Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by qingcharles 499 days ago
I always keep two sets of Apple devices with separate accounts for this reason :(

Some apps are country specific. My banking app wasn't available in the USA app store, so that alone meant I had to keep a separate iPhone.

2 comments

You can log out of your US account in App Store, login with your other country account, download the app, then log out and log back in to your US account.

It will maintain authentication for some time and let you update the app, but eventually it expires. Then you get the sketchiest dialog box ever randomly when doing anything on your phone:

“If you have an Apple ID, enter the password”

What it actually means to say is, “I know you have another Apple ID that’s not currently logged in as primary, and I’m trying to background update apps owned by that account but the authentication expired. Please enter the password for [other Apple ID].”

> What it actually means to say is..

Good use case for Apple Intelligence: pick the best customer-authored translation of incoherent error messages and display in an optional overlay.

Android/GrapheneOS allows multiple profiles per phone.

Apple could do the same, with sufficient internal or external motivation.

Yeah but then maybe families will maybe only buy one iPad instead of maybe buy multiple so it's not happening.
Apple can charge $$$ for each extra profile:

  - earn high margin revenue with low input costs
  - save planetary raw materials 
  - save customer time, energy and space costs
  - improve customer security via data segregation
  - increase per-device storage revenue
As AI advocates say, more efficiency leads to larger markets.

Ignoring customer needs via artificial inefficiency leads to stagnant growth.