Epic vs Apple

JT986M2 wrote:Apple will never open up iOS to allow applications to be installed from other sources. Ever. Their infrastructure and approach is now too privacy and security orientated to ever allow that.

I think it is unlikely, and they would only do so if compelled by the state. It's still what I want to happen though.

Apple's own store barely even strawberry floating works on their older devices and it's not possible to obtain older versions that still work without the hardware-blocked latest iOS versions, so I would welcome side loading of applications in much the same way.

It's a consumer choice whether to orient themselves in a way that increases risk of device vulnerabilities by installing applications whichever way, not Apple's, all they are doing is preserving their "safe and never breaks" bullshit PR angle which is not true anyway. We have literally tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of devices out there that can hardly do anything thanks to Apple's locked down ecosystem, which is an environmental problem everyone likes to forget about. Weren't they already called out in a class action for downclocking devices in order to "conserve battery life" after an iOS update? I think I got that update. But if you don't update iOS (because Apple won't allow you to) you can't run many applications.

It's ridiculous that on 10 or even 20 year old hardware I can still install and use applications that work absolutely fine yet on a smart device running iOS you can expect it to become borderline unusable for certain everyday tasks after a few years because you start getting literally locked out of your own device that you paid in full for.

Green Gecko wrote:Apple's own store barely even strawberry floating works on their older devices and it's not possible to obtain older versions that still work without the hardware-blocked latest iOS versions, so I would welcome side loading of applications in much the same way.

It's a consumer choice whether to orient themselves in a way that increases risk of device vulnerabilities by installing applications whichever way, not Apple's, all they are doing is preserving their "safe and never breaks" bullshit PR angle which is not true anyway. We have literally tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of devices out there that can hardly do anything thanks to Apple's locked down ecosystem, which is an environmental problem everyone likes to forget about. Weren't they already called out in a class action for downclocking devices in order to "conserve battery life" after an iOS update? I think I got that update. But if you don't update iOS (because Apple won't allow you to) you can't run many applications.

It's ridiculous that on 10 or even 20 year old hardware I can still install and use applications that work absolutely fine yet on a smart device running iOS you can expect it to become borderline unusable for certain everyday tasks after a few years because you start getting literally locked out of your own device that you paid in full for.

In defence of Apple, how long are Android devices supported for with official updates? You'd be lucky to get a couple of years. I have an iPhone 5S that is still getting security updates from nearly a decade ago. My iPhone 4 is even older and still works - can't comment on the security patch aspect though. Does it have the latest versions of all apps installed? Nope, but I trust it to keep the information I have on it secure, and the last supported versions of applications work fine.

Who reviews and validates every application that is uploaded to the Google Play store to rule out both incompatibility and security issues?



Apple products break, but they break a hell of a lot less frequently than the competition! Their OS software is leagues more user-friendly for the average user too. So contrary to what you are saying, their approach does work. The standardised OS approach also allows them to support a number of products effectively and consistently. You absolutely cannot say the same of any other mobile device or OS - if you do, you are delusional.

People expect some magical bullshit where a device is completely open, supports multiple store-fronts, supports user-loaded apps, and expect it to be 100% secure. It's fantasy. You pick your platform depending on your priorities - don't bitch at other companies because they focus on different aspects.

Apple may do things wrongs, but they stick to their guns and deliver a secure and user-friendly environment.

(but they need to get xCloud on there)

User friendly is debatable but subjective I guess, but secure is definitely not a term I would use around iOS!

Jenuall wrote:User friendly is debatable but subjective I guess, but secure is definitely not a term I would use around iOS!

Compared to Android I certainly would.

Mafro wrote:

Jenuall wrote:User friendly is debatable but subjective I guess, but secure is definitely not a term I would use around iOS!

Compared to Android I certainly would.

In terms of security? It's all relative isn't it. Putting my money in a wet paper bag is more secure than leaving it out in the open but it's still not a good idea!

There's a huge market for secure tooling on top of iOS purely because the base operating system simply isn't good enough

Jenuall wrote:

Mafro wrote:

Jenuall wrote:User friendly is debatable but subjective I guess, but secure is definitely not a term I would use around iOS!

Compared to Android I certainly would.

In terms of security? It's all relative isn't it. Putting my money in a wet paper bag is more secure than leaving it out in the open but it's still not a good idea!

