Potential fix for Apple Bitcoin ban

[ArticMine]

I could never understand why on earth would anyone buy an apple product and let apple choose what is allowed to run on their device!!!!

This situation is not limited to Apple. Microsoft has created the same situation with Windows 8 RT. As to why people buy Apple products I can understand why, because a very large proportion of purchasers of iPhones and IPads etc are not tech savvy at all so they do not really understand the implications of what is really going on. My experience is that when one users a "bricks and mortar" analogy such as a bookcase where only books approved by the bookcase manufacturer may be placed on the bookcase many people actually get it.

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[TooCasual]

Easy fix for the apple issue... don't purchase apple products.  They are a proprietary, closed source, greedy, forcing their users what they should do and what to download.  SO out with the apple-crap-in-toss.  Use Linux or Android.  Windoze is ok - but dangerous for trojans and viri.

Big brother is Apple.  "Do as we say, not as we do."

Sincerely,
Your non apple conformist.
TC.

[ArticMine]

Easy fix for the apple issue... don't purchase apple products.  They are a proprietary, closed source, greedy, forcing their users what they should do and what to download.  SO out with the apple-crap-in-toss.  Use Linux or Android.  Windoze is ok - but dangerous for trojans and viri.

Big brother is Apple.  "Do as we say, not as we do."

Sincerely,
Your non apple conformist.
TC.

Microsoft Windows used to be ok. However since the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the United States at the end of the last century Microsoft has been moving in slow incremental steps to a complete lockdown of Windows. Windows 8 RT is the end product completely locked down and censored, just like an iPhone or an iPad.  It is the frog in boiling water scenario. Throw a frog into a pot of boiling water and it will jump out; however raise the heat gradually to a boil and you will cook the frog.

So unless one plans on running Windows 3.1 stick with FLOSS such as GNU/Linux.

[n8rwJeTt8TrrLKPa55eU]

My guess is that within 5 years or less, Apple will have decisively lost the smartphone wars and we won't care too much if they decide to shoot themselves in the foot by banning Bitcoin apps.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/08/technology/smartphone-market-share/index.html

[bg002h]

I'm a huge proponent of electronic freedom...but I will likely ways own an apple phone. Why?
It works. It works well and doesn't require me spending time to make it work well. If I really need freedom on it, I jail break it until they come out with new features on the sanctioned platform. Right now, I have blockchain.info app on my phone. If they take it away, I'll give it back to myself via jail breaking. I'd jailbreak 10 times before buying a non-apple phone.

That's not to say I'm happy about their self- interested policing of the App Store. But having a a non-vetted crap store is worse than useless to me.

[Mike Hearn]

Making jailbreaks keeps getting harder. You may soon find that you can't install apps that require jailbreaking anymore. Also, the latest Android phones are better than iPhones in practically every respect. They are fast, fluid, easy to use, reliable. Get a Nexus 4 and see how you feel about it after that.

[Offthechain]

This

Apple don't even innovate anymore... its been practically the same phone since the 4.
The app store is great... soon to overtake Iphones.

I don't want some central authority dictating what I can or cannot put on my phone.
I have a wallpaper of a girl wiggling her tits and a torrenting app...
And my Bitcoin wallet will not be withdrawn anytime soon... I bet it will (again) on IOS.

Android is awesome!

[Gabi]

My guess is that within 5 years or less, Apple will have decisively lost the smartphone wars and we won't care too much if they decide to shoot themselves in the foot by banning Bitcoin apps.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/08/technology/smartphone-market-share/index.html

Nice graph, but it is so old.

Android market share today is 75% or more 

By the third quarter of 2012 Android had a 75% share of the global smartphone market according to the research firm IDC

[Mike Christ]

Gonna have to agree with the replies before me, easiest way to stop Apple is to stop using Apple products.  They overcharge just to tell you what they think you should do with your phone.  And if you disagree, too bad.  Apple's word is law, and their TOS is the holy bible.

[Gabi]

It is not hard to avoid apple today, other products are cheaper and are better...

[SgtSpike]

I'm a huge proponent of electronic freedom...but I will likely ways own an apple phone. Why?
It works. It works well and doesn't require me spending time to make it work well. If I really need freedom on it, I jail break it until they come out with new features on the sanctioned platform. Right now, I have blockchain.info app on my phone. If they take it away, I'll give it back to myself via jail breaking. I'd jailbreak 10 times before buying a non-apple phone.

That's not to say I'm happy about their self- interested policing of the App Store. But having a a non-vetted crap store is worse than useless to me.

iOS users are a small minority here, but I agree with you.  For a phone, I want something that just works.  I don't want to fiddle with it, or worry about what I am downloading might crash my phone, reduce battery life, contain malware, or something worse.  I want to know that all of the apps I see listed work as intended and don't do anything I don't want behind the scenes.  So, in that way, I appreciate Apple's stringent censorship - there are still so many apps to choose from I couldn't possibly have time enough to try them all.

Also, the cross-compatibility is excellent.  I think I have 8 relatives who all use iPhones, and I can text pictures and video to them for free without even having to pay for any sort of texting plan.  That is great, and saves me a decent amount on my monthly bill.  I know I can recommend an app to any of them and their phones will run it.  With Android, I'd have to look up their model of phone, determine whether their system specs are up to snuff and if their current OS version is recent enough, or if they need to update it, etc.  There is something to be said for this sort of simplicity.

