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by JohnMakin 1157 days ago
> Read the comments on the article itself, it is just full of "i dont want to do this".. so great, don't sideload apps (no one is forcing them to), but why are they so keen on preventing others from doing it as well?

because it's going to make unscrupulous companies like google/fb/etc all force you to go through their app clients to install their sideloaded apps, without any of the scrutiny and control the apple store has provided historically. that's not really a world I want to live in. While yes, I can just uninstall those apps, some are nearly intrinsic to a mobile experience, like the youtube app.

2 comments

Shouldn’t most of the protections come at the OS layer? Weird tracking nonsense isn’t stopped by App Store policy alone (far from it!)
Apple can and has threatened to pull apps from the store for unscrupulous behavior. Absolutely no one is claiming that the app store itself provides protection. It's the fact that Apple can decide who gets to publish on a device that over a billion people use.

I'm also not really sure how OS level protections would prevent an app from sending out data it shouldn't. Apple is acting as a regulator here because no one else is.

Similarly how they do it on Android?
1) Android doesn't restrict spying as much as Apple does,

2) Android is far, far less lucrative per-user than iOS.

Maybe sideloading on iOS will work out like Android has. Maybe not.