Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-awesome-with-iphones/

by griffinli • 1 year ago

1678 1084 1 year ago

bearjaws• 1 year ago

It's honestly amazing how Apple managed to dodge anti-trust in the United States.

The fact you cannot build a competing watch is unacceptable and the idea that "well go build one for Android" is refusing to acknowledge that Apple is its own market in and of itself.

Throw in the fact that even getting an app that isn't a game into the App store is not trivial, especially if it dares include some form of payment processing outside of the Apple-verse.

The Floatplane Saga, where Linus Tech Tips didn't want to use Apple payment processor because they would have to charge 30% more is another example. It took months and dozens of app resubmissions, only to have to use their massive YouTuber influence to get into contact with someone at Apple should be proof enough that the App Store has gone too far.

jjtheblunt• 1 year ago

I think you’re overlooking Garmin who has a healthy business in smart watches and they’re compatible with Apple devices.

Edit : more up to date and useful comments thankfully below

james_pm• 1 year ago

Long time Garmin watch user here and Garmins are also HORRIBLY crippled on iOS. Can I respond to a text message? No. I can clear the notification, but that is it. Apple Watch has far greater abilities than any other smart watch. That is the issue.

Zagitta• 1 year ago

As someone who has a garmin watch and switched from android to iOS I can tell you it's exactly as crippled as the article spells out. So if anything garmin has a healthy smartwatch business in spite of apple trying their hardest to choke competition.

do_not_redeem• 1 year ago

The limitations in the blog post apply for Garmin just as much as Pebble.

kelnos6• 1 year ago

My wife (iPhone user) has a Garmin watch that a friend of ours (Android user) recommended. The friend's experience is much much better, with many more features that work. Apple is definitely intentionally crippling the third-party smartwatch experience.

roamerz2• 1 year ago

With as much functionality as there is on an Apple Watch I can see how that would be huge endeavor to accomplish while maintaining the tight security and privacy model.

eddieroger3• 1 year ago

I think the devil is in the details of how iOS and watchOS interact. Instead of sending and receiving texts from iOS, watchOS is running messages and only sharing data. I imagine this pattern works a large amount of the time in Apple's benefit. They make a notification API available for anyone to use, they just choose not to do it. They also make it so the watch can use the phone's data, and this they do use, but also it can use WiFi or Cellular on its own.

jimt1234• 1 year ago

It's honestly amazing how Apple managed to dodge anti-trust in the United States.

What's amazing to me is how much things have changed since the Microsoft antitrust saga: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

Jtsummers• 1 year ago

MS had a much larger market share than Apple does in any product category. They were something like 95% or more of the PC OS market. Apple has, in the US, around 50% of the smartphone market and around 15% of the PC market.

MS also did a lot to curtail competition that Apple hasn't even come close to. Like how they crippled BeOS by threatening OEMs with higher Windows licensing costs (as a low-margin business this would have pushed any OEM prices too high to remain competitive).

parsimo20106• 1 year ago

Obviously this is going to be up for debate, but in your comment you acknowledge that "go build one for Android" is an option. This is an indication that your complaint is not in Apple's behavior, but your regret that the competition sucks and it's not Apple's fault. Apple is not a market on their own from the perspective of smart phones and watches, every person making a purchasing decision has options (This is different from an app developer's perspective. See the last line for the explanation of why that's different).

It's not like Apple started off letting third party watches work well and then suddenly locked them out (but you could argue from the article that they started off with minor handicaps and have increased the level of handicap over the years). Most people choose to buy iPhones knowing that only certain watch options work. It's not like anyone is suing Ford or Dodge for only making accessories that work on their own cars and trucks. It's not like anyone can legitimately complain that Ford is anticompetitive because they aren't making themselves compatible with Dodge oil filters.

If Apple did something anticompetitive to keep Android options from being good, then you probably have a winnable legal case. But it seems like Google, Samsung, and the other Android players are losing on their own merits.

Apple is its own market from the perspective of app developers. The app developers can only get to iPhone users through the Apple App Store, so restricting access and charging high fees is anti-trust.

AnthonyMouse9• 1 year ago

It's not like anyone is suing Ford or Dodge for only making accessories that work on their own cars and trucks. It's not like anyone can legitimately complain that Ford is anticompetitive because they aren't making themselves compatible with Dodge oil filters.

You're conflating two different things here.

One is, are their oil filters compatible? That isn't a problem; they can be incompatible. They're often incompatible even with other vehicles from the same manufacturer. Larger engines need larger oil filters etc.

The other is, does the company prohibit compatibility? If a new company wants to make engines but not oil filters, so they make a car engine compatible with existing Ford oil filters, or someone wants to make oil filters for Fords even though they're not Ford, does Ford do anything to inhibit this? In general they do not, and if they did, that very much should be an antitrust violation.

rickdeckard12• 1 year ago

Apple is not a market on their own from the perspective of smart phones and watches.

Apple actually acts as a gatekeeper to the smart watch market when used with their devices, because they provide core platform services as a gateway for these products to operate and communicate with end-users, but define rules and restrictions which don't apply for Apple smart watches themselves.

Apple is its own market from the perspective of app developers.

Exactly. They create a market while giving themselves preferential treatment. They do the same with smart watches, therefore not ensuring a level playing field in that market.

If Apple did something anticompetitive to keep Android options from being good, then you probably have a winnable legal case.

But isn't that's the case Pebble is making here?

There is actually a Wear OS iOS App from Google to connect Android Wear devices with iPhones, and beside the fact that it's not possible to connect any non-Apple Watch to the iPhone without manually installing a separate App, Google is not able to provide the same functionality as Apple Watch does even when incorporating such a companion app.

kelnos6• 1 year ago

This is an indication that your complaint is not in Apple's behavior, but your regret that the competition sucks and it's not Apple's fault.

No it's not; GP didn't even address this. Competition sucks, and that is Apple's (and Google's) fault.

Most people choose to buy iPhones knowing that only certain watch options work.

I'm sure that's not true. Most people choose to buy an iPhone because it's an iPhone. No one is going to buy an iPhone because Apple Watch works and Garmin watches don't work (as well).

Certainly some people buy an iPhone because they also want to buy an Apple Watch (which I assume doesn't really work well or at all with Android), but I think that's a minority of purchasers. They by an iPhone because of the iPhone itself.

It's not like Apple started off letting third party watches work well and then suddenly locked them out (but you could argue from the article that they started off with minor handicaps and have increased the level of handicap over the years).

I feel like your parenthetical refutes any point you were trying to make in the prior sentence. The first part of your sentence is irrelevant. While it does take work to standardize public APIs, it also takes work to lock things down and choose what subset of functions third parties are allowed to access. The fact of crippling third-party smartwatch access is anti-competitive behavior.

This is the same shit we went through in the 90s with Microsoft, but many people here are too young to remember what that was like. MS gave their own apps (Office, IE, etc.) access to private, undocumented Windows APIs that let them provide a better experience than similar third-party apps could provide. The US government and courts decided that was illegal. It should be illegal for Apple to do so as well. (And before you start quoting relative market share numbers between MS in the 90s and Apple now, I don't think that's relevant. You shouldn't need a monopoly in order to be restricted from anti-competitive behavior.)

But it seems like Google, Samsung, and the other Android players are losing on their own merits.

That's a naive explanation for complex social phenomena. Android doesn't suck. It's fine. Very good even. But it's not enough to be good, or even excellent in today's markets. You need incumbency, lock-in, social capital, and, yes... anti-competitive behavior.

And to be clear, Android manufacturers are not losing. In most places outside the US, Android is the dominant operating system.

But! This isn't about Android winning or losing. It's not about Android at all. It's about companies like Pebble and Garmin being hobbled in the iOS smartwatch market because of Apple's anti-competitive practices. Android is irrelevant to this.

enragedcacti2• 1 year ago

your complaint is not in Apple's behavior, but your regret that the competition sucks and it's not Apple's fault

Apple uses their dominant position in the smartphone market to exert leverage over the smartwatch market and block other companies' access to a huge chunk of potential smartwatch buyers. Reduced addressable market->reduced potential returns->reduced investment->worse products for everyone.

This same pattern hurts Apple users as well because Apple can reduce their investment, increase prices, or both, without worrying about being beaten on quality or price.

Most people choose to buy iPhones knowing that only certain watch options work.

This statement would be true if iPhone had 0.1% or 99.9% marketshare and is on its own irrelevant to whether or not it should be regulated. The whole point of regulating companies with dominant market positions is that they have tools to force customers into sub-optimal outcomes regardless of whether or not the customer recognizes it beforehand.

If Apple did something anticompetitive to keep Android options from being good, then you probably have a winnable legal case. But it seems like Google, Samsung, and the other Android players are losing on their own merits.

This ignores the dozens of Smartwatch companies that don't have a smartphone business to integrate with. In your view, what should Garmin have done if the major Android players blocked 3rd party feature parity from the beginning along with Apple? Would Garmin need to make their own smartphone and OS to compete for watch sales, or would their product just not exist? Would that be good or bad for the industry?

hyperbovine3• 1 year ago

I don't see how you can be a monopoly with <30% market share.

dismalaf• 1 year ago

Apple has majority share in the US.

AnthonyMouse9• 1 year ago

You're conflating two different markets.

Apple has less than 100% market share for phones. Apps and phone accessories are not phones, they're separate products made by separate entities.

If Apple phones and Android phones were compatible then the apps would be addressing the same market. For example, phones from Samsung and phones from Xiaomi both run the same apps, so they're in the same market. However, phones from Apple and phones from Samsung do not run the same apps. They're different markets. And Apple has a monopoly on the former.

jobs_throwaway4• 1 year ago

You don't see how you can be a monopoly with nearly 2/3 market share and 2.5x market size of your next-largest competitor? You must not be very imaginative

jimbokun4• 1 year ago

refusing to acknowledge that Apple is its own market in and of itself.

Is the market iOS devices or smart phones?

I think the definition of "market" is usually one of the most difficult questions to answer in anti-trust litigation.

josefresco• 1 year ago

I have a very capable smartwatch and it's ridiculously bad how hobbled it is on iOS. I'm glad to see this article specifically highlight the issues, and how it's 100% Apple's intention to make non-Apple wearables on iOS terrible.

cm2012• 1 year ago

This is apple's modus operandi. Hobble competitors even if it's anti-customer. Fill the gap themselves for higher profits.

diggan2• 1 year ago

Don't forget the classic "Oh, that 3rd party app/feature is so popular, I bet we could build a identical/slightly less useful thing ourselves so people don't have to use other things than Apple software ever"

wilg• 1 year ago

I mean it’s also a lot more work to add all the features Pebble would need so it could simply be they don’t think it’s worth it (and it probably isn’t, given all the other broken stuff they need to fix).

underdeserver2• 1 year ago

And why wouldn't they? It's a ton of money and no regulator seems to care.

echelon3• 1 year ago

The ONLY answer is antitrust action from every major government.

The trillion dollar companies are so massive that they are impinging upon every category of business that touches them. And they're so massive that their sinnew and tendrils touch everything under the sun.

Mobile computing is de-facto owned by two companies. It's owned, tightly controlled like an authoritarian government, and heavily taxed. Compared with the (formerly?) open web and desktop of the 90's - 10's, we've wound up in a computing universe where we're all serfs.

We're in a stagnant world where platforms don't evolve because that's where the moats lie.

Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta desperately need to be broken up into multiple subsidiary companies. It'll oxygenate the entire tech sector and unlock pent up, unrealized value for the shareholders of these equities.

The reason we seldom see centicorn startups or blockbuster tech IPOs is because FAANG (or whatever we call it nowadays) has a dragnet where they can snuff out the markets of new upstarts or M&A on the cheap.

It costs nothing for Amazon to become Hollywood, buy James Bond and Lord of the Rings, become a primary care doctor, become a grocery store, and cross-sell all of these highly unrelated products on prime advertising real estate. It's essentially free for them to put ads at the top of the Amazon store and emblazen it on their delivery trucks and boxes. The old media, which were once healthy competitors, have to spend hundreds of millions to reach the same eyeballs.

We've wound up with Standard Oil 2.0 and it's deeply damaging our market. The innovators and innovation capital are no longer being rewarded. The calcified institutions are snuffing out everything that moves in search of remaining growth.

We must break up these companies. That is the only healthy way forward.

tehjoker3• 1 year ago

isnt it efficient though for these capabilities to exist? why not nationalize them instead and make them accountable to the public

jlkuester72• 1 year ago

100% agree that decisive anti-trust action is needed. In addition, many of us can (and do) choose to just not participate (to the best of our abilities) in the nonsense from these companies.

Many of us are not required to use Apple devices (and we choose not to). Additionally, many of us are able to choose privacy-respecting Android variants (like GrapheneOS). It sometimes is less "convenient", but IMHO it is better then surrendering to the duopoly...

fishcrackers• 1 year ago

I mean you could just not buy apple's stuff

9rx12• 1 year ago

Trouble is that most major governments are democratic, meaning that the governmental powers that be are the very same people (the population at large) who are already not willing to do anything about it. The majority will clearly isn't there at this time (that can change in the future, of course).

Government is a useful tool to clean up the dissenters who wish to act against the will of the people, but under a democracy you cannot believe that the majority are the dissenters. That defies the entire premise.

holmesworcester• 1 year ago

I don't think we need any major government intervention.

What we need is a law that requires companies like Apple to allow their customers to install and run the software they wish, and provide external developers with the same OS features their internal teams have access to.

Europe and Brazil already have such laws, though they could go farther.

In the US we had this bill, which would have covered most of these issues and had bipartisan support: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_App_Markets_Act

bradleybuda• 1 year ago

If you don't like an iPhone, don't buy an iPhone. Don't legislate your consumer preferences on me.

jimbokun4• 1 year ago

Mobile computing is de-facto owned by two companies.

Still beats the Windows era when a single company owned desktop computing (which was the only type of computing for consumers).

We've wound up with Standard Oil 2.0

Skipped right over Microsoft!

We must break up these companies.

