Discontinuing FlickType Keyboard for iPhone

https://twitter.com/FlickType/status/1427292830523744257

by keleftheriou • 5 years ago

503 164 5 years ago

MBCook• 5 years ago

As Miguel de Icaza said on Twitter today, this is exactly the kind of behavior that makes Apple look terrible to regulators. Big popular app that has been promoted in the past and Apple just seems to want to keep screwing with them.

itslennysfault• 5 years ago

This is such a standard apple developer experience. I've been rejected so many times without making changes related to the rejection reason. I've re-submitted the same app 3 or 4 times and eventually it just gets "approved" all of a sudden. Their review process is complete BS. It's all just luck of which off-shore vendor you got reviewing your app.

fatnoah• 5 years ago

It really is. A past company made an application that was in the app store for a couple years. Three different customers paid us to white-label the app for them, so we ended up with three additional versions that were new app packages and differed from the original only in fonts, colors, and logos. Two were approved after a short back and forth with different questions for each, and we eventually gave up on the third after 9 months of fruitless back and forth.

weimerica• 5 years ago

Worked for a company with a similar approach (circa 2010) and we got rejected and had to just use the one. Can’t say I feel Apple is wrong for fighting app spam, however.

mdoms2• 5 years ago

And has any of this caused you to re-evaluate building software for Apple devices or purchasing Apple devices for either home or work? If so, what was the outcome of this re-evaluation?

banana_giraffe2• 5 years ago

It has for me. I've mentioned it before, but I had an app to help with D&D stuff rejected for describing how to harm someone in one of the descriptions of a spell somewhere.

Some variation of this happened three times. Eventually the level of stupid was too much for me to handle, and on the third time, I just pulled the app rather than resubmit things.

tonyedgecombe6• 5 years ago

It has for me. I had been working on a Mac app but decided it wasn't worth the hassle.

I prefer the platform but there is no way I'm going to sign up for an abusive relationship with Apple.

tacker2000• 5 years ago

I also had random rejections, and a couple years ago, the review process took some days to a week, making oneself pretty anxious while waiting it out.

These days I doubt I would create anything for iOS anymore, since the risk of getting banned over some nonsense without any recourse whatsoever is just too big and I just dont want to deal with losing my precious time and money. There are better alternatives, like the web, etc.

Unfortunately macOS will be going down that path soon, once they remove the ability to install from any source (and they will do it, no doubt).

It’s a real shame.

tonyedgecombe6• 5 years ago

Unfortunately macOS will be going down that path soon, once they remove the ability to install from any source (and they will do it, no doubt)

People have been saying that for ten years now and it hasn't happened yet.

jareds• 5 years ago

As a Voiceover user this is disappointing. If the law changes to allow third party app stores or side loading this is the app that would convince me to go down that road.

yarcob• 5 years ago

People who critizise Apple in public often seem to have trouble updating their apps.

I'm sure Apple has their reasons for blocking this app, but I'd prefer a world where customer choices what apps they can use don't depend on the whims of a very secretive company.

wsc9812• 5 years ago

I'm sure Apple has their reasons for blocking this app ...

Perhaps, but I found this Tweet interesting:

App Review problems & broken APIs isn't even all. The broader relationship Apple has with keyboard developers is hostile, as my decade of relevant experience can confirm. And it's not just my own assessment: the former head of keyboards at Apple has admitted to this hostility.

I'd like to know more about Apple's hostility towards keyboard devs.

tyingq• 5 years ago

He could be referring to this thread, though it's not specific to just keyboard devs.

https://twitter.com/kocienda/status/1273732626331791360?lang...

tonyedgecombe6• 5 years ago

To be fair I could see why they might want to be extra careful about 3rd party keyboard software. The potential for malware is huge.

AnonC• 5 years ago

The submitter of this story here on HN is the developer of FlickType. He had also filed a lawsuit against Apple for allowing apps that have been outright cheating people with incredibly high in-app purchases and has pointed out several instances of scammy apps.

I thought larger companies keep tabs on the "noisy and popular" ones in media (and social media) and would take more care not to annoy them further. But this story makes it seem like Apple has decided to just keep pushing his buttons as some sort of punishment.

I don't believe there's anyone capable in Apple top leadership who's spending any time in leading the App Store team appropriately. The scammy apps and the contrasting meaningless rejections of praiseworthy apps only tell one thing – the App Store is an abandoned space run by "bots" with almost no oversight.

