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Comment by jheriko | Hacker News Reader

They already shut it down ... afaik this has always been forbidden by App Store guidelines

I have a good relationship with the Microsoft team behind Code Push. After speaking with them about this exact topic multiple times, they are sure that not only are JavaScript updates allowed, but they will continue to be allowed, as it is stated in the Apple Developer Agreement [1].

There is also a growing ecosystem of open source projects and companies offering services that offer and facilitate over the air updates.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/information/iOS_Pro...

Thanks for clarifying. I'm guessing Microsoft has directly talked to Apple about this before spending time building their infrastructure.

I'm thinking many people at Apple are happy to encourage OTA updates and even side loading apps. The original guidelines were dictated by you-know-who and so that's what they rolled with, but are willing to look the other way now (even though this type of code push directly violates the spirit of the App Store as a closed and controlled environment)

When I investigated last year, the TOS had a pretty clear paragraph that only allowed JS that was run by the Safari Browser to be downloaded. It specifically disallowed web views.

However, about 2 months ago, the mobile team at my current workplace announced a new product built with several React Native components. They specifically mentioned that they had gotten clearance from Apple on downloading JS bundle updates outside of full app releases. I haven't personally reviewed the TOS to see if there is a change to the language, YMMV, IANAL, etc.

In theory so is A/B testing yet pretty much every major app (Facebook/Pinterest/Airbnb/Google) has been doing it for years. It's very unlikely you would get in trouble unless you abuse it terribly. Also the app store changed its rules recently to allow over the air updating with JS.

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