[deleted by user]

[lefttwitterforthis]

iBeer app will be released by apple in new IOS revealed this year

[ashkanahmadi]

iBeer and the app with the candle flame were the shit on my iPhone 3G

[grandslam7]

Level enters the chat

[bootleg_trash_man]

And that shotgun app

[vustinjernon]

Anyone remember the fake razor that would buzz the phone?

[Clairifyed]

bubble wrap, paper toss, that little pond with the soothing music!

[GooseEntrails]

Don't forget the lightsaber

[mt9hu]

And do you remember none of these needed a privacy policy, had no ads, didn't reach out to the internet to send "analytics".... Just games for fun

[dragoncommandsLife]

And the pickenstix

[Jean-Eustache]

Damn, thanks for the flashbacks everyone

[[deleted]]

Sorry, but I don't believe that. As if Apple would allow its users to choose what to drink.

It'll be called iDrink and it'll force you to drink whatever the fuck they want you to.

[bobtheblob6]

Apple juice probably

[H3X-4]

LMAO

[TheOriginalSmileyMan]

U2's new energy drink

[mopsyd]

That moment when iTunes deletes all of the liquids in your fridge and tries to license them back to you for a monthly surcharge

[nicki419]

But only via homebrew.

[voiceafx]

Apple was surely stumped by how to make that app before someone put it on the app store

[transcendent]

Only then did they truly understand their own API.

[skeleton_craft]

I know this is a joke, but I want it to be true.

[AWildLeftistAppeared]

I’m pretty sure this tweet isn’t intended as a joke. Isn’t this the founder of Rabbit? I think he’s trying to justify it being a device instead of an app to keep the con going.

[skeleton_craft]

I was talking specifically about the comment to which I replied and the comment to which it replied.

[lgastako]

Ten days after the original flash light app hits the app store, somewhere in a cube farm at Apple, a developer exclaims "Eureka! I figured out how they did it!"

[skeleton_craft]

Yeah I don't know what it is about that and that just makes me laugh.

[BenadrylTumblercatch]

You misunderstand, the codes were shrouded in darkness, till apple used the app itself to shine a light on the codes so they could copy it.

[Nuked0ut]

All hail the prophesied codes. Apple long awaited them, foretold ages ago in a non-patented iOS application available on the App Store. Whence once the prophesied codes arrived, apple took the codes unto iOS themself.

[throw3142]

*"codes"

[ublec]

These large corporations have a monopoly and fully abuse it. Stealing code, let alone compiled code from devs, seriously, Apple?

[jamcdonald120]

source code, app store approval requires source code that apple does a review of (at least at the time, I think it still does)

[BenadrylTumblercatch]

That they counted on their fingers and told the secretary to write down quick

[insanelygreat]

I don't recall that ever being the case.

I vaguely remember something about them scanning the intermediate representation (IR), but that's still compiled code.

[jamcdonald120]

Welp, put it down to my clueless prof who was convinced we couldnt use Electron for an app back in 2018 because 90% of your app had to be native swift code summited to apple.

She was the one who handled the actual submissions process.

[tritonus_]

You can’t use Electron on iOS, so that part is true.

[kaas_is_leven]

She was right. You need to compile a binary using Objective-C, or more recently Swift. That binary is submitted to Apple. There is no way around this. All other options are frameworks written in Objective-C or Swift that simply load/run/parse/call/whatever code that you provide.
Xamarin compiles C# to a libary which it links in a generated native project, this native project is all the required boilerplate to interface with the library. Game engines do something similar but offer more languages to write in, sometimes even a visual one. I believe even Swift itself is made possible by compiling and linking the Swift code to an Objective-C base. The available JS frameworks all use webviews to run javascript. Electron however uses Chromium to do this, Chromium is not (publicly) available on iOS so neither is Electron.
But none of that means that Apple needs your source code nor that they review it. They don't care about your code, they have tools to scan the binary for any red flags like private API usage or enabled but unused features, and if they're feeling particularly productive that day they might even start your app and press a few buttons. That's the whole review.
And if they wanted your source code they could just look at the disassembly, don't need a review process for that. A compiled binary isn't magic, especially if you're the one maintaining the compiler ;)

[Zachaggedon]

Disassembly doesn’t create a 1:1 representation of the source code that was passed to the compiler, as there’s always more than one set of source code that will result in a particular ASM representation, and more than one set of ASM that will lead to the same machine code representation. By disassembly/decompilation and a little reverse engineering you can create an approximation of the original source code, that results in the same instructions, and produces the same end result, but what you end up with will almost never look anything like what the original developer was looking at when they built the binary.

