[Wowfunhappy]

IMO, saying "no side-loading" is as good as correct, and getting technical about it just creates confusion and muddies the waters. Unless you're paying $99 per year for a developer account, what little sideloading Apple offers is completely useless for anything but limited testing. Who wants to reinstall an app they actually use every seven days?

The semi-exception is Altstore, which is a fantastic project... but it's a major hack which sometimes breaks, and which Apple is liable to kill at any time. You also need to keep a server running on a PC or Mac on your wifi network, which isn't workable in a lot of situations.

I mean, my iPhone can run unsandboxed sideloaded apps, because it's jailbroken. But I wouldn't say that Apple allows third-party unsandboxed apps.

[36rdydudhdh]

I don't see how you can say with a straight face that getting technical just creates confusion and muddled waters when side-loading is already something that mainly technical users do. It just seems like a lazy way to dismiss valid criticism. The vast majority of users don't side-load on their phones or have any interest in learning to do so. Side-loading is already technical.

[lolinder]

Those are two different definitions of technical. When you accuse someone of "getting technical", it has a very specific meaning: It means that they're overemphasizing the dictionary definition at the cost of more practical considerations. That's exactly what's happening here, by calling what Apple allows on iPhone "sideloading". Yes, technically, you are able to get an app on your phone without going through the app store. But without a paid developer account, the fact that you have to reinstall weekly is intentionally designed to make that impractical for actual use.

[jsjohnst]

Sideloading is a made up term anyway with a loose meaning. The most common variant of the definition is:

> install apps that were not approved by the OS vendor and/or delivered via said company’s app store

iOS meets every letter of that.

The weekly resigning limitation is explicitly not about blocking code you wrote for your device, but about blocking piracy. That same feature that allows you to sideload an app you wrote, also allows you to take many paid apps and resign it for your device allowing you to skirt payment. I wish Apple would relax the signing for code that could be provably unique, but I’m sure there’s ways that would be exploited still and it would turn into a constant cat and mouse battle which Apple is choosing to not engage in. Does that suck, yes. Does it mean you can’t side load, no.

Long story short, I would not object to anyone who says iOS sideloading was useless without paying (even though that would be wrong in some folks’ eyes), but trying to claim it doesn’t exist when in reality it just doesn’t meet your (or my) needs feels important enough to say to lose karma over if necessary.

[Wowfunhappy]

> iOS meets every letter of that.

Yes, in the same way that tomatoes meet the definition of a fruit. (And before you say "but tomatoes are a fruit"—exactly.†)

I respect your desire to be precise, but the problem is that it makes conversations super difficult. Detailing Apple's convoluted policies every time the topic comes up is tiresome and needlessly derails the conversation.

† See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmxIK9p0SNM

[jsjohnst]

> I respect your desire to be precise, but the problem is that it makes conversations super difficult.

Respectfully, this isn’t about being precise, it’s about being factually correct. I feel your tomato example is off the mark. A more fair (albeit not precise) analogy would be someone saying “there is no sun in the sky” and someone correcting them by saying “yes there is, it’s just behind that cloud” and then the person arguing back that “only suns that aren’t behind clouds count”.