As an Apple iDevice user for long, this story (from the beginning) as well as others have made me wish for alternate app stores on iDevices enforced through regulation. The wait has been too long already, and Apple isn't being the steward it imagines itself to be or portrays itself in media to be.

t00• 5 years ago

Just vote with your money and do not buy Apple products instead of wishing - this is the way.

fouc3• 5 years ago

Right, if enough people buy the non-apple, non-android phones, perhaps we'll get a viable competitor.

makeitdouble• 5 years ago

About voting with money, I always wondered why you are not advocating for the literal meaning of it: finance lobbies representing your interest to have rules matching your expectations.

It feels to me way more direct than trying to find alternatives that Google and Apple spend their time crushing away.

post_break• 5 years ago

The Appstore is just so broken. No support, no communication. Just like the bug bounty program. It feels like throwing a message in a bottle into the ocean. They aren't alone, Google can do it too, but damn, this is an embarrassment. I always love the topics about how the iPhone would be a dumpster fire with sideloading, meanwhile Apple promotes apps that charge $10 a week known scams.

qzw4• 5 years ago

My theory of why the App Store sucks so much is that every manager at Apple is aware of the risk that antitrust action could kill its profitability at some point, therefore nobody good wants to be at the wheel when this particular titanic goes down. So it gets no real love or investment, even though it’s still a major profit center right now.

vbezhenar• 5 years ago

It’s useful to look at Mac AppStore. You can use it to estimate how many apps will prefer alternative ways to reach users.

bsder• 5 years ago

The anti-trust is just one more nail in the coffin.

The primary issue is that any solution to App Store "problems" means reduced profitability. So, quite simply, nobody is going to pass that up the management chain.

Sure, Apple gets a PR bruise, but they know that everybody is locked into their iOS ecosystem, so who cares?

"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company." https://vimeo.com/355556831

g_p• 5 years ago

To back up at least the outline hypothesis of this point, this is in Apple's 10-K SEC filing:

If developers reduce their use of the Company’s platforms, including in-app purchases, then the volume of sales, and the commission that the Company earns on those sales, would decrease. If the rate of the commission that the Company retains on such sales is reduced, or if it is otherwise narrowed in scope or eliminated, the Company’s financial condition and operating results could be materially adversely affected.

This does feel like the kind of situation that few would want to be at the helm of, if blame was to be passed around in the event of an adverse approach being taken.

There's now a number of international regulators all looking at Apple and the competition aspects of their App Store model, and legislators in the US seem to claim to have bi-partisan support as well on the point. If individuals feel they might be blamed, that might explain why nobody wants to step up and improve things.

mortenjorck• 5 years ago

I've been bearish on the Open App Markets bill because I just can't see a hyper-efficient, trillion-dollar company being defeated by our dysfunctional, infighting-plagued congress, but the more stories like this that reach senators and representatives, the less of a moonshot such legislation becomes.

qzw4• 5 years ago

There are some players with fairly deep pockets on the other side as well. Nobody on the scale of Apple or Google, perhaps, but not mom-n-pop shops either. Plus if I were Microsoft or Amazon, I would be salivating at the chance to run an alternate store on iOS and Android, so there could be some dark money flowing through K Street lobbyists for all we know.

GekkePrutser9• 5 years ago

Of course Amazon kinda already does that on Android with Fire OS. It surprised me they never teamed up with phone manufacturers.

Not that Fire OS or its store is very good but they have the infrastructure.

wsc9812• 5 years ago

I think a Steam managed AppStore on iOS would be great. I don't particularly like the Steam app with it's web based interface, but it's much more responsive than Apple's native app and features like wish lists, content discovery queues and such are really great and help apps and games reach a larger audience.

GekkePrutser9• 5 years ago

Or GOG, even better. They really have some great ideas like integrating the different platforms, and they're really great for protecting their customers, not allowing DRM etc.

If I can get the same game on Steam and GOG I will always pick the latter.

klyrs• 5 years ago

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1427292830523744257.html

makecheck• 5 years ago

It’s such a “perfect” circle of non-communication that benefits only the fruit company, isn’t it?

- Can I update my app inside your store? Fruit company: No.

- Can I find out why? Fruit company: No.

- Can I find out who or what makes this decision? Fruit company: No.