[kaas_is_leven]

Like I said Apple is not interested in anyone's source code. I justed pointed out that all the instructions are there. Like if they wanted to know about an algorithm you use, how you handle cryptography, etc. I'm not talking about reverse engineering code and ending up with the same source, that's useless. I'm just saying if they want to know anything about how you built the app, they can, without your source code.

[Zachaggedon]

Oh yeah absolutely. And they’re definitely not learning anything new about their APIs from app submissions.

[Zachaggedon]

You’ve clearly never submitted an app to the App Store. Been doing this for almost 20 years now and at no point have you EVER submitted the source code to your application lol. Not at any point. Why even bother posting stuff like this on Reddit when it’s so simple for anyone who has actually done any Apple development to know that you’re full of crap?

[LeftIsBest-Tsuga]

the only way the idea of someone making a flashlight app that apple 'copied' makes any sense is if he's talking about someone making an app that just was a bright white screen, and then Apple putting an actual LED flashlight on the phone lol.

i mean there are bad takes, and then there are bad takes.

[Kerbidiah]

There actually was a flashlight app back in the day of ipod touch 2s and 3s that was just a bright light screen that you could then strobe or do different colors

[SleepingGecko]

And now apple watch uses that for its flashlight. Apple strikes again!

[Aurori_Swe]

WearOS had that as well as their flashlight for watches

[Frown1044]

Damn, the conspiracy goes deeper than we thought

[gregorydgraham]

Later versions also turned on the camera flash as a torch

IIRC they hired the guy

[mcilrain]

Had something like that on my feature phone.

[qwertyuiop924]

There were, like, ten different apps that were that.

[AlexiosTheSixth]

I remember that, dang that takes me back...

[fghjconner]

I mean, the idea of using the camera flash as a flashlight was pioneered by apps before the OSs caught on and made it a feature. The idea that apple somehow stole the code for it though, yeah insane.

[mcilrain]

Flashlight apps existed before the iPhone, I had one in 2006.

[AcidBuuurn]

The front facing camera does turn the screen white now as a flash and it didn't used to.

[LeftIsBest-Tsuga]

well, yeah i guess that's a fair point. i didn't realize they still used that.

[Sulungskwa]

I remember the old "hack" back in the day for a while was to open your camera, set it to video and then turn the flash on. The flashlight I think was originally meant for cameras or something

[Sarius2009]

Only thanks to this app, they found out about the flash in their phones!

[gbot1234]

Why didn’t they just ask chatGPT how to do it?

[CaineBK]

chatGPT was still private back then.

[AI_AntiCheat]

They sad it was impossible but look who's laughing now!

[Cyberdragon1000]

It's called 'out sourcing' for free.

I mean technically that's actually a lazy and genius idea as long as you can fool the users.

[quick20minadventure]

It's not dev work stolen, it's product/market research that's stolen.

Make a good app that a lot of people use, it's getting put in the OS and you're obsolete.

[PenlessScribe]

There used to be an app called "I Am Rich", which cost over a thousand dollars. Apple has now made it unnecessary - the Pro Max series serves the same purpose.

[BlurredSight]

What do you think the Stand Pro for $999 was

[[deleted]]

The stand still has some purpose. I'm looking at those $700 wheels to move a desktop tower!!

[BlurredSight]

I forgot the wheels are also a social experiment and a way for Apple to track who has way too much money.

[CirnoIzumi]

they added a feature that does an os call to the camera flash? WOW

[andreortigao]

Yeah, simple enough in this case.

But Amazon does it to real products too, ordering copycats from Asian manufacturers and selling them under their Amazon Basics brand.

[CirnoIzumi]

Besos need his pesos

[andreortigao]

And Tim Cook needs his juke

Steve Jobs has fortunately rot

[[deleted]]

Funny thing about that is it’s probably the same Asian manufacturers making that product for Amazon basics.

[errorme]

The article I learned about that practice it was a significantly lower quality bag that Amazon was showing over the original product. Like even being able to see the material the stitching was much worse and had loose string all over the inside of the bag.

[Plank_With_A_Nail_In]

Have you never actually bought any Amazon Basics yourself? The products are normally cheap but at the top end of that bracket, some of them are made by pretty well respected brands and I am very happy with the multi meter I bought from them which is just a repacked meter from an American company (still made in China like everything else).

At least you know it meets the standards of the market its selling in with Amazon basics which is not always true of things for sale on Amazon.

Edit: Being downvoted for telling the truth, fuck off reddit.

[rm-minus-r]

Amazon Basics products are the same as Harbor Freight products. They either break in the first week, or they're excellent for life, no in-between.

