Technology

59576 readers

5002 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

894

Apple plans to charge fees for sideloading (9to5mac.com)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/technology

312 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Who would've thought? This isn’t going to fly with the EU.

Article 5.3 of the Digital Markets Act (DMA): "The gatekeeper shall not prevent business users from offering the same products or services to end users through third-party online intermediation services or through their own direct online sales channel at prices or conditions that are different from those offered through the online intermediation services of the gatekeeper."

Friendly reminder that you can sideload apps without jailbreaking or paying for a dev account using TrollStore, which utilises core trust bugs to bypass/spoof some app validation keys, on a iPhone XR or newer on iOS 14.0 up to 16.6.1. (ANY version for iPhone X and older)

Install guide: Trollstore

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] thehatfox 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I’m not sure how this would work in practice. Developers distributing apps independently to be sideloaded wouldn’t be submitting them to Apple to review, and sideloaded code may not even have an identifiable developer to charge.

I suppose Apple could implement some sort of rigid signing system, but I think the EU would see that as just another abuse of power.

[–] codemichael 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

As far as I know iPhones have never allowed unsigned code to run.

[–] anlumo 8 points 10 months ago

Yeah, the first operation of every jailbreak was to disable this protection.

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

Well they would have to allow unsigned code to run under the DMA, wouldn't they?

[–] codemichael 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't know the details of the DMA, it's definitely possible to provide code-signing to developers that does not go through the app store.

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

An example of this in practice is Firefox addons. You need to get your extension signed for people to install it, but you can distribute it however. Mozilla of course doesn't charge for signing though. It's just to give them the ability to ban an extension found to be malicious.

[–] anlumo 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

No, macOS allows sideloading apps that are still signed by Apple.

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

You can run unsigned code on macOS. Apple makes it seem scary and dangerous, but it is possible.

[–] anlumo 1 points 10 months ago

Yes, but that's separate from what I'm talking about.

[–] QuarterSwede 2 points 10 months ago

This is most likely how they’re planning on allowing it. Gatekeeper is the macOS tech they use to keep unsigned code from running yet can be from anywhere on the web.