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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

> Testut told The Verge that measures to block AltStore would break key functionality for developers or iTunes syncing.

No, it won't. Keep in mind that we didn't have the 7 day side-load for free apple ids prior to 2015[1]. All apple has to do is disable sideloading for free accounts. I imagine it won't impact many legitimate developers, who probably have paid developer accounts anyways.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2015/06/10/xcode-7-allows-anyone-to-down...

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It wouldn't break functionality for developers releasing apps in the app store, but it would break functionality for kid/teen developers and coding classes and people teaching themselves to code, which Apple cares a lot more about than people putting a Gameboy emulator on their phones

I'm pretty sure Apple's position towards kids learning to code is "use the swift playground thingy from the app store"

I wouldn't be AT ALL surprised if Apple decides to break the kid/teen developers over this. People like the AltStore developer are why we can't have nice things.

AltStore is a nice thing, and blocking it would be apple removing nice things. Why are you shifting the blame to a developer?

But people like you are why I'm happy those like the AltStore dev exists and challenge the status quo!

They could simply limit it to one account and three apps. It’s just an oversight.

Also I didn’t check out how this store works but if you have to reinstall every few weeks I imagine it gets tedious pretty quickly.

Might there be an antitrust angle here?

There is already a anti-trust lawsuit going on about side-loading apps, see Apple v Pepper

Not at all. This functionality isn't intended for the general public anyway.

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