Comment by 827a
5 months ago
I'm generally very anti-Apple when it comes to their draconian control over the code I'm allowed to execute on hardware I've purchased. However, I'm going to devil's advocate this situation for a minute (and I do mean the devil, because that is what Apple is):
Very broadly speaking, my position that I feel strongly on is: Apple should enjoy a right to distribute or restrict whatever apps they want through their app store. They might have a reasonable right to restrict what apps can be installed on their operating system and the means through which those apps are installed; I could be convinced either way depending on the day and I would not lose sleep if precedence is established in either direction. But they absolutely should not have any rights when it comes to restricting what operating systems I can run on their devices. I outline that only to state the context and framework within which the next paragraph is typed.
If Apple doesn't want to carry and distribute the anti-ICE app, I think that's their right. Apple's problem right now is that this unilaterally now means that the native application can no longer be executed on iOS, and that is a problem, but let's pretend like it isn't and that this app is now only available through the Epic Games App Store (or wherever). Why is this situation better for the anti-ICE app than just being a web app? This should be a web app, right? It shouldn't really rely on any native capabilities.
Phrase this another way, flip this on its head: the anti-ICE app wants in the App Store because of the marketing and ease of distribution it enables, which I feel are not natural rights developers should have when making applications. Its similar to freedom of speech; you have a right to speak, but you don't have a right to be heard. You should have a right for your app to be available (not all apps can be web apps; but this can). You should not have a right to ultra-streamlined distribution through Apple's servers.
I understand why this is a flashpoint, and I think its important that we push Apple on this issue because there should be more options when it comes to running code on mobile devices. However, functionally speaking: Y'all should just make this a web site.
> ...but let's pretend like it isn't...
You can't just do this. If you assume 1=2 all of math falls apart, and the same is true when you assume obviously un-true facts: the reason all of this matters at all is only because Apple wants to ban this kind of software from being native AT ALL, not merely because they don't want to themselves distribute something they dislike. I'd happily stand up to defend their right to do the latter if-and-only-if they stop doing the former, and you can't separate these two issues.
> ...the anti-ICE app wants in the App Store because of the marketing and ease of distribution it enables...
And so like, here: I don't care if the app doesn't get to be in the App Store, and I don't care if it gets "marketing" or "ease of distribution" from Apple. I do care that it gets to be a native app. I deeply deeply care about that.
(BTW, the App Store in fact DOES NOT provide marketing, and if you ever go to any developer conference that focuses on mobile apps that's extremely common knowledge. Except in extremely narrow circumstances, users do not discover apps inside the App Store: they discover apps from advertisements, word of mouth / viral features, and searching for things on Google. The search engine inside of the App Store is pitiful and, to the extent to which it works at all, often surfaces your competitor's app before yours.)
> Why is this situation better for the anti-ICE app than just being a web app? This should be a web app, right? It shouldn't really rely on any native capabilities.
I mean, in a perfect world, this app wouldn't be a web app, because a web app makes it really easy to go to the servers and shut it down, allows for a network choke-point to discover its users by traffic analysis, and generally harass (whether legally or illegally) the people who are paying for the service to exist.
What you want here is a peer-to-peer service, which requires a native app that you can download from numerous sources, one that is published anonymously, one which uses DHTs to store information and which builds on a platform capable of hidden services... and yet you also want to have things like push notifications (possible from native apps using local notifications that are surfaced after background updates).
Like, I dunno: this entire discussion is always so broken as it relies on so many assumptions made by people about what actually should happen... but every single one of these assumptions is buying into a narrative frame that Apple themselves have set through the years by choosing what to cripple in their quest to own app distribution.