- Can I update my app outside your store? Fruit company: No.

- Can I contact my customers? Fruit company: No.

- Can I even identify my customers in order to help them? Fruit company: No.

- Can I directly give my own customers a refund? Fruit company: No.

- Can I be removed from your list of featured apps? Fruit company: No.

- Can customers prevent this one app from being auto-updated into brokenness? Fruit company: No.

- Can you tell customers that this new brokenness is your fault and not the developer’s? Fruit company: No.

And on, and on, and on, and on.

This is a completely absurd system that has never, ever, ever benefited customers or developers nearly as much as fruit companies.

Congress can’t act soon enough.

cageface• 5 years ago

Don’t forget - can I use common PWA features to build my app on the web instead? No because Apple doesn’t allow that either.

IlliOnato• 5 years ago

https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5675

seems to be relevant

donmcronald3• 5 years ago

It's such a nasty side effect of demand aggregation platforms which is what everyone has been trying to build for the last decade+. It's a real prisoner's dilemma too. Earlier adopting developers get to be "fart app millionaires", but there's a definite tipping point where the supply side becomes commoditized.

I think Ballmer got unfairly criticized for laughing at the iPhone. I always thought he looked at it and thought it was such a ridiculously bad deal for both developers and users that no one would adopt it. His biggest mistake was underestimating the ability for people to act in their own long term self interest.

cglace• 5 years ago

Please tell me which option we had that was “in our interest”.

ucosty• 5 years ago

That's a very charitable take on Ballmer's reaction. The Windows mobile platform may have been more hackable, but from an end user's perspective it was pretty awful.

gumby• 5 years ago

I always thought he looked at it and thought it was such a ridiculously bad deal for both developers and users that no one would adopt it.

That famous video of him laughing on TV was from the first announcement when there were no plans for an app store at all.

annexrichmond• 5 years ago

If we’re thinking of the same interview, he laughed at the iPhone because it lacked a physical keyboard and cost $500 fully subsidized.

There was no App Store or any indication of a developer platform.

lucb1e• 5 years ago

And yet people keep buying it. It's not like there aren't alternatives. I just don't get it.

Marsymars5• 5 years ago

The alternatives aren't very good. Was recently looking at Android options, and of the three things I care about, and which I don't feel are a particularly high bar (1. Non-huge phone. 2. Close-to-stock OS. 3. Good update policy.), as of the next set of Pixel devices (which are all growing bigger), it looks like a "pick two" situation. (ZenFone 8 is small and close-to stock, Pixel 6 is stock with good updates, Galaxy S21 is small with good updates.)

dt2m• 5 years ago

another possible reason might be due to iMessage being de facto messaging platform in the US, amplified by the societal pressure to not have "green bubbles".

add to this the fact that video recording on Android has a horrible rep for being blurry and blocky, staining the reputation further.

the time has come for legal action against Apple. this is textbook early-2000s MS behavior.

llukas2• 5 years ago

Most of issues are developer only. Maybe that's why?

As an user I'd prefer to interact with larger company that is not going anywhere rather than each developer separately. This has downsides as described in grandparent post but also increases trust a bit for unknown developers.

ksec2• 5 years ago

I think I need to point out, it isn't your customer. Apple have been very explicit in all of their public communication and in court. They are Apple's customers. Apple's customer are trusting Apple and App Store to use your App. And Apple is sharing 70% of revenue to you and they only keep 30%.

While I have lots of things I disagree with DHH, his point on App Store were spot on. It wasn't just about the commission, It was the company Basecamp has no relationship with its customers signing up via iOS. It only has it with Apple. And that is not how a business should work.

kuschkufan• 5 years ago

- Can my users become customers of mine? Fruit company: No

mdoms2• 5 years ago

Apple will keep being Apple and you'll all keep buying shovelling money into their pocketbooks. There's nothing new under the sun.

p2t2p3• 5 years ago

and you'll all keep buying shovelling money into their pocketbooks

Because for me as a user everything else is even worse. Generally nowadays _everything_ is pile of crap in some way or another, Apple's is just a pile that stinks for me a little less.