With Microsoft it was a complex consent decree. (The initial ruling to break up the company was overturned.)

rangestransform• 1 year ago

Apple Silicon could not have existed without the vast amount of capital that a trillion dollar company like Apple could've mustered, TSMC might even be one or two generations behind where it is right now if Apple couldn't afford bankroll the latest generation and temporarily monopolize it, and for that reason alone I'm fine with the state of affairs

It's also great that Apple is able to negotiate with countries as an equal wrt. user privacy, iMessage is the only e2e encrypted messenger allowed in China, and is currently able to mobilize a significant political movement against mandatory backdoors in the UK

distrill4• 1 year ago

it's pretty frustrating how "apple people" just don't care that it's apples fault. i routinely hear my wife mutter "i hate google so much!" when a google maps integration is being intentionally hobbled to keep her using apple maps. or when she has trouble managing rcs conversations because somebody in our social world has the gall to be on an android phone.

ch4s315• 1 year ago

I am aware that apple blocks certain functionality to maintain a cohesive and secure experience. It is THE reason I buy their products, I want the curation. Otherwise I'd buy an android device.

skyyler2• 1 year ago

What kind of trouble does she have managing rcs conversations? It works fine for my partner on their iPhone.

frollogaston31• 1 year ago

I don't like that iMessage = lock-in, but everyone else needs to make a better standard first. We got cross-platform encrypted covid chat before we got this. RCS has an FBI "do not use" warning on it because there's no E2EE. And the reason people don't want green bubbles is cause they always screw up the group chat.

blackeyeblitzar3• 1 year ago

There are many anti competitive practices that Apple and Microsoft engage in. And a lot of it is not even “preventing” something but just bogging it down so it takes a lot of time and money and starves out anyone who could challenge them.

But we should also talk about the inverse thing where they give themselves an advantage in positive ways. Like for example, iOS devices will regularly advertise Apple’s own Siri intelligence or their own games subscription or news subscription or iCloud or whatever. These get special treatment and show up in unexpected ways - notifications that you cannot prevent ahead of time or in your system menu with an annoying badge you cannot dismiss until you click the thing. These are things Apple only does does THEIR OWN products and services. It gives them an anti competitive advantage against others, but it does so not by crippling others but by boosting themselves.

All of this should be illegal. I dislike regulations sometimes, for example when EU regulation gets into censorship. But they seem to be doing a lot more to help customers and support competition than the US. While Trump talked a lot about breaking up big tech, I am skeptical as to whether he’ll do anything to actually support competition and actual free markets. It will require regulation, not posturing.

riazrizvi• 1 year ago

Because everyone here commenting knows the reason?! This is all speculation by outsiders. Apple isn’t commenting and if they did, outsiders wouldn’t know if it’s the real reason. It could be that Apple lacks the patents, for some of these key features and they are making the best out of a bad situation. It is what it is and we can’t be sure why.

Osiris8• 1 year ago

The reason is irrelevant. Apple watches can do things that Apple doesn't allow other non-Apple devices to do.

The law doesn't care why they choose to do it. The result of the decision is what constitutes illegal monopoly behavior.

LeifCarrotson2• 1 year ago

I too have a very capable smartwatch (fitness watch - Garmin Fenix) and it's remarkable how different my experience with messages and actions are relative to the experience of Garmin users with Apple phones.

Garmin Connect always runs in the background on my Android phone, watching for notifications, pulling data from and pushing data to Garmin servers on my behalf even when I'm not using the app. It's third-party, but it's reasonably well-written and doesn't nuke my phone battery or data plan - Android doesn't need to protect me or their reputation from Garmin. I can always check the weather or look at my daily workouts or whatever on my watch and trust that it's recently been upodated by the phone app phone. Garmin users with Apple phones complain that "Garmin doesn't work" after every iOS update that further hobbles the Garmin background service.

I get text notifications on my watch for any Android apps that provide notifications, and relevant ones (like text messages, whether SMS or RCS) provide an option to reply from the watch. I tap the top right button on the watch and scroll to "OK" or "Thanks" or "Can't talk right now" or whatever one of a half dozen canned responses covers 90% of my needs in this mode, and don't have to dig my phone out of my backpack or otherwise interact. Emails, calendar appointments, clock stuff, music controls, etc. all work over the watch. It's just as privileged as the phone, I'm not concerned about my Garmin intruding on my privacy as protected by Android, I wear the watch 24/7 and it has more data on me than the phone!

lloeki2• 1 year ago

watching for notifications, pulling data from and pushing data to Garmin servers on my behalf even when I'm not using the app. It's third-party, but it's reasonably well-written and doesn't nuke my phone battery or data plan
get text notifications on my watch for any [...] apps that provide notifications, and relevant ones (like text messages, whether SMS or RCS [or iMessage])

I get this behaviour on iOS+Garmin, and can both see notification text (even when phone is locked and notification content hidden on lock screen) + can dismiss notifications just fine with "Clear" action (both points noted in the article as not being possible)

Fair enough though, I just can't reply or take a specific action in actionable notifications.

Media play pause next prev work as well, and calendars are all viewable too.

Widgets that use the phone+app as proxy for network access also just work (e.g weather refreshes, or I have a Home Assistant widget which hits my self-hosted instance just fine)

Apart from replying I don't have a hobbled experience at all.

fracus• 1 year ago

I honestly don't think Apple products are a smart choice for tech savvy people anymore if they ever were. You are paying a premium for easy to use, convenient servicing, and the aesthetic.

megablast• 1 year ago

I have a very capable smartwatch that I will not mention the brand once. OK.

vrosas• 1 year ago

You'll one day hear Apple's lawyers argue in court that "security" never meant cybersecurity, only share price security.

singularity2001• 1 year ago

or job security

wffurr• 1 year ago

If only

https://www.hrgrapevine.com/us/content/article/2024-08-29-te...

jisnsm3• 1 year ago

If iOS only allows you to build a worse experience, then Apple customers will leave the platform for Android. The problem solves itself.

Brainspackle• 1 year ago

No I won't, Android is not a good user experience. I'd rather buy an Apple Watch.

kelnos6• 1 year ago

And this is exactly the problem. Apple presents many of their users with bad choices: either buy an Apple Watch and suffer from its downsides, or switch to Android, and suffer in other ways. Or stick with the iPhone, buy a third-party smartwatch, and suffer from and unnecessarily-crippled user experience.

There's no technical reason it needs to be this way. Apple just prefers to be anti-competitive and increase their profits, than to give their users the as-close-to-ideal experience they want.

giancarlostoro• 1 year ago

You couldn't pay me to go back to Android, having used Android from 2009-2020. Apple Watch is fantastic, I'm a little sad that they don't provide better integration capabilities to external devices. I can only assume that's another anti-competitive lawsuit brewing.

Steve16384• 1 year ago

It doesn't if there are only two choices and consumers don't like either.

jisnsm3• 1 year ago

That’s not Apple’s fault or responsibility. Maybe Android should stop sucking.

presbyterian3• 1 year ago

I don't think this is true. Apple could drop smart watch support entirely and I still wouldn't use an Android phone. I personally find the user experience infinitely better on iOS than on Android, and Apple would have to drop the ball very bad to get me to switch.

(Note: This isn't because Apple is without faults. iOS and macOS are both a mess right now, and iPadOS is even worse. I just think that Android is worse than that, and I know many, many Apple users are in the same boat)

beeflet2• 1 year ago

what's so bad about android

ok_dad• 1 year ago

Same. I actually like that Apple locks down everything to their own devices, in general, because I believe (from my limited knowledge; I am no insider) it's more secure. Perhaps not, but I trust Apple to release products that are fairly secure, and update them for several years. Whereas with Android, I'd have to trust the phone manufacturer, Google (ewww), and all of the companies that have bloatware installed by default. I do wish there were more 3rd party integrations for those who want them (without sacrificing security), but as for me I am perfectly happy giving Apple my money to get good hardware and decent software that works together well (way better integration than anything in the Android/Linux/Windows world).

vile_wretch• 1 year ago

Similarly if Apple opened up every API and allowed every smart watch to do whatever it wanted, I'd still prefer an Apple Watch. I tried using a Garmin and "not being able to send an sms" isn't even on the list of things I disliked about it. Ugly clunky interface, pogo pin charging, a companion app that at times wouldn't look out of place on a Windows CE smartphone circa 2006, etc.

kelnos6• 1 year ago

No, because it's much lower friction to "just" give up and buy an Apple Watch (or just do without), even if you don't like it and think that the features or design a third-party watch are better for you. Or at least could be better, if not for Apple's anti-competitive practices.

The problem is that people don't really have choice. Both iOS and Android have positives and negatives, and often those positives and negatives are not the same. Choosing one or the other is going to have you missing some positives you want, and taking on some negatives that bug you.

If this was just the nature of how things have to be, I'd be more sympathetic. But the real reason it's this way is due to anti-competitive behavior on the part of Apple. There are no technical limitations; it's just their business model to restrict what people can do with the device they've bought. There are certainly some valid security reasons for doing this in some cases, but most of it is just to protect their revenue streams.

lozenge• 1 year ago

How long is the problem going to take to solve itself?

jisnsm3• 1 year ago

From my argument it follows that Apple customers don’t care about this.

beart• 1 year ago

Isn't this ignoring the lock-in factor? Leaving Apple is probably more than just switching a single piece of hardware for many users. The entire Apple ecosystem encourages "buying in".

As a few examples

* (almost all) bought apps don't transfer

* bought media (music, etc) and how that integrates into the software

* icloud and other account services

* replacing your phone + laptop + watch + IOT devices which may all be in the apple ecosystem.

So one can easily see how folks who have bought in are willing to put up with user-hostile actions.

Of course, Apple is not the only company that uses integration as a way to retain customers. However, from personal experience, I feel Android is a bit more open (at the cost of a more fractured experience). I can definitely understand the pros of not having to deal with carrier installed garbage when purchasing a device.

shuckles19• 1 year ago

Another company that would like Apple to donate R&D resources to them to add iOS API for free.

JoshTriplett3• 1 year ago

Another company that would like Apple to not expose functionality to their first-party ecosystem and refuse to expose it to third parties even with user consent.

If the functionality isn't available to anyone, fine, so be it. If the functionality exists on the Apple Watch, it should be done through an API.

shuckles19• 1 year ago

Surprised there are professional developers who seem to be clueless about the vast difference in the cost of developing 3p API versus internal only functions. The basic difference between public and private has been captured in language design for decades now.

mrlatinos2• 1 year ago

The APIs already exist...

shuckles19• 1 year ago

Then what’s the post complaining about? Just use the API!

croes4• 1 year ago

You mean APIs the Apple watch already uses?

shuckles19• 1 year ago

It’s not API. That’s the whole complaint of the post. Just because it’s implemented internally does not mean it’s ready for framework support. Have you ever built an API before?

celsoazevedo3• 1 year ago

Isn't that included in the price of the device you buy?

shuckles19• 1 year ago

What is “that”? The iOS SDK is public knowledge and it makes no guarantees about future features.

film422• 1 year ago

iOS wearable integrations are bad, but somehow Meta Ray-Bans are very good. Voice assist to start a call, send a text, read a notification, etc. Did Meta get special access to do this?

radlad• 1 year ago

Does it do anything that the linked article says it can't do?

film422• 1 year ago

It’s impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to send text messages, or perform actions on notifications (like dismissing, muting, replying) and many, many other things.

Unless I'm crazy, I think I've used my Meta Ray-Bans to do all of these things at some point. So is this a watch only limitation that Meta was able to avoid?

CharlesW2• 1 year ago

Did Meta get special access to do this?

Apple would never give Meta access to private APIs. Eric has access to everything that the Meta View app is doing.

TonyTrapp• 1 year ago

We have seen competitors (big, well-known apps) do things on iOS that most definitely are not possible with public APIs. Either Apple willingfully provides access to these APIs to a select few companies, or they don't care that they reverse-engineer private APIs and then use them. If it's the latter, the competitor app was probably too big to be banned from the app store for this. Apple was unwilling to comment on the situation when we asked them.

iamcalledrob• 1 year ago

Often this is via special entitlements [0]. Published APIs, which you're only allowed to use if Apple approve your request.

Apple typically don't publish the criteria for when they approve entitlements, so it's almost impossible to get approved. You need to be a big company with contacts inside Apple.

Meta, Google etc. will all have negotiated a bunch of these entitlements for their own apps. But smaller companies are totally shut out.

[0] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/en...

itsdrewmiller• 1 year ago

I've still had some settings thrashing with my raybans - sometimes they will refuse to read messages and ask me over and over to enable a setting, which is already enabled. Seems more likely to be an Apple issue than Meta given it has roughly coincided with iOS upgrades.

Lio2• 1 year ago

For voice integration, you can just provide a bluetooth microphone on you device and have it access Siri. Garmin have tried the same strategy on some of their watches.

What you can't do is reply to a text without using voice, which is what I'd like.

TMWNN3• 1 year ago

For voice integration, you can just provide a bluetooth microphone on you device and have it access Siri. Garmin have tried the same strategy on some of their watches.

Interesting. This indicates that the inability for my Amazfit Balance to do this is indeed an artificial limitation, and not something that Apple prevents. <https://np.reddit.com/r/amazfit/comments/1j3ftbr/why_cant_ba...>

ChadNauseam• 1 year ago

I wonder if you could synthesize a voice with TTS saying "hey siri, send a text to X saying Y", and send that over bluetooth as if it was mic input.

jimbokun4• 1 year ago

So Pebble needs to open a Siri connection, ask it to read the latest text, then speech-to-text the response and show it on the watch.

And then the same in the other direction.

sabellito• 1 year ago

Some 6 years ago I bought new bluetooth headphones. Every time I'd put them on, my macbook would open apple music (I didn't even know it was installed). Every time. No way to disable it, I really tried. Stopped shy of doing some kernel stuff.

Sold that laptop, and have never touched anything apple since. Probably never will. The hardware's good, everything else is an embarrassing mess.

Sent from my Ubuntu.

mrpippy• 1 year ago

Your headphones were probably sending an AVRCP 'play' command every time they connect. This was a common problem with older car radios too.

jandrese• 1 year ago

Not only every time they connect, but every time they are paused or stopped too. My car has this problem. It was not possible to pause the music, it would always immediately restart play.

