iPhone app sideloading: Apple reportedly plans to charge fees and review apps downloaded outside of the App Store - 9to5Mac
9to5mac.com
Apple will soon announce policy changes to conform to the Digital Markets Act in Europe, with an impending implementation deadline...

Who would’ve thought? This isn’t going to fly with the EU.

Article 5.3 of the Digital Markets Act (DMA): “The gatekeeper shall not prevent business users from offering the same products or services to end users through third-party online intermediation services or through their own direct online sales channel at prices or conditions that are different from those offered through the online intermediation services of the gatekeeper.”

Friendly reminder that you can sideload apps without jailbreaking or paying for a dev account using TrollStore, which utilises core trust bugs to bypass/spoof some app validation keys, on a iPhone XR or newer on iOS 14.0 up to 16.6.1. (ANY version for iPhone X and older)

Install guide: Trollstore

  • @[email protected]English
    9•5 months ago

    You are both correct. They do stop things that would be ok, on say, a windows machine. For example, intercepting text messages at the system level. It prevents a lot of mischief but also stops legitimate software.

    But we can already look at the Android market for guidance on what will happen. Few Android users venture out of the official store. It will take a large company with must-have apps to get people to go to another marketplace. Like Steam, Epic, or Facebook. Companies that either want to keep their cut or want to collect data to sell. This will likely not matter at all for small developers. They don’t have the clout.

    • @[email protected]English
      3•5 months ago

      There is this god-tier unofficial store called f-droid. Installing app from there is always a joy

    • @[email protected]English
      1•5 months ago

      There is one aspect people don’t really talk about yet, because it is not just about “allowing sideloading”. The law says “no self-preferencing”. That means that installing an app from for example F-Droid has to take the exact same amount of taps with the exact same UX as installing something from Google Play. Same goes for the App Store. The point is not to allow sideloading, but to erase the word sideloading from the vocabulary of the platform and make it just like Windows in that regard.

      This is not just bringing iOS to where Android is, Android is still not compliant yet either. Neither is Windows by the way, because of how they treat Edge.