Mobile alternative my recent Android phone from Motorola (Moto 5G Plus):

- I haven't seen ROM update in a while and

- Unremovable hidden Facebook services binaries in the very core of the OS (de-bloater from F-Droid dealt with it)

- Facebook pre-installed

- No mail client (no, Gmail doesn't count)

- No caldav client (purchase for 15 AUD in Google Play, comes stock on every Apple device)

- No cardav client (purchase for 15 AUD in Google Play, comes stock on every Apple device)

- No way to stop apps running in background

- Absolute barrage of notifications about features I don't care about that won't go away until I click them.

- Absolutely idiotic approach to photos where every app lists _every_ image on the device in photos. My 100gb music collection with folder images simply crashes most gallery apps.

- The amount of ads is just staggering compared to iOS

- No ad-blocking in the browser (Safari on iOS provides a framework, you install an app and you don't see ads anymore, I was unpleasantly surprised when I tried surfing the web in Chrome on that Moto phone)

- Google Photos simply blocks the screen with suggestion to back up everything to the cloud on each launch and I have to dismiss every time.

OS Alternative:

- Linux - good luck making 4k scree snappy and god forbid you have your laptop monitor with different scaling settings

- Linux - general hardware support is meh, had huge troubles with my wifi printer

- Linux - convenience apps - like photo gallery and stuff, almost none - there are either too simple apps or monstrous combine harvesters.

- Linux - public wifis is still a trouble, getting to those login portals is flakey, sometimes you get there automatically, sometimes you have to figure out yourself how to get there.

- Linux - good luck finding a decent email client. Best I could do is neomutt + notmuch but Apple's Mail achieves the same setup I had there in 5 minutes of clicking instead of couple days of tweaking configs.

- Linux - still comes to a halt when I'm trying to copy a 10GB file somewhere.

- Windows: spyware-as-a-service

- Windows: no native unix tools, only through a layer of virtualisation

- Windows: terminal emulator still sucks and slow af, see "refterm" by Casey Muratori.

- Windows: convenience apps nearly impossible to find (on Apple platform you get full office suite, video editor, photo library solutions, music making thingy, etc, etc for free).

- Widows: usability choices suck, like hibernating my surface sometime after I lock the screen so I have to wait good 10 - 20 seconds for it to wake up when I need it. Had to hack something in registry to get "old" power controls back to remove that crap.

- Windows: email clients _all_suck_, the last half-decent client was Outlook 2010. (Well, Thunderbird is ok-ish)

- Windows: still no caldav, no cardav (you can hack shit together by going iCloud road and replacing URLs in buil-in clients)

EDIT(s):

%s/worth/worse

%s/have seen ROM/haven't seen ROM

arepublicadoceu• 5 years ago

I believe you made a few very good points, but I will argue against some that I disagree and some disadvantages that you overlooked from Apple (I'm an iphone user).

No way to stop apps running in background

Its been three years since I used Androids but there was absolutely a way to kill / freeze background Apps

No ad-blocking in the browser (Safari on iOS provides a framework, you install an app and you don't see ads anymore, I was unpleasantly surprised when I tried surfing the web in Chrome on that Moto phone)

Adblocking is what I hate the most on iOS and what will probably drive me away from the platform. Good luck finding anything remotely as useful as ublock origin on Apple (No, no amount of content blocking apps can deliver the granularity of uBlock, if you want an example, try blocking youtube ads lately)

Absolutely idiotic approach to photos where every app lists _every_ image on the device in photos. My 100gb music collection with folder images simply crashes most gallery apps.

You probably never heard of the ".nomedia" flag right? You can easily prevent any image from going into gallery apps by appending this file to a folder like Music folder.

While were re still on the topic of music management. Messing with iTunes to manage my music library makes me die a little bit inside every time.

Absolute barrage of notifications about features I don't care about that won't go away until I click them.

Ha, one thing that I miss the most about android was that I could fine control my notifications to an OCD level. Apple is getting better on iOS 15 but its still not as great as my android experience from 3 years ago.

…

My bottom line is, I left the Android world not because I hated the system but because I thought that apple was championing privacy and I wanted to support this goal. I dealt with every iOS limitations just because of the privacy propaganda, but now that it’s all over? I will go back to android. At least I have some degree of freedom if I can’t have privacy anyway.

NelsonMinar• 5 years ago

The ability to sideload APKs is the single thing I appreciate most about Android vs iPhone. I don't use it often; the main app I sideload is Mendhak's GPS Logger. (He finally gave up trying to comply with the Google Play Store's changing restrictions on location trackers.) But it's nice to be able to install the software I choose to on my phone without having to have Apple or Google's approval.

