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I really want this to happen, and I hope Apple is forced to make it happen — a fairly likely scenario in the EU I think — but if they do allow side-loading I fear they will disable all sorts of Apple services when you flip that switch.

No more Apple Pay, for starters. Maybe no iMessage. Things where they can argue they have to turn them off to protect the user, and/or themselves, from rogue apps.

And then you could have a kind of freedom, but it wouldn’t be a very useful one. You can already load whatever you want on your own phone if you have the source and do the build yourself. I can pretty easily imagine Apple making it so you can side load closed apps but almost nobody ever does.




Agreed. The real reason is the inevitable avalanche of support requests that hit when some popular side loaded app introduces a 0-day. No one at the Genius Bar is going to touch your toxic device. That means no Apple Care or iCloud backups either.

Support is expensive. Apple spends a lot of money to provide what is generally very excellent support. It’s a huge component of the overall brand for many users that stay in their ecosystem.


Apple wouldn't want that in the first place because a customer who's angry at a 0-day (even if it wasn't caused by Apple) still hurts Apple's brand image.

Apple has gone a long way by sticking to the safest paths, meaning they do things that cause the most customer satisfaction, and don't do anything that can go wrong. That's why Apple abandoned the iCar project because while many would like the concept, a car experience is not something that Apple can have control over; if users get into car accidents, for example, that hurts Apple's brand no matter the cause of the incident. In comparison, making phones, Macs, tablets, etc. is fairly safe as long as Apple retains its full control over the experience (which must be perfect for most consumers).

Because of this, I don't really see Apple allowing app sideloading, even though I personally like it. I think the more pressing issue right now is the 30% cut on AppStore.


Hear these excuses time and time again that it’s impossible for them to do this when they ship an entire product line and have for decades that does exactly what people claim is impossible for them to support.


Yes, if you disable SIP on ARM Macs, apple already disables Apple Pay and running iOS apps as I found out the hard way.




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