Make the app a Web App and visit it in Safari.
Apple has banned it being notarized and distributed from their App Store but iPhones still have access to the conventional web which Apple has no control over.
Apple also loses all code auditing and screening, meaning they can't ban GPL licensed PWAs like they ban alternative Linphone builds (as they are GPLv2), Signal Private Messenger builds (GPLv3) and only the official developer can build and submit these apps to the app store.
Apple's GPL ban also effiectively mandates these apps having broad CLAs to ensure they can relicense the code for use in the Apple App Store.
Edit: removed bonus apostrophe
This was also the music industy's fear of digital data about 20-30 years ago.
Both the Music industry and Apple seek to maintain their control and thus their cash cows, but whether that will continue to work out for Apple remains to be seen...
And what is it's replacement? It seems in app purchases are what keeps up a large part of mobile apps.
iTunes changed the music business, but I have not noticed a similar change for mobile apps, web or not.
If I make my app available via my website as a PWA, and all the hosting costs are my own, and don't use any of the app store's services, why does Apple deserve a share of the in app (in PWA?) purchases?
There is a way for end users to modify their software now, but I don’t know if it would satisfy that developer. VLC relicensed to make clear they don’t require distributors to do this.
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store...
http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/
[…]
Anyway, the message is pretty obvious: Apple won’t ship anything that’s licensed under GPL v3 on OS X. Now, why is that?
There are two big changes in GPL v3. The first is that it explicitly prohibits patent lawsuits against people for actually using the GPL-licensed software you ship. The second is that it carefully prevents TiVoization, locking down hardware so that people can’t actually run the software they want.
So, which of those things are they planning for OS X, eh?
I’m also intrigued to see how far they are prepared to go with this. They already annoyed and inconvenienced a lot of people with the Samba and GCC removal. Having wooed so many developers to the Mac in the last decade, are they really prepared to throw away all that goodwill by shipping obsolete tools and making it a pain in the ass to upgrade them?
The consequence is that Apple can't merely settle to solve patent disputes for any included GPLv3 component, but has to find a way to have the upstream component (and all deviations) have free use of the patent.
As far as I can discern, Linphone is provided in the App Store under a proprietary license, VLC had to relicense as LGPL, and GNU Go is still not on the App Store.
The original point was that apparently there are no "work arounds" not mentioning that it could be done via WebApp seems a little disingenous.
Pointing out a "work around" for the developer is meaningless, in terms of "hey! they can reimplement it as a web app to bypass Apple's shitty walled garden!" is completely useless to these folks in HongKong right now.
And anyway, a PWA should be actually progressive. If it requires all the features it’s the opposite of progressive.
Part of these are social network effects (all my friends use it, plus the apps they use need you to use the same apps, meaning you have to use the same OS or one of the big ones, etc).
Part of them are actual network effects (you've already used the same g-suite or whatever apple provides, and moving to something else - if it exists at all - is either very difficult or impossible).
I'm sure there's others I am not thinking of right now.
But both leave only the "hardcore" privacy and open source activists as your only market - and that's so small that only others of similar persuasion even both to create and host those alternatives, if they exist at all. Since the market is small, and developers/time is lacking, UI and other parts of such apps/operating systems/ecospaces tend to be non-existant or suffer other oddities that keep them out of being adopted by the masses, unless those people get fed up enough with the existing products to be willing to put up with all the downsides of a more free and open system.
Which is kinda where Linux is today - a combination of becoming "good enough" - but also coupled with more than a bit of "corporate America" (and/or "corporate west") helping to make it just a tad better (for business use, for gaming, etc) - and the masses who are getting fed up with Apple and/or Microsoft - a few of them peel off to see what it's all about. Dual boot, or virtualization (and Microsoft has made that easier, too), they get a taste, and some think "hey this isn't really that bad - I can do almost everything" and some migrate over (with the big exception - games - but Valve and Steam are helping in that regard, too).
That's what is needed in the mobile realm, and nothing exists yet. Yes, there are alternatives, but the real bugger has been the hardware - which is very locked down, and only (again) the hardcore and activists are willing to go the extra mile to break open (root, jailbreak) consumer-available hardware, or purchase already "open" hardware, or go so far as to build their own hardware (I am contemplating this option, personally).
Until it gets easier for the "masses" to get a more open hardware mobile platform, the next step of an open ecosystem, operating systems, and apps is much for difficult to make happen. With Apple and Samsung being the main two hardware providers (for iOS and Android respectively), with the way both lock down their hardware, it will stay this way.
But really - for Android at least - Samsung does this mainly for the providers themselves. For instance (in my case), I have a G7 - but it's a T-Mobile version. I paid for it in full (I don't have a contract with T-Mobile, but they are my provider) - but Samsung provides a different version of the G7 (with a different processor and such) than they do outside the USA. That hardware is much easier to root, while the USA version is seemingly made to be as airtight as possible to root (with a constant back-and-forth game being played behind the scenes). It is strange - it's partly Samsung, partly the providers.
Ultimately, I'm just going to opt-out of this hardware game and build my own platform; I already have the 4G module to support phone and data (and I am planning on using it for data only, as I virtually never use my phone for voice calls). If I am lucky, it will be my winter project.
So true, which is why we need antitrust enforcement. If you run a platform or a service, you have to provide access to that platform or service to your competitors under the exact same terms as your customers. Anything less is the definition of anti-competitive.
Documentation on iPhone hardware is basically nonexistent. Someone would need to reverse engineer it all and write drivers from scratch.
In addition there is nothing stopping them for trading their iPhone for a more expensive Android.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is a likely outcome.
Hong Kong has multiple private companies providing eyeball access. It would be far more difficult for the Chinese government to get all of their compliance. If they just wanted to get traffic information, it would be far easier to just collect a statistical sampling collected from flows data on core routers for general info or to monitor specific IP's using rulesets without the massive undertaking needed for always on firewall capabilities on every single packet.
The other aspect of the Great Firewall is the alternative ecosystem inside it, and the censorship system embedded in weibo etc. It will be interesting to see if surveillance capitalism apps like Wepay and Alipay suffer a setback in HK in the wake of the protests. Cf https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-24/alipay-s-...
I don't think this is accurate, though it may come to be in the future. Which is sort of the point, why allow the techno dystopia to come?
Is the web censored in HK?