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 have the RAM (16gb on higher storage models), appropriate keyboard and trackpads, the works. Great hardware being held back by Apple's vision people weren't allowed to deviate from.
A straightforward reading of the DMA suggests that Apple is not allowed to restrict apps from using hardware features. Let's hope that means Parallels/VMware style VMs are possible without too much of a fight.
Do I think side-loading and alt app stores would make iPads and iPhones more versatile devices? Yes.
Do I believe indie devs will be worse off? Unfortunately, also yes.
If you are a solo app developer, you will now have to keep presence on all app stores out there, since if you don’t publish on one then a copycat will. Every store would have its own review processes, fee structures, billing and tax procedures. Since you would need to follow a dozen of those, as an indie operation realistically you will either go under or pay middleman companies a chunk for this—so, in the end, you’ll lose the same cut or more and we’re back to the starting point.
Furthermore, I believe you will have much less protection against plain piracy, which was a big thing in the days of yore until it was spectacularly dealt with by Apple within its mobile ecosystem.
This is why I suspect the primary interests side-loading and alt app stores on Apple devices would satisfy is large enterprises and a few opportunistic middlemen. Entities like Epic, Netflix, who will be able to generate more profit; governments, perhaps; a few publishing companies (think CDBaby for apps) will win small time; some users who don’t want to pay and want to get things for free might be able to get their way; indie devs will be worse off.
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.
I disagree. First of all I expect competing stores to ask a smaller cut than what currently Apple asks (and Apple itself may lower it), so it may very well be the case even with a middleman the amount "lost" by the developer will be lower. Not a given though, I guess we will see.
Secondly, the Android ecosystem seems to be doing well even with the situation you describe. There are not that many competing stores (mostly from sellers of devices, like huawei, samsung, amazon, which is something will not happen with Apple devices), and piracy, while present is not as commons as with desktops.
You raise some valid points, but I believe your comparison isn't quite complete/holistic.
> If you are a solo app developer, you will now have to keep presence on all app stores out there, since if you don’t publish on one then a copycat will.
This doesn't make much sense. The App Store will still be where 90%+ apps are installed from, and I'm willing to bet money on that. Where are all the Google Play devs pushing their apps on the Amazon store or on 3rd party app stores?
> Furthermore, I believe you will have much less protection against plain piracy, which was a big thing in the days of yore until it was spectacularly dealt with by Apple within its mobile ecosystem.
Depending on your familiarity you already had lots of such websites (I'm not going to mention any names but it's easily googleable if anyone wants to verify). Yes keeping the app for >7 days was a pain as they expire but a 3rd party altserver helps with that.
> This is why I suspect the primary interests side-loading and alt app stores on Apple devices would satisfy is large enterprises and a few opportunistic middlemen.
Have you taken a look at any of the privacy forums/subreddits? Places where they use say GrapheneOS? Do you know what's their favorite app store? It's this thing called F-droid. And it only contains open source apps. Such a move would be amazing for open source devs. Hell, it would be great for beginner/hobbyist devs too. I (ages ago) had tried my hand at android dev. And unlike iOS, you don't need to pay $99 to appease the Apple gods for that. Free publishing is great for indie and small devs who may never hit $99/yr revenue.
Btw, afaik you already needed to pay a higher price for youtube premium if subscribing through the app. And apple's draconian/benevolent-and-super-nice policies (/s) meant that you couldn't even tell your users to get it for cheaper from elsewhere. Would you like paying 30% of your income regardless of choice?
I've not done much app development as a solo dev, but hasn't it been the case for many years now that Android has supported multiple app stores? Is this a problem for developers of Android apps?
I'm still waiting for a toggle that lets me turn off mandatory notarization checking. And a way to tap on a .ipa file in the file browser and just being able to install it.
oh and a way to do all this without paying rent money to apple...
Almost a decade ago, I bought an iPad Air to try and replace my MacBook Pro. It didn't work and had to resort to laggy online editors with paid subscriptions. And even then, when I was doing Ruby on Rails, it didn't even work out. Ok, so, the technology was new, sure.