CharlesW2• 1 year ago

It's because your headphones were sending a Bluetooth "Play" command on connect (my Honda Odyssey does this as well). For anyone else with this problem, you can override this silly default in macOS using Privacy & Security > Bluetooth, adding Music, then turning off Bluetooth access for Music.

jeremyjh2• 1 year ago

Music isn't in the list of apps and I don't see any way to add it. I would love to fix this in my car radio.

rpmisms• 1 year ago

Just did this, pressing play on my headphones still launches Apple Music.

bigyabai9• 1 year ago

you can override this silly default

But Apple sure won't, seeing as Music.app conveniently displays a modal advertisement for Apple Music when it launches.

Silly defaults. At what point does it stop being silly and start being a dark pattern?

kevincox4• 1 year ago

That is maybe questionable behaviour from the headphones. But the worse problem is that there is no way to change what media player is used. I don't use Apple Music, have no songs in it and no subscription. But it opens that rather than the player I do use.

I'm pretty sure I have also launched Apple Music accidentally with some keyboard button or touchbar action. For a "premium" device having to close Apple Music (effectively an ad) a few times a week is not acceptable.

jedbrooke• 1 year ago

just in case anyone else is running in to this problem, there is a solution

https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes

this will prevent itunes/apple music from opening

IshKebab2• 1 year ago

Should have called it byeTunes.

seba_dos13• 1 year ago

Apple has been restricting iPhones from being awesome since 2007.

bsimpson2• 1 year ago

Remembering the uproar when Apple said 3rd party apps would have to be web apps, but didn't ship the features needed to write good web apps on the first iPhone? The term PWA wasn't coined until 8 years later, and Apple has long been accused of hobbling its web stack to incite people to ship on the App Store and pay their 30% tithing.

meatmanek• 1 year ago

The term PWA may not have been coined until 2015, but you could definitely save a webpage to your home screen on i(Pad)OS at least as early as 2010. Granted, it was pretty limited, but you could put an icon on your screen, have it open a web view that was somewhat separate from Safari, store data with localstorage, and generally look and feel kinda mostly like a native app.

bfrog3• 1 year ago

I guess this is why their market share grows and grows, because the product is terrible and the competition is amazing.

Or maybe reality is the opposite. That android phones that are supported by their vendor for maybe a year or two, have terrible battery life, allow any and all spyware, and generally suck aren't really comparable to the iPhone which effectively does the exact opposite? Or do you love being the product at Google?

seba_dos13• 1 year ago

Well, that's why I don't use Android either.

xyst• 1 year ago

One of the many reasons I have been exiting out of the Apple ecosystem.

They are so damn hostile to any third party integration, reserve apis for first party usage, and give middle finger to developers with their abusive fee structure (Apple takes a 30% cut …).

Only thing left is for my devices to age out (I am in deep with phone, watch, mbp, mba, and even Mac Studio M1 “ultra”)

nehal3m• 1 year ago

You can always sell them, they hold their value pretty well.

tmshapland• 1 year ago

"So we’re going to make a damn iOS app." Love it.

mns• 1 year ago

Some of the things mentioned in the post seem to work just fine with Garmin watches. Maybe because Garmin is just bigger they have the resources to implement some of the things (like third party devs publishing various watch apps and faces that are in the Garmin store). Same with notifications, yes, you can't do actions from notifications, but I have notifications "hidden" or whatever that feature is if the phone is locked and they show up just fine on my Forerunner.

nradov• 1 year ago

Replying to text messages on Garmin watches doesn't work with iPhones. It works fine with Android. But Apple has restricted that messaging functionality to only their own watch in a monopolistic and consumer hostile move.

drewg123• 1 year ago

The notification feature that I miss most from Android+Garmin on iOS+Garmin is the ability filter what apps notifications can go to my watch. Its apparently possible, as Coros seems to have done it.

But after hearing repebble's complaints about not being able to do things that Garmin can do, I almost wonder if different vendors may be given different private api exceptions or something (just guessing, not an ios dev).

dmitrygr2• 1 year ago

This article is 100% weapons-grade FUD

It’s impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to [...] or perform actions on notifications (like dismissing, muting

REALLY? Why not RTFM?

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...

Notification Actions
Starting with iOS 8.0, the NP can inform the NC of potential
actions that are associated with iOS notifications. On the
user’s behalf, the NC can then request the NP to perform an
action associated with a specific iOS notification.

These API have exited for over a decade and plenty of other wearables use them. Yes there are some limits, but many fewer than the original article implies to create outrage

croes4• 1 year ago

Where is the part where you can reply to a message?

etchalon3• 1 year ago

I'd assume it would be a notification action?

dmitrygr2• 1 year ago

OP said “ cannot do A or B”. I demonstrated how to do B, proving the original statement to be a lie. The fact that you still cannot do A irrelevant. Hyperbole has no place in technical discourse.

wafflemaker• 1 year ago

Lol, you're asking for it by using apple.

I'm still recommending Apple to family members (less support needed from me, and I can always say I have Android and can't use apple so I can't help). But you have to go all in. If you want non apple stuff, just use something else. And if you can use Linux etc., why are you using Apple? Other then being lazy, which is totally ok.

infecto2• 1 year ago

I guess you could call it lazy, I value my time and have zero desire to tinker with the daily products I use. I am sure some enjoy it but I do not.

layer82• 1 year ago

And GP is saying that that’s totally okay.

matheusmoreira2• 1 year ago

Other then being lazy, which is totally ok.

It's not OK. This collective laziness and convenience is our number one enemy. People don't want to be responsible, they want some corporation to manage everything so they don't have to think about stuff.

We need more people to take responsibility and use Linux and free software and hardware. Owning the computing system means being responsible for it, and we need to get people to accept that responsibility. The less of us there are, the more business and financial sense it makes for them to just straight up ignore us as some irrelevant vocal minority.

We should all own our computers, and there should be so many of us that they have to suck it up because not doing so means they take a big hit to their profits.

joshstrange3• 1 year ago

This is such an incredibly HN take.

What are you seeing in the world that would led you to think the average Joe can use Linux without someone like us supporting them? Maybe not day to day but they are absolutely going to run into pain points like “Netflix is low quality” or “I need to install this windows app for this new gizmo I bought”.

It’s a fantasy world that Linux desktop is good enough for most people, it just is. I love Linux and use it on all my servers but come on.

_emacsomancer_11• 1 year ago

Don't recommend Apple if you know better. Not everybody does know better.

You can just say that you don't have enough time or spoons to do free tech support.

rickdeckard12• 1 year ago

If there's a case to make on Apple hindering a competitive landscape, then it would possibly be a case of violation of the European Union's DMA (Digital Markets Act), as Apple is not allowed to favor their own services over those of competitors in visibility, functionality, or integration within iOS.

But the EU is a blunt instrument that needs to be sharpened sufficiently with explicit facts. And then still, possibly a very slow instrument...

As for the US justice system.....not sure whether there is any interest to pursue such a case these days...

bsimpson2• 1 year ago

Apple has also shown its not shy about geofencing the remedies to only help people physically located in the EU's jurisdiction, with a billing address to match.

rickdeckard12• 1 year ago

Indeed. But i.e. India followed with similar demands based on EU's DMA Regulation, and so could other countries then.

In a ideal world US would lead the way, as it's the most influential market especially for US companies. But I don't expect this to happen...

tacker20002• 1 year ago

Similar thing is going on with the Spotify Apple Watch app, probably so that people migrate to Apple Music...

see this discussion, for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/1h6qmrw/spotify...

snotrockets• 1 year ago

With Spotify app, some issues seem to be due to Spotify themselves. For example, even when you explicitly download music to your watch, the app needs network connection to start playing. This seems to be explicit design decision on Spotify's part.

coolspot• 1 year ago

Likely a condition from IP holders to make sure the play is counted and paid for.

tacker20002• 1 year ago

The (unfortunate!) hack here is to disable the BT connection on your phone, works 90% of the time.

Also when downloading songs, its better to disable BT on the phone, otherwise the songs download through BT instead of through the much faster Wifi connection. This is clearly an Apple impendiment here, crippling a feature that should work without these sort of hacks.

sroussey• 1 year ago

I dunno, I use the spotify apple watch app just fine

ATMLOTTOBEER• 1 year ago

Do you listen without your phone? Ime the app is fine with phone nearby, but for independent playback from just the watch it’s trash.

mafuyu• 1 year ago

ANCS gang rise up

rickdeckard12• 1 year ago

"Apple’s “Watch Policy” annoys me, but not enough to switch to Android. I hope Apple will be forced to improve their compatibility with other watches."

The conundrum of "[xyz] annoys me, but not enough to [do anything about it], yet I hope [Company] will be forced to improve [xyz]"

So where is that 'force' expected to come from...?

wlesieutre• 1 year ago

If there are effectively two choices and both of them do things you don’t like, “it’s your fault for not switching to the other one” isn’t a very useful argument

rickdeckard12• 1 year ago

The question is more, where is that 'force' expected to come from which should make them change their way? Just hopes and prayers?

ianferrel• 1 year ago

So where is that 'force' expected to come from...?

On the margin, it probably does annoy some people enough to do something about it. And even though Apple's policy on this isn't enough to move me, if you combine it with my other annoyances about Apple products, eventually the sum will be enough.

And we vocalize stuff like this because switching does have a cost that I'd rather not pay, so hopefully people who can make a change at Apple will see the discontent and fix it so that I don't have to pay the switching cost.

kevincox4• 1 year ago

Because everyone is on a spectrum. [xyz] wasn't the straw to break this user's back, but it will be the tipping point for some number of users. [xyz] is also moving this user closer to the edge, so when Apple does [abc] the sum of both is now enough to move this user.

You can't expect that everyone who is bothered by an issue switch away from a platform. The switching cost is significant (and Apple works hard to make it as high as possible). Not to mention that the platforms (really one notable competitor) that they are considering switching to also have [def] and [ghi] that the user doesn't like which is also counterbalancing the decision.

noname120• 1 year ago

There is a thing called regulation.

babypuncher2• 1 year ago

I think the problem is that nobody makes a smart watch as good as the Apple Watch, so people already in the ecosystem have no real reason to care that it's their only option. There's a reason Linus Sebastian has been wearing Apple Watches for years despite being a self-proclaimed Android fanboy.

This is only getting attention now because these new Pebble devices are offering an Apple Watch alternative people actually want.

rickdeckard12• 1 year ago

The article is literally describing aspects where Apple prevents competitors to offer a COMPARABLE experience to an Apple Watch on iOS.

There is no equal opportunity to compete in the market of iOS users if you try to compete with Apple.

I think that's part of the problem.

bmandale• 1 year ago

There's very little an individual can sensibly do. You can't pick and choose every feature you want; you're given bundles of features and you have to pick which bundle you like best. This sort of bundling is deliberate anti-competitive behaviour, which the EU and other countries have recently taken steps to crack down on. So there is hope that apple will be reigned in here.

jillesvangurp• 1 year ago

Anti-trust authorities. Non US based government authorities (e.g. in the EU). Etc. The current trade wars might impact Apple the other large Silicon Valley companies pretty soon. Think stricter rules, bigger fines, more restrictions outside the US.

When it comes to Apple, there probably is quite a bit of low hanging fruit:

- Allowing 3rd party interpreters, browsers engines, etc. on IOS. The OS has sandboxing, there should be no security argument here. Android can manage this, so why not Apple?

- Arbitrary app store restrictions and predatory fees on transactions. Apple is getting rich by essentially using mafia style schemes here. Nice App you have there. It would be a shame it got banned. Better implement X, drop feature Y, or else ... Oh and by the way, you need to pay us 30% on every transaction in your app and you are not allowed to link to payment options outside your app.

- Repairability issues. Apple products continue to score low here. And Apple makes quite a bit of money charging 3-4x component cost for parts and upgrades.

There are probably some more issues.

bsaul• 1 year ago

The whole iOS extension mechanism should be illegal. It's such a clear advantage to apple's own apps, i don't understand how nobody has every sued Apple about it.

dcchambers• 1 year ago

Stuff like this is the reason iOS/iPadOS will never be serious general purpose computing platforms.

rahkiin5• 1 year ago

Which they never advertised it to be. Nor is my toaster and my oven or my xbox

bhelkey5• 1 year ago

~70% of the 8 billion people in this world use a smartphone [1]. It is the primary computer for a huge percentage of these people [2].

Comparing mobile phones to toasters, ovens and gaming consoles is disingenuous.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203734/global-smartphone...

[2] https://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-mob...

fsflover3• 1 year ago

Did you want Apple's ads on iPads? They definitely do advertise it as a replacement for a computer.

pipeline_peak2• 1 year ago

They'll get by...lol

resource_waste• 1 year ago

I read Darwin recently and he talks about how weak insects will use deception methods to compensate for their lack of strength and it reminded me of Apple.

They arent the best, they are never 1st, they are 2nd or third or beyond.

Instead they found niches in marketing. Read the word "Security" or "Privacy" in white and black text in their commercials, no actual claims on either. Just the words. They have stylish products with their celebrities, dancing people, and blue bubbles. None add to the strength to the product. In the LLM world, they've tricked people into thinking 'unified RAM' and integrated video cards are equivalent to an Nvidia GPU.

Specifically on topic, iPhones seemed to always under perform in features. This is yet another example.

Their track record makes it obvious, but most consumers won't notice. That is why the deception works. I used to be an Android Zealot who preached the immorality of Apple, but I genuinely stopped caring that other people were making mistakes and Apple was exploiting them. If anything, I take notes personally how to be more like Apple, save my strength and get positive outcomes.

liuliu• 1 year ago

I think, we fundamentally lack a mechanism to enforce secure / privacy aware APIs without resorting to trusted inner-circle type of things. I am already not comfortable with Apple picking winners (such as giving Zoom special entitlement but not the VOIP apps you want to distribute by your own). Apple trusting their own apps more than other apps is another symptom of this and it is not helping their anti-trust situation even if it is with good-will.

And "giving people choice" won't work neither because people will just tap whatever checkbox you give them (the internet should never forget that Facebook SDK just forces to accept "The App is Tracking You" notification and most users tapped yes).

wpm• 1 year ago

Quicktime Player.app gets an entitlement called `com.apple.private.tcc.allow`, giving it unprompted access to the Camera, Microphone, and Screen Capture.

An MDM administrator, managing a computer or device owned by an organization, cannot grant those permissions to anything without user consent. For good reason!

So why the *fuck* does Apple think they're entitled to?

judge2020• 1 year ago

Replace MDM administrator with ‘malware author’ or ‘spy software’ to get your answer. There is functionally no difference between a regular company doing MDM wanting to bypass camera permission prompts and a hacker who has tricked/forced the user into enrolling into MDM.

