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by viro 1886 days ago
I find it funny that users of this site constantly complain about how Apple should treat iPhones as general purpose computers and every time Apple does they scream about not protecting them from scams. you can't have it both ways.
3 comments
quelltext 1886 days ago
That's not a fair complaint. It can be turned around.

In fact YOU (well, I mean Apple) cannot have it both (other) ways. It's not fair to arbitrarily remove legitimate apps, lock down the devices, under the guise of user safety but in the end fail to actually provide the level of security at all that people now expect and paid the price of the device not being GP.

If Apple is so sure of their measures they should also cover (i.e. pay up) any damages when fraudulent or dangerous apps do make it to the store or are not removed in a timely fashion. The fees they siphon off from app revenue should probably go there.

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throwaway21001 1886 days ago
General purpose computing doesn't mean tolerating multimillion USD scams even after numerous complaints. Apple has created an aura that it's App Store is trustworthy. One person was enough to blow that out of the water. Also he didn't even have to do something brilliant/hard to find out these scams.
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NovemberWhiskey 1886 days ago
I think it's slightly more nuanced than that. It's more like "the walled garden is bound to fail and allow malicious apps so you might as well allow people to load whatever apps they like".
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xbar 1886 days ago
Are you arguing that imperfect security is worse than no security?
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quelltext 1886 days ago
I don't think they said that.

The argument is rather that the AppStore is not secure at all, but a) we still cannot sideload apps and b) legitimate apps get kicked off for no good reason, etc.

The problem is false security and false expectations.

Arguably it's easier for a user today to accidentally download a scammy app from the app store than it would ever be to do when sideloading. The latter would always come with the expectation and warning that it's not vetted by anyone, so the user and/or community will invest the time to make sure the download is legitimate.

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