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Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

arstechnica.com

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Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#211

Post by manderley »

MyFirstSass wrote: post #180
DCKing wrote: post #67

The iPad App Store is perhaps an even more dysfunctional place than the iPhone in how much it holds hardware and use cases hostage to the manufacturer's vision. Just imagine how much more versatile the iPad Pro would be if only you could run Linux VMs on it in the moments you want to do anything remotely tinkery on an iPad. Apple's hardware since the 2021 iPad Pro (with M1) has had the ability to do this. The iPads h…

Another thing is the issue of e-waste. At some point i had multiple older iPads with perfectly great screens, and i wanted to use them as "hubs" for a home setup to control various things, another option was using them as secondary screens, or maybe just give them to a kid. You couldn't, they were simply to old for the new IOS update, and almost all apps including browsers requires the newer IOS and update automatica…

Of course they were recycled, there are valuable minerals in these devices.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#213

Post by pzo »

MyFirstSass wrote: post #180
DCKing wrote: post #67

The iPad App Store is perhaps an even more dysfunctional place than the iPhone in how much it holds hardware and use cases hostage to the manufacturer's vision. Just imagine how much more versatile the iPad Pro would be if only you could run Linux VMs on it in the moments you want to do anything remotely tinkery on an iPad. Apple's hardware since the 2021 iPad Pro (with M1) has had the ability to do this. The iPads h…

Another thing is the issue of e-waste. At some point i had multiple older iPads with perfectly great screens, and i wanted to use them as "hubs" for a home setup to control various things, another option was using them as secondary screens, or maybe just give them to a kid. You couldn't, they were simply to old for the new IOS update, and almost all apps including browsers requires the newer IOS and update automatica…

Same, I wish once device stops being supported it should give easy option to be jailbroken and unlock bootloader. Such devices could be retrofitted for many other roles e.g robotics toy with arduino/raspberrypi, smart home, smart router etc.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#214

Post by robertjpayne »

firstbabylonian wrote: post #128
tomashubelbauer wrote: post #84

I am happy to see Apple's arm twisted, but disappointed the demand is to allow alternative app stores and not user-facing side-loading. In my view, having only the official Apple App Store is just fine as long as Apple also adds the ability to install an app off an unsigned IPA file for free. With that, users would be free to install apps that Apple don't deem fit for the app store, giving them the freedom to use the…

> ability to install an app off an unsigned IPA file for free I feel like the thinking is that there must be an entity — somebody running an app store — who could be held legally responsible for any damage caused by malware distributed via their channels. Regular non-tech-savvy users cannot be trusted with such delicate software as apps running on their personal phones.

This is the myth that everyone is going to be screwed by. Nobody is going to be legally responsible for malware that ends up on your device.

The only difference is Apple has the $$ and incentives to remove it as soon as it's brought to their attention (assuming it's actual malware that may cause large financial loss not just copyright infringement).

Alt-stores will be ridden with malware and nobody is going to be legally responsible for it. We can just hope the alt-stores that end up existing have incentives to keep them "clean".

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#215

Post by zmmmmm »

tomashubelbauer wrote: post #84

I am happy to see Apple's arm twisted, but disappointed the demand is to allow alternative app stores and not user-facing side-loading. In my view, having only the official Apple App Store is just fine as long as Apple also adds the ability to install an app off an unsigned IPA file for free. With that, users would be free to install apps that Apple don't deem fit for the app store, giving them the freedom to use the…

I wonder if, as a thought experiment, someone could create an App store with a completely transparent self-signing mechanism that allowed you to install apps yourself (but only to your device).

If so, one would think that unless Apple gets to dictate terms strongly to the App stores, that this would only be a matter of time.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#217

Post by AshleysBrain »

I suspect the only reason Apple rebranded iOS on iPad as iPadOS a few years ago was just to be able to claim it's a separate OS for regulatory reasons, despite it obviously being the same iOS as run on iPhones but on a different form factor device. I'm glad this gambit did not fool the EU.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#219

Post by Adverblessly »

gtufano wrote: post #148
madeofpalk wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Users win. The first alt app store didn't even launch and it pressured Apple to change it's review policies TWICE. Once to allow game streaming services, and then to allow game emulators. Hell, even developers won here. 2) How did this play out on every other platform. Sure - piracy exists, but most don't and it's pretty non-impactful AFAICT.

Piracy is not-impactful is not true. The disappearance of indie software that do not depend on a remote server (or that's not software on a remote server) is basically due to the inability to monetize with sales native, stand-alone, software. And that's for the piracy. In some way, the success of the App Store towards indie/solo developers is because there was a way to sell things without the piracy easily steal your…

There have been various efforts to estimate the effect piracy has on revenue like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15319476 or http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy

So depending on product category it might be a large drop (EU study finds -38% displacement rate for books) but it might also be a boost (EU study finds +24% for video games), and it is hard to say in general, since even a 90% piracy rate might only mean a maximum of 5%-10% lost sales (from the wolfire blog post). Either way it isn't at the level of "impossible to succeed".

If we are talking about app stores specifically, I bet a much bigger factor in (lack of) success is discoverability, both because your app is literally hard to find and because app store owners allow a flow of cheap clones to compete with your genuine app.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#220

Post by bojan »

MyFirstSass wrote: post #180
DCKing wrote: post #67

The iPad App Store is perhaps an even more dysfunctional place than the iPhone in how much it holds hardware and use cases hostage to the manufacturer's vision. Just imagine how much more versatile the iPad Pro would be if only you could run Linux VMs on it in the moments you want to do anything remotely tinkery on an iPad. Apple's hardware since the 2021 iPad Pro (with M1) has had the ability to do this. The iPads h…

Another thing is the issue of e-waste. At some point i had multiple older iPads with perfectly great screens, and i wanted to use them as "hubs" for a home setup to control various things, another option was using them as secondary screens, or maybe just give them to a kid. You couldn't, they were simply to old for the new IOS update, and almost all apps including browsers requires the newer IOS and update automatica…

As a counterexample, the other day I found my old Nexus 5, from 2013, running Android 6. While it was not completely straightforward, I was able to reset the phone and link it to a new Google account, and after several cycles of updates the entire Google suite seems to work, including Maps, and not slowly at that. I was, and still am, genuinely impressed.
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