Rayz2016

Beats said:

mjtomlin said:

Beats said:

Do you think Apple will have a closed App Store except for rare software? I'm thinking Apple is gonna reset apps for Mac with Apple Silicon. This will close security holes etc.

No.

Right. Didn't work for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch.

/s

True, but on the other hand, millions of developers aren’t using iPhones, iPads and the Apple Watch to run the IntelliJ toolset, Docker, Eclipse, Git clients, static website builders …

ihatescreennames said:

How does “serving ads outside of the app” work? I don’t think I have seen that happening myself so I’m having a little trouble wrapping my head around it. Wouldn’t an app only be able to display an ad in the app?

razorpit said:

How does an installer hide the app icon? I think that's one of the more scary things to come out of this article.

Good questions; the problem is that the writer left out a few details from the original Avast report, the most important part being exactly what platforms were affected by which malware.

From the article:

The apps violated both App Store and Google Play terms of service by serving ads outside of the app, hiding their app icons, and making false app functionality claims. Avast has reported the apps to Apple and Google, and the social media profiles to Instagram and TikTok.

However, if you read the Avast report, it makes the following very clear:

• The apps that were serving ads outside the apps and allowing the icons to be hidden were running on the Android platform. (Quel supris)
• The iOS apps were basically charging idiots for crap apps, wallpapers and effects that just involved making the phone vibrate. They're junk, but they're not actually malware. iOS apps are sandboxed to hell; if an app is serving ads outside of the app then it's a bug in the operating system. The real problem is that the App Store is full of junk.

There is still a serious problem with Apple customers being ripped off by apps like this. Apple needs to tighten up its reviews on any app that is offering in-app purchases. These scammers know that Apple will not actually make a purchase during the reviews, which is why they've hung around so long.

Apple also needs to actually read the app reviews on its own store; they'll be the first clue to a problem. If you're getting hundreds of 1-star reviews for any app or game, then you should at least take a look.

ro_ro_ur_boat said:

Is there a petition by Apple users to urge Apple to implement the privacy feature?

That would be a good idea, though I don’t think Apple is going to change tack. They often delay sweeping changes like this to give developers more time to implement them. 

davgreg said:

It will be interesting to watch this play out and the deal is not done by a long shot.

ARM is a British company and the UK is still trying to sort out Brexit. Also, NVIDIA only promised to keep the HQ of ARM in the UK for one year- expect that to be a problem for the approval of the UK government. 

And Apple has made no public comment to my knowledge. They might very well have a problem with the deal and may try to spike it. And I do not think Apple is ready to abandon ARM reference designs as the basis for the A series chips that run every iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and soon many Macintoshes.

One small point: Apple doesn’t use ARM reference designs. 

tmay said:

techconc said:

flydog said:

Nonsense.  Apple doesn’t rely on ARM for design or manufacturing. It has a perpetual license that allow it to design its own chips.

You either didn’t read or didn’t understand my post as your comment doesn’t address what I actually said.  

By definition, a perpetual license for the ISA would cover all future versions, and while ARM may very well have a maintenance fee structure in place with Apple to maintain that license in perpetuity, it is more likely that Apple negotiated and paid a lump sum for that perpetual license.

Apple has deviated from the ISA at least since the A7 SOC, and again by definition, Apple would have created a superset of the ISA, which would be proprietary to Apple. I can't imagine that this would have any noticeable impact on the virtualization of Linux. though it might require some small effort.

It is conceivable that in the future, Nvidia might attempt to increase licensing fees "unreasonably", or deprecate all external licensing, leading to a hellscape of legal jeopardy, which would ultimately lead, I suspect, to an external caretaker that would take over management of the ARM operation. That seems unlikely to happen.

Again, by definition, Apple would have guarantees and penalties written into any contracts that they would have enjoined with ARM. That's what Apple's legal department is for.

Good grief.

I was just going to type everything you just said. You've pretty much nailed it.

The important point is that any attempt to extract further fees from the perpetual licensees would wreak havoc throughout the industry and would land Nvidia in multiple courts facing multiple lawsuits. 

The only thing that Apple gets from ARM is the spec for the instruction set and a set of compatibility tests to make sure that their instruction set will still run basic ARM instructions. To break this, Nvidia would have to break the instruction set for everyone, which would have very little effect on Apple, since the only thing they need compatibility for is virtualisation and containers, but would cause an industry meltdown.

If the ARM sale represented a problem, then Apple would have bought it when they were offered first refusal. They could've let it carry on as an independent entity (much as they do with Filemaker), raking in license fees. The fact that they chose not to demonstrates how far ASi is dependence on ARM.