Now, replace ‘Apple’ with ‘malware author’. What’s the difference? Well, for one, a hacker has nothing to lose and everything to gain from snooping on your webcam. Meanwhile, if Apple mishandles this permission or used it to beam video data to HQ, there’s a high likelihood hundreds of millions of dollars of iPhone or Mac customers are lost, resulting in billions of dollars in stock value loss.

Spivak3• 1 year ago

I mean the reason is because Apple, the people who made the security boundary, and Apple the people who made Quicktime are the same people.

I'm not saying it's not anti-competitive but it's fine from a security context. Apple knows exactly how Quicktime behaves, that it doesn't act maliciously, and can't be updated to do so.

FireBeyond4• 1 year ago

Remember when people realized that Apple apps were bypassing application-level firewalls like LittleSnitch?

First it was denied, then it was a bug, then it was a "temporary workaround" while ... something ... was updated.

And that was just ... accepted as an answer. I could never fathom why TextEdit might need a kernel extension in the first place, let alone unfettered/unmonitored network access. I don't even think it was necessarily nefarious, just "we know best, shut up and buy".

badc0ffee3• 1 year ago

Think about why they ask for access in the first place - it's because camera access or screen access might be unexpected for the app you've just started. Or maybe you don't trust the app with your camera (looking at you, Instagram).

QuickTime Player is already on your Mac and you already know what it does when you launch it.

crazygringo9• 1 year ago

So why the *fuck* does Apple think they're entitled to?

Because they manufactured the device, and you bought it?

And honestly, I support them. Because starting QuickTime is a user action, and it only records when I want it to. QuickTime is an app I trust.

I don't trust an organization admin not to record me without my consent. As we've heard the horror stories of schools spying on students with school laptops while they're in their own homes, their own bedrooms.

I trust Apple a whole lot more than I trust an org admin.

m463• 1 year ago

Because to activate apple's device (not yours), you had to read 1000+ pages of terms and conditions (did you?) and they told you this somewhere in there.

paulcole• 1 year ago

I am already not comfortable with Apple picking winners

This is what I like most about them! Just pick something that you think is good. If I like what you pick I'll keep buying from you.

m3kw92• 1 year ago

It’s likely a priority issue. They have limited software resources but have so many products to support and develop, they will like any company weight what fits their future roadmap and strategy. Saying they purposely hobble watch devs isn’t really true

pat_space• 1 year ago

My Garmin Fenix 6 refused to stay connected to my iPhone without deleting the bluetooth device and re-adding it, until I enabled location services for Garmin Connect to Always Allow. This contradicts documentation but is the only way I could get it to work.

m3kw92• 1 year ago

Apple: “It seems letting other watch devices have access to all the capabilities the Apple Watch has will commodize it. But it will make them happy. Let’s do it anyways, our shareholder shouldn’t mind us allowing our watch to get cannabalized”.

sergiotapia2• 1 year ago

The best decision I made was to switch to Linux Mint and Samsung Z Fold 6. I can't believe I was ever a fan of apple products. Hobbled walled garden products. If you're in tech you should not use apple products. Unless you're building an iphone app.

skydhash• 1 year ago

I got on the apple train on Mojave. Before that I was enticed by iOS 6. It was a good platform. But now it just have too much restrictions and other weirdness like not being able to delete apple’s apps, writing files on network shares, not able to adjust system fonts (like the menu bar).

While I still keep the Mac for professional purpose, I move over to fedora.

vultour• 1 year ago

I've had iPhones since the 3GS and not once have I seen a convincing argument for why I should switch. I need my phone to make calls, send text messages, and to be a 2FA device. The secure "hobbled walled garden" you're talking about is a selling point.

sergiotapia2• 1 year ago

1. i can install any apk i want

2. i can transfer files by just plugging in my phone to any usb

3. better battery, i can go to 0% plug in and in 30 seconds turn my phone on. on iphone i have to wait at least 30 minutes.

4. actual innovation in hardware like a foldable

vessenes8• 1 year ago

I guess I’ll take the contra here on messages integration — moving a message over BLE to untrusted hardware and worse accepting them back into iMessage is a massive, massive change in the security boundary and therefore security architecture and therefore security promises that apple makes on iMessage.

I do not believe average smartwatch users understand what they’d be doing if they got this. I do not believe vendors integrating with such a thing can do it safely, or even that all vendors integrating are good actors.

One reason iMessage is less of a total cesspit than SMS is that the ecosystem is closed, and makes automation difficult. It used to be impossible nearly, and in that era we had almost no iMessage spam. Now it’s difficult, and we have moderate iMessage spam. But adding hooks to make this automation easy, and worse, leave the trust environment as a feature is just wrong.

tadfisher• 1 year ago

Opening up a BLE API for iMessages is not going to impact iMessage spam whatsoever. It will impact Apple Watch sales though.

agloe_dreams• 1 year ago

Hey, there we are.

That's exactly it.

You've always been able to use Applescript to send iMessages on a Mac.

Nextgrid4• 1 year ago

moving a message over BLE to untrusted hardware and worse accepting them back into iMessage is a massive, massive change in the security boundary

Anyone can already screenshot iMessages and move them out of the "security boundary"... which btw doesn't exist much, as if you have any Mac connected to your iCloud account then those messages are being synced to an SQLite DB any process running under your user can access.

droopyEyelids• 1 year ago

Did you mean to reply to a different comment?

culi3• 1 year ago

In what world is screenshotting an iMessage enough to move them out of the security boundary

seanhunter• 1 year ago

I don’t think you understand what the security boundary of iMessage is.

People’s phones got compromised by NSO sending images to them via whatsapp that used an exploit in one of the image libraries to run a malware payload. The security boundary isn’t about whether you can see your own messages, it’s whether bad people can root your phone by getting untrusted code to run. That’s a very different proposition if iMessage is a single codebase that they fully own end to end versus it has a plugin ecosystem. Having such a plugin system widens the security boundary by adding a much larger codebase that would require trust.

threeseed5• 1 year ago

any process running under your user can access

You will need to grant that app explicit Full Disk Access permissions in order for it to access that folder.

sunshowers13• 1 year ago

The problem is that this argument happens to conveniently align with Apple's financial interests.

ch4s315• 1 year ago

If your value prop to customers is seamless and secure default behavior, then of course blocking insecure peripherals aligns with your financial interests. This doesn't seem nefarious at all to me.

wobfan2• 1 year ago

That's the problem. Apple has two arguments. It obviously only tells us about the one that sounds good.

gretch• 1 year ago

It's not a problem, it's a good thing that someone's financial interests intersect with sound security practices.

That like saying "people want reliable cars" conveniently aligns with Toyota's interest and implying there's something wrong happening.

richwater• 1 year ago

I'm glad Apple's financial interests are aligned to my interests of not letting the eco system turn into a shitty Android-esque privacy wild west.

mistercheph6• 1 year ago

So sick of this strawman dialectic from the apple-brained, where the alternative to the walled garden is the worst possible implementation of an open standard.

culi3• 1 year ago

Firefox is also frequently criticized for not implementing certain APIs because of security concerns. There was a post on this site just the other day about their lack of support for WebUSB for exactly this reason

It's not unique to Apple. And we should take security seriously. To people who are technically literate and think they can navigate security risks it's not a big deal but people's entire lives are frequently turned upside down by scams and security loopholes

minkzilla2• 1 year ago

It doesn't have to be the worst possible implementation to be less desirable than the walled garden for me. I get so much spam in whatsapp, groupMe, telegram, and from sms. Some of it is even from legitimate contacts but then they signed up for something or did something and it sends one of those stupid "join me on {thing}" messages. The only place I don't get spam is imessage

sockaddr• 1 year ago

It's not a straw man argument, it is the argument.

An average user can't dive into the bluetooth driver code and figure out where in the 4000 page spec something deviates and is now a security issue. So we have to assume the worst.

the_mitsuhiko• 1 year ago

moving a message over BLE to untrusted hardware and worse accepting them back into iMessage is a massive, massive change in the security boundary

Is it? My iPhone replicates messages to my mac from where a process can extract that data, it can capture the screen etc. I can use a mac today to set up a relay that would then send those messages to a smart watch if one would do that.

browningstreet• 1 year ago

Same with Phone Link on Windows.

judofyr• 1 year ago

Yes? Imagine a bug where iMessages are leaked over Bluetooth when a user has installed an application that integrates with some watch brand. Bring this to an airport and you can steal hundreds/thousands of messages from a wide range of people. That’s widely different attack vector than targeting macOS.

That said, I don’t see why Apple can’t provide toolkit/certification that will make it safe to communicate over Bluetooth. They already have it in-place for Apple Watch.

eddieroger3• 1 year ago

I agree with you, but your iPhone forwards SMS messages, but not iMessages, and there's a trust relationship between the devices through Keychain. Still, doing it blindly over BLE is a scary proposition.

greggsy• 1 year ago

Your phone and Mac have strong trust at the OS, hardware, and manufacturing level.

maximusdrex3• 1 year ago

I truly don’t understand how these types of comments keep appearing under any discussion of apple’s blatantly anti-competitive behavior with messages. This doesn’t even make sense on technical grounds; it would be trivial to require such message passing to be encrypted/signed securely if that’s your real concern. After all, the Apple Watch does exist and does have these capabilities, so it’s clearly possible to do it and maintain the “security boundaries” you’re so concerned with. Then every single one of these comments inevitably turn towards spam messages which no longer even makes sense since iMessage has been filled with spam lately. I really don’t see how allowing smartwatch manufacturers to also interface with iMessage (in the same way Apple Watches do) will inevitably increase spam on the platform which can’t be detected/mitigated in other ways. I’d love to see some technically rigorous explanation for why apple can’t support any third-party anything instead of hand wringing about “security” with no real explanation but I have a feeling I’ll be waiting a long time.

snailmailman3• 1 year ago

It’s not just the transmission over Bluetooth. It’s the entirety of what happens with the message. Apple fully controls and trusts the code that’s running on the apple watch. But they have no control over what third parties do with all the data they can collect in notifications.

Bluetooth devices on iOS that display notifications already are getting more information than normal by simply even reading all notifications. Normal apps on iOS can’t do that, they have no reason to. This api was added because smart watches kinda need that functionality to be useful. I think it’s still locked behind a “this device will see all your stuff” permissions box.

I do think they should add in more iMessage/sms/replying capabilities to smart watches though. I think they are extremely hesitant to make it even easier to automate iMessages. iMessage spam is definitely increasing, but it’s NOT as prevalent as normal sms spam for instance. The barriers are much higher, and Apple can basically blacklist devices/appleIDs that send out too much spam, partly because they’ve kept iMessage so locked down.

dns_snek8• 1 year ago

One reason iMessage is less of a total cesspit than SMS is that the ecosystem is closed, and makes automation difficult

Really? I'm not in the Apple ecosystem to confirm but it looks trivial to me, and you can always fall back to keyboard/mouse input type of automation.

https://airmessage.org/

https://bluebubbles.app/

https://medium.com/@jameskabbes/sending-imessages-with-pytho...

jmb992• 1 year ago

Some anecdata. I get a few dozen spam SMSs in any given month, as well as some spam phone calls (varies a lot by month - sometimes only 1-2, sometimes 20+). I have received a total of 2 spam iMessages (I remember them because they’re notable to exist), and 0 spam FaceTime audio calls, and I’ve had this phone number associated with iMessage since it was first released.

Regardless of the reason, there is substantially (many orders of magnitude) less spam on Apple’s networks, at least for me, when compared to SMS/RCS/telephony.

dwighttk• 1 year ago

Apple is fine with any customer retention benefits from security and I don’t agree (with the article author) that they are merely pretending their strategy is primarily focused on security

chamanbuga• 1 year ago

This is cap. I worked on heads up glasses, and one of our issues was the lack of integration with Apple's iMessage ecosystem. Device makers are willing to go through several security measures, like deploying the MFi chips and certification. However, at best this gives you access to the notification system, not iMessage itself. You are able to respond to messages via the notification framework, but not integrate directly with iMessage even after taking all security and certification efforts. This isn't a security play. This is a walled garden play.

mceachen2• 1 year ago

s/cap/crap/?

Retric• 1 year ago

Every device you let in is another attack surface, and no certification process can eliminate it.

Allowing devices to view and respond to messages is inherently lower risk than allowing them to freely communicate with anyone.

pertymcpert• 1 year ago

*This is false.

madeofpalk4• 1 year ago

What are the limitations of integrating via notifications? That seems like the user-respecting method. For example, I don't use iMessage or SMS, but WhatsApp.

bloodyplonker22• 1 year ago

May I suggest using proper English? I believe part of the reason you are getting downvoted is due to the hat language you are using. Several people, understandably, will not comprehend.

lynx976• 1 year ago

As a user, I am totally fine with Apple restricting access to iMessage. In fact, now that I read this, I want them to do this, thanks Apple.

alex1115alex• 1 year ago

Preach. My team's building an OS for smart glasses and some of our most common feature requests are iOS notifications & being able to reply to them.

We're going to have to do insane things to get them working. Due to how ANCS works, we're considering developing an ANCS "doohicky" (either a BLE pop-socket, smart-ring, or mag-safe wallet) which gets notifications via BLE & relays them back to the iPhone, to then send to the glasses. That would just get us the raw notifications, though, and wouldn't solve the issue of replying. The other option is a Beeper-like system in the cloud to bypass iOS entirely, but that also has downsides.

It's a total mess, especially compared to Android where you can just easily listen for notifications & send them to the glasses without much pushback from the system.

8ytecoder• 1 year ago

The attack vector is a 3pt app being compromised - maliciously or otherwise - that logs/collects the messages - i.e, the apps themselves can be a threat vector. To be blunt and honest, I’m not sure I disagree. The notification framework seems like an okay compromise to me. I have used it with my Garmin bike computer and I’m more than happy with the level of integration.