Unlike iOS there's no complicated jailbreak required, I can't remember if you even have to enable developer mode (an easy supported thing). And there's a reasonable ecosystem of safe alternative app stores. F-Droid mostly, APKMirror also comes in handy for things that have disappeared.

I understand the value of a curated app store. I get the benefit of that too on Android! But it's nice to have an override in the cases it's needed.

LeoPanthera2• 5 years ago

As someone who is beginning to really dislike both Google and Apple, is it possible to buy/use an Android phone without the Google store where you only sideload software?

NathanielK• 5 years ago

Yes, but it may require you update things manually. You can disable the Play store and any other apps and only use F-Droid.

throwawayboise• 5 years ago

With one or two exceptions, I only install Google software on my Android phone. Since I'm already on their platform, I don't guess that makes me any more open to their data gathering. And I don't trust any of the other apps.

ttctciyf• 5 years ago

There's a few different approaches to this.

Here's one page about it, I'm sure there are plenty more.

https://fsfe.org/activities/android/liberate.en.html

rchaud• 5 years ago

Look for Android models that have been confirmed to work with LineageOS or E-foundation OS. Both are de-Googled, I believe.

boudin2• 5 years ago

It is definitely possible with some limitations.

Totally ungoogled you won't have the google service layer, if you still want to use some proprietary apps, it is possible but some won't work. The biggest constraint is often push notifications not working.

As an alternative you can use microg [1] which is a client side re-implementation of google services. Some part uses alternative service as backend, some will use google though, like push notifications.

Side loading can have its limitations has you need to find sources for APK that you can trust.

The best non google store is f-droid [2] in my opinion, all open source and build reproducible.

If you need some proprietary apps from google store, you can use the client Aurora Store [3] which still sources app from google play store.

In term of buying a phone with most of that, /e/ does sell phones with android + microg + their own store [4]

Otherwise plenty of phones allow to easily replace the operating system. You can look for phones supported by lineageos which comes with no google apps. [5]

[1] https://github.com/microg [2] https://f-droid.org/ [3] https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore [4] https://e.foundation/ [5] https://lineageos.org/

donmcronald3• 5 years ago

This is why I don't understand how Microsoft can't compete in the mobile market. They could be successful just by using AOSP with Office and an alternate app store that doesn't screw developers and users.

abawany• 5 years ago

CalyxOS offers a preloaded Pixel 4a on their site and also lists all of the handsets they currently support: https://calyxos.org/get/ .

pomian• 5 years ago

Yes. Completely. Never sign in. Never allow any Google install on original boot.. Disable all Google at that time. Pre copy fdroid into SD card ahead of time. Also can copy on, a collection of already downloaded apks. Don't forget the keyboard apk. You need that one almost first, so you can enter letters into fdroid. Then you may also use other apk sites than fdroid - which are good, just not as verified. You may miss some Google layers or other so called "ease of use." I don't.

stefan_• 5 years ago

What on earth is "curated" about the Google Play store? It is the most spyware ridden, spam filled "store" I've ever had the displeasure of using.

If I need an utility app, I now just look for it on F-Droid. Need something to track AirPods charge? You can find the original open-source app for it on F-Droid, or download one of 100 ad-filled, GPL-breaking clones of it on Google Play.

Causality14• 5 years ago

Sadly Android is becoming more user-hostile all the time. For example there are fewer and fewer devices that will give you root access. Imagine buying a PC and finding the manufacturer decided you can't have access to an administrator account.

mschuster91• 5 years ago

To my knowledge every Samsung can be rooted with Magisk, but at the cost of losing Knox, which makes a bunch of apps relying on biometrics go bonkers - Telegram, Chrome and the unlock screen work, but some banking apps outright crash or lose their data, even with "SafetyNet Fix" - they are expecting the presence and usability of Knox vault.

For Google's Pixel lineup, the situation is similar.

