FSFE should top caring about Apple and giving awards to Microsoft and propietary software company supporters. Learn a thing or two from FSFLA and stop being a honeypot against libre software.
I wonder how it is that we, as the users, allow it when iOS started allowing third-party. After that we accepted that macOS is more and more closed platform. And I'm hearing constantly something like "Yes, that's wrong, but at least platform is secure". For me security is less about how much platform is closed and more about how educated users are.
On the side note that is interesting, that when first iOS version was released Apple talked that "PWA" will be the future, and nowadays Apple do everything to suppress PWA ;)
People have been saying that Apple was going to require apps to be sold through the Mac App Store since 2010. You can install anything you want on your Mac.
And if only mean old Apple is suppressing PWAs, then why are the same companies who make apps for iOS also making apps for Android instead of telling Android users to use the web?
Second point, Apple could care less about random indie developers using a PWA. It came out in the Epic trial that 90% of App Store revenue came from loot boxes and other in app purchases for pay to win games.
Third point, users no more wish they could have shitty PWAs than Electron apps. It’s just what we are stuck with on the desktop
Educating billions of nontechnical users is far harder than technical fixes. It’s not going to happen at scale, so that’s basically an excuse to do nothing.
Mobile phones are mostly for nontechnical users. There are some accommodations for power users and I’m glad they’re there, but we’re not the primary audience.
Steve Jobs' "sweet solution" (web apps) for iOS was derided by developers when he announced it at WWDC 2007. But Apple had included a bunch of useful features (touch controls, native-like widgets, javascript canvas, etc.) in mobile Safari so that web apps could be usable and useful. Apple preferred javascript web apps to flash or java apps, which were seen as power-hungry and sources of security flaws. Fast forward to today and you can have a cloud game streaming client (such as Xbox Cloud Gaming, GeForce Now, or Amazon Luna) running as a web app in Safari.
One reason Apple was cautious about third party apps was the concern (from both Apple and carriers) that iPhone features would be misused or the iPhone itself might become unreliable or unusable. So when the App Store was rolled out the next year, apps required approval from Apple and were restricted to running in a sandboxed environment. (Background execution was also forbidden at first due to concerns relating to responsiveness, memory usage and battery drain, as well as security and privacy.)
I think it is a valid article but it tries very hard to ignore that it seems like at least 12 (21%) of the requests are currently in development at Apple. If all of them are medium/complex requests then they are all still within the advertised timeline. So yes, technically nothing was released yet but I read at least an implied suggestion that nothing will be, which does not look like a conclusion that can be drawn at the moment.
> 56 interoperability requests under the Digital Markets Act have produced no concrete solutions by Apple,
The chart, stupidly created as a pie chart and with percentages rather than numbers: 21% of requests are in Phase III, ie implementation by Apple.
When liars make clear their intent is to deceive, the correct reaction is to ignore them entirely. You can fairly quibble about what requests are approved or not, but honest people fairly communicate the state of things.
Maybe you are saying something that makes sense. But your comment doesn’t read that way.
A “concrete solution by Apple” would be a solution that shipped.
Cook got accused of acting illegally by a judge. Which is very unusual. It is pretty clear that Apple is dragging their feet as hard as they can get away with.
Are people honestly surprised that companies being forced by the EU to give up parts of their competitive advantage would be maliciously compliant? That’s honestly baked into the regulatory system. Make better legislation next time LOL
"Interoperability only works when it is built into the platform from the start"
-- Lucas Lasota, FSFE Legal Programme Manager
To my mind, this is almost exactly opposite of true. Most new capabilities need to be incubated in private first, so that the APIs can get real-world usage and have a chance to evolve into a stable state before they become public interoperability promises.
> Interoperability only works when it is built into the platform from the start.
So the solution is for Apple to offer Linux (or FreeBSD, etc.) as setup options for people who don't want to be locked into a proprietary, walled-garden, vertically integrated platform?
That is an interesting idea. Apple has some experience writing hardware drivers for other operating systems, as they did with the Boot Camp drivers for Windows.
22 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 42.3 ms ] threadOn the side note that is interesting, that when first iOS version was released Apple talked that "PWA" will be the future, and nowadays Apple do everything to suppress PWA ;)
And if only mean old Apple is suppressing PWAs, then why are the same companies who make apps for iOS also making apps for Android instead of telling Android users to use the web?
Second point, Apple could care less about random indie developers using a PWA. It came out in the Epic trial that 90% of App Store revenue came from loot boxes and other in app purchases for pay to win games.
Third point, users no more wish they could have shitty PWAs than Electron apps. It’s just what we are stuck with on the desktop
Mobile phones are mostly for nontechnical users. There are some accommodations for power users and I’m glad they’re there, but we’re not the primary audience.
One reason Apple was cautious about third party apps was the concern (from both Apple and carriers) that iPhone features would be misused or the iPhone itself might become unreliable or unusable. So when the App Store was rolled out the next year, apps required approval from Apple and were restricted to running in a sandboxed environment. (Background execution was also forbidden at first due to concerns relating to responsiveness, memory usage and battery drain, as well as security and privacy.)
First paragraph
> 56 interoperability requests under the Digital Markets Act have produced no concrete solutions by Apple,
The chart, stupidly created as a pie chart and with percentages rather than numbers: 21% of requests are in Phase III, ie implementation by Apple.
When liars make clear their intent is to deceive, the correct reaction is to ignore them entirely. You can fairly quibble about what requests are approved or not, but honest people fairly communicate the state of things.
Maybe you are saying something that makes sense. But your comment doesn’t read that way.
A “concrete solution by Apple” would be a solution that shipped.
Cook got accused of acting illegally by a judge. Which is very unusual. It is pretty clear that Apple is dragging their feet as hard as they can get away with.
Reading this after a day of fighting microcontrollers made me interpret the headline quite differently.
Ignoring DMA requests and contradictory documentation sounded entirely on point.
"12 too long" might lead to acronyms.
would be nicer if they could say:
Apple ignores 56 interoperability requests under the Digital Markets Act, leaving third-party developers locked out of iOS and iPadOS.
> But Apple rejected the request from the developer and said JIT for non-browser apps was not a feature controlled by iOS.
I stand with Apple here :)
"Interoperability only works when it is built into the platform from the start"
-- Lucas Lasota, FSFE Legal Programme Manager
To my mind, this is almost exactly opposite of true. Most new capabilities need to be incubated in private first, so that the APIs can get real-world usage and have a chance to evolve into a stable state before they become public interoperability promises.
So the solution is for Apple to offer Linux (or FreeBSD, etc.) as setup options for people who don't want to be locked into a proprietary, walled-garden, vertically integrated platform?
That is an interesting idea. Apple has some experience writing hardware drivers for other operating systems, as they did with the Boot Camp drivers for Windows.