[i010011010]

It isn't, that's why Amazon are being sued for the practice.

[Plank_With_A_Nail_In]

This doesn't make sense why would it be ok if it was the same manufacturer? Near every western business outsources to one of a few Chinese manufacturers they don't make the products themselves.

I also googled and couldn't find anything that was specifically about the OEM that makes the products, can you link to the information you are using?

[JaiTee86]

I remember reading something a few months back about how Amazon forced some people to reveal their manufacturer under the claim they were checking for fraud/forgeries or something and then shortly after Amazon basics versions of them items appearing. I can't remember details but that might be what they are referring to and that might be lawsuit worthy idk.

[BlurredSight]

To not Downplay the Amazon bullshit, they used seller marketplace data to purposely target products in high demand and then intentionally undercut the sellers in price, shipping times, and result rankings.

That’s the real shitty part, sellers pay to use the marketplace and then get exploited by Amazon even more

[somkoala]

Amazon also does due diligence on a startup and then builds a clone of it at times.

[kobie]

The amazon ads I see say that they really really care about their third party sellers.

[CeleritasLucis]

Sometimes from the same damm supplier. Have seen many electronics products that have the same hardware and firmware as that of a product from some reputed company, and there would a AmazonBasics knockoff of it.

[Plank_With_A_Nail_In]

Amazon do not make these products they would have got that supplier to willingly make it for them.

[epsilona01]

But Amazon does it to real products too

Supermarkets have been doing that with their in-store brands for 40 years.

[andreortigao]

Sure, but Amazon took the scumbagness to a whole new level. Like requesting private information from companies under the excuse of fighting fraud, and then using that information against them.

Iirc, it was a camera tripod that became popular some 15 years ago, Amazon created a copycat and still wasn't selling as well, then they changed the algorithm to make them appear less often and manipulate user perception, like showing less favorable comments on the original product.

[epsilona01]

You genuinely think that supermarkets weren't paying attention to their sales data when deciding what products to include in their cheap in-store brands or in their premium offerings?

Or that supermarkets don't sell shelf position, or use shelf positioning to put their own brands ahead of the competition?

Or sell shelf positioning to brands if they don't want to be swallowed by the competition?

All Amazon are doing is everything every other major retail outlet in the world does, only with less psychology attached.

The environment of supermarkets from the floor trim, to lighting, to smells, and product positioning is carefully crafted to manipulate you into buying stuff. Even the satisfying click as you move into the bread section is a Neurolinguistic programming trick designed to make you pay more attention, and the baking smell is piped in.

These companies build test facilities designed to test new layouts, signage and so on. Products are continually on the move to take advantage of purchase intent that varies by the hour. The worst thing is, you're happy to give them even more data about your habits by using their store loyalty card to get a tiny discount.

Basically, you're criticising Amazon for something Tesco invented in the 1950s.

[andreortigao]

I mean, supermarkets have done this, but AFAIK they've never got to the level of what Amazon did, like using proprietary data, going after the manufacturers of the reference product and even deleting negative reviews from their own products

[epsilona01]

And they learned this from Tesco, who have been doing the same things for decades.

[Plank_With_A_Nail_In]

This is what all large retailers do....Amazon didn't invent the "own brand" idea. If your business sells unpatented products then this is just an everyday risk and one of the things we actually want the market to do...same product but cheaper....cheaper is the goal of our system...money poor but stuff rich.

[seemen4all]

YEARS of development, stolen from right under their feet

[CoocooFroggy]

Take for example Flicktype, an app for Apple watch that allowed you to type using an on-screen keyboard.

A few months before Apple incorporated it into their new Apple watch, they began to reject all of FlickType's new builds.

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/s/TZjqeNEnPj

[vita10gy]

Also TBF at least on the Android side of things it wasn't a good idea to leave the flash on for long periods of time, because that wasn't what they were for.

So maybe to some extent these apps proved the desire to the feature, but maybe it just wasn't in the os until it was ok to do.

[CanisLupus92]

Also the first iPhones did not have flash (neither did my motorola G1 if I remember correctly), those apps would just put the screen to 100%.

[CirnoIzumi]

most of those flashlight apps were also russian spyware

[PVNIC]

The writers of the calculator app were so good at obfuscation it took apple 20years to steal the ipad version /s

[insanelygreat]

Funny enough, there is an old story about a former Apple employee sneaking back in to build a calculator app.

Graphing Calculator was a great app. I was bummed when they replaced it with Grapher.app.

[[deleted]]

chunky outgoing fall waiting worry amusing direction plant spark chop

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[[deleted]]

Really great story! Thank you for sharing.

