this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024

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iPhone sideloading seems a certainty for European users - here's the latest development (bgr.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's not just "sideloading", it's Apple being forced to break its vertical integration with the App Store. The point is that the App Store cannot even be a "preferred" source for apps, much less the only one, and that includes having a perfectly workable iPhone with the App Store not even installed ever, because you did not choose it from some list at first start, and you're rolling with some third party store exclusively.

In theory, it should look like Windows and its browsers, or even more free, because what Windows does now with Edge is also illegal over the DMA and Europeans will soon be able to uninstall or not even have Edge installed on their Windows devices.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I’m hoping this ultimately makes Apple open their operating system and leads to Apple letting users dock their phones and let it launch traditional macOS

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

I think it's a step towards a world where that makes sense. Not this time, but maybe next time.

This law very carefully includes only select software, they are carefully trying not to disrupt the market too much. For example, this is the law that mandates Facebook Messenger must support third party clients, where I should be able to send messages to it from a third party app and receive responses through an open API. So does WhatsApp and a few other messaging apps.

It doesn't include iMessage though, because nobody cares about iMessage in the EU market. I am interested where this goes in the next decade. Hope they keep unshittifying tech.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I have to say I thought that was kinda a pipe dream, but Samsung DeX is surprisingly useful and I use it a lot when I don't have my personal laptop around but I do have a docking station (which happens a LOT in today's hotdesking environment).

Just plug it in and access to all my personal computing stuff is there <3

[–] onlinepersona 27 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Fuck yeah, Europe. Imagine F-droid on iphone. IINM Apple has a thing against opensource on their locked down devices. This will change that, finally.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

Fantastic, now the next step is opening up iOS development outside of MacOS

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Nice! I hope this will create a similarly great FOSS privacy-first ecosystem as F-Droid has done for Android. Some of the apps on there are really high quality. And amazingly small and efficient. It's really cool how much you can do if you don't waste 90% of your time spying on the user. Which goes for Android and iOS store apps almost equally.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Do we know if this is going to be implemented per device or it's done via geolocation or something? I skimmed the article, didn't seem to say besides "don't get excited if you're outside of Europe" or something to that effect. Basically wondering if this benefit can be gained in the future by importing a phone.

My dislike of Apple is... decades old. But Google sucks too. I need to dig into how Apple treats privacy (someone mentioned that it might not be great on another of these posts) and see how the software ecosystem outside of the Apple store shakes out. I'm hopefully several years out from needing a phone replacement, so I can wait and see how it goes.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Well Google sucks but at least they opened the door to sideloading and open-sourced Android so things like Graphene and LineageOS exist. You don't have to put up with the spying. Apple spies less, but whatever is there is unavoidable right now. Same with controlling what you're allowed to put on your phone.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is like someone drinking for the first time only long after reaching adulthood. Dumb mistakes will be made. Oh, well...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Sure, Apple has a point about protecting the users. But it's their choice to make and I'm sure they will make it a really unattractive option with many warnings. Considering some of my friends who work in IT are now afraid to do things as simple as making changes in the registry now, I don't think an unknowing user will be tricked into this.

And really let's be honest Apple's strong objections have absolutely nothing to do with user protection and absolutely everything with that 30% take they're making.

And the thing is, for all Android's lack of privacy, I can open the box of an Android phone and install whatever I want without having to even create an account with Google or Samsung or whoever. You can use an iPhone without an Apple ID but you can do absolutely nothing apart from the built-in apps.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I agree, my point was that this should have happened years ago. Android had this option from the start, and evolved with it in mind; iOS will probably have a rougher time dealing with this.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

Once this is implemented, what sort of apps are people hoping to see available?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Browsers with engines other than the WebKit, e.g. native Firefox with the Gecko.

The FOSS community will gain momentum.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

They should allow gecko browsers in the apple store too, otherwise Mozilla won't bother making it for only a few users.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I've definitely noticed a demand for emulators. Apple does not permit those on their app store.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Crazy that they're still not allowed, I remember using a great gameboy emulator on a jailbroken iPod touch in like 2010

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I bought my first Android phone in late 2010. Its 600 MHz single-core CPU just barely ran a GBA emulator at playable speeds. The screen wasn't multitouch and a bug in the operating system (fixed about a year or two later by the manufacturer) meant that any time the screen was being touched, CPU load would shoot up to 100% and everything slowed down to a crawl, which meant I could only play turn-based titles. That's how I discovered Advance Wars.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

On a related note I was recently incredibly impressed to see how well Dolphin Emulator runs GameCube and Wii games on Android, though even fully working touch controls aren't really viable for anything other than glorious turn-based combat!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

PS2 emulation is my recent surprise. If you have a powerful enough device, then AetherSX2 will run games extremely well on it. Less powerful devices can still run PSP games using the remarkable PPSSPP emulator.

Then there's the whole business of emulating Windows PCs. There's a number of impressive apps that can be used to play even fairly new titles. I believe Winlator is the latest.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah x86 emulation is actually huge, is winlator in a usable state yet?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I've only used it with older games so far, but it works really well already. If you don't mind a bit of fiddling with the configuration, I highly recommend trying it out.

Edit: ETA Prime's video on the emulator is a few months old already, but it's a good starting point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd30iUUkJ1A

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Amazing, I'm saving that!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

We’ll probably see shitloads of spyware and other questionable apps.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I doubt it. Apple will make the process scary enough that users won't get tricked into this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Depends on how open the EU will force them to be.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm still kind of sceptical about this. You could always install custom apps onto your iPhone as long as you had a Mac and you had the source. I'm imagining that you now still need everything, except that you can install packaged apps. I'd love if it was different/like on android, but the past has shown us that big companies often know their ways around.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You could but you also had to reload them every 2 weeks which is a real PITA, or pony up the $100. And keep Xcode up to date which uses a ton of space.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Hmm, that's true. The two weeks probably also wouldn't be okay.