The really problematic stuff are Huawei (which can't be rooted at all with something trustable and open source such as Magisk), Xiaomi (these need to flash a custom recovery first, IIRC) and all the fly-by-night ops that don't have any kind of support other than hoping for a web/apk exploitable bug (I believe KingoRoot is using that method, but since it's closed source I wouldn't use it!).

phh• 5 years ago

I'm looking at Wikipedia page of most sold Android devices ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_... ). We've got Samsung, Xiaomi and Huawei devices. Samsung and Xiaomi are root able (as far as I know without issue, having 4 Samsung devices in my collection, though sibling says otherwise). Only Huawei isn't (and it's actually much lower than Samsung and Xiaomi). I'm speaking only of root ability without security flaw (Huawei had some.), Since we're discussing user hostility

That being said, there is one feature that is user hostile with regard to owning your software, it's contactless payment. Contactless payments all require stupid security requirements, that the community well knows how to circumvent (so it doesn't provide any actual security), but are pretty annoying for the user. I would guess Google isn't to blame there (even though GPay does have this anti-feature just like all other services, and Google being more monopolistic manage to make it even more annoying. But still insecure)

vzaliva• 5 years ago

While it is bad it is still not as restrictive as Apple policies. Even at non-rooted device you can side-load APKs. Rooting device gives you an extra level of freedom of loading custom OS. This is something none of iOS device never had officially.

znpy2• 5 years ago

I'm always happy to read this kind of stories.

And I know that such things happen on Android too.

The things is, apple/Google is a duopoly and the app market needs to be regulated.

To people going through this kind of issue, I say: you chose to be in that position, bring Apple to court or just close your business.

saagarjha• 5 years ago

Perhaps it might bring about change, but until that happens a lot of good developers are suffering…also, FWIW, the developer of this app has filed a court case against Apple for exactly this.

znpy2• 5 years ago

FWIW, the developer of this app has filed a court case against Apple for exactly this.

I'm really glad they did and I'm rooting for them.

Regarding people suffering... It takes suffering to realize that the current situation is not right.

yunohn• 5 years ago

you chose to be in that position

I’m always confused by these statements. Would you rather nobody develop apps for iOS/Android, because they had the same amazing foresight as you, and decided to not beholden to Apple/Google?

mthoms7• 5 years ago

There's another angle to the App Store scam: Family Sharing.

Most people don't know this but the "Parent" (read:credit card holder) of a family sharing account can't see, let alone cancel, any subscriptions a minor on the account has purchased.

Let that sink in for a second. Apple will happily charge the parents' credit card a weekly recurring fee but there is nowhere in their interface (on device nor on the web) where the parent can even see that subscription.[0]

Apple expects the child to go into their interface and cancel the recurring subscription. Something many (most?) adults find confusing. In my case, the child just deleted the App when the trial was over. Which is of course perfectly logical thinking. No bueno.

So if the child is away at school (as in my case), or the phone gets left at a friend's house, or worse... stolen. The only way to get it cancelled is to call them.

There's more to this story, including details on how the built in parental controls are intentionally crippled (IMHO) but I've got to run. In summary: The entire "Family Sharing" system is built to rip off people while still maintaining plausible deniability.

[0] A senior Apple rep told me this is for privacy reasons. But two things: the minor should have no expectation of privacy when spending their parents money (how is that a good thing?). And secondly, Apple does email a receipt for the subscription to the card holder... so the privacy excuse was pure bullshit. In my case I missed the email because I have more than 6 or 7 recurring Apple subscriptions. I do take partial blame because of that. But I've still not been given a good reason why a parent can't easily cancel a childs subscription.

donmcronald3• 5 years ago

The whole scheme is such an obvious dark pattern. You have 2 options:

1. About 5 prompts every time a child wants to "buy" something including free stuff.

2. An absolute free for all where a child can have unlimited spend.

Competing app stores would have a MUCH better family sharing setup with proper budgets and controls. Microsoft gets the money end of it right, but sucks at the actual app sharing. Google can't even make their gift cards work properly.

We need app store competition.

GoOnThenDoTell• 5 years ago

Then you get to learn 5 different systems with dark patterns

alisonkisk3• 5 years ago

Where would competing app stores get funds to build all these features? And why wouldn't half of them be scams?

smoldesu2• 5 years ago

Receive a photo that an AI thinks is porn? Your parents will now instantly receive a notification on their iPhone, for safety reasons.

Spend $500 on in-app-purchases? Your parents aren't even allowed to know, since you're such a vulnerable little person. Privacy is a human right, you know!

Leave it to Apple to find the most ironic contradictions.

jolux• 5 years ago

Your parents will now instantly receive a notification on their iPhone, for safety reasons.