Last year I got myself an M series iPad "Pro" thinking things would have changed. Well, VS Code was the only product that allowed me to run a tiny VM to edit and deploy my apps online. It worked really well to its credit despite a little bit of hacks (have to save it as a Safari shortcut) but still, a far cry from replacing my MacBook Pro.
I have the same M series Mac mini back home that I do insane multi-tasking on and something I would claim is easily the best god damn computer ever made for IT devs like myself. That's when I realized, the limitation is in the OS and not the hardware. The iPad "Pro" is really powerful for a lot of other stuff. Photo editing, music creation and what not.
Ironically, I saw someone on YouTube get annoyed with the same problem and use a Raspberry Pi attached with the iPad as a MacBook Pro replacement (it draws power from the iPad itself, so it's a single cable solution). I was amazed and sad at the same time that Apple had to push their neglected audience so far to the point of even bundling our own DIY hardware to make it usable to call it a "Pro". The iPad's "Pro" is such a misnomer.
I am still waiting for the day when I can throw away my MacBook Pro and work from a small factor without carrying a brick to charge a 14", almost 3Kg device in my office bag every day.
I would also love to run a Linux VM on my iPad Pro, but if we could get third-party app sideloading to work without alternative app stores and other idiocy UTM would fix that for me.
The biggest problem rn is Apple's blocking of JIT for everything but browsers. This means neither UTM nor the more modern emulators can run at close to full speed.
I'd like to see this changed. This seems like the real "Gatekeeper".
They didn't along with iOS? Oh come on! Apple... sigh
I think this might honestly make iPad more appealing, and serve Apple more than they might think. The room for improvement on iPadOS seems greater than iOS due to iPadOS underutilizing the device.
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 their device as they see fit.
> 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.
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.
It would need to be signed so there would be a way to disable it if needed.
This is essentially the same on MacOS now if you distribute, things built without signature at all only open on the machine they were built, you need to provide even a self signature to get it to open with a warning on another machine.
It is mostly just an iOS under the hood. Apple separated the iOS and iPadOS, saying that this way they can develop for it separate exclusive features. While we have things like multitasking and stage manager, mostly it’s been an excuse to bring iOS features to the iPadOS with a delay for a year.
That means Apple must cover jailbroken devices under warranty too. Sideloading Cydia will be even easier now. Apple must support all device configurations now.
Software modifications are already covered under warranty in Europe too as long as they didn’t cause hardware issues (and it’s up to the manufacturer to prove it).
Cydia is just an App Store for modifications, right? Don’t you also need to exploit a vulnerability in the OS to get arbitrary code execution? Doubt modifying the OS will be covered under warranty.
No I didn’t “hack” the device or anything, the last thing I want to do is tinker with my single most important computing device, I need it to work all the time and work well. It’s been possible for years, officially.
With these legislations, I always wonder how the lawmakers come up with timeframes like 6 months. Who is to say this implementation doesn't take, say, a year? I doubt lawmakers have the technological know how to estimate such a project (actually, I doubt anyone has) - but 6 months seems rather short (given they hadn't just had to implement the same thing for iOS)...?
> given they hadn't just had to implement the same thing for iOS
You've kind of answered this for yourself; iPadOS _is_ iOS.
Apple has, in any case, presumably more or less known this was coming for a year or so; they kind of had to make the argument that iPadOS and iOS were not the same thing, I suppose, but it was always a bit far-fetched that the EC would buy that.
Any deadline will be declared either too short or too long.
That's why the deadlines usually tend to be on the shorter side to put actual pressure on companies needing to implement them. However, the companies always have a way to say "look, we've tried our best, it's just we just need more time". No one is going to fine them for not meeting those deadlines if the companies are actually working on implementing the changes in good faith.
It's telling that they are even going after iPadOS. Really messages to Apple strongly that they have no hope of dodging this on iOS if even a relatively niche product by comparison is also qualifying them for gatekeeper status.