There's a huge market for secure tooling on top of iOS purely because the base operating system simply isn't good enough

What exactly are you talking about here?

I would call any fully-encrypted device where the highest authorities are unable to hack into it pretty secure. Even more so when - in a publicised example of this - the manufacturer of the device stood their ground under pressure from the authorities and courts.

JT986M2 wrote:

Jenuall wrote:

Mafro wrote:

Jenuall wrote:User friendly is debatable but subjective I guess, but secure is definitely not a term I would use around iOS!

Compared to Android I certainly would.

In terms of security? It's all relative isn't it. Putting my money in a wet paper bag is more secure than leaving it out in the open but it's still not a good idea!

There's a huge market for secure tooling on top of iOS purely because the base operating system simply isn't good enough

What exactly are you talking about here?

I would call any fully-encrypted device where the highest authorities are unable to hack into it pretty secure. Even more so when - in a publicised example of this - the manufacturer of the device stood their ground under pressure from the authorities and courts.

Android supports full disk encryption as well. There's a hell of a lot more to security then encryption

JT986M2 wrote:

Green Gecko wrote:Apple's own store barely even strawberry floating works on their older devices and it's not possible to obtain older versions that still work without the hardware-blocked latest iOS versions, so I would welcome side loading of applications in much the same way.

It's a consumer choice whether to orient themselves in a way that increases risk of device vulnerabilities by installing applications whichever way, not Apple's, all they are doing is preserving their "safe and never breaks" bullshit PR angle which is not true anyway. We have literally tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of devices out there that can hardly do anything thanks to Apple's locked down ecosystem, which is an environmental problem everyone likes to forget about. Weren't they already called out in a class action for downclocking devices in order to "conserve battery life" after an iOS update? I think I got that update. But if you don't update iOS (because Apple won't allow you to) you can't run many applications.

It's ridiculous that on 10 or even 20 year old hardware I can still install and use applications that work absolutely fine yet on a smart device running iOS you can expect it to become borderline unusable for certain everyday tasks after a few years because you start getting literally locked out of your own device that you paid in full for.

In defence of Apple, how long are Android devices supported for with official updates? You'd be lucky to get a couple of years. I have an iPhone 5S that is still getting security updates from nearly a decade ago. My iPhone 4 is even older and still works - can't comment on the security patch aspect though. Does it have the latest versions of all apps installed? Nope, but I trust it to keep the information I have on it secure, and the last supported versions of applications work fine.

Who reviews and validates every application that is uploaded to the Google Play store to rule out both incompatibility and security issues?



Apple products break, but they break a hell of a lot less frequently than the competition! Their OS software is leagues more user-friendly for the average user too. So contrary to what you are saying, their approach does work. The standardised OS approach also allows them to support a number of products effectively and consistently. You absolutely cannot say the same of any other mobile device or OS - if you do, you are delusional.

People expect some magical bullshit where a device is completely open, supports multiple store-fronts, supports user-loaded apps, and expect it to be 100% secure. It's fantasy. You pick your platform depending on your priorities - don't bitch at other companies because they focus on different aspects.

Apple may do things wrongs, but they stick to their guns and deliver a secure and user-friendly environment.

(but they need to get xCloud on there)

Leaving aside that you might think each and every application on the Apple store is some kind of high quality, bastion of security and functionality (and I have literally submitted applications to the Android store and they do have some quite stringent requirements, especially with regards to consumer privacy legislation), and myself having downloaded reams of total shite from both the Apple and Android stores to do something as mundane as scan a QRcode because (guess what), iOS doesn't come with a code scanner or even a strawberry floating calculator... because these are two different subjects.

I honestly have no idea why you are comparing iOS to Android all of a sudden. I don't use a smartphone, posted that from an iPad 2, and am currently typing this on a fully upgraded MacBook Pro 2010 (costing £1,650) and which I have repaired three times because it melted itself (was subject to a class action lawsuit in which every single laptop of this type manufactured between 2010 and as late of 2012 is subject to the same problem; partly because Apple don't like visible vents on their systems for strawberry float all reason, but also because they can't select an appropriate capacitor - costing about one cent - that will take the thermal load they generate by refusing to incorporate a sufficient cooling system). The same thing is very common with iMacs around the same period.

