to it, how would they detect that its in "japan"
Or would these work at a hardware level? That a phone sold in japan would have such features, if that would be the case, I would assume it would increase the values of such phones.
I would appreciate it if people could tell me more about what's the case and answer my questions.
https://downrightnifty.me/blog/2025/02/27/eu-features-outsid...
https://lagrangepoint.substack.com/p/airpods-hearing-aid-hac...
A VPN doesn’t cut it.
just a VPN alone won't fool it
I just want to take the iOS equivalent of an EXE or APK, load it onto the phone, and be done with it. I don't want fucking stores all over the place.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/support/web-distribution-eu/
You couldn't install it at all on iOS for 4 years.
To your point, you were fine with that, you'll be fine with forgoing anything that's not in Apple's AppStore.
https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi...
FWIW, it does look like Apple have made it pretty hard to qualify to ship one though! To best of my knowledge, no one has actually shipped one yet in the EU.
> https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apples-browser-engine-ban...
Let's say Apple changed the requirements to have an app "pass" the app store rules. Allowed developers a lower fee for "free" applications, including OSS ones. (It would be nice if this was $0 if the developer was intending to make $0 just to make your platform better, etc.) Charged a 10% fee to be hosted on the app store instead of 30% (ignore any other fee minutia here, I understand making sure taxes are paid in other countries, etc. I don't expect them to do it out of the goodness of their hearts) Allow businesses to make revenue without going through Apple. (yes, the year is past 1998, we can all do this now) I'm ignoring legality for the most part. I also understand there's a provision "for children safety", but that's never really been "for children safety", but some other form of control because children figure out how to bypass it before grownups do. (sorry I'm jaded. I have children that have figured it out).
Would an alternate store even be needed at this point? How much financial loss do they have due to the other app stores vs the 30% fee difference? Where I come from 10% is greater than 0%. What about folks making money outside of Apple platforms? Yes, it happens, strange to think otherwise. Downloading apps? The whole thing is sandboxed, with provisions... how is app store review different here? If I have to say "yes", allow shady apps to access my contacts, does it matter where the app came from?
I don't think third party app stores is the problem. Let people install what they want, and charge less to do so. Change the App Store to show "This hasn't been blessed by Apple", like the Firefox extension store does. Let me install an app I wrote/built without expiring in a week, etc. You could have something like Gatekeeper that says "hey, are you sure you want to run this?". Or, if it's the same self signed cert on my computer and my phone just let me do it. It still protects your user base (I can't imagine the support calls), without stopping folks that "know what I'm doing". You'd have a walled garden for those that want it, but a nice footpath for those that don't. It doesn't have to be on or off, it can be both.
I'm thinking Apple has much more to lose here. I'd bet in the billions. A perspective shift could have avoided this. Think different :)
Alice wants to use a program made by Bob. Apple won’t allow Alice to do so unless Bob pays a fee to Apple. With third party app stores, they’re just allowing _different_ middlemen. What we actually want is to be rid of middlemen imposing arbitrary restrictions on how Alice can use her own device.
Isn’t it difficult to do this without rolling out a welcome mat for NSO et al?
This is a value statement. There is more public concern and support for security and freedom to use commercial software than there is for using it as a Stallmanesque general-purpose computer.
I'm not your grandma, though, and I'll thank you (and Apple) for not treating me as if I were.
I am afraid that making it too easy to install anything you want on modern smartphones is going to be a problem. Imagine how many are going to end up in botnets.
Android _already_ has this problem. It takes a few extra taps / coaching to get somebody to install an arbitrary and malicious APK but it's doable now. Moving towards a "if google didn't sign it and distribute it, you shall not run it" future won't really prevent the ignorant laity from installing malware regardless. The rest of us, however, are going to get screwed.
It does? Last I checked you just had to click install for a f2p mobile game on the Play store and voila, you're an exit node for various botnets
Either Bob or Alice could set up an app store if this is done right.
What do you mean "usual"? Android had always had app stores without too many restrictions (though for a long time it was complicated to have auto updates) and it's never been a problem.
On which platform did this happen?
I think there would be a few different models. Epic, of course, would lead as a gaming store, but I could easily see competition between Epic and Steam for this space. But there could also be other audience-focused stores as well, such as for creative professionals, like we had prior to iPhones. Then there's also suite apps that will maintain their own stores as well.
Just because Apple locked down the entirety of the mobile app world for 20 years, and told us we didn't want alternatives, doesn't mean it won't happen. If anything, it's evidence to the contrary.
And one may argue - it's not malicious compliance. It's just how world is setup for big companies. Any other strategy is leaving huge amount of money on the table - that's not what shareholders want. Unless you're willing to have fines that exceed the profits (and not just say about possibility of those, but actually impose and collect them) it's not going to change.
Apple first Users second Developers third
Not only that they still live with ptsd from the times when they almost disappeared, and will do everything in their power to keep as much revenue as they can squeeze.
Because of this, the Japan appstore will be as crappy as the european one. And the apps as surpar as the ones from the appstore.
Because let’s be honest, apps quality have gone downhill
Apple: "I never thought I'd die fighting side-by-side with an advertisement monopoly..."
Google: "What about side-by-side with a friend?"This helps the tens-of-thousands fart app developers and ultimately hurts quality developers making privacy sensitive apps for well-heeled customers who gladly sign up for fat subscriptions if the value is there.
For me personally, I think both the App Store and Play Store are mostly malware. Ironically, third party stores like f-droid have the least amount of malware.
Your life is absolutely untouched by having other store options. And privacy is maintained by the granularity of the permissions, the manual review process is generally a joke and it changes like the weather.
Personally, every time I hear Apple fans talk about Android users "trying to turn their iPhone into Android because they bought the wrong device", I groan. Because over the last ten years, while Apple has more or less hasn't budged on their shitty security policy[0], Google has been stumbling head over heels trying to turn every Android into a shittier iPhone.
As for the "race to the bottom malware ecosystem", you don't need to sideload at all to get pwned on Android. That's enabled by Google themselves, because Google Play - what is supposed to be the vetted and secure place to obtain software - is absolutely chock full of scamware. If the app store is the "default", or only option, its business model doesn't actually punish the store for failing its users' trust.
In fact, while Google is demonstrably worse at every aspect running an app store, Apple's own store isn't much better. Sure, Apple can stringently review and deny app submissions from a new developer, but large established megacorporations get all sorts of special treatment on Apple devices. Think about how they made an example out of Tumblr, compared to how they manage Reddit, Twitter, or any Facebook-owned[1] app. Or how Apple blatantly violates their own ATT guidelines by not letting us turn off their own first-party tracking[2]. Or worse, how Roblox's core business model violates basically all the App Store rules and nobody at Apple seems to care, even though that app is basically a child predator's best friend. The iOS App Store is also a race-to-the-bottom malware ecosystem.
[0] To paraphrase, "Users can't be trusted not to fall for scams, and also they will rape developers, so we should have total control over their phones".
For the record, "rape developers" means "modify software in a way those developers don't like", which is "rape" in the same sense that your VCR is a home-invading rapist.
[1] It is always ethical to deadname corporations.
[2] In fact, this is so blatantly anti-competitive, the EU is mulling over - I shit ye not - forcing Apple to get rid of opt-in consent to level the playing field. Which itself sounds like a GDPR violation.