DrBenCarson• 1 year ago

Might be a little bit of both but nothing you said there contradicts the original point--opening up iMessage integration to arbitrary bluetooth connections is a bad idea. It blows open access to all your messages...who knows, maybe even the e2ee keys. Law enforcement would have a brand new frictionless way into all your messages

shuckles19• 1 year ago

And what happens when the MFi chip is cracked, as it has been before, and Apple has to choose between permanently compromising their ecosystem or disabling support for a bunch of 3rd party peripherals?

apimade• 1 year ago

As someone who has found a lot of holes both in design and implementation, which have been reviewed and vetted by excellent people and companies, which have all the appropriate certifications - no thank you.

I understand the benefit of an open ecosystem. Use your web browser, or a third-party app. The tech adopted by the masses needs guard rails and secure defaults.

I hated Apple’s ecosystem growing up, now I think it’s necessary. We can’t trust developers, or companies, that have competing interests to do the right thing.

whyenot• 1 year ago

This is crap

I appreciate you sharing your experience, I just wish you could have done it without this bit.

boringg2• 1 year ago

It might be a walled garden (which is a form of security) but thats also why a lot of people buy their products. Know your demographic.

xnx• 1 year ago

Does iOS have third-party accessibility software that would have full display and interaction privileges?

stemlord• 1 year ago

And I'll be the contra to your take: the iMessage ecosystem is so closed that everyone without iphones can barely even interact via sms with iphone users. This is overall such a huge problem that it makes the closed ecosystem security solution not a practical solution

op00to7• 1 year ago

I’ve never had an issue texting via SMS since iMessage was available. Now, I can do RCA as well. What issues should I have encountered?

vessenes8• 1 year ago

Nope, SMS works. Just fine. Apple rightly warns you that you are in a lower security environment by adding a bit of visual friction. This is true EVEN IF you are using RCS, because European laws require termination and inspection when RCS messages “interoperate” and are sent to other providers.

nashashmi• 1 year ago

my Chinese smartwatch can get imessages. It can't send messages, but it can use the AI voice (SIRI) to send messages. It can't delete messages either.

PebbleOS is asking for the ability to respond to messages with reply or user interactions. This is not a security breach. And it won't leak from encryption anymore than it is leaking now.

stefan_• 1 year ago

I think you just don't understand the point. I don't care for choosing between 15 different brands making differently colored RAM either when it's all the same standardized thing, but you bet we're in a lot of trouble when it's only one brand at all. Competition isn't always "technically pure" and "elegant" or meaningful.

amiga3865• 1 year ago

Step 1: Have the iPhone pop up saying "do you want <Pebble watch> to be able to send messages?" and let the user decide which devices can send their phone messages.

Step 2: Have the iPhone pop up saying "do you want <Apple watch> to be able to send messages?" and don't just assume "yes"

Both steps would improve security, even if they harm Apple's profits.

spiderice• 1 year ago

How would step 1 improve security over not allowing third party devices to send messages at all?

threeseed5• 1 year ago

We have decades of experience that users will blindly click whatever prompts they need to make the app work.

fiddlerwoaroof3• 1 year ago

I absolutely hate these sorts of nagging popups and I’m happy that a vendor I already have to trust doesn’t pop them up when I acquire a new product and sign it into my Apple account.

Imo, if this were to happen, it should happen by allowing devices like the pebble watch to sign into an Apple account and acquire permissions through that process rather than nagging on my phone on pairing.

modeless3• 1 year ago

Apple makes a mockery of their own "security promises" for iMessage by not end-to-end encrypting iMessages in iCloud by default. Ridiculous to use that as a justification to prevent users from choosing to send their messages to watches that happen to be made by someone other than Apple.

dwaite• 1 year ago

I don't understand, there is no option for iMessages to not be end to end encrypted. Are you speaking to the security of the recipient's backups?

conradev2• 1 year ago

Bluetooth devices can already read Messages from your iPhone with no degradation to E2EE: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...

This is just about sending.

glitchc• 1 year ago

What is the problem here that a standardized cryptographic algorithm would not solve?

I can understand if media poses concerns, but inbound and output text consisting entirely of UTF-8 characters?

queuebert2• 1 year ago

And yet haven't iMessage 0days been used to track and kill people? Even without opening the message?

frollogaston31• 1 year ago

The only hard part of automating either iMessage or SMS spam is getting a clean account to spam with. The input source is easy.

blackeyeblitzar3• 1 year ago

One reason iMessage is less of a total cesspit than SMS is that the ecosystem is closed, and makes automation difficult.

Is this really true? I receive a lot of iMessage (not SMS) spam on iOS devices too. In fact for me I see more spam purely on iMessage than SMS. It wasn’t like that in the past, but my point is even closed systems can be abused.

Rebelgecko• 1 year ago

Does Apple not support that sort of integration already? What happens when your phone is connected to a car and you get a message?

Osiris8• 1 year ago

I get plenty of spam texts on iMessage. Can you elaborate on what you mean by "cesspit"?

mid-kid• 1 year ago

Yet another example of security without consideration for user experience and freedom. Information security is a careful balance between not using technology at all and getting things done using technology. Sometimes you have to wonder if heavy-handed solutions like this actually helps maintain this balance for users, or just serves to ensure a company's bottom line.

This is the line of reasoning that has resulted in me being unable to sign up with a shocking amount of house rental companies, thanks to Play Integrity on the android side of the coin. Does it improve security for me? I would argue it doesn't, as it would force me to use unpatched versions of Android. If it's not serving the user, who is it for?

tomrod• 1 year ago

If AppleWatch didn't exist, this critique and reasoning would have legs.

Jyaif• 1 year ago

That's not the "contra", you've just fallen for Apple's PR.

epolanski• 1 year ago

What's the SMS cesspit?

tylerchilds• 1 year ago

solution: red bubbles

apple already does blue for in network and green for out of network

red can just be “this message was yolo’d, be aware”

cmiles743• 1 year ago

Only letting Apple Watch have this functionality is what is wrong. It's clearly anti-competitive, in my opinion their hand-waving about security is just that.

They could implement something that works for other smartwatch vendors, they haven't because they don't want to.

Reason077• 1 year ago

"One reason iMessage is less of a total cesspit than SMS is that the ecosystem is closed"

I don't think that's the main reason. iMessage is available on macOS, so by definition isn't that tightly locked down. Anyone can automate/script the desktop app to try and fire off as many messages as you like.

But of course that won't really work because Apple has security algorithms in the network that detect unusual behaviour. Did that user/device suddenly start to fire off 1000 messages to users they've never contacted before? Activity flagged, user blocked.

There are also functions in the iMessage app itself to block and report unwanted/inappropriate/spam messages. So even low-volume spammers will not get away with it for long.

Besides, in the UK, SMS spam is almost non-existent in my experience. Unlike in some other countries I've visited where it's a huge problem. That's not because the ecosystem is any different - it's because there's strict rules that are actively enforced (see TPS: www.tpsonline.org.uk).

s3p• 1 year ago

Do you have a citation for apple rate-limiting iMessage?

alsiola• 1 year ago

Besides, in the UK, SMS spam is almost non-existent in my experience.

This is not my experience. Perhaps 3-5 years ago was the peak of SMS spam, but I still regularly (1/week minimum) get one of the various "package delivery" | "tax refund" | "diesel emissions" scam/spam texts.

johnnyanmac• 1 year ago

I do not believe vendors integrating with such a thing can do it safely, or even that all vendors integrating are good actors.

Well, Apple will sure make sure the hard task is impossible. That's where the fault lies. It can be a bit tiring hearing security used as a smokescreen to maintain a monopolistic structure over uhh... green bubbles?

windexh8er2• 1 year ago

If you don't think that a walled garden locked into an ecosystem of hardware isn't already a cess pool - then I don't know what is.

Hardware should be able to be interoperable. Apple chooses not to, it's in their best interest because they claim "security" and "privacy" for it's users. Security theater for the masses.

boringg2• 1 year ago

Your not wrong but it is significantly better then microsoft which was its main competitor.

Arkhadia• 1 year ago

Oh the irony of how your comment could change a few words and sound like a trump/musk post

RockRobotRock• 1 year ago

One reason iMessage is less of a total cesspit than SMS is that the ecosystem is closed

Would like to add my personal experience: I get way more spam iMessages coming from random Apple IDs than I do spam SMSes.

pyrale4• 1 year ago

The idea that device pairing can and must only be secured at hardware level is a fallacy whose goal is to ensure that only apple products work well with apple products.

For the spam example, nothing prevents apple from offering a ble api with auth that ensures that only devices manually paired by the user access it.

As for automating spam... when we’re discussing ble, we’re talking about a device a few meters away from your phone. What are spammers going to do, send a jogger right behind you that spams you after somehow hacking apple’s auth system?!

simonebrunozzi• 1 year ago

iMessage is a failure on policy. Antitrust and similar govt entities should have forced Apple to open it a long time ago.

HexPhantom2• 1 year ago

I get the security concerns, and you're right - opening up iMessage integration to third-party devices would require a serious rethink of Apple's security model. But at what point does -security- become a convenient excuse for anti-competitive behavior?

amelius3• 1 year ago

Nonsense, you can set up your phone such that it shares messages with other devices. If users don't know what that means for security, then tell them. But don't act like it's in their interest to never use devices from other brands.

rkagerer• 1 year ago

untrusted hardware

That's the root of the problem right there. As a hardware vendor, how do you achieve a "trusted" status in their ecosystem?

If only Apple devices can do the Appley things, then it really isn't an ecosystem (at least not what I have in mind when applying that term).

ryandrake3• 1 year ago

I wouldn't trust most hardware vendors with my wifi password, let alone access to my phone's messages. Hardware vendors have shown time and time again that they don't care about privacy or security. All they care about is shipping their widget and getting you to buy it, and to do that, they will cut corners, ship defective firmware, use easily guessed default passwords, and turn a blind eye to abuse.

As a hardware vendor, you'd achieve "trusted" status by having a decades-long track record of not doing these things.

rolisz• 1 year ago

Counterpoint: SMS is not a spam cesspit in Romania. My phone number is public (company information is public). And I get 1 completely unsolicited messages per month and 1 per week from companies that I bought something from. That's not even enough to get me to try to get rid of those messages.

Aachen5• 1 year ago

To add: it's not about targeting rich markets, either. I have a number from the Netherlands and Germany and neither gets more than one spam SMS per, eh, year maybe on average? Some years none, some years three or so perhaps? When COVID was new, I also got a few spam calls (as did my family around the same time, so I guess it was briefly a thing), but that seems to have stopped again. I've had the Dutch number for 20 years and it's in public records, so it's not brand new and unknown either

Timon3• 1 year ago

Just don't make the mistake and give your phone number to any American companies. I did so when starting my current job since I didn't yet have a company phone number, and I suddenly started receiving multiple spam messages daily, which has been going on for years now.

Hammershaft• 1 year ago

I don't see how spam would be a problem.

Couldn't messages created externally to imessage be tagged as such and then just rate limited?

ig1• 1 year ago

This is incorrect. It's trivial to reverse engineer and use the imessage API and there's third party services which will give you access to it.

thedangler• 1 year ago

couldn't they make it so it requires permission access with face recognition, thumb print, or pin to give it temp access that needs to be renewed.

freehorse2• 1 year ago

I don't know much about ios. But in macos there are ways to access imessage chat logs or send imessages programmatically. You can create an applescript and do all sorts of stuff. So while I do get that giving this sort of access to an app on your iphone should at least be done through explicit intentful consent from the user, I do not see the impossibility in it. And the fact that there is all this crapp around should not make it impossible for us to have good things, either.

nicoburns• 1 year ago

Do you have a problem with SMS spam? I can't remember the last time I got a spam SMS message, and I had my phone number on public on my personal website for a number of years.

Perhaps SMS spam is a US thing?

invig• 1 year ago

Summary: "Users get to decide if they trust Apple. Users shouldn't get to decide if they trust anyone else."

Royce-CMR• 1 year ago

I want to say thank you for writing this. 100% same opinion. I've stuck with Apple - despite their downsides - specifically for their zeal in areas like this.

My phone works, I'm glad it blocks others from integrating because I need it to always just work. That's why I still have an iPhone over all the often paper superior alternatives.

etchalon3• 1 year ago

I have a hard time sorting out the difference between a "restriction" and an "unwillingness to devote resources to making easy".

kennysoona• 1 year ago

Restricting something isn't the opposite of devoting resources to make something easy.

This is a false, and very strange, dichotomy.

etchalon3• 1 year ago

I never said it was the opposite?

closetohome• 1 year ago

I can't help but feel echoes of the 2015-era Pebble trying to compete with the Apple Watch, and the lessons learned from that. I have an Apple Watch, I've been wearing one for ten years at this point. All I use it for is notifications, time, weather, and music control. I'm more than happy to buy a tinker-friendly smartwatch that does just that, and I don't think I'm alone. I hope these guys don't kill themselves trying to feature-match, and just lean into the inherent advantages of their platform.

pcdoodle• 1 year ago

Adding a comment in support. This seems like a really cool product and it sucks that Apple is gatekeeping features they use in their own crappy watch that needs to be charged all the time...

mentalgear• 1 year ago

another illegal walled garden method

jms703• 1 year ago

I do not get smartwatches after having 2 of them. Back to a simple digital dumb watch.

abhinavsharma• 1 year ago

between the restrictions, apple dropping the ball on AI, and Gemini slowly improving, the idea of Google significantly leapfrogging Apple in end-user experience is not that unfathomable any more.

rednafi• 1 year ago

There's nothing new here. From AirDrop to AirPods, Apple's MO is to lock you into their ecosystem and be as belligerent as possible toward any non-Apple gizmo. Couple that with social and network effects, and you have a perfect formula for monopolizing a market without continuously improving the tech.

briandear4• 1 year ago

I like the ecosystem. If you don’t, choose another ecosystem.

csours2• 1 year ago

"Love it or leave it" - why not make it better?

lucianbr• 1 year ago

I like that the EU forces Apple to be more open. If you don't, just don't come to Europe.

tavavex2• 1 year ago

If you like it, use it. Why not let other people augment the ecosystem? If Apple allowed Pebble to get full permissions and it all turned out to be the extremely unsafe, buggy disaster that everyone here chooses to portray it as, then you can still buy an Apple Watch. In what way does shutting out the competition benefit you?

grishka• 1 year ago

What if you like their computers but absolutely can't stand their mobile devices though?

I got fed up with the walled gardens enough that I made a macOS app to transfer files to and from Android devices using Google's Quick Share protocol (that I had to reverse engineer first).

