uroshnor

cropr said:

sennen said:

Apple, whatever fingers it may want to have in the pie, is still providing the most secure solution for it's customers. I'll take that over whatever service Australia's banks want to push onto me.

My bank is offering financial service since 1945, Apple started 2 years ago
The financial services of my bank are audited yearly by an independent organization, Apple isn't
I take me 15 minutes to get an appointment with a bank representative, I cannot get an appointment with someone from Apple
All the data of my bank is stored in a national data center,  Apple stores its data in a foreign data center,  If have a dispute with Apple, I have no chance to access my data and to prove I am right
My bank supports heavily open standards,  Apple has a closed iOS ecosystem
My bank is expensive.  Apple is expensive

And you want me to believe that Apple is a more trustworthy partner than my bank. You must be kidding

Not at all.

Apple is considerably more trustworthy than any of the major banks in Australia, and has vastly superior customer service. Australian banks get bulk data breaches all the time, Apple has currently had zero (passwords being re-used or phished is not a bill data breach). Although some people have alleged in speculation that bulk breaches have occurred , Apple is legallly required to provide notification if such a thing happened , and they never have had to notify.

In the specific instance of Apple Pay , the Secure Element and NFC hardware was added just for payments, just with ApplePay. It is not used for anything else. There are no APIs to touch the NFC hardware , outside of Apple Pay, for anything else in iOS - there's no "Samsung bump" or similar uses for App developers , Apple internal or App Store.

So Apple is not giving ANY developer access to. NFC , for ANY purpose. They are not singling out the banks.

Apple provides Bluetooth 4.2 to developers if they want short range low power radios. There is exactly nothing you can do on NFC that you can not do with Bluetooth ( and BT does more than NFC). It's just that there is a historical installed base of NFC readers is dominant in payment tech.bot that Apple only supports a handful (6-8 depending on device) of the 30+ Bluetooth profiles, so it limits what 3rd party dev's can do with it.

The banks falsely assert NFC is unique in iOS devices, in that it's not open to developers, and all other radios are. The banks statement is false : Apple does not provide direct access to ANY radio on the device : Bluetooth, GPS, Cellular , and Wi-fi are all completely restricted , and abstracted from the developer with  high level , abstract APIs that do not give direct access to the hardware. 

HID started shipping BT door locks in addition to their NFC ones a few years ago, as one example of hardware vendors moving with the times.

NFC is ancient, with commercial deployments dating back to the late 1980s.

The NFC Secure Element functionally duplicates a subset of what Apple provides in the Secure Enclave.

My best guess is Apple are only temporarily including the NFC with Secure Element , and are planning to abandon it in favor of an API sitting on top of Securd Enclave, but still capable of NFC (several component vendors are starting to deliver NFC / BT chipsets )

If the current hardware is transient and single purpose , then it's not unreasonable it's not open to 3rd parties.

i'd add that ever applet Apple allows to be installed on the Secure Element means they need to re-certify with EMVco, so it's a non-zero cost to them to maintain certification with potentially 3000 - 4000 different bank's applets, and the cost of doing that is also a deterrent to it being opened up to 3rd parties. How do they certify the good banks but keep out the bad ones (and there are plenty of bad banks globally)

The Digital Transformation Agency isn't a company. Its part of the government - specifically the Department of Finance, and has overall responsibility for the Commonwealth government's strategic procurement and use of technology, including things like government-to-citizen Apps and services.

They subcontracted a local developer to build at least one of the Apps for DTA (and the figure quoted is way too high for just the DTA's Coronavirus App, which would have been 1-2 people over a weekend at best). The COVIDSafe app is more complex than that, but 1.85 M seems way too high for just front end development of 2 simple apps, so there must be more to it than that.

https://www.crn.com.au/news/canberras-delv-awarded-185-million-for-developing-covid-19-app-546593

Delv are a small-ish solution integrator who do things like manage MDMs and do development work for agencies. They aren't exclusively Apple, but have been doing stuff pretty well on Apple platforms for a long time.

I'd also note the holding of contact data was covered in detail here:

https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/covidsafe-application-privacy-impact-assessment

And there's fairly harsh legislation about discrimination associated with and unauthorised use of the App's data that has been put before parliament. 

