hhmx.de

Föderation EN Sa 27.01.2024 09:35:20

I see this sort of argument from developers a lot, but they need to understand users’ perspective. One of the things we like about iOS is the increased trust we have that apps won’t do bad things. This trust is also good for developers because users are willing to try out apps much more freely. The alternative is to go back to the bad old days of Windows, where it was best practice just to blow the OS away every 6 months to get rid of accumulated cruft.

From: @Gargron
mastodon.social/@Gargron/11182

Föderation EN Sa 27.01.2024 09:50:28

@riotnrrd I'm an iOS user, not an iOS developer. By all means keep downloading apps from the App Store. Nobody is taking that away. But I shouldn't be forced to go through Apple to execute a binary on a machine I paid very good money for.

Föderation EN Sa 27.01.2024 09:52:53

@Gargron Yeah, as I said down-thread, a developer mode that allowed sideloading would work for me. The concern would be that if Apple made it too easy, the mechanism would be abused by Meta/Google/Epic/etc to inject their abusive apps. I’d rather err on the side of that protection, even if philosophically I agree with you.

Föderation EN Sa 27.01.2024 09:58:51

@riotnrrd No, I should not have to sign up for an Apple developer account and pay $99/year to be able to run an app of my choice on my own hardware. Nor should any other company have to pay Apple so that I can run an app I got directly from that company directly on my hardware.

Föderation EN Sa 27.01.2024 10:01:30

@Gargron There is also a free developer account. I want just enough of a hurdle that my parents or kids can’t be tricked into installing something nefarious.

And on the latter point, I disagree: especially past the one million user threshold, I think it’s reasonable for Apple to require payment. It may not be how you would like them to monetise their platform, but it’s how they have built their business. As a user, I like how this discourages abusive β€œfreemium” business models.