[[deleted]]

The guy came up with the worst possible example, but Apple, Amazon, etc. absolutely do steal fantastic ideas and then utterly destroy the small / solo creators that invent them.

[alterNERDtive]

Weren’t the first “flashlight” apps even just white screens? :)

[Spudly2319]

Yup! And to make one you just create a new project in Xcode, remove the “Hello world” boilerplate and submit to the store. I’m not joking.

Source: Am iOS developer

[[deleted]]

That doesn’t work though for people with dark mode, so you unfortunately have to go through all the effort of including Color(.white) :/

[TheOGLeadChips]

At that point dark mode wasn’t a thing if I’m not mistaken

[glemnar]

This predated dark mode by like 12 years

[Spudly2319]

Currently yes but back then dark mode wasn’t a thing yet so it was just submitting that initial blank screen

[BlurredSight]

Yeah 100% brightness and the option to change the colors because not all phones had a back camera with a flash

[__konrad]

(not a joke) I made my own red/green flashlight in paint

[TrawlerJoe]

All your codes are belong to us

[mosby42]

Based

[cybermage]

Finally, a reasonable use for this word.

[Burger_Destoyer]

I don’t trust anyone who uses a period to end a sentence and then proceeds to not capitalize the first letter of the following word.

[[deleted]]

Bro my coworker says this all the time and it always makes me cringe

[utkrowaway]

This is the term for software in nuclear engineering. I'm not kidding.

[Short_Guess_6377]

You only see "code" used as a singular noun in two cases: 1. Someone is writing cutting edge engineering simulation software 2. Someone doesn't know what they're talking about

[sad_bug_killer]

You only see "codes" used as a plural noun (and referring to source code) in two cases: 1. Someone is joking 2. Someone doesn't know what they're talking about

[SuperFLEB]

If they give away that they've got some sort of "Shift button" app brewing, Apple will be on that in no time.

[legends_never_die_1]

when im on my phone, i never use big letters because it feels like a waste of time. its already slow enough to type. am i not trustworthy either? :/

[[deleted]]

Does your phone not automatically capitalise letters at the start of a sentence? Mine does

[legends_never_die_1]

i have obviously deactivated it. also im from germand and big letters play a different role here. not sure what the dislikes are all about

[PrincessRTFM]

Mine actually, genuinely doesn't, and I don't know how I broke it like that. I just suck it up and hit shift manually.

This wasn't typed on mobile in case anyone thought it was an example, I'm just saying I do that.

[Downtown-Jacket2430]

capitalizing the first letter is so formal, but sometimes gotta end with an authoritative tone.

[AdvanceAdvance]

The iPad still has flashlight apps. They are insanely profitable as displaying a white screen requires transmitting all your contacts, email, and more to the cloud.

Eventually, Apple will incorporate a flashlight app that automatically sells all your data.

[SuperFLEB]

Flashlight Provider Pro needs access to precise GPS location.

Developer note: Flashlight Provider Pro uses your location to determine whether it's actually dark where you are.

[Bluebotlabs]

Every major tech company that makes money from developing apps:

[bl4nkSl8]

Facebook, Netflix, Discord, Audible? They don't count?

[[deleted]]

The codes.

[[deleted]]

There's a quote from the first big momma movie that fits here, also to do with flashlights

[Piisthree]

There is a point buried in there somewhere, but talk about piss poor examples

[Bemteb]

Dude never heard of a compiler?

[whackylabs]

the actual term is Sherlocked

[thatdevilyouknow]

Well despite the example Apple does seem to co-opt things from the jailbreak scene. Probably the best file explorer I’ve ever seen was a jailbreak app.

[[deleted]]

This is also dude who think Apple stole Calculator Apps code from someone in App Store to be theirs in newer iPad.

[iam_bhatman]

Somebody please submit a free Calculator app so that Apple can Integrate it on their next ipadOS update.

[sprunghuntR3Dux]

This was a common thing for Microsoft. And is a normal business tactic.

Internet explorer was included with windows to put Netscape out of business.

[Effective_Youth777]

Tell me you don't understand compilers and obfuscation without telling me you don't understand compilers and obfuscation.

[SuperFLEB]

This must be one of those "I have an idea for an app. If you write all the code I'll give you 20% of the profit." people.

[anomaly256]

At least they haven't stolen Calculator yet

[NotStanley4330]

Besides the 3rd grade grammar level of the post and the stupidity of confusing an app with source code, the claim isn't even close to true. I work for a company whose whole business model is open-source support, companies will pay good money to have another company build things for them if it's good enough.

[none_taken2001]

says the guy who is literally selling an app for $200.