The home button on the iPad 2 (also around 2010) also stopped functioning reliably after about one year. The vast majority of useful applications that I need on the device no longer install because Apple decided to lock developers out of functionality on any iOS version older than the arbitrary length of time they decide a device they engineered should work for - despite there being next to nothing wrong with the actual parts. Planned obsolescence at its very finest.

In my experience having dealt with Apple, unless you literally quote legislation or litigation, they are not interested in supporting a £500-£1000 investment at all after the warranty expires. Not only that, but they literally know which faults in their products exist, and yet they continue to incorporate them and build redundancy into their entire business model.

You may not be able to reliable install the latest versions of Android through the manufacturer's distribution on handsets older than about 4 to 5 years, in my experience, with Google's own branded devices (Nexus, Pixel etc) receiving a generous length of update support in keeping with or better than Apple's offering, however I have never been unable to download an app because of this. Also, anyone at all can unlock their device and install the latest version of Android should they wish to, due to open source distributions of the OS being made publicly available since the day Android devices were brought to market. I know because I have done it. It is not that it is difficult on an iOS device, it is literally impossible to do.

Did you know that, for instance, if you need to replace your home button on an iPhone 7, which includes the fingerprint scanner, outside of warranty (when it is 100% most likely to fail due to how many actuations Apple have tested this component for), you can get that done by a third party but what happens? If you had fingerprint scanner activated, you cannot boot the device at all. But it's the exact same part. Why? Because Apple decided to hardcode a device ID into every single iPhone and match this uniquely to that home button that originally came with the hardware. If you change it, your device dies. You cannot unlock it. It's bricked forever. The solution? Buy a new iPhone. To replace a $5 part. It's completely strawberry floating insane.

How's that for engineering redundancy into your products?

I would have to say that an OS based on Linux such as even, for example, Symbian (right down to the kernel design and, for example, exceptional processing thread and memory management, rather than a gutted fork of OSX) is incredibly efficient compared to iOS, that dies like a dog the moment you try to load a strawberry floating website half the time. If getting no error when that happens is "user friendly", i.e. "nothing to see here", or the device simply rebooting, then that's a matter of opinion I suppose. I still use a Symbian device because I realised that much the functionality in a smartphone is not only a giant violation of privacy and thus security but also a waste of time, turning me into a product rather than a user. All I want is for my gooseberry fool to send texts and send/receive calls and do it without needing charging twice daily and constantly micro managing its OS updates, Wi-Fi networks/data usage or other crap. And that quickly tailing off efficiency of the iOS devices can be attributed to Apple's decision to make customers pay 4-5x as much for less powerful hardware - every single time - in return for their operating system and cosmetics, that are largely moot given that the competition have caught up so much in this respect.

Meanwhile, every single component of every computer I have ever built myself since 2005 still works - with some parts warranted for up to 25 years. I have mobile phones from 2006 that still turn on and function as intended.

I cannot think of a more consumer unfriendly company in the world than Apple these days, and as someone technically minded but just as much having little patience for deliberately gimped devices, I am unlikely to sway from that opinion, because I use their products every single day and I use a wide variety of software/hardware for different things. I have not said they are bad, I just don't think Apple's policies always benefit consumers. Which given their enrichment in past years and the sheer proliferation of their devices, is not a good thing, and there is no excuse for it.

Should've got that iPad fixed under the Sale of Goods act tbh

I got my 80W MagSafe power adapter replaced that way following a long debate with a "genius", when it short circuited due to apple's shitty cosmetic rubber they insist on using, but they blacked out the barcode to pretend it never happened. I also simply pointed to the torrent of 1 star reviews on their own storefront pointing out the problem which they insisted they have "never seen in our playground area and those machines get used every day". Well, sure, nobody actually moves those machines around as a portable computing device do they, strawberry floating hell

Bizarrely after about another 2 years the iPad home button fixed itself, I'm using it now.

The trouble is that dirt or flux or something works its way into the micro switch, you can twist your thumb on it a millions times to sometimes get it working again. It was super annoying because I was going to trade it in in perfect condition a couple of years ago when that very day it just decided to be a dick and stop working, so they refused it, rendering it worthless.

I've made it 10x more usable by simply waiting 30 seconds for certain stuff to happen/load, avoiding certain websites (GRcade is the only website that doesn't have frequent problems ) and certain tasks, and adding a Bluetooth keyboard eliminating apple's keyboard and autocorrect (for the most part), which I've never really gotten on with.

