Some seemingly innocuous APIs are misused to track users, Apple says.
As a Product Manager that manages several apps, IT’S ABOUT TIME! One of the most frustrating things is needing a permission for a mundane thing that happens to be bundled under something like “microphone”. Then users freak out because they think apps are listening to them when they are not. We need apps to be transparent and clearly explain what they are doing.
why can’t you have a page or section describing these things and require it to be revealed only when you are asked to do?
It wouldn’t matter. People would click right through it. You’d need to have it in the permissions popup to have any hope.
Bingo. We’ve tried explaining what permissions are used but since it is still the honor system of disclosure, most people don’t believe it or just ignore it.
Good. Google play is a joke atm
It’s what struck me when I switched to Android… the play store is awful. Good on Apple, hopefully Google will follow suit.
Sincerely asking, do people actually go browse the stores to try to find apps? Like, I’ve literally never done that and I’ve been using Android for over a decade. If I have a problem that needs an app I’ll research the problem, the apps, compare and contrast, and then go follow a direct link to download the thing that does what I need.
Sure, but the average user shouldn’t need to go do research outside of the store to understand what data apps are collecting and to have recommendations for quality apps from verified users of said apps. The App Store is by no means perfect, but it is leagues better at informing you about what data an app will collect and why.
I’m the mobile team lead at my company. For the app store, I need to inform about every piece of data our app will collect, in addition to whether it is given to or sold to third parties. For the play store, there is no such requirement. App Store approval is far more stringent, which makes my job harder, but it’s better for the end user, so I’m all for it. This new requirement will require us to lay out why we call specific APIs that could be used to grab user data. It will be more work for us, but I don’t mind, it will result in a more explicit explanation for our users.
I don’t go and search for apps in playstore. I try based on looking at some discussion threads, forums or word of mouth etc. Only if I think that would be useful to me I will download it. Otherwise I wouldn’t even download it for trying.
I used to do that.
In 2012-15. Not anymore.
That sounds horribly inconvenient and reminds me of how it’s like installing apps on windows.
it is a vastly different and better experience when you filter out apps with ads , it actually becomes usable , aurora store for the win
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They do, it’s just that they limit it very severely. Right now, there’s a cap of three apps per account. What I usually do is have multiple apple accounts as “dev accounts” and use them to side load my apps onto my phone. There’s no cap on how many you can put on a single phone. The real catch to this method is that you need to resign your apps every seven days. I find it to not be too much of a hassle to plug in my phone to my computer and press a button, but I know that some people get frustrated by having to do something to keep their apps on their phone.
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iOS 17 will have to allow some form of official sideloading (at least in the EU) by law, so you might just be in luck
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but i bet the sideloading feature will be allowed only in the Europe and will be locked for other regions.
Apps that force close when you deny permissions without examining why they’re needed should be labelled as malware
It used to be the case that Apple would reject apps that force close, but I’ve noticed several that do this now. I guess they don’t check for this stuff anymore.
I wonder if they’re planning on presenting this data to end users. I don’t mind if an app is using a certain permission, and if they have to get Apple’s approval that is great, but I’d love to know why specifically it needs that permission
Except Apple devs, of course. Apple can have all the data it wants.
Is that statement even remotely true?
Apple does collect a whole bunch of data from its devices’ users. Pretty much everything you do on it, actually. All of the “turn of data collection” stuff they’ve been advertising only affects third-party data collection — not their own.
What data? Because if I look at the data points for Apple Advertising, than it is nowhere near the amount Meta or Google are collecting.
In addition, Apple is very transparent about what they collect, see https://privacy.apple.com to know what they have on file linked to your Apple ID.
But if you have a source that this is not the whole picture, I’m very interested to learn.
And what should they do instead? Should they be ‘fairer’ and let everyone else have just as much access to an iPhone user’s data as they do, with very little transparency?
What they should do — what we should force all corporations to do, and governments for that matter — is to respect the fundamental human right to privacy. And in the meantime, they should stop getting in people’s way when it comes to repairing their devices at the repair shop of their own choosing, and getting in people’s way when they want to get literally any software on their device not expressly approved by Apple.
The choice isn’t “either they do what they do now, or they just let everyone collect data”. Big tech corporations like Apple, Google, and all the rest have, from a privacy perspective, been fucking us up the ass for years and years now. Apple’s entire “we care about your privacy” thing was, aside from a big PR success, pretty much just a giant middle finger to Facebook, and its other data collecting competitors. Fuck Apple, fuck Facebook, fuck Google, fuck them all.
Companies to protect us from problem they created.
wouldn’t this be a general problem of most, if not all, app store, not exclusively to Apple or Google ecosystem?
It’s not a problem for linux package managers which do the same job of distributing and updating software but without a profit motive involved.
That’s a false equivalence. Apple does a lot more than “distributing and updating software”
Exactly. And that’s a good thing even though you make it seem like not.