I'm not exactly a superfan of the current government, but given how governments work, they've done a pretty good job here under time pressure, and the efforts to do the right kind of things really appear to be there (they are just in tension with the "be seen to be doing something" and "hey we are government so we'll just do things the hard way" factors)

Patient Care Record software vendors basically ship garbage, where the user and the patient are an afterthought, and their core system components are truly ancient. None of that helps Apple sell devices in Healthcare , but none of the players seem interested in modernizing. There are also huge differences between the US market and the rest of the world (the US spends way more per patient than most Western countries , but gets clinical outcomes closer to a third world country). Producing a 1 size fits all solution for a global market will be masterful if someone pulls it off.

dicebier said:

I rarely chime in here but COME ON!

iDevices trigger an error code if a third party attempts to perform a repair and the only company that can repair such device without generating an error code is Apple?

As if they don't make enough money 300 to 400 percent on the sales of a product, they make it impossible to repair without paying their high charges. it's not right .... period.

If the repair shop incorrectly performed the physical repair itself then it should be on them to deal with the repair, but this is wrong.

Sorry sir, you replaced your own windshield and that triggered an error that leaves your car unusable, if we replaced your windshield everything would've been fine.....BTW cost to replace windshield with us ,  $1500.00.

LOL

You haven't described the situation. Typically it was something more like this:

- Phone had a broken screen
- Owner took phone to 3rd party repairer to get screen replaced
- Phone was fixed and worked fine ....

<insert lifestyle montage of temporarily happy phone owner here>

Several months later...

- Owner applies a software update to their phone that has been working fine the whole time
- Phone is totally bricked with error 53

Apple's response was "we can't do anything because you want to a 3rd party repairer. Here buy a new phone"

In Australia, that response is not legal, and the ACCC totally made the right call here. The Error 53 behaviour was Apple's fault, and they should have either replaced the hardware or issued a software patch to fix it, at no cost to the customer. For some customers who were already stuck, a hardware repair at Apple's cost might have been the only way to fix the problem, and Apple ought to have worn that cost, and not refused service. They eventually did all the right things here (before the fine was issued).

If the failure mode had been "touch ID won't work again on a phone with a 3rd party screen repair" (which is kind of where it landed up after Apple released a later software patch) this whole thing would have been a non-issue. If the error 53 bricking had never happened, it would have been a non-issue.

For the benefit of our American cousins - this is what protection of consumer rights and not being ruled by corporations and kleptocrats looks like.

Stabitha_Christie said:

red oak said:

This screams anti-trust if they have any intention of making Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox and PC.    Half of company’s revenue is generated on PlayStation and mobile.I don’t see the point in Microsoft buying it.

Microsoft has a horrible M&A record.  It is where company’s go to die 

If they are the third largest game company after this then it’s somewhat hard to see where the anti-trust complaint would be. They aren’t a gaming monopoly so it would need to be some other provision of the Sherman Act. Not really a cartel since it is all one company. Perhaps product bundling depending on what they do in the future. Simply nixing COD for PlayStation wouldn’t quality. Game exclusives exist already and there is nothing inherently illegal about that. 

If you are the 3rd largest OS vendor (Windows installed base being smaller than Android and iOS), and the 3rd largest game console vendor, and they you buy in via acquisitions to become the 3rd larges game vendor ... all you have to do for it to become an anti-trust issue, is redirect the games you acquired (which are honestly one of the more cross platform vendors), to on future versions and releases, to only run on the platforms and services you already had. They've done this many, many times before, and its not unreasonable to expect Blizzard to go the way of Bungie as an example (for those of you not old enough to remember, Bungie were Mac exclusive with a couple of contracted ports, until bought out by Microsoft who then removed Mac as a client OS from Bungie products). Its a real testament to the skill of Microsoft's government relations teams that they've avoided anti-trust action in the last 5-10 years.

You don't have to be the largest player in a market to for anti-trust issues to surface, you just have to be "big enough" and to leverage power in a one market to improve your sales & revenue in another.

DAalseth said:

I've never agreed with Apple claiming a portion of all sales from an app even if those sales don't go through the AppStore.
Yet Apple is demanding a slice of everything bought on Amazon Prime, and Kindle, and all in game purchases, and more, even if those transactions have nothing to do 

But neither of those things is what Apple or Google have set up in their rules.

They only take a percentage if:

1. Its an App Store App.
2. the financial transaction is for digital goods, and was done in-App.

Transactions outside the App Store don't. Real world good don't. You can buy books on the Amazon web site, and they appear on your Kindle App on iOS. Apple gets nothing. You can order a pizza, Apple gets nothing.

Google has a little more flexibility, but has similar rules for Google Play.

Epic (and a number of others) are taking the position that the App Stores owners are basic middlemen, and do little more than credit card processing. That is at best disingenuous, and at worst delusional. Historically, the personal computer revolution it the 80's and 90's is an abberation, and there are aspects of it that are not normal at all - we'll probably never see a new area of technology emerge like the personal computing again. Tim Sweeney grew up in that, and probably thinks thats how things should be - you can build something commercial, that leverages somebody else's work without cost.

