[zepto]

> I'm arguing that it hasn't prevented attacks to a degree that was worth the cost

Ok, but that’s not what you said before,

> (completely forfeiting ownership of personal computers by anyone that wants to participate in group chats with iphone users.)

This is false. There are many group chat programs, that people use cross platform and they are more popular than iMessage.

Nobody if ‘forfeiting ownership’ of anything anyway - that’s just an ideological tautology.

If you you want a platform that can do both iMessage, and install apps without review, then you can use a Mac.

So literally no part of your statement is true.

>Here you admit that significant classes of attack have been prevented.

> I don't think people care whether they lost things on their phone because of malware or because of a fake CA cert, the attack works pretty much the same way and has the same result.

They may not know or care about the technical details but they do care about the risk level, so this is a moot point.

>False. Once a scam has been detected, the developer account can be disabled, which adds cost to new attempts, unlike windows defender.

> You don't need a dev account to distribute malware in dylibs.

No, but you do to distribute it to App Store users.

>> Nope, lots of people knew it was happening for years before Apple actually stopped it and it happens with other libraries still. >That doesn’t change anything.

> It means the App Store doesn't stop malware before it's able to exfiltrate data from large numbers of users for long periods of time. That's the justification for it.

False. It just means that some apps slip through the protections. It doesn’t say a thing about the ones which are stopped.

This is a repeat of the earlier fallacy: “if the protection doesn’t stop all attacks then we don’t need the protection”, which is obviously not true.

[swiley]

>> I'm arguing that it hasn't prevented attacks to a degree that was worth the cost

>Ok, but that’s not what you said before,

It's not worth the cost IE a scam, literally what I wrote in my first post.

>If you you want a platform that can do both iMessage, and install apps without review, then you can use a Mac.

Ah yes let me just go ahead and fold up the macbook so I can put it in my pocket. If you want to be included in a group of iPhone users that use iMessage you must own an iPhone. Apple knows this and that's why there's no web interface for iMessage.

>No, but you do to distribute it to App Store users.

Someone does, but it does not need to be the dylib author.

> just means that some apps slip through the protections.

This wasn't some, it was happening (and likely still is) on a massive scale and affected most popular apps.

>This is a repeat of your earlier fallacy: “if the protection doesn’t stop all attacks then we don’t need the protection”, which is obviously not true.

Forcing the "protection" on everyone, despite the extreme cost, is wrong. Especially since the "protection" does very little to stop this kind of attack in practice. Not a fallacy, it's not worth the cost IE a scam.

[zepto]

> If you want to be included in a group of iPhone users that use iMessage you must own an iPhone.

This is true but also meaningless. If you want to be included in a group of Android users who use Facebook messenger, you must own an Android device. If you want to be part of a group of Windows users who use signal, you must own a Windows machine.

All three are true, but presumably you can see they have absolutely nothing to do with app review.

There is no extreme cost.

You say the protection does very little - but that ignores the numbers: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/05/app-store-stopped-ove...

[swiley]

Those numbers came from Apple, lets pull them apart:

>App Store stopped more than $1.5 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2020

They never justify or source this, they literally just pulled it out of their ass.

>Apps rejected for containing hidden or undocumented features

A lot of those are probably development tools that users legitimately wanted.

>Other rejected apps

Good job they blocked some stupid obvious scams. The web is full of these so the users careless enough to fall for them will still get scammed. I don't see how that justifies the ridiculous situation they've created.

>credit card numbers are never shared with merchant.

The whole point behind credit cards is that you don't care if someone steals the number. Otherwise everyone would be using PKI instead of shouting an ID number at eachother. So yeah, thanks I guess for saving some banks money but that does little to help the end user.

[zepto]

> They never justify or source this, they literally just pulled it out of their ass.

You do realize they have the data, right?

>Apps rejected for containing hidden or undocumented features A lot of those are probably development tools that users legitimately wanted.

You never justify or source this, you literally just … … I think you know how this goes.

>Other rejected apps > Good job they blocked some stupid obvious scams. The web is full of these so the users careless enough to fall for them will still get scammed.

