> There is a security argument for the app store, which I would accept were it not for Apple adding 43% to the purchase price of most paid applications, which is much worse for the end user than the average piece of malware.
IIRC most of the revenue is games, and most of game revenue is microtransactions. In this context, 43% (or whatever the lower number is that they announced a while back to reduce the heat) is just sending the same money to a greater evil.
As for "worse"… we already have cryptocurrency miners (leading to app store rules saying no to this because of the battery drain), and encryption-ransomware locking away all your data; financial fraud is only protected to the extent that it can be unwound, which means fraudsters in that domain look for things that can't be reversed.
If we do end up with a laissez-faire free-for-all — which is a possible scenario, but not a necessary one, it depends on the details of how alt-stores are done in practice — then you have to worry not just about your own device being malwared but also those of anyone nearby, because a hot mic in someone else's pocket can clone your voice, and there's already more than one demonstration of how wifi can be repurposed to function as a wall-penetrating radar.
IIRC most of the revenue is games, and most of game revenue is microtransactions. In this context, 43% (or whatever the lower number is that they announced a while back to reduce the heat) is just sending the same money to a greater evil.
As for "worse"… we already have cryptocurrency miners (leading to app store rules saying no to this because of the battery drain), and encryption-ransomware locking away all your data; financial fraud is only protected to the extent that it can be unwound, which means fraudsters in that domain look for things that can't be reversed.
If we do end up with a laissez-faire free-for-all — which is a possible scenario, but not a necessary one, it depends on the details of how alt-stores are done in practice — then you have to worry not just about your own device being malwared but also those of anyone nearby, because a hot mic in someone else's pocket can clone your voice, and there's already more than one demonstration of how wifi can be repurposed to function as a wall-penetrating radar.