Only if you choose to view it, from a prompt that tells you it will notify them if you do.

dang• 5 years ago

Would you please stop posting this sort of low-information, snarky/ranty comment? You've been doing it a lot, unfortunately, and it's not within either the spirit or the letter of the rules here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

73r7fudhdjduru• 5 years ago

Being competent and not giving your child access to your credit card or devices you can't also access seems like it solves this problem. I don't understand how it's 2021 but we're still giving parents a pass on being illiterate.

mthoms7• 5 years ago

The child has a learning disability and, as I already mentioned, is away at a (special) school for much of a year. Thus - I don't have immediate access to the phone.

But thanks for your thoughtful and measured contribution.

dumpsterdiver• 5 years ago

Apple does email a receipt for the subscription to the card holder... so the privacy excuse was pure bullshit.

I called Apple support today for an unrelated issue and verified that what you say is true. That truly is egregious that they're hiding that information, and you have to notice it via your bank statement. At the very least the primary account holder should be able to see that an unspecified member of their family account has a subscription to an unspecified service, and have the ability to summarily cancel it. It's not unheard of to imagine that even with the "Ask me first" feature enabled to allow members to make purchases, you might accidentally click yes while trying to click something else - I've unintentionally answered incoming calls that way. Granted, there's likely a confirmation prompt, but between having your fingers fly across the screen from muscle memory, and having FaceID enabled - it seems like even with a confirmation prompt it would still be possible to inadvertently approve purchases.

fouc3• 5 years ago

That does suck. What about canceling the credit card?

dylan6044• 5 years ago

Depends on how sophisticated the company one is subscribed is. Let's take Netflix for an example. As a service to you to not miss out and get your account suspended, they will assume you have "forgotten" to update the service with your new card information. Surely, you wouldn't get a new card and not update them, right? So, again, as a service for you, they will contact card issuers to see if you have a new number and automatically start billing that new card. All without you having to lift a finger.

jasonjayr• 5 years ago

If you cancel the card to stop one subscription, or chargeback, you risk losing your whole Apple account and any and all purchases.

mthoms7• 5 years ago

I didn't need to cancel the card because they did refund the money (and cancel the subscription) after speaking with a few reps.

I'll give them credit for that, but I feel like they use the fact that chargebacks are easy to make themselves feel better about all the dark patterns.

alisonkisk3• 5 years ago

Apple just launched a feature where parents can see their kids conversations, but not see their kids spending of parents' money.

ribosometronome• 5 years ago

No, they didn't. They're going to be launching a feature that will send an alert to parents if the kid opens and views or sends an image determined to be sexual by ML. There's no indication it will let you see any part of the conversation, much less the entirety.

ramshanker• 5 years ago

This problem is almost solved by UPI payment service in India. All payments need manual approval. Credit/Debit card not required to be added here. Apple was forced to add UPI payment because that’s what people use here. I will trade the payment safety anytime over whatever convenience credit cards offer for auto debit recurring transactions.

mthoms7• 5 years ago

Interesting. How do you manual approve App Store charges?

gonehome2• 5 years ago

Don’t they have ask to buy as a setting? You can have it ask you prior to child accounts purchasing stuff.

mthoms7• 5 years ago

Good question - this was one of the details I left out of my comment because I ran out of time...

The feature called (as you say) "Ask to buy" is not what the name implies. It's actually "Ask to download anything, including free stuff".

You end up turning it off after being interrupted 5 times a day to approve free stuff. Many are free games, some are even apps needed for school (the Apps needed for school are sometimes time sensitive - if I don't approve it within a few hours it can be a problem).

This is what I alluded to with the "plausible deniability" comment. Apple can say we have an "Ask to buy" feature but they cripple[0] the feature so as to make most parents turn it off.

[0] I'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether this is intentional or not. Based on the dark patterns present, I personally think it's 100% intentional.

I wrote to Tim about it. Never heard back. Wasn't surprised.

btown• 5 years ago

If Apple was serious about preserving privacy while promoting healthy spending habits for minors, they'd let parents set a budget that can't be exceeded, make this visible at purchase time to the minor, give the minor the ability to ask permission for a specific purchase that exceeds the budget, and keep all other purchase information private. But of course this would cut drastically into their revenue.

