alt Hacker News> The Core Technology Fee, a per-install fee for developers that achieve extraordinary scale, will be replaced by the Core Technology Commission, a simple 5 percent commission on digital transactions in apps distributed outside the App Store. The new terms also eliminate the initial acquisition fee and store services fee.
[...]
> In order to keep EU users as safe as possible, Apple will continue to require every alternatively distributed app to go through Notarization — a baseline review focused on basic functionality and protection from serious threats.
All in all, still extremely anti-consumer. If I can download and run arbitrary code on my Mac--even if I have to jump through scary warnings--why should I not be able to do so on my phone? Why would one computing platform be different from the other?
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> If I can download and run arbitrary code on my Mac--even if I have to jump through scary warnings--why should I not be able to do so on my phone?
I just bought a new m5 macbook air. The day that I can't treat my MacOS laptop as basically a glorified NeXT workstation and install/run code of my own choice (albeit after going through a few scary warnings in the default user protecting system preferences, like allow to run unsigned code, etc), is the day I stop buying apple hardware and just use linux laptops again.
I see news about apple thinking about "merging" MacOS and iOS and making a touch screen macbook and it really makes me think they are going to try to do this in the near future.
> why should I not be able to do so on my phone?
Strictly speaking, you can. Enable developer mode, connect your phone to your Mac (you need a Mac), and you can build and install whatever code you want.
Asterisks being that your phone will uninstall it after a while I think, and you need to create a free account for Xcode.
> If I can download and run arbitrary code on my Mac
For now. It is clear which direction Apple is going.
>All in all, still extremely anti-consumer.
One thing that ticks me off about this conversation is they are always framed as anti-consumer, instead of anti-developer. It's Tim Sweeney, Mark Zuckerberg, and the ad networks who have the biggest gripe with these policies, not consumers. Consumers are the ones who bear the brunt of the cost when it comes to developers who desperately need to exercise their right to capture every and any piece of data the OS provides.
>If I can download and run arbitrary code on my Mac--even if I have to jump through scary warnings--why should I not be able to do so on my phone?
We saw how developers used that "freedom" - now all almost all software runs in a remote server and is delivered through a sandbox (and even then developers try as hard as possible to poison that as well).
Because phones are surveillance devices people happen to casually carry everywhere, so the stakes are considerably higher.
apple had this once, and it ended with chinese qr codes to download illegal apps everywhere
The messages on Mac are becoming more ridiculous and cumbersome each upgrade though. Kind of sick of jumping through System Settings hoops every time I upgrade an app
If you’re a developer you can kind of do it, or so ChatGPT tells me:
> So for, say, your iPad mini plus 2–5 other iPads, the workable setup is: Mac + Xcode → $99/year developer membership → register each iPad's UDID → create an Ad Hoc build → install that build on those devices. You don't have to publish it, make it discoverable, or have Apple review it.
That would work for me, except that I prefer to build web apps instead. There’s nothing I really want to build that couldn’t be done as a web app.
As for why one computing platform would be different than another, if you don’t think there’s any difference then why not use a Raspberry Pi or something?
> why should I not be able to do so on my phone? Why would one computing platform be different from the other?
If Microsoft had its act together PCs would have been just as locked down as phones are today and we wouldn't be questioning a difference.
> Why would one computing platform be different from the other?
Because malware breaking the sandbox of one of them can mostly only spy on the owner, while malware breaking the sandbox of the other can spy on whoever the owner walks past, GPS trace their movements…
Question for those with more industry knowledge than me: If you assume a broken sandbox, is it possible for an app to record phone calls, then use that recording to create a deepfaked voice that can then be transmitted as a new call? My naïve assumption is "yes obviously", but for all I know the hardware has some way to activate a switched circuit from the phone service to the speaker and microphone that can't have other sound data pass through it.
> All in all, still extremely anti-consumer. If I can download and run arbitrary code on my Mac--even if I have to jump through scary warnings--why should I not be able to do so on my phone?
Don’t worry. They’re working really hard to fix the bug. It’s not intended that you can install without paying a fee.