Would Epic be better off if they got charged only a credit processing fee, or even better, could side step the App Store completely. Totally - they would be. 

However, what is good for Epic, isn't necessarily what is good for their users. 

Does Apple's App review guidelines & processes need to be more refinement, and be consistent and transparent ? Could they communicate better ? Does it have ugly knobs on it ? Is there a power imbalance ? Definitely. They could learn a lot from outside Silicon Valley as to what procedural fairness actually is. Most of that isn't to do with what Epic is claiming.

You can argue if 30% or 25% or 20% or 15% or 10%or 7.5% is the "right" % for Apple to charge. You can argue they need a sliding % scale so more successful titles scale to lower percentages as they pass certain tiers. 

However, they are also delivering the most frictionless, safest (for consumers), software store ever. Its been hugely advantageous for small/indy developers, and levelling the playing field inherently weakens the position of large players.

Apple build the development environment used by most developers on the store. They developed and maintain the languages used by most developers on the store. They develop the operating systems used by all of the devices that use the store. They design all the devices. All of that adds up to having some value to access. You can argue what it is, if it should be a flat fee or a % or some combination of both, but its above the transaction percentage on a credit card.

As a percentage, what Apple charges was lower than any other preceding attempt at a digital or physical software store previously. It hasn't changed much in over a decade. Do you know what it cost to become a developer for Nokia's Symbian OS ? 4 million USD per year. What was the % to be in EB games or a supermarket shelf ? 50+%

Are their business models that are so low margin, that they don't make sense using Apple's 30% fee ? Yes. There are business models that don't make sense at 1.5% credit card fee rates.

Thats not inherently anti-competitive. No-one's business model is owed anything. Companies die because they can't adapt to new environments and markets. The people go on to get new jobs elsewhere.

Some of the commentary by Epic, Spotify and others justifying their positions is just bare faced lying - other parts are valid points. My bet is they will lose the case with costs.

If society wants to make laws to mandate consumer grade side-loading, they can. But don't for an instant claim it will make end users safer in terms of consumer protections, or privacy or cyber security.

 

macgui said:

TheObannonFile said:

When I see articles like this, I realize how many assumptions I make. I assumed this was already happening at large. Adoption of things like CarPlay and USB-C at large has been painfully slow.

I can't fathom any reason why someone would reasonably assume police were using CarPlay to provide information regarding calls for service, not only at large, but at all.

It's innovative on the part of the WAP, and maybe other law enforcement agencies have done this, but at large? Hardly. I suspect an analysis of law enforcement world wide would find very few agencies with CarPlay in their enforcement vehicles. Every year more vehicles include CarPlay in their package options, some may even make it standard equipment. But most police agencies don't have the budget for that.

Police cars typically get a fit-out that raises the cost of the car to 3-5x from the "base" base for the chassis from the car manufacturer. The previous "gold standard" in policing is to mount a Panasonic Toughbook in the passenger compartment as a "Mobile Data Terminal", at the cost of over AUD $5,000 per vehicle, but thats not the only cost. Because that laptop and its keyboard are an obstruction in the safety zone for airbags and the passenger in the event of a crash, under the Australian Design Rules for cars, the fitted car needs to be destructively crash tested (usually 5 vehicles). So bringing a new type of police car into service, can cost an Australian police force several hundred thousand dollars just in crash testing, before the cost of fitting a fleet comes into it.What WA Police are doing, removes the obstruction in the passenger compartment, and means the car can keep its standard model safety certification without additional testing. So from a few different angles, its actually saving them money.

anome said:

blastdoor said:

sog35 said:

Soli said:

sog35 said:

This is yet ANOTHER REASON why Apple should GTFO of China

[...]

FUC THEM. No way. GTFO of China.

[…]

Till them, go to hell China.
I'm not racist. My grandmother was 100% Chinese (RIP) and I loved here dearly. 

Is this going to be your new OCD focus? Come into every thread and say Apple should stop selling HW in China? 

This story is about China spying isn't it?

And now China wants access to iOS source code and a back door on China iPhones.
Plus access to China's iCloud.

This china thing is a big problem.

What happens if the Trump administration wants to access iOS source code and put a back door on US iPhones. Should Apple leave the US too? Just focus on Canada maybe? 

Didn't he claim he was boycotting Apple after the San Bernadino case? Does he have a stated policy about encryption and backdoors?

It doesn't really matter what his stated position is - it will change soon. That's what is so scarey - we don'5 really know what the policy direction will actually be