I'm actually somewhat surprised that legislators haven't tried to regulate this. The cynical part of me says that if legislators don't have kids or grandkids who are spending too much of their money on app stores, they either don't have kids or are too wealthy to care, either of which would make them grossly out of touch with their constituents...

ksec2• 5 years ago

This Family Sharing problem has been known for what? 4+ years if not longer?

That is precisely why all the games are Ad based with subscription option. These Ad based Games offer 1 min of Game play and 30sec of Ads and . These Ads are also showing games the kids might like, so they go to download this new game which Apple gets to come up with new download or installation milestone. The new games are also ad based with subscription, showing ads that..... until you hit subscription.

And the great things about these Subscription is that are so cheap, so they can easily pile up without getting noticed. And this example is only the tip of the iceberg. All these changes came after they announced their Services Strategy in 2015.

It is literally impossible to convince Apple Fans there are any wrong doing of Apple. Go to Macrumors or 9to5 comments you will see Apple Apologist working there 24/7. But A lot of people are starting to question, if Apple were really doing what they said were doing.

And I mean if you are starting to doubt, you may finally understand why I have been saying Apple reeks of hypocrisy for the past few years. ( I have comparatively little to no problem with Steve Jobs's Apple )

hexis• 5 years ago

Conquest's third law - "The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies."

40four• 5 years ago

Thread reader version: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1427292830523744257.html

passivate• 5 years ago

What makes this insidious is that Apple became successful on the backs of App developers, and now they're kicking down the ladder after reaching the top.

black_puppydog• 5 years ago

I'll drop this reminder here: donate to your local linux phone OS projects! Donate money, code, bugs, triage, design... Donate PR time. They're all running on shoestring or non-budgets.

We've all let these projects die of starvation, and now we keep having these threads but frankly none of the big two platforms have to be afraid people might flock away. Maybe to the other big platform, until they flock back during the next brouhaha...

weikju• 5 years ago

This. We need to put our money where our mouths is, and accept the discomfort NOW (both to our wallets and to how convenient it is to use a device), so that things can be better LATER, for us and for users who can't tell a Terminal command from gibberish and just want to get on with their lives.

altantiprocrast2• 5 years ago

tbh not even using but just donating could help

everyone• 5 years ago

Don't support walled gardens people.

HomeDeLaPot• 5 years ago

I'm so excited to see things like the Librem 5, Pinephone, and Fairphone popping up along with non-iOS and non-Android operating systems. I hope they get enough support to become a viable alternative to the walled gardens of today. Apple and Google have extracted enough rent; it's time to open things up and build things for the users, not the shareholders.

Marsymars5• 5 years ago

And this is entirely separate from the technical side, where Apple's 3rd-party keyboard APIs are - quite frankly - terrible. Since 2014 keyboard APIs have been buggy, inconsistent, ever-changing, and broken - particularly when it comes to accessibility features like Direct Touch.

This actually ties into the foremost reason I don't use an iPhone. I'm a Dvorak user for 20+ years and have no ability to use QWERTY, or any interest in learning. iOS doesn't have a Dvorak option for the first-party keyboard, and every third-party keyboard I've tried with a Dvorak option is glitchy in ways that make them effectively unusable. (e.g. the system QWERTY keyboard will sometimes come up for OS-level events.) So, I use an Android phone.

Wowfunhappy4• 5 years ago

Whoa! WTF? I always just assumed that would be there in Settings as an option, like it is on the Mac—but nope!

I'd have expected that to be added in iOS 3 at the latest. (I'd say at launch, but then it did take until iOS 3 to get copy and paste.)

Marsymars5• 5 years ago

It kinda is there in iOS like it is on the Mac - you can set hardware keyboards to Dvorak - it's just the software keyboard that can't be changed.

salamandersauce• 5 years ago

Kinda funny because my Apple IIc has a built-in switch just for Dvorak!

p2t2p3• 5 years ago

It almost like the want Congress to get down on them.

A little more of crap like from all of the involved - Google, Facebook, Apple, doesn't matter, they are digging their own graves here.

loehnsberg• 5 years ago

Once iOS and MacOS are merged, will Apple open up its app store to the wild west or will every little OS hack have to depend on their approval? I would certainly be put off by the latter. I was willing to accept the walled garden for my little iOS consumer toy but for my PC I want to have the freedom of messing with it as I see fit.

Discontinuing FlickType Keyboard for iPhone

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