And no, don't suggest me to try desktop Linux. I want to use my system, not maintain it.

crazygringo9• 1 year ago

and you have a perfect formula for monopolizing a market without continuously improving the tech.

...but the Apple ecosystem has the best tech. M chips, AirPods Pro, Apple Watch, iPad, Pencil, I mean the tech is great.

Apple isn't monopolizing anything. They're competing like hell and winning because their tech is best. The real question is why the Android and Microsoft ecosystems don't do better at improving their tech. Where's the Windows equivalent of an M4 MacBook Air in terms of performance and battery life?

NotPractical7• 1 year ago

...but the Apple ecosystem has the best tech

You aren't in any position to make that call, since you have no opportunity to try competing products due to being locked in to an anticompetitive ecosystem. European iOS users will soon be able to decide if Apple really does have the best tech or not.

DecentShoes• 1 year ago

Apple is monopolizing lots of things. You aren't allowed to make software for the iPhone without distributing exclusively thru the App Store. This whole post is about how they restrict third party watches.

_emacsomancer_11• 1 year ago

Microsoft couldn't compete themselves out of a wet paper bag (it may be a slightly different script, but they're anti-competitivists just like Apple).

Apple technology is "great" as long as you you're rich enough to afford it, and buy into the whole ecosystem. And, most crucially: contort yourself yourself enough. (="If it's not working for you, you're not holding it right.")

presentation3• 1 year ago

I just wish that they didn't feel the need to block out competitors to compete on an even playing field - I agree that their hardware is great, but if it's so great it should be able to dominate the market without hobbling competitors on iOS.

jeroenhd• 1 year ago

Best individual hardware components perhaps, but their software is shit enough that I don't consider their tech to be best. macOS and its weird limitations are enough for me to accept Windows 11 before I'll buy an Apple laptop.

lawn• 1 year ago

The hardware seems pretty good.

The software has taken a nosedive though and Android has overtaken iPhone in many (most?) aspects.

mbs159• 1 year ago

"Best tech" in a general sense doesn't really mean anything, since it depends on use-cases

kmeisthax• 1 year ago

It’s very difficult to enable other iOS apps to work with Pebble. Basically iOS does not have the concept of ‘interprocess communication’(IPC) like on Android.

Actually, let me make this worse. iOS has plenty of IPC, you're just not allowed to define your own IPC protocols. IPC is solely for your app to talk to Apple's code, not for apps to talk to each other.

vladcodes• 1 year ago

I completely get the point, and it's a shame. Apple is bad because it doesn't clearly announce this kind of limitation for third-party hardware and software before selling their phones. And I don't think Pebble or Garmin will either. Why not just limit your market to a platform that fits well? That would be the fairest solution for a customer.

tech234a• 1 year ago

As a side note: Phone Link on Windows does allow replying to texts/iMessages on a connected iPhone. However, group messages are not handled properly, and message history from before the connection started isn't available. I believe it's available on an API that is only available on an older version of Bluetooth that is not low-energy. It can also sync contacts and do phone calls.

Over BLE, it is possible to receive and delete notifications, as well as view and control media playback/volume/metadata.

peter_vukovic• 1 year ago

Apple is simply continuing to do what Apple does best - building strong products and protecting their ecosystem.

Does that mean some vendors will be treated unfairly? Of course.

Does it mean Apple users will remain happy? Absolutely.

If there is one OS that is anti-tinkering by design it is iOS, and yet people keep criticizing this intentional design decision that forms a large part of Apple’s moat.

Osiris8• 1 year ago

Clearly not ALL users are happy because users of non-Apple watches are unhappy that their watch can do things with Android it's not allowed to do on iOS.

It's not reasonable to make a blanket absolutist statement like that.

mulderc4• 1 year ago

I guess I don't see why Pebble, or any smart watch, should need a phone at all. The watch should be able to connect to wifi and/or cellular by itself. We should be able to run full apps on the watch itself.

Majromax• 1 year ago

Battery life. Radios are energy-intensive, and the processing required to run "full apps" is also often pretty steep. In the meantime, while battery chemistries are getting better space is very much at a premium on one's wrist.

From the other recently-posted article, the new Pebble watches are targeting 30-day battery lives between charges. That would be unthinkable for a watch that manages its own wifi/cellular connections.

mulderc4• 1 year ago

I had a pebble and the limitations of the device drove me insane. I don't care if my smart watch has 30 days of battery, I care about what it does and that I can do the things I want to do on it. The Apple watch has wifi and celluar and I can do tons of things on it without my phone around. Many of the apps I use have essentially full apps on device which allows me a lot more freedom from my phone and flexibility with my watch.

bhelkey5• 1 year ago

Two reasons:

One, adding hardware to connect to WiFi and cellular increases size and power requirements. Notably, the new Pebble 's battery is projected to last 30 days.

Two, people use phones. They want their watch to work with their phone instead of around it.

mulderc4• 1 year ago

WiFi and Cellular are avialble on the smallest of apple watches. I don't care if my smartwatch can go 30 days between a charge, none of that matters if it can't do what I want it to do. I had a pebble back in the day and I thought it was useless as it was such a limited device and it sounds like they want to replicate that experience. I'm happy the people that want such a device are getting it, but I don't get the appeal and want a device that can do thing.

TMWNN3• 1 year ago

As I wrote on Reddit <https://np.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1jea1k6/apple_restric...> to someone else critiquing the post:

----

he’s going to opine about how Apple is “anti-competitive,” and “evil,”

Complete with obligatory Trump mention.

I haven't owned a Pebble but have long heard how nice they are. That said, this is wrong:

It’s impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to send text messages, or perform actions on notifications (like dismissing, muting, replying) and many, many other things.

My Amazfit Balance lets me dismiss iOS notifications. I don't know how Amazfit's Zepp app enables this functionality; all I know is that it works.

Its integration with iOS is not ideal or complete; for example, although I can take and make phone calls with its mic and speaker, I can't talk to Siri through it despite my ancient $20 running headset being able to do so. But Balance's other advantages are more than enough for me to go with it over an Apple Watch.

sod• 1 year ago

I used an apple watch since the first one, updated twice, but stopped using it a few months ago. Siri got slower an more unreliable. Automatic sport detection became annoying. And still having to charge it every single day became pretty old. I miss being able to pay with my watch without having to unlock my phone. But thats about it. Anything else about that product just became annoying.

I'm 100% certain that if 3rd party watches could integrate like apple watch could, that apple watch could be way better. But the lack of alternatives conceals how mediocre of a product it became. I wish apple wasn't such a control freak.

lukevp• 1 year ago

The ultra only needs to be charged for like 45 mins every couple days. It’s nice for the “find my phone” button and for getting alerts when my phone is in my pocket.

pipeline_peak2• 1 year ago

They don't even offer the same support with BT headphones as their AirPods. Why on earth would they support something that could be a threat to their watches?

What type of company do you people think Apple is, one that pleases hackers at the expense of their competition?

manmal3• 1 year ago

Some features will appear first on our Android app, and then eventually we’ll add them to the iOS app. This is because the majority of our development team uses Android phones, and generally we’re building things for ourselves, so naturally Android comes first.

Up to that paragraph I sympathized. Sometimes it does feel like Apple doesn’t care one bit about me, an iOS developer. But, as a user, I really don’t care what phones the devs use. I use an iPhone and now I feel like I‘d be a second class citizen because of this paragraph. Not because Apple’s restrictions are unnecessarily bad, but because the devs just care less. I guess I‘d go for an Apple Watch instead.

(Was a first gen Pebble owner btw)

bhelkey5• 1 year ago

Apple creates significant roadblocks for 3rd party accessories. Android does not.

Is it really surprising that developers who love building third party accessories would choose Android?

manmal3• 1 year ago

They chose to make an iOS app though, and, it seems to be a second class citizen.

gxs• 1 year ago

I don’t want to see any tweets or blog posts or complaints or whatever later on about this. I’m publishing this now so you can make an informed decision about whether to buy a new watch or not. If you’re worried about this, the easiest solution is to buy an Android phone.

Agree or disagree with what he's saying, he sounds like a petulant child

briandear4• 1 year ago

If you’re worried about this, the easiest solution is to buy an Android phone.

The easiest solution is to buy Apple Watch.

gslepak• 1 year ago

If you’re worried about this, the easiest solution is to buy an Android phone.

Readers might be interested in our Ultimate iOS to GrapheneOS Migration Guide and Review:

https://blog.okturtles.org/2024/06/the-ultimate-ios-to-graph...

piyuv• 1 year ago

Nice guide! Immich should be added for Photos imo

_emacsomancer_11• 1 year ago

(this is excellent!)

conradev2• 1 year ago

Reminds me of the time I wrote a jailbreak tweak for iPhone to send more types of notifications to Pebble back in 2013:

https://www.engadget.com/2013-02-14-hack-brings-all-iphone-n...

https://github.com/conradev/btnotificationenabler

This has been a problem for a long time.

Nifty3929• 1 year ago

I think people forget that Apple is not making devices for the Hackernews community. They are making devices for people that just want something that works pretty well and has reasonable security - even to the extent of protecting them from themselves. They have other things to do with their time than learn about security vulnerabilities and how to avoid them. They want to just click 'yes' on every popup and expect things to keep working. Because they know that they are not qualified to answer that yes/no popup question. And those people do not care much about lock-in and walled gardens. They are not interested in jailbreaking and sideloading apps. They've never heard of Pebble or have any interest in it.

This is 90% of humanity, including people we all know and love.

Apple serves these people pretty well.

zamadatix3• 1 year ago

The post has a section regarding these concepts and why the author disagrees, why not respond to that directly instead?

I tend to side somewhat with what the author is saying: they can be both relatively true statements and a way to abuse market power at the same time so identifying it as fitting the mold of one or the other is only the start of the conversation. People against the practices tend to care more about the latter and I think that's why we've seen the EU, Japan, and now Brazil regulate the behavior based on that rather than asking "what's Apple's target usage type".

ketzo6• 1 year ago

Apple claims their restrictions on competitors are only about security, privacy, crafting a better experience etc etc. At least that’s what they tell you as they tuck you into bed.

Ah, yes, the author is clearly interested in an in-depth discussion of the tradeoffs in allowing 3rd-party users access to data that you tell your customers is 100% always encrypted.

sigmar• 1 year ago

Couldn't you make that argument for literally any anticompetitive practice? Like in the 1990s: "Microsoft isn't making an OS for people that want to try different browsers"

liquid_thyme6• 1 year ago

Yes, you could. It's indeed troubling to see this mindset on HN. We have an overflow of professional "explainers" these days, we need more doers and fighters.

sneak2• 1 year ago

Not any anticompetitive practice, just the ones that allow in competitors who have different security models for human/computer interaction.

Imagine if you could swap out Siri for Alexa. The privacy guarantees are nothing alike. People buy iPhones because they prohibit unsafe choices.

eddieroger3• 1 year ago

Unlike Microsoft of the 90s, there are alternative mobile operating systems that are actually competing with iOS and Apple, so the argument isn't the same. In fact, people point out that iOS doesn't have majority share when you look at global usage, and only has a small majority when you look at the US. Microsoft's next nearest OS competitor didn't make a browser, and a lot more than half of computer users were using Windows.

wat100002• 1 year ago

Making your own products interoperate better than competitors' products is pretty typical and I don't think it rises to the level of "anticompetitive practice."

If you don't like it (and I can totally understand why), there are numerous other smartphone makers out there with products that allow better integration with these watches and you're free to buy one.

MS didn't get into trouble because they went after competing browsers, they got into trouble for doing that while also having a monopoly on PC OSes. Apple doesn't have anything like a monopoly in this market (their US market share is about 50%, worldwide is around 28%).

frollogaston31• 1 year ago

I honestly don't care about Microsoft bundling a browser. The real problem was that they intentionally broke web standards to push websites to "work best on Internet Explorer," so even those who chose not to use Windows were caught up in it. Whereas, Android users aren't affected by what Apple does here.

They still bundle Edge, and keep setting it to default. But idc, it's just one of 1000 reasons I don't use Windows.

crazygringo9• 1 year ago

Only if they're a monopoly.

In the 1990's, Microsoft Windows had over 90% of operating system market share. They were a monopoly.

iPhones are only 58% versus Android in the US right now. That's nowhere close to monopoly. Globally Android has 71%. Android is thriving.

With Windows, you didn't have a choice. With iOS and Android, you have choice.

ubermonkey• 1 year ago

Well, no, at least not honestly, because in the 1990s Microsoft was sitting on a true monopoly. Apple is one of several (3, at least) players in desktop computing, and one of two in mobile. Nobody has the kind of power Redmond wielded now.

And that's a key part of the discussion.

liquid_thyme6• 1 year ago

Whose side are you on exactly? I'm sure Apple doesn't need help amplifying their position.

that_guy_iain3• 1 year ago

Apple are making devices for people who want things that look pretty. Functionality is generally not the major concern. Think about it.

They are late with most new tech as they will just wait until it becomes cheaper, why? Because they already know it's not a deal breaker.

They removed a bunch of fundamental and heavily used ports from the Macbook for years. Because they knew people would just work around it and buy dongles.

They put the charging port for their wireless mouse on the bottom of the mouse so it wasn't possible to charge and use the mouse at the same time. Because they knew people would put up with it because it was pretty.

For a lot of people, it's not that it works well or anything. It's about the brand and the design. It's about the marketing. And when it's about that and not the actual product you can do whatever you want to your product and it doesn't really matter. And compatibility with other brands doesn't matter because they've already bought into Apple's brand over everything else including basic functionality.

frollogaston31• 1 year ago

I'm annoyed about the dongles, but that's about it. Macs work better.

efdee• 1 year ago

They have other things to do with their time than learn about security vulnerabilities and how to avoid them.

You're making that statement as if iPhones don't have security issues and people using Android definitely have to learn about those things.

They want to just click 'yes' on every popup and expect things to keep working. Because they know that they are not qualified to answer that yes/no popup question. And those people do not care much about lock-in and walled gardens.

What exactly is it that Apple does that makes it not matter whether you click 'yes' or 'no' on these popups?

alterom• 1 year ago

To add: if the goal is to make a system where the yes/no answer is irrelevant, then it's a system when very horrible UX: the pop-up shouldn't be there in the first place!

