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by justinclift 890 days ago
> Apple is hosting, distributing, and directly marketing apps in the app store.

Isn't that a forced situation though, unlike with macOS?

With macOS anyone can throw an application on a website (GitHub, etc) and the users can download the application and run it.

To get rid of the scary warnings, there's even a $99 dev membership that can be used to sign the macOS binaries.

iOS developers don't have any choices to host their binaries elsewhere though.

The EU "allow side loading" thing might allow for some improvement there (hopefully), but I'm not sure.
1 comments
xyzzy_plugh 890 days ago
It's been a while but I'm pretty sure signing and notarizing is required on macOS now, without disabiling SIP. At least for things downloaded from a browser. My interpretation is that $99/year is required if you want to avoid your users needing to use the terminal.
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lxgr 890 days ago
If they’d simply allow the same on iOS, I’m willing to bet that essentially all of their lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny would disappear overnight.
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kmeisthax 890 days ago
Right-clicking an app bundle and clicking open gives you the option to run the app even if it's not signed and notarized by Apple.
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xyzzy_plugh 889 days ago
This doesn't work if the app is quarantined.
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grishka 890 days ago
It's not required. I made a macOS app recently and no way in hell am I paying that $99/year. People are still able to run it. But there is a scary warning.

On my own Mac I keep gatekeeper disabled.

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abhinavk 890 days ago
You can still run an unsigned binary using right-click menu > Open.

https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/mac-help/mh40616/mac

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justinclift 890 days ago
Ahhh. I thought that there was still a button in "System Settings" -> "Security" (or similar) that let users launch an unsigned app anyway.

But it could indeed have been removed in some macOS version without my noticing. :)

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