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These rules are applied selectively. I know very popular apps that are loading interpreted code over https and executing it. Also, these same apps are exploiting a flaw in iOS in order to track users across apps and using the interpreted code to hide this.
Honest question - what do iOS users do in such situations? I'm using Android and we can always install things from outside the store, or even from alternative stores (eg. F-Droid). Is there any similar solution? If the app is open-source, can you at least build it yourself and sideload it as if you are the developer and you're testing your app? What solutions are there?
The largest loophole still is probably Enterprise Distribution, which allows high-limits (long time, many devices) signing associated with an Enterprise account.
When I was younger, my family couldn’t afford a laptop, but I have the distinct memory of wanting to learn to code on the iPads at my school, and being unable to find any app which would let me just write and execute programs. Looking around the App Store now, there do seem to be a couple of apps which would allow this, but it’s still really disappointing to see this kind of removal. The majority of kids these days w…
Kids can get a Pinebook for $100, and a rpi+power source+keyboard+cheap touch display for less than $50.
When I was younger, my family couldn’t afford a laptop, but I have the distinct memory of wanting to learn to code on the iPads at my school, and being unable to find any app which would let me just write and execute programs. Looking around the App Store now, there do seem to be a couple of apps which would allow this, but it’s still really disappointing to see this kind of removal. The majority of kids these days w…
Because if the iPad can be used as a computer, there's very little reason to buy a Macbook. It makes no financial sense. It'd also allow apps to dynamically load external software, which could be used as a bypass for Apple's stringent app store requirements.
Honest question - what do iOS users do in such situations? I'm using Android and we can always install things from outside the store, or even from alternative stores (eg. F-Droid). Is there any similar solution? If the app is open-source, can you at least build it yourself and sideload it as if you are the developer and you're testing your app? What solutions are there?
The latter as you said, compile it yourself.
Honest question - what do iOS users do in such situations? I'm using Android and we can always install things from outside the store, or even from alternative stores (eg. F-Droid). Is there any similar solution? If the app is open-source, can you at least build it yourself and sideload it as if you are the developer and you're testing your app? What solutions are there?
If the app isn't open-source, you don't have any great options. Hypothetically, compiled apps from other developers can be re-signed just like apps you build yourself (see AltStore [1], which uses this technique), but those apps are still time-bombed and have to be periodically refreshed. The barrier to entry means you don't see a ton of apps around that do this; if something can't be compliant with App Store rules, it generally doesn't get made on iOS.
(There's also jailbreaking, and there used to be a decently-large community of developers building applications and tweaks for jailbroken iOS devices. That's gotten smaller both as Apple's made jailbreaking more difficult to maintain, and as new features in iOS have made much of the functionality people used to jailbreak for redundant.)
Honest question - what do iOS users do in such situations? I'm using Android and we can always install things from outside the store, or even from alternative stores (eg. F-Droid). Is there any similar solution? If the app is open-source, can you at least build it yourself and sideload it as if you are the developer and you're testing your app? What solutions are there?
Honest question - what do iOS users do in such situations? I'm using Android and we can always install things from outside the store, or even from alternative stores (eg. F-Droid). Is there any similar solution? If the app is open-source, can you at least build it yourself and sideload it as if you are the developer and you're testing your app? What solutions are there?
use Prompt or another mosh terminal emulator and ssh into wherever you want
Even just for coding, that sounds awful to me. iOS users bought a mobile device, and particularly if they're on an iPad Pro, a mobile device with a really good processor. For me, part of that would be being able to treat it like a mobile device, that it should keep working if I drive through a tunnel, that I should be able to use it on the go.
Hard for me to wrap my head around people being satisfied with "ignore that you have a well-built device with interesting sensors in front of you, and instead just use it as a thin client to another functioning computer."
There are cheaper thin clients out there than an iOS device if someone is OK ignoring their native hardware, doing all of their programming through a terminal, and having functionality break if their device goes offline.
Honest question - what do iOS users do in such situations? I'm using Android and we can always install things from outside the store, or even from alternative stores (eg. F-Droid). Is there any similar solution? If the app is open-source, can you at least build it yourself and sideload it as if you are the developer and you're testing your app? What solutions are there?
Since this is really intended to make developing iOS apps more accessible, it requires resigning or rebuilding apps. Since iDOS is open source, that should be no problem here - you can compile and install your own copy, likely just by loading the upstream project in Xcode and deploying it your iDevice like app developers do. A usability problem is that apps installed this way are only runnable for a week [0], at which point the signature must be refreshed or iOS will refuse to open the app.
AltStore [1] is a project that streamlines this ordeal as much as possible. It’s an alternate app store that allows you to install a bunch of open source apps not allowed in the app store (e.g. apps using permissions that would be rejected, or game console emulators). It also comes with a server component that uses Apple’s frameworks on Mac/Windows to refresh those apps’ validity on iDevices on the same network. If you regularly connect your iDevice to a network with an AltServer of your own, the apps should continue to work.
It’s certainly not pretty, and very far removed from fare more open Android devices, but workarounds to run your own software on iDevices do exist. There’s an entire subreddit, r/sideloaded, dedicated to this apparently mostly for piracy purposes.
[0]: Unless you pay for the Apple Developer Program, which has much longer limits. This limit is for free accounts.
[1]: https://altstore.io/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't do anything. It's a phone, not a PC. I got an iPhone because it does what it does well, and doesn't do other things at all. iPhones are slick, costly and secure, at the cost of not being malleable. It's a trade-off I made at purchase time and I know most users of both iPhone and Android never considered that tradeoff.
I partially agree with you but I think the iPad breaks this rationale. They argue it's a computer so why won't they let it be?
Where is the next generation of developers going to come from, if they grow up on iPads?
But I feel the same towards Apples stance on server hardware, which they discontinued over a decade ago: Even if servers don't make a sizeable profit on their own, they help ensure that developers can build large scale stuff inside the apple ecosystem.
Yet, that hasn't really been the hindrance I feel it ought to have been.