The ONE blackspot in my mind is their elimination of Bitcoin apps.  However, I think that may change in the future.  Apple allows a Paypal app, various banking apps, etc, without taking a cut of those transactions.  I think as Bitcoin becomes more popular and more users complain about being unable to transact with Bitcoins on iOS without going through special gyrations to get blockchain.info running, Apple will eventually cave and allow it, just as they have with Paypal and banking apps.

[velacreations]

The problem is not me using Apple products (I do), but the real problem is that my customers use Apple products.  And guess what?  They can pay with a credit card or Paypal or any number of other payment methods with their devices.

So, it is hurting bitcoin, not Apple.  Every single person using an iPhone or IPad buying something online is someone not using bitcoins to make that same purchase.

That means a lot to people who sell things online, and it is really their support that bitcoin needs, not the other way around.

[enquirer]

Actually you could create a HTML5 wallet that would work on the iphone.

I tried to do this but the main think you need is access to the camera so that you can capture QRcodes to make payments. At the time most phone browsers didn't support javascript access to the camera. This might be changing. See. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9431475/html5-camera-access.

This would completely bypass itunes but still give users the functionality of the android based mobile wallets.

Say, one app which has nothing to do with bitcoin, can capture an image and upload it to a web site. Then bitcoin app can send "take a picture" signal to the first app, and then download the image. If they can't talk directly within the iPhone, maybe they can use an external website for communication.

[Gabi]

The problem is not me using Apple products (I do), but the real problem is that my customers use Apple products.  And guess what?  They can pay with a credit card or Paypal or any number of other payment methods with their devices.

So, it is hurting bitcoin, not Apple.  Every single person using an iPhone or IPad buying something online is someone not using bitcoins to make that same purchase.

That means a lot to people who sell things online, and it is really their support that bitcoin needs, not the other way around.

Oh c'mon, people with apple products are negligible. They are a minority.

[SgtSpike]

The problem is not me using Apple products (I do), but the real problem is that my customers use Apple products.  And guess what?  They can pay with a credit card or Paypal or any number of other payment methods with their devices.

So, it is hurting bitcoin, not Apple.  Every single person using an iPhone or IPad buying something online is someone not using bitcoins to make that same purchase.

That means a lot to people who sell things online, and it is really their support that bitcoin needs, not the other way around.

Oh c'mon, people with apple products are negligible. They are a minority.

Still a large number of people not using Bitcoin... he has a point.  They may be a minority, but it's still tens of millions (or hundreds of millions?) of people.

[velacreations]

Oh c'mon, people with apple products are negligible. They are a minority.

It depends on your definition of minority.  Personally, I don't like to exclude 100+ million customers.

This reminds me of the browser wars back in the day.  I use to hate coding for Intenet Explorer.  Not only was it a hassle, it added extra cost to every job.  but even when traffic dropped below 50% from IE, we still do it.  why?  Because we don't want to miss that business.

On a brick and mortar business, do you make the door only 2 ft wide?  Why not?  the majority of people would fit through that door, right?

You can say that Apple users are a minority and all that, but they are still (and will be for some time) a significant minority.  These sorts of issues are obstacles that bitcoin will have to figure out how to work with, not avoid.  If we are serious about mass acceptance, then we're going to have to learn how to accommodate a very wide range of customers.

Otherwise, you might as well be Paypal...

[xxjs]

Also, the cross-compatibility is excellent.  I think I have 8 relatives who all use iPhones...

Is that cross compatibility? Sounds more like inbreeding.

[Beans]

Not sure what all this apple hating is about, no one likes their censoring and that part makes sense. Although a 5 year old could jailbreak a iphone. When you produce the best phone and have the largest selection of apps, I guess you get jealous haters. Only one android phone even turns a profit these days, you can hardly get upset that a company likes to turn a profit on thier products.

[ArticMine]

Not sure what all this apple hating is about, no one likes their censoring and that part makes sense. Although a 5 year old could jailbreak a iphone. When you produce the best phone and have the largest selection of apps, I guess you get jealous haters. Only one android phone even turns a profit these days, you can hardly get upset that a company likes to turn a profit on thier products.

I will start with the fact that Apple's business model for IOS poses a threat to the integrity and security of Bitcoin. Why because if one gives centralized control over computing devices to a single authority by means of DRM, then one has already set the stage for all sort of attacks against Bitcoin, since the security of Bitcoin depends on individual users having complete control over their computing devices.

Do not get me wrong I do not expect for example a 51% attack against Bitcoin to work at all, in-spite of the efforts of Apple with IOS or Microsoft with Windows 8 RT. Nevertheless it makes very little sense to me why anyone involved with Bitcoin would want to support a business model that poses such a security threat to Bitcoin.

[SgtSpike]

Not sure what all this apple hating is about, no one likes their censoring and that part makes sense. Although a 5 year old could jailbreak a iphone. When you produce the best phone and have the largest selection of apps, I guess you get jealous haters. Only one android phone even turns a profit these days, you can hardly get upset that a company likes to turn a profit on thier products.

I will start with the fact that Apple's business model for IOS poses a threat to the integrity and security of Bitcoin. Why because if one gives centralized control over computing devices to a single authority by means of DRM, then one has already set the stage for all sort of attacks against Bitcoin, since the security of Bitcoin depends on individual users having complete control over their computing devices.

Do not get me wrong I do not expect for example a 51% attack against Bitcoin to work at all, in-spite of the efforts of Apple with IOS or Microsoft with Windows 8 RT. Nevertheless it makes very little sense to me why anyone involved with Bitcoin would want to support a business model that poses such a security threat to Bitcoin.

Please state a specific example of how Apple could attack Bitcoin or Bitcoin users.