Green Gecko wrote:Apple's own store barely even strawberry floating works on their older devices and it's not possible to obtain older versions that still work without the hardware-blocked latest iOS versions, so I would welcome side loading of applications in much the same way.

Really?

OK, my 1st gen iPod touch needs iTunes 9 to even connect to a computer but I am able to download older versions of apps I have bought on my emergency 4S and iPad Mini 1 without any problems. My iPad Mini 1 has been my Webex and GMeet machine for the last 6 months despite no official support from Apple or Google.

Apple keep all the older versions of apps on their servers for older devices to still download years later. I can still download and play Super Monkey Ball from 2008 on my iPod Touch even though it doesn't work with any newer devices. On my iPhone 4 (not 4S) I can still connect to iCloud and download my old Notes even though they are not visible on the iCloud web page or newer iOS devices duie to app updates yet there they are, still sat on Apple's servers.

Apple aren't perfect by any stretch but their support for older phones and other devices is second to maybe Microsoft and their ongoing servers for the Xbox 360.

I find the "download the last version for your device" feature never works in the App Store. Both my old iPad 3 and iPhone 5 just constantly fail when I try to download apps that used to be supported on them

Console wars >>> ‘phone wars.

Phoney Wars more like!

Jenuall wrote:I find the "download the last version for your device" feature never works in the App Store. Both my old iPad 3 and iPhone 5 just constantly fail when I try to download apps that used to be supported on them

Did you go into the 'my purchases' section of the app store?

Carlos wrote:

Jenuall wrote:I find the "download the last version for your device" feature never works in the App Store. Both my old iPad 3 and iPhone 5 just constantly fail when I try to download apps that used to be supported on them

Did you go into the 'my purchases' section of the app store?

Yeah it just doesn't work for me sadly.

Green Gecko wrote:Apple's own store barely even strawberry floating works on their older devices and it's not possible to obtain older versions that still work without the hardware-blocked latest iOS versions, so I would welcome side loading of applications in much the same way.

It's a consumer choice whether to orient themselves in a way that increases risk of device vulnerabilities by installing applications whichever way, not Apple's, all they are doing is preserving their "safe and never breaks" bullshit PR angle which is not true anyway. We have literally tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of devices out there that can hardly do anything thanks to Apple's locked down ecosystem, which is an environmental problem everyone likes to forget about. Weren't they already called out in a class action for downclocking devices in order to "conserve battery life" after an iOS update? I think I got that update. But if you don't update iOS (because Apple won't allow you to) you can't run many applications.

It's ridiculous that on 10 or even 20 year old hardware I can still install and use applications that work absolutely fine yet on a smart device running iOS you can expect it to become borderline unusable for certain everyday tasks after a few years because you start getting literally locked out of your own device that you paid in full for.

Chrome devices only update for 5 years too but at least that's a fairly open and agreed state of affairs.

That's true, I've found with my Android devices the support is fairly explicit whereas with Apple it's just some random amount of time when they deem older devices redundant or, as they literally call it in the apple store, "vintage". Sure, vintage, for a device manufactured within the past 5-10 years.

I even had an update for my HTC device that while it worked, it was explicitly recommended not to install it except by developers wanting to do testing. Sure enough, the device struggled to cope with the update. But hey, I had the option, and I was literally told it might not run great.

Apple literally install updates that make your device run bad without telling you.

Apple has cut the commission rate for developers earning less than $1million. What with the antitrust rumblings this is going to be related, in part at least, to the Epic battle.

Apple on Wednesday announced a reduction to its longstanding App Store commission rate — one of the most substantial changes to how iOS developers earn money in the history of the iPhone maker’s digital app marketplace — as part of a new program for small businesses.

The new App Store Small Business Program, as it’s called, will allow any developer who earns less than $1 million in annual sales per year from all of their apps to qualify for a reduced App Store cut of 15 percent, half of Apple’s standard 30 percent fee, on all paid app revenue and in-app purchases.

The company says the “vast majority” of iOS app developers should be able to access the program, but Apple declined to say what percentage of its more than 28 million registered app makers would qualify. Apple also declined to specify how much of its App Store revenue would be affected by the reduced commission.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/18/21572302/apple-app-store-small-business-program-commission-cut-15-percent-reduction