[+] [-] DCKing|1 year ago|reply
Apple's hardware since the 2021 iPad Pro (with M1) has had the ability to do this. The iPads have the RAM (16gb on higher storage models), appropriate keyboard and trackpads, the works. Great hardware being held back by Apple's vision people weren't allowed to deviate from.
A straightforward reading of the DMA suggests that Apple is not allowed to restrict apps from using hardware features. Let's hope that means Parallels/VMware style VMs are possible without too much of a fight.
[+] [-] anileated|1 year ago|reply
Do I believe indie devs will be worse off? Unfortunately, also yes.
If you are a solo app developer, you will now have to keep presence on all app stores out there, since if you don’t publish on one then a copycat will. Every store would have its own review processes, fee structures, billing and tax procedures. Since you would need to follow a dozen of those, as an indie operation realistically you will either go under or pay middleman companies a chunk for this—so, in the end, you’ll lose the same cut or more and we’re back to the starting point.
Furthermore, I believe you will have much less protection against plain piracy, which was a big thing in the days of yore until it was spectacularly dealt with by Apple within its mobile ecosystem.
This is why I suspect the primary interests side-loading and alt app stores on Apple devices would satisfy is large enterprises and a few opportunistic middlemen. Entities like Epic, Netflix, who will be able to generate more profit; governments, perhaps; a few publishing companies (think CDBaby for apps) will win small time; some users who don’t want to pay and want to get things for free might be able to get their way; indie devs will be worse off.
[+] [-] madeofpalk|1 year ago|reply
2) How did this play out on every other platform. Sure - piracy exists, but most don't and it's pretty non-impactful AFAICT.
[+] [-] mrighele|1 year ago|reply
Secondly, the Android ecosystem seems to be doing well even with the situation you describe. There are not that many competing stores (mostly from sellers of devices, like huawei, samsung, amazon, which is something will not happen with Apple devices), and piracy, while present is not as commons as with desktops.
[+] [-] user_7832|1 year ago|reply
> If you are a solo app developer, you will now have to keep presence on all app stores out there, since if you don’t publish on one then a copycat will.
This doesn't make much sense. The App Store will still be where 90%+ apps are installed from, and I'm willing to bet money on that. Where are all the Google Play devs pushing their apps on the Amazon store or on 3rd party app stores?
> Furthermore, I believe you will have much less protection against plain piracy, which was a big thing in the days of yore until it was spectacularly dealt with by Apple within its mobile ecosystem.
Depending on your familiarity you already had lots of such websites (I'm not going to mention any names but it's easily googleable if anyone wants to verify). Yes keeping the app for >7 days was a pain as they expire but a 3rd party altserver helps with that.
> This is why I suspect the primary interests side-loading and alt app stores on Apple devices would satisfy is large enterprises and a few opportunistic middlemen.
Have you taken a look at any of the privacy forums/subreddits? Places where they use say GrapheneOS? Do you know what's their favorite app store? It's this thing called F-droid. And it only contains open source apps. Such a move would be amazing for open source devs. Hell, it would be great for beginner/hobbyist devs too. I (ages ago) had tried my hand at android dev. And unlike iOS, you don't need to pay $99 to appease the Apple gods for that. Free publishing is great for indie and small devs who may never hit $99/yr revenue.
Btw, afaik you already needed to pay a higher price for youtube premium if subscribing through the app. And apple's draconian/benevolent-and-super-nice policies (/s) meant that you couldn't even tell your users to get it for cheaper from elsewhere. Would you like paying 30% of your income regardless of choice?
[+] [-] dkdbejwi383|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] heavyset_go|1 year ago|reply
Worse off than having 15% to 30% of their entire revenue stream taken? Doubt it.
[+] [-] rcarmo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] no_time|1 year ago|reply
oh and a way to do all this without paying rent money to apple...
[+] [-] 369548684892826|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kandros|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] robertlagrant|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dzogchen|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] FooBarWidget|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] neya|1 year ago|reply
Last year I got myself an M series iPad "Pro" thinking things would have changed. Well, VS Code was the only product that allowed me to run a tiny VM to edit and deploy my apps online. It worked really well to its credit despite a little bit of hacks (have to save it as a Safari shortcut) but still, a far cry from replacing my MacBook Pro.