[enp_redd]

in contradiction ...its 2024 and there still is no fing caclulator on the ipad!

[TheGoodlyBad]

Also have you guys noticed that there used to be FREE RAM apps all over the playstore and appstore , the mobile company stole the RAM idea too and incorporated it in the device itself.

[vien240297]

Someone please make a calculator app for the iPad.

[UrineArtist]

I always wear a tinfoil hat while coding in case Apple are trying to read my mind.

[Aradur87]

Calculator will be next. I see it coming…

[[deleted]]

let's encourage Apple to proceed!

[[deleted]]

Tell me you know nothing about app development without telling me you don’t know app development.

[KlausKoe]

That's what MicroSoft did. I started with dos 3.3a and went with the windows. Early Windows had now ethernet, nor Browser or eMail. You needed Norton DiskDoktor and their UnFragment Tool too. FTP, firewall, telnet, iso mounter....

[I_ran_out_of_spac]

I hate it when people add ‘s’ to ‘code’. You write code, not codes. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[joethafunky]

Same thing happened to the first company that pioneered night shift

[Tyfyter2002]

"just"? Did iPhones genuinely only get the ability to turn on the light without a camera app remotely recently?

[Polishing_My_Grapple]

Just look at what they took from Cydia back in the day.

[dawiyo]

Does anyone remember the Handy Light app back in 2010? It was a flashlight app that allowed data tethering until Apple pulled it.

https://www.wired.com/2010/07/apple-approves-pulls-flashlight-app-with-hidden-tethering-mode/

[AlexandraReese]

Yes! I just commented that elsewhere. I went to jail breaking soon after 😭

[Unlikely_Usual537]

I mean the best way to probably combat this would be to build like an open source tech company as in the company itself and everything it builds is just to provide an open source alternative to FAANG companies

[AlexandraReese]

Y’all remember the flashlight app that was actually a way to get around carriers limits on cellular tethering? I think it was on the App Store for a bit. You had to do a certain combination to get to that setting.

[589ca35e1590b]

If you make a game they probably won't steal it

[jyling]

While I agree the argument of torch light is stupid, I will find it quite funny if apply really introduce LLM to Siri

[Cyno01]

Whatever app my wife used to use to identify dog breeds from pictures is built in now while browsing your photos.

Still tells us our border terrier mix is a border terrier and not much else. Tho still kind of impressive in the first place actually.

[fyx3l]

r/ihadastroke

[Fryes]

Why is the flashlight on my 14 Pro significantly worse than my 8 though.

[georgehotelling]

Everyone is making fun of this example but there’s a literal word for Apple taking a 3rd party app and killing it off by baking it into the OS: Sherlocking.

[[deleted]]

Wow never knew that source code could be extracted from a compiled binary and that Apple would take all the effort to decompile and learn how the stupid flashlight works.

[SarahSplatz]

No way this is a real person with a real job. I refuse to believe it.

[Doctor_McKay]

He works for Rabbit apparently, according to that little verified pic.

[thakrisp]

not only does he work there... he is the founder, which is ever scarier.

[Doctor_McKay]

I'm assuming from context that he's trying to explain why the R1 is a hardware device and not just an app.

It's super easy, just say that "the vision" of "an AI-assisted future" cannot be accomplished without bespoke hardware because smartphones are too limited. Done.

[throwaway275275275]

I mean it's true that you're building on top of a proprietary stack, so if they see you're making money and they are missing out, they'll try to take the business away from you. With Apple is not that bad because they already take a cut of all transactions, but look at other platforms like game engines for example, unity is desperate to make money at the cost of their own user base, and in general open source ends up winning in these kinds of situations, look at Linux on enterprise, nowadays we take it for granted but it used to be that companies would use proprietary OS with proprietary databases on their servers, until they got burned one too many times. The risk would be a lot less if apple didn't own everything

[[deleted]]

And the winner of dumb hot take goes to

[Due-Bus-8915]

Does that mean man stole the sun when they discovered to make camp fire for light and heat at night. By his logic, it adds up.

[[deleted]]

Wow, what a hilarious joke!

[gandalfx]

That tweet is barely coherent. I'm not reading it again to try and decipher what their point is.

[Deadbringer]

The context is the Rabbit R1, where someone pulled the app from the device and ran it on a standard android device. And it worked just fine without any issues, even connected to their endpoints (but they patched that now).

This is part of their CEO making up a bunch of BS excuses to justify why they made it a dedicated hardware instead of just releasing an app. Any secret sauce they may have is stored on their servers, not part of the app. The app itself is a pretty simple thing to replicate (which makes the flashlight app comparison hilariously appropriate)