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by rudolph9 2296 days ago
I wish there were more open source iOS apps. Recouping development costs is probably a big driving factor and provided I haven’t dabbled in building iOS apps in years I imagine the open source community driven scene hasn’t hasn’t changed much in the iOS community and turn costs remain high.
2 comments
dahfizz 2296 days ago
The problem is that it costs money to develop iOS apps. Even just the $100/year or whatever it is, is enough to severely discourage open sourcing your apps.

On Android, you can create apps for free in your spare time and distribute them however you want. The lower barrier to entry means a lot more open source hobby projects.

Distribution is another big issue. Even if you found an open source iOS app, how are you going to run it on your own device? You can only run apps blessed by apple or pay the developer fees to compile it yourself.

Apple severely restricts the hobby/ open source market from both ends.

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tracker1 2296 days ago
While you can use a third party build system, you pretty much have to buy mac hardware at inflated pricing as well to develop for iOS.
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jedieaston 2296 days ago
The problem is that sideloading is so difficult on iOS (you need a Mac, XCode, and then, after spending that $1k you realize that to keep the app on your phone for more than a couple days-one week, you have to pay Apple $99 per year) that people who would usually help open-source projects (where you use whatever tools you want and a free toolchain), have a much higher opportunity cost to getting involved with a iOS project.

If Apple had a mythical developer mode/SEP disengage button (like Macs and Chromebooks do) that voided the warranty, disabled the secure enclave (therefore Apple Pay and system-wide encryption), and put a big warning on the lockscreen in exchange for sideloading access to make development easier/cheaper, I think more people would do it.

Or if they let you build and compile apps on the iPad Pro that is super powerful but still can't be used for anything more taxing than word processing, but I've ranted about that on hn too much.

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jsjddbbwj 2296 days ago
Disabling the secure enclave is unnecessary. Voiding the warranty is obscene and illegal.
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