No, people trust the App Store more than they trust the web. That’s the whole point.

> I don't see how that justifies the ridiculous situation they've created.

The situation where consumers are happy to pay for software because someone is weeding out scams?

>credit card numbers are never shared with merchant. The whole point behind credit cards is that you don't care if someone steals the number. Otherwise everyone would be using PKI instead of shouting an ID number at eachother. So yeah, thanks I guess for saving some banks money but that does little to help the end user.

I guess you’ve never had a card stolen or been the victim of fraud. Eventually you can get your money back in most cases, but it can take a long time and be a huge hassle.

Again you argue against beneficial protections for no apparent reason.

[swiley]

>This is true but also meaningless. If you want to be included in a group of Android users who use Facebook messenger, you must own an Android device.

Nope, you can use Facebook messenger from an iPhone or even a Pinephone. Apple is running the only popular chat app which demands you use only their hardware.

> If you want to be part of a group of Windows users who use signal, you must own a Windows machine.

No you don't need a windows machine for this, just something that can run signal.

>All three are true, but presumably you can see they have absolutely nothing to do with app review.

They do because anyone participating in a real time iMessage group is forced to put up with whatever software policy Apple dictates on their phone.

>There is no extreme cost.

The cost is that you have to hand your ssh keys over to closed source apps to use ssh, you can't use decent chat applications because the app author has to have a full-time ops team (distinct from the team managing the chat server even though they already have the resources) managing the F**ing notification server because those are Apple's policies. You can't run most desktop apps because of licensing restrictions. There's almost no community maintained software so almost everything on the phone either costs a ton or harvests every last bit of data it can find (which is typically beyond what Apple supposedly allows) and anything remotely useful is unprofitable to maintain.

Quite simply: the cost is that almost all the software is absolute shit.

[zepto]

>>App Store stopped more than $1.5 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2020

> They never justify or source this, they literally just pulled it out of their ass.

They pulled it out of their data.

> Nope, you can use Facebook messenger from an iPhone or even a Pinephone.

Exactly - as I said, there is no shortage of cross platform apps you can use to do group chat.

> Apple is running the only popular chat app which demands you use only their hardware.

So what? There are many options. Nobody has to use it.

> Quite simply: the cost is that almost all the software is absolute shit.

Not for most consumers.

If you are someone who insists on inspecting the source code of SSH apps, I applaud you.

You are one of a tiny minority of specialists who can do this. End users in general quite obviously cannot.

That’s why they buy a consumer product which doesn’t require them to.

[swiley]

I meant to mention this in my other reply but can't now because of noprocrast.

>You are one of a tiny minority of specialists who can do this. End users in general quite obviously cannot.

"Experts" inspecting the source code for apps allowed for some bare minimum security checks. Companies buy out smaller software projects and add spyware to them fairly often (on the iPhone this usually happens via dylibs rather than the App publisher purposefully doing it.) and Apple has removed one of the only ways to catch this without an adequate replacement. The effect is much worse overall security.

[zepto]

> Companies buy out smaller software projects and add spyware to them fairly often (on the iPhone this usually happens via dylibs rather than the App publisher purposefully doing it.)

Yes.

and Apple has removed one of the only ways to catch this without an adequate replacement.

No - these can be scanned for during app review.

> The effect is much worse overall security.

No, consumer software outside the App Store is rarely examined by experts who have access to the source code.

This certainty is not a general practice.

[swiley]

If you hand auth secrets to random apps on the App Store they will get stolen, this happens all the time. Having some contractor spend a few hours poking at the GUI doesn't mean consumers aren't required to be responsible.

[zepto]

> If you hand auth secrets to random apps on the App Store they will get stolen,

I agree. This is why Apple is offering ‘login with Apple’. It’s safer than entering credentials.

> this happens all the time.

No it doesn’t. There are a few rare cases, but many more are stopped by review.

> Having some contractor spend a few hours poking at the GUI doesn't mean consumers aren't required to be responsible.

No, but almost nobody is dealing with SSH keys, and those who are should know how to deal with them.

These are consumer devices - if you need a device you can inspect the source for, these are not for you, but clearly almost nobody can do that.