I have the same M series Mac mini back home that I do insane multi-tasking on and something I would claim is easily the best god damn computer ever made for IT devs like myself. That's when I realized, the limitation is in the OS and not the hardware. The iPad "Pro" is really powerful for a lot of other stuff. Photo editing, music creation and what not.
Ironically, I saw someone on YouTube get annoyed with the same problem and use a Raspberry Pi attached with the iPad as a MacBook Pro replacement (it draws power from the iPad itself, so it's a single cable solution). I was amazed and sad at the same time that Apple had to push their neglected audience so far to the point of even bundling our own DIY hardware to make it usable to call it a "Pro". The iPad's "Pro" is such a misnomer.
I am still waiting for the day when I can throw away my MacBook Pro and work from a small factor without carrying a brick to charge a 14", almost 3Kg device in my office bag every day.
Hopefully this changes things.
[+] [-] stevej1999|1 year ago|reply
Most people don't need MacBook Pro. Those extra cores just sit idle most of the time if not utilised for heavy computation.
[+] [-] windowsrookie|1 year ago|reply
"work from a small factor without carrying a brick to charge a 14", almost 3Kg device"
13" M2 Air - 15 Hours of battery life and 1.24kg. An iPad + Keyboard case is likely going to weight more than a MacBook Air anyways.
[+] [-] rcarmo|1 year ago|reply
I would also love to run a Linux VM on my iPad Pro, but if we could get third-party app sideloading to work without alternative app stores and other idiocy UTM would fix that for me.
[+] [-] olabyne|1 year ago|reply
Install Wayland (easy install now). Enjoy Linux Dev & Android Apps
[+] [-] fl_rn_st|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] user_7832|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jug|1 year ago|reply
I think this might honestly make iPad more appealing, and serve Apple more than they might think. The room for improvement on iPadOS seems greater than iOS due to iPadOS underutilizing the device.
[+] [-] ChrisArchitect|1 year ago|reply
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40196573
[+] [-] tomashubelbauer|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] firstbabylonian|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] zmmmmm|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] whywhywhywhy|1 year ago|reply
This is essentially the same on MacOS now if you distribute, things built without signature at all only open on the machine they were built, you need to provide even a self signature to get it to open with a warning on another machine.
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] BiteCode_dev|1 year ago|reply
But I really like this change.
[+] [-] chucke1992|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] IH0kN3m|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mise_en_place|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pjerem|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] l33ter|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sharpshadow|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Terretta|1 year ago|reply
And so is Kagi Orion+ browser with Firefox and Chrome extensions like uBlock Origin.
Don't drink the "you can'd do that on iPad" koolaid without asking someone unbiased quietly using these things already.
[+] [-] vundercind|1 year ago|reply
No I didn’t “hack” the device or anything, the last thing I want to do is tinker with my single most important computing device, I need it to work all the time and work well. It’s been possible for years, officially.
[+] [-] fredski42|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] CubsFan1060|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Longhanks|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rsynnott|1 year ago|reply
You've kind of answered this for yourself; iPadOS _is_ iOS.
Apple has, in any case, presumably more or less known this was coming for a year or so; they kind of had to make the argument that iPadOS and iOS were not the same thing, I suppose, but it was always a bit far-fetched that the EC would buy that.
[+] [-] troupo|1 year ago|reply
That's why the deadlines usually tend to be on the shorter side to put actual pressure on companies needing to implement them. However, the companies always have a way to say "look, we've tried our best, it's just we just need more time". No one is going to fine them for not meeting those deadlines if the companies are actually working on implementing the changes in good faith.
[+] [-] zmmmmm|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] b0dhimind|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ghusto|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] boyka|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Havoc|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gchokov|1 year ago|reply
Will I ever install something side loaded? No.
[+] [-] toyg|1 year ago|reply
Should your position impose any limitation on what people can do with their own devices? Also no.