This also doesn't address the obvious solution: safe and easy defaults, and an option for manual overrides in advanced "I know what I'm doing" settings.

And no pop-ups at all.

CivBase6• 1 year ago

IMO, Apple's position as part of a duopoly disqualifies them that kind of defense.

When customers aren't empowered to choose which company they engage with, companies should not be allowed to choose which customers they support.

frollogaston31• 1 year ago

The customer has plenty of choice here, including just not having a smartwatch. It's a toy.

0xEF• 1 year ago

It's crazy that so many don't realize this. I am not an Apple user, likely never will be, but I recommend their tech frequently. They meet that market's needs with aplomb and I respect that.

SecretDreams• 1 year ago

This is 90% of humanity, including people we all know and love.

I'd say more like 95-99% of humanity tbh.

senordevnyc• 1 year ago

I’ve been a professional software engineer for 20 years and this is how I feel. And I’m an iOS engineer!

I mostly want my phone to just work.

queuebert2• 1 year ago

This is a false dichotomy. You can build a system that is secure by default but allows you to opt out with sufficient technical knowledge.

_emacsomancer_11• 1 year ago

Or also just have a corporation with enough technical knowledge themselves to work out security.... I suppose they figure it's not in their business interests though.

shantara3• 1 year ago

We’re rapidly approaching the point where having a smartphone is becoming a necessity for being a functional part of the society. You could argue that is some countries we’re already past that point. A device of this social importance that’s also locked into one of the two American megacorps absolutely needs as much scrutiny as possible, since the interests of those megacorps are not aligned with the interests of the society.

To give one example, Apple has removed an option for Airdrop file sharing between iPhones that are not on one another’s contact lists after the pressure from the Chinese government to stop it from being used for protests coordination. And yet this change was silently rolled out globally as a part of an iOS update.

So, no, “Good enough for most people” is not actually good enough.

nomel• 1 year ago

This is somewhat false. It wasn't removed, it just takes intent now, and it has a timeout. I've been spammed by strangers with airdrop before, and have accidentally airdropped things to strangers. I enjoy the increased intent.

But, gone are the fun days people spam airdropping funny "This is the captain" pictures to everyone while waiting for takeoff in an airplane.

vv_4• 1 year ago

having a smartphone is becoming a necessity for being a functional part of the society

This is correct, as in some countries, you use your phone to authenticate access to banking applications and payments (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart-ID). However, I find it a bit of a stretch to claim that having iMessage access on a smartwatch is essential for being a functional member of society.

Corporations will always take steps to ensure their profitability. Apple, for example, is incentivized to keep its systems locked down to maintain its ecosystem. There are likely other justifiable considerations behind these decisions. While laws exist to regulate what corporations can and cannot do, there should be a reasonable balance. That said, I don’t think this is a battle worth fighting - people can simply switch to an Android phone, which offers better support for a wider range of smartwatches.

golergka4• 1 year ago

It took a 100 years from first phone public networks in the 1880s to the basic expectation that you would have a phone number in 1980s. Public internet came this way in ~20 years (early 90s-early 10s). Smartphones did it in 15?

brailsafe• 1 year ago

iPhones are the Starbucks of phones. They were sort of novel and better than competition for a few years after launch maybe, became a status symbol, and then all the people who bought in stuck around while it became a bit old hat and uninteresting while paying the price that it was when it was still cool. If I want a capable rectangle, there are plenty of options now that are better and cheaper and more reliable. iOS and iPhones and just fine if you don't care, just like Starbucks is fine if you don't drink black coffee or have no options

uni_baconcat2• 1 year ago

People cares, but not care that much.

They care about privacy and freedom, so they have different opinions besides Apple. But they don’t care that much, so not everyone is trying to figure out if their phones have a hackable toggle.

blackeyeblitzar3• 1 year ago

And those people do not care much about lock-in and walled gardens. They are not interested in jailbreaking and sideloading apps. They've never heard of Pebble or have any interest in it.

Customers are interested in new products and services that are good. This is how all currently popular products began, obviously. By preventing competitors from being good, as Apple and Microsoft and Amazon and other mega corporations regularly do, there’s no chance for competition to get to the point of attracting customers in the first place. Those people that you think are not interested in one thing or the other COULD want those things if they were allowed and easy to do without all these anti competitive practices.

Osiris8• 1 year ago

Wouldn't "see my text messages on my watch" be included in "works pretty well?"

_emacsomancer_11• 1 year ago

People who don't read Hacker News occasionally want nice things too, and don't necessarily deserve corporations infantalising them.

nixpulvis• 1 year ago

Sub $200 smart-watches would be great for a lot of people.

KennyBlanken• 1 year ago

There are a bunch of them in the market already. You can also buy used/refurbished.

NotPractical7• 1 year ago

They want to just click 'yes' on every popup and expect things to keep working

This is an extremely dangerous mindset, even if you never leave Apple's garden. As a reminder, Facebook and TikTok are on the App Store. We cannot encourage this zombie-like behavior and simultaneously have a healthy, free society.

Because they know that they are not qualified to answer that yes/no popup question

Apple put thought into their permission system and made it easy to understand even among non-HN users, so that regular people can make meaningful choices about what information they want to share with apps and the companies who make them. There might as well be no permission system and no sandboxing at all if users are just going to spam the "yes" button all the time.

presentation3• 1 year ago

I kind of agree - while I personally don't like to be treated like a dummy because I do feel like I know what I'm doing with tech, I wouldn't trust e.g. my parents with that power.

If Apple wants to be the brand for the tech illiterate that's fine—the real problem is that their hardware (and to a lesser extent some of their software) is actually a lot better than the competition, especially every since the M1 CPU came out.

So people like me and other HN denizens are left to hope that either some competitor actually becomes competitive; or Apple positions itself in such a way that they can simultaneously provide the "dummy mode" for dummies, and the "power mode" for people like me.

For the latter option, they clearly don't want to do it, probably not because they don't trust power users to do power user things; but because leaning on the dummies for cover helps them protect their walled garden.

Cue great frustration.

rchaud• 1 year ago

Many people are mentally still in 1997, when Apple was the scrappy upstart against the Micro$oft goliath.

cryptoegorophy• 1 year ago

I thought this community is security over convenience? 12 years ago my iMessage got hacked. Someone was sending messages from my name to my relative. My password was secured and there were no ways I thought it would get hacked but there it is.

827a2• 1 year ago

Apple Propaganda.

There's extremely few reasons why a modern Android phone from Google or Samsung is less secure than an iPhone, against any attack vector that 99.sevennines% of people [1] would ever experience. The worst way I've ever seen the most tech-illiterate person ever mess up an Android phone is by installing some QR Code reader that took over as a home screen launcher so it could (nonmaliciously, but questionably) put its QR code reader as a home screen left of the app icons. It should be way harder for Play Store apps to do that, because this guy needed professional help (me) to figure out where his home screen layout went.

But that was it. That's the worst I've ever seen. Android's security is very good.

While not a security concern, I've had multiple iPhone users ask "what the heck is this screen to the right of my app icons" (referring to the App Library introduced ~2 years ago). One person thought they'd been hacked. Kind of a similar inconvenience vector as that QR code app.

[1] The 100-99.sevenines% of people who might actually find themselves the target of an attack vector that Apple's unique security can help mitigate are, for example, journalists or dissidents who find value in Advanced Data Protection and Apple's generally very good and healthy stance on cloud security and end-to-end encryption. This level of security should be available to everyone, on every cloud provider, even if it only directly advantages a small number of people, but Apple is the only one really doing this right now.

nunez2• 1 year ago

Replacing a launcher can be pretty bad.

This happened to people I know. Some innocent sounding app replaced their launcher and added a fake Gmail widget to their home screen. It prompted them to login and, well, you know the rest.

This would never happen on iOS because you can't change the launcher.

cubefox• 1 year ago

They are making devices for people that just want something that works pretty well and has reasonable security

This statement doesn't make sense except if you are implying that Android doesn't have reasonable security despite not being a walled garden like iOS, and allowing e.g. interactions with smartwatches.

SergeAx• 1 year ago

protecting [people] from themselves

I finally understand what exactly I dislike in Apple. It's an authoritarian company.

freddydumont• 1 year ago

I wonder what people mean here by "security promises" made by Apple. There is no such thing.

iMessage has been targeted for years with zero click exploits, most notably by the NSO group.

Apple’s restrictions aren’t meant to protect consumers, their purpose is to protect Apple’s profits.

teekert• 1 year ago

My current iPhone 12 mini was my first iPhone. Before they it was a OnePlus3, before that a Lumia 800. I tasted it all. I think it’s back to Android after this, specifically a GrapheneOS Pixel. It’s the sweet spot for the modern hacker. And I’m gonna have a great Pebble experience or some other cool watch via GadgetBridge.

MPSFounder• 1 year ago

I like Apple. But this is exactly why regulation is needed. I often meet people (including knowledgeable engineers etc) who think companies will do the best thing. Just like Flint did the best thing by poisoning their own people. Apple is a for profit company, and it will debilitate any 3rd party device. That is because by killing its market, profit is to be made by buying it for cheap. It's that simple folks. The end user can go and screw themselves, as far as they are concerned.

firefax• 1 year ago

This sounds noncompetitive, and bad, but can I just say I don't see the appeal of these watches? I much prefer a simple casio.

I got around Europe with a CA-53W. I did currency conversion, and had an alarm so I didn't have to leave my phone unattended in a 10 bed hostel.

I find my mind is clearer not using these things, not constantly bombarded with pings, and instead mindfully checking the phone occasionally to see if I missed any texts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_CA-53W

jdalgetty• 1 year ago

Couldn’t something like blue bubbles solve this issue?

Aachen5• 1 year ago

Say what? What's blue bubbles?

Edit: wait, is this this imessage thing about coloring messages by transport method? I never used/saw it so didn't immediately recognise what you meant, if this is what you meant

xenodium3• 1 year ago

It’s impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to send text messages

From Apple's docs: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102842

"Message Access Profile (MAP 1.4)

This profile is compatible with iPhone 5s and later.

Message Access Profile allows devices to exchange messages. It's used to receive incoming message notifications on connected vehicles. iOS and iPadOS support these MAP functions on connected vehicles:

- Receive incoming message notifications

- Reply to incoming messages

- Compose new messages

- Browse message inbox

- Mark messages as read"

The documentation talks about "connected vehicles", but can totally be implemented by any Bluetooth accessory.

alphan0n3• 1 year ago

Every accessory that is compatible with a device and supports MAP must:
•..
•..
•Not provide a user interface for sending messages. Devices do not support sending messages using MAP.

From: “Accessory Design Guidelines for Apple Devices” [0]

[0] https://www.bluetooth.com/wp-content/uploads/attachments/Blu...

xenodium3• 1 year ago

It's been a little while since I've worked in the space, but it's worth checking a newer revision as this wording may no longer be present https://developer.apple.com/accessories/Accessory-Design-Gui...

From a technical standpoint, there is no limitation for an accessory to implement the profile.

otikik• 1 year ago

Frequent iPhone user here. Don’t care about iMessage a little bit.

johnisgood• 1 year ago

legitster• 1 year ago

Not too long ago it was revealed that Apple's supposedly secure protocol for their Airpods entirely relied on plaintext keys locked to the hardware. Based on the quality of their software products, I am not surprised.

The Apple razor: "Never attribute to security that which can be adequately be explained by incompetence."

standardUser• 1 year ago

I know people love Apple products, as do I, but at a certain point it must get exhausting arguing that the wealthiest company with the largest market share is also, somehow, the one that should be exempt from anti-trust action and/or exempt from developing simple 3rd party integrations.

captainmuon2• 1 year ago

I wonder how much of this is policy, and how much is actually a technical limitation.

For example, could you build an app that would not pass app store review, that would be able to send SMS or manipulate notifications? If so you could just "install" it yourself with Xcode.

incanus77• 1 year ago

Whenever I go to this one restaurant, they insist on feeding me the bread that they make. I bring my own dough, but they won't let me into the kitchen to use their equipment. It's a hobbled experience and they are doing it entirely in the name of increased profits. The bread could be awesome! The problem is, I want to eat at this restaurant. They are ruining my bread experience.

bigyabai9• 1 year ago

This is more like shopping for bread, selecting the bread you want, taking it home, slicing off a piece and being told you can't eat it since it didn't come from the right store.

It's all just software. You can download IPA files onto your iPhone, just not install them without an arbitrary feature-flag enabled.

tonymet2• 1 year ago

in the 90s there were no APIs you would just debug resident memory and network buffers to reverse engineer the API & IPC

Am I old or do people have higher expectations now?

ferbivore• 1 year ago

The author of this article was also the CEO of Beeper. They did just that and released an iMessage client for Android in December 2023. Apple proceeded to ban users of that client, launched a smear campaign against the company and implemented countermeasures until Beeper gave up on the whole endeavour.

Apple has lots of options at their disposal to frustrate any attempts to reverse engineer their APIs, and have shown they're willing to go above and beyond in defending their walled garden. If all else fails, every Apple device newer than 2018 has a secure enclave and verified boot, so they could just enforce an encrypted channel between the enclave - which will be able to attest that the device is running latest iOS or macOS with all DRM measures enabled - and iMessage servers. The only reason they don't do that already is the number of users on older devices, but that number gets lower and lower each year.

tonymet2• 1 year ago

i wasn't aware of the Beeper affiliation that's helpful context. a good college try.

omneity• 1 year ago

First with Beeper and now with Pebble. I see a pattern here.

_atyler_• 1 year ago

This makes sense for large-scale deployments where cost control is paramount, but I wonder how it holds up in environments with unpredictable traffic patterns. Have you found any practical workarounds for the lag introduced by dynamic scaling? In my experience, the trade-off between cost efficiency and real-time performance isn’t always worth it.

fudged71• 1 year ago

Didn't Eric run into the same thing at Beeper?

xfz• 1 year ago

This is why the only Apple device I'll buy is a MacBook Pro, and even then if they wall it off as badly as their other products I'll reconsider.

timwis• 1 year ago

I degoogled my life out of principle—that one was about privacy. I feel strongly about this one too (in fact I just migrated from kindle to kobo for similar reasons), but where else is there to go? Some rooted android phone with Google play services disabled, where lots of apps aren't available and it's a struggle to get everything to work? (Genuine question!)

