Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a pretty significant shifting of the goalposts. The argument was users should have the ability to run whatever code they want on their iPhones. That is actually possible today. It costs a $100/year, which considering the costs of the phones is pretty reasonable. Part of the reason it has to cost something non-trivial is because otherwise it would encourage massive piracy, which would devalue the entire App St…
> The argument was users should have the ability to run whatever code they want on their iPhones. That is actually possible today. Technically possible, fine. But there's a big gulf between "possible" and "not extremely painful". Let's say I create a personal fork of the open source Bitwarden password manager, to add some trivial quirk that makes the software better fit my life. How do you propose I actually use my c…
The free account is good for playing around with the environment and learning how to write code for iOS. It is not well suited for running production software on your phone. If you want to run production software on your phone, blessed or unblessed, you probably want to pay Apple $100/yr for the longer duration and higher app limit.
In my opinion, if you could do what you wanted for free, it would contribute massively to app piracy, and devalue the work of millions of developers on the App Store. $100/year is at about the right level to dissuade most people from circumventing the App Store (the average Apple user spends ~$75/year on the App Store).
> ...it's an artificial restriction explicitly created to make running un-blessed code impractical for more than rudimentary testing.
Crucially, paying Apple $100/year does not mean they ever see or have to bless code you deploy to your own devices. It just removes the limits in the development environment!