Linked List: February 8, 2024

Thursday, 8 February 2024

LastPass Rip-Off Named ‘LassPass’ Made It Into the App Store ★

Mike Kosak, writing for the LastPass company blog:

LastPass would like to alert our customers to a fraudulent app attempting to impersonate our LastPass app on the Apple App Store. The app in question is called “LassPass Password Manager” and lists Parvati Patel as the developer. The app attempts to copy our branding and user interface, though close examination of the posted screenshots reveal misspellings and other indicators the app is fraudulent.

“LassPass” sounds like a Scottish dating app.

I was able to install LassPass earlier today, before Apple removed it. I think it’s just a blatant brand rip-off, not an attempt to phish the credentials from actual LastPass customers. The app itself doesn’t look like LastPass, and never prompts you to log into an existing LastPass account. Instead, the scam LassPass app tries to steer you to creating a “pro” account subscription for $2/month, $10/year, or a $50 lifetime purchase. Those are actually low prices for a scam app — a lot of scammy apps try to charge like $10/week.

But whatever LassPass is, it obviously shouldn’t have been approved by App Store review. And that leads to a predictable knee-jerk response:

“Hagen”: “fake password manager in the app store. isn’t this what the 30% cut is supposed to protect us from?”
Emil Protalinski: “I don’t understand. I thought Apple uses the money from its 30% tax to stop phishing apps from getting into its app store?”
Mary Branscombe: “if Apple is going to insist that having the only app store on its devices is there to be a security barrier, letting through fake apps doesn’t help with that argument”

Branscombe is correct that even isolated incidents like this hurt Apple’s arguments in favor of App Store exclusivity. But what’s the counterargument? That anything short of 100 percent accuracy at flagging scams and rip-offs renders the entire App Store review process pointless? That if, say, 1 in every 1,000 scam attempts slips through, the entire process should be scrapped? That argument can’t be taken seriously.

Disney Buys Partial Stake in Epic Games for $1.5 Billion ★

Disney:

The Walt Disney Company and Epic Games will collaborate on an all-new games and entertainment universe that will further expand the reach of beloved Disney stories and experiences. Disney will also invest $1.5 billion to acquire an equity stake in Epic Games alongside the multiyear project. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.

In addition to being a world-class games experience and interoperating with Fortnite, the new persistent universe will offer a multitude of opportunities for consumers to play, watch, shop and engage with content, characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar and more. Players, gamers and fans will be able to create their own stories and experiences, express their fandom in a distinctly Disney way, and share content with each other in ways that they love. This will all be powered by Unreal Engine.

Corey Weinberg, at The Information:

Disney’s $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games values the Fortnite maker at $22.5 billion, a person familiar with the matter said. The price is about a 29% drop from where investors last valued the company less than two years ago.

The investment makes the “Fortnite” maker one of the largest private, venture-backed companies to sell new shares at a steep discount since higher interest rates hit tech valuations. Disney’s $1.5 billion investment will dilute existing Epic shareholders by 9%, the person said. The size of the investment would imply a roughly 7% stake in the company.

The interesting third wheel in this relationship is obviously Apple. Apple is exceptionally cozy with Disney — from the whole Steve Jobs thing with Pixar to Bob Iger appearing in last June’s WWDC keynote to help Tim Cook announce Vision Pro. Apple is not so cozy with Epic Games.

Will this change anything on that front? If these new experiences require Fortnite to play, right now that rules out playing them on iPhone, iPad, or Vision Pro, because Epic Games no longer has an Apple developer account for Fortnite.

YouTube Says a VisionOS App Is ‘On the Roadmap’, but I’m Not Sure I Care ★

Nilay Patel, writing at The Verge:

Here’s a little bit of an about-face: YouTube now says it has a Vision Pro app on its roadmap. I mean this literally, as YouTube spokesperson Jessica Gibby just emailed me the following statement: “We’re excited to see Vision Pro launch and we’re supporting it by ensuring YouTube users have a great experience in Safari. We do not have any specific plans to share at this time, but can confirm that a Vision Pro app is on our roadmap.”

This of course follows YouTube, Spotify, and Netflix all declining to allow their iPad apps to run on the Vision Pro before launch — and the last time we asked, there was no mention of a proper visionOS YouTube app coming in the future, so something’s changed in Mountain View. (One theory: the immediate popularity of Christian Selig’s Juno app for YouTube on the Vision Pro.)

Is Juno so good that it might have altered Google’s development plans for supporting YouTube with a native app? I suppose that’s possible. But given the design quality and adherence to platform design idioms of Google’s iOS apps (poor), I’m not sure they’re even capable of making a Juno-quality app.

I’m also unsure whether Google cares, ultimately, that Juno is and will remain the premier client for YouTube on VisionOS for the near future. Because Juno is mostly just a redesigned presentation of youtube.com, it doesn’t block ads. If you don’t like YouTube ads you should sign up for YouTube Premium (which of course works great in Juno) — one of the best bang-for-your-buck values in all of media.

Juno: Christian Selig’s YouTube App for VisionOS ★

Christian Selig (developer of the late great Apollo client for Reddit):

At its core, Juno uses the YouTube website itself. No, not scraped. It presents the website as you would load it, but similar to how browser extensions work, it tweaks the theming of the site through CSS and JavaScript.

That results in:

Tweaking backgrounds so the beautiful glassy look of visionOS shows through. As the great Serenity Caldwell once said, “Opaque windows can feel heavy and constricting, especially at large sizes. Whenever possible, prefer the glass material (which pulls light from people’s surroundings).”

Increasing contrast so items are properly visible

Making buttons like the button to view your subscriptions native UI, and then loading the relevant portions of the website accordingly

You get your full recommendations, subscriptions and whatnot, just as you would on the normal YouTube site or app

It was a lot of work tweaking the CSS to get the YouTube website to something that felt comfortable and at home on visionOS, but I’m really happy with how it turned out. Does it feel like a perfectly native visionOS app? Well no, but it’s a heck of a lot nicer than the website, and to be fair Google apps normally do their own thing rather than use iOS system UI, so not sure we’ll ever fully see that. :)

What a brilliant way to approach the problem of creating a third-party YouTube client. Rather than using APIs to create a YouTube client from the ground up — which likely wouldn’t work, practically speaking, because Google’s API limits are so restrictive, because Google doesn’t want developers making alternative YouTube client apps — Selig instead has created a dedicated web browser just for youtube.com that uses CSS and WebKit extension jiggery-pokery to completely restyle the YouTube web interface to look like a native VisionOS app.

I’ve been using Juno for the last week — in fact, I sent Selig some bugs I encountered on-device that didn’t manifest in the VisionOS Xcode simulator — and I’ve already gotten more than $5 of entertainment value from it. Using Juno is just so much better than visiting youtube.com in Safari on Vision Pro. It’s not just prettier (though it is very pretty) — it’s far more usable, because the tap targets are generally bigger and more spread apart.

It’s my favorite and most-used third-party VisionOS app so far. $5 one-time purchase. Cheap!