_emacsomancer_11• 1 year ago

An answer with a catch:

I ran rooted android phones for a long time, but have for the past few years been on GrapheneOS, which doesn't require Google Play, but allows you to use it while sandboxing it (so, harm reduction), and it's much less of a struggle now than it used to be.

The catch is that, at least currently, GrapheneOS only works on (Google) Pixel phones.

[On Kobos:— I agree on Kobo vs Kindle, and like Kobos a lot: but partially because I don't actually have to use Kobo's software if I don't want to. (See KOReader[0] and NickelMenu[1].)

[0:] https://github.com/koreader/koreader

[1:] https://github.com/pgaskin/NickelMenu ]

umbra072• 1 year ago

My Kindle Paperwhite 5th gen is rooted and runs KOReader.

It's not a great solution - you still have very little freedom, Amazon frequently patches root methods - and you might be waiting months for someone to find a working root method, and if you accidentally update - bye bye, root/KOReader.

But it is a solution.

bfrog3• 1 year ago

More like Apple restricts data being shared with 3rd party devices as it then loses all hope of curtailing abuse.

As someone who uses Apple because of their MO is not selling everything about me to advertisers this is great news.

bigyabai9• 1 year ago

Yet Apple is fine letting users browse Safari with an unfiltered internet. If their APIs can't facilitate safe permissions for user data, maybe they need to re-configure their security model to look more like the Mac. UNIX solved this decades ago.

kemayo2• 1 year ago

Apple supports content-blockers for Safari. They have since 2015.

Would it have been better if they did it sooner? Sure! But the iPhone has currently had officially supported content-blocking for longer than it lacked it.

bfrog3• 1 year ago

I wasn't aware safari allowed unfettered access to my phone and provided that to completely untrustworthy web apps and javascript. You have a source for this information? Would love to read more.

skurilyak• 1 year ago

For iOS compatibility, consider this architecture:

- Swift UI layer for Apple-compliant UI/UX

- Zig core library (as XCFramework) for watch communication

- Data processing WebAssembly runtime for watchface interpretation

This avoids Pebble's original JS compiler workaround while still enabling customizable watchfaces within Apple's restrictions

The WASM engine stays within App Store guidelines by interpreting watchfaces as data rather than executable code

TL;DR to avoid this:

iOS App (Swift UI) <-> Zig Core Library (XCFramework) <-> WebAssembly Runtime (for watchfaces)

JaggerJo2• 1 year ago

In Europe Apple was forced to allow side loading + alternative app stores.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/117767

Might be possible to do more (like call private apis) when apps don't need to pass app review.

TheDong2• 1 year ago

"side loading" in the EU still requires you to have your app reviewed and notarized by apple, which means you can't call private APIs.

You also still need to pay $100/year developer fee for your app to continue to be side-loadable (otherwise they revoke the notarization), and need to pay the €0.50 "core technology fee" per side-load to apple after a free allowance of side-loads.

I doubt it's going to help pebble since they'll have to pay more for users to side-load the app than to install it from the app store.

https://doesioshavesideloadingyet.com/

JaggerJo2• 1 year ago

Hah, I'm not so sure about what happens during automatic notarisation.

Sideloading would at least allow JIT compilation.

The fee only applies to alternative app stores, not simple apps.

rambambram6• 1 year ago

There's something about the title that irks me the wrong way.

X restricts Y from being awesome.

Apple also restricts me from being awesome because they didn't give me a million dollar.

I get what the message is and I think I agree with Pebble on the iPhone being more closed off, but putting the blame on some outside thing for yourself not being awesome just feels immature.

It's just as easy to turn it around: by developing the iPhone in the first place and getting it in the hands of a lot of people, Apple makes it possible for Pebble to be at least close to awesome.

burnte2• 1 year ago

Apple also restricts me from being awesome because they didn't give me a million dollar.

This is a disingenuous argument. The two are nothing alike. One is about how they artificially limit their platform for their own dominance, and the other is literally just giving away money. One hurts consumers and competitors, the other is a nonsense expectation that no reasonable person has.

rambambram6• 1 year ago

That disingenuous argument is an example, of course. I already put that inside my argument. It's the chosen words that irk me. Apple does things, yes. But it not only restricts Pebble, as they make it seem, it restricts everybody.

bitpush2• 1 year ago

Sometimes I wonder whether people are willfully ignorant, or just simply trying to pick a fight.

Please read what you wrote yourself, and put yourself in the shoes of someone who might actually be affected. If you cant think of any failure cases ("edge cases", in programming parlance), please read on -

You've essentially reduced every monopolistic tendancies companies exhibit into a positive thing.

- Amazon restricting smaller third-party vendors - according to you, not a problem - Microsoft ensuring their favored browser (IE) is successful unfairly - according to you, not a problem.

Those are just 2 examples I could think of at the top of my head.

rambambram6• 1 year ago

Read what I write, please. Every word, every sentence. It's not that hard.

Let me spell it out again for you: the wording of the title irks me the wrong way.

If you have anything to reply, than reply to that.

IceHegel• 1 year ago

Feels like we’re getting all the downsides of Jobs’ Apple without the upsides.

They aren’t innovating inside the walled garden anymore.

Privacy is a real issue and Tim Cook deserves credit for his stance, but if apple gave devs good apis security and privacy could actually be enhanced throughout the ecosystem.

yalogin• 1 year ago

I empathize with both Pebble and Apple here. We all understand the issue from Pebble's point of view. For Apple though, security will be lost by allowing one bad actor. To allow an external watch they need to set up a full org for interoperability. Every app/service on the phone or for that matter anywhere in their ecosystem must be designed and potentially reimplemented to allow for outside interaction. That puts a whole new spin on security and privacy requirements. Yeah regulation is one way to force them to prioritize, but outside of that I cannot see them supporting these.

gkoberger• 1 year ago

I feel like Eric's full-time mission has become fighting Apple's propriety bend. His last company, Beeper, was basically also built on reverse engineering Apple's system very much against its will.

ein0p• 1 year ago

I wish Apple just made a dumb watch with really good battery life (a week+) and health tracking. I don't really use any "smart" functions in my watch anyway, and I find notifications annoying.

ocdtrekkie• 1 year ago

Generally speaking I agree and accept everything here, except the idea that 40% of the respondents "still" use an iPhone: I switched to one, because Android is absolutely atrocious for privacy and security, and running a hacked up custom OS is no longer something I have spoons for.

I long for a better alternative, but until then, yeah, here I am accepting my current PineTime is... a little bit worse, until Tim Sweeney manages to bust up Tim Cook's little garden.

hnlurker22• 1 year ago

I'm not a big fan of Apple, but this has to be the sleaziest marketing technique. Poor product. Poor marketing. Founders stuck in 2010.

sidcool• 1 year ago

There has to be an anti competitive angle to this.

nullbio• 1 year ago

Hopefully, AI generation will get to a point where people can very easily generate a strong (secure) open-source competitor to iOS with equally good UX and ease of use.

lou13062• 1 year ago

Least pipe-dreamy AI comment on HN

michaelsshaw• 1 year ago

I genuinely don't see a reason to use apple products, particularly professionally, other than developing slop for Apple consumers

Their absolute lockdown nature simply makes them inferior devices, and sorry but, any excuse for non-free general purpose computers and (esp.)phones is seriously asinine.

lasergyro• 1 year ago

Bluetooth does not inspire trust, but neither does Apple closed source software; iMessage has failed pretty badly for me, in that it I can’t send a SMS to a previously registered with iMessage phone number.

pyrale4• 1 year ago

The technical illiteracy of comments defending apple here with remarks about spam is staggering for hn.

Ble is a type of network communication that is only used for short distances, in order to save energy. We’re talking about a few meters, here.

The goal of the feature would be for people to pair their device with their iphone, something which users can do explicitly, ensuring that only their device works with their iphone.

Pairing an iphone with a third party device is already something that apple does, for instance in the case of personal hotspot.

dzogchen• 1 year ago

What Apple is doing should be illegal.

maxehmookau• 1 year ago

Security arguments aside (apple has infinite money, they can solve any problem that they want to and they regularly solve harder technical problems than this when it's financially prudent for them to do so), this is hugely anti-competitive.

My wife loves her Garmin as it's just a better sports watch than an Apple Watch, no matter what Apple say, but the integration with the iPhone is poor.

It's about time Apple opened up integration with 3rd party watches. They could still vet it with human-reviewed capabilities, the same as they do with Tap to Pay with iPhone and Family Sharing APIs, but they choose not to.

HexPhantom2• 1 year ago

Apple's approach to 3rd-party smartwatches feels like watching someone build a beautiful bridge and then pulling up the drawbridge so no one else can cross

amelius3• 1 year ago

Break them open like we did with Bell telephony.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

PS, why keep people defending this locked down consumer brand?

uni_baconcat2• 1 year ago

But Apple is neither monopoly nor infrastructure company. Bell telephony has no relevance in this case.

amelius3• 1 year ago

They run infrastructure (iMessages is communication infrastructure).

And you don't need to be a strict monopoly to be subject to antitrust law.

danielenick89• 1 year ago

I've bought a Mac for the first time in my life after 15 or more years on Linux because the hardware is superior than pcs. Software sucks, not sure how people can live with that, especially tech people. I suffer every day poor and weird design decisions. Phone side, I'm an Android user and I've been living with iphone users in the last 10 years, and I must say the software in iphones is getting comparatively worse and worse. I believe avg app (probably developers) quality is a bit higher, but they usually fall behind functionality wise, and you pay well for that small quality gap. Friends who switched to iphone recently are now switching back. I'm not an average user, but I can see how software quality in apple is going down and affecting real users. Even iphone aficionados are starting to notice, which says a lot.

michpoch• 1 year ago

Software sucks, not sure how people can live with that, especially tech people.

Like, what in particular? I use Macs for both personal and work activities (software eng) and MacOS has been vastly superior to both Ubuntu and Windows I used before.

0 blue screen type of issues, zero hardware incompatibility, zero issues after system updates (looking at you Ubuntu!).

yapyap• 1 year ago

“ You can’t easily side load apps onto an iPhone. That means we have to publish the app on the iPhone appstore. This is a gigantic pain because Apple. Every update comes with the risk that a random app reviewer could make up some BS excuse and block the update”

eh. nowadays it’s easier, at least in the EU

lou13062• 1 year ago

Good to point out the anti-competitive practices by Apple, but some of the complaints are a bit far-fetched and do not really help the point the author is making, and/or they do not seem to match my experience with wearables.

For instance, I understand Pebble is targeted to hackers, but how is lack of sideloading such a big pain point? How come my Fitbit (that I absolutely long to exchange for a new Pebble when its time comes) _can_ display my Whatsapp notifications even without full lockscreen previews?

Also:

As an aside, back at Pebble, we went to crazy lengths to find a way to let Pebble users to send text messages from Pebble.

Why would you... Do that? No 3rd party can do that: you are on a level playing field. A kludge like the one described is not going to give you an edge over the competition. And it is exactly the kind of kludge that may rub App Store reviewers the wrong way. Much pain, no gain. Just invest your limited resources on making Pebble the best 3rd-party watch on the market, and pray/lobby for Apple to open up its APIs.

zevon• 1 year ago

Can anybody explain to me in simple terms the argument about opening the floodgates for spam on iMessage if Apple would lower their restrictions? I just don't get it. If true, wouldn't this mean that every other messenger app with fewer restrictions or even alternative clients would have a massive spam problem? Anecdotally, I can't really confirm that.

dns_snek8• 1 year ago

Start with the conclusion that Apple's actions are necessary and morally good, find a reasonable-sounding but ultimately weak technical explanation and confidently present it as the only solution, then fearmonger less technical users into accepting the preconceived solution with all of its drawbacks using anecdotes and hyperbole.

Lastly, ignore or dismiss any evidence that invalidates your preconceived conclusions, like the fact that these "floodgates" have always been open [1] and yet people credit non-existent floodgates for solving the spam problem.

Anecdotally, the amount of spam I receive across Signal and Telegram is zero, and SMS is very close to 0, maybe one SMS every few weeks.

[1] https://documenter.getpostman.com/view/765844/UV5RnfwM#0d8e0...

Razengan2• 1 year ago

we have to publish the app on the iPhone appstore. Every update comes with the risk that a random app reviewer could make up some BS excuse and block the update.

uhhh and if there wasn't any reviewing, every update would come with a risk of malware to the users.

madeofpalk4• 1 year ago

App Store reviews does not reduce malware - things slip through Apple's review process all the time. The iOS security features such as the sandbox is what makes iOS safe to run third party apps.

Razengan2• 1 year ago

Yes, but that opposing argument could be made, and it's better to have some gate than none, even if it allows everything by default. For example, apps that are found to be malicious could be revoked later.

randall• 1 year ago

it’s funny that i actually want a pebble with fewer features than the apple watch. i got an oura and haven’t been wearing one in forever… and i actually just miss the watch part. 30 day battery life is amazing.

tgtweak• 1 year ago

This is pretty much the hallmark of antitrust/monopolistic behavior - apple watch (and airpods) are a significant contribution to Apple's bottom line - by restricting these functions under the guise of security or optimization, and offering them only via privileged abi, and by controlling a sizeable share of the smartphone market, they can effectively kill and stifle competition - even to devices that aren't under Apple's control which is a key case to understanding why this behavior is harmful. If Pebble can't make a functional product work for 40% of their addressable market, it may make their business model impossible.

It's impossible to argue that this isn't intentional and to make the case that this isn't impacting competition, innovation and consumer choice here.

Hopefully someone takes Apple to task over this. If it can be done on Android without jeopardizing the security or optimizations of the phone - it can be done on iOS.

CrossVR• 1 year ago

I feel sorry for Apple users who advocate for a more open ecosystem as they are always met with outright hostility and told they should stop using Apple. As if you don't deserve to use Apple hardware if you don't agree with everything that Apple does.

skue• 1 year ago

Ironically, I’ve read through many of the top comments and although there are many different opinions, I hadn’t seen any that came across as hostile until I read your comment.

moi2388• 1 year ago

I buy Apple products specifically because they don’t allow random third parties access to features like this.

I don’t want crap, I don’t want spyware, I don’t want spam.

If I did, id buy the insecure cheap plastic crap that the android ecosystem is.

Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones

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