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Comment by seafoam | Hacker News Reader

Not a bad time to start building an App Store for iOS apps.

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/01/28/us-states-back-fortnite...

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/11/11/ios-sideloading-questio...

I'm not really excited about the prospect of alternate App Store or sideloading. The thing that irritates me about the whole thing however is I feel like we wouldn't be in this position with imminent regulation incoming if Apple executives had not been so stubborn and greedy with App Store policies and completely deaf to developer and user feedback. With some give and take we could have made it work with the App Store but Apple dug their heels in and doubled down on their outdated stance.

I on the other hand really am excited.

Apple devices turn into expensive ewaste when a country gets sanctioned by the US. There are millions of apple phones in Iran, that can't do anything other than browse the web.

There are millions of talented developers in the world that have to avoid iOS because of the $100 fee.

Anyway I'm really really really excited for being able to use a general computer as a general computer.

Well I'm not strongly against it either as I recognise other people need/want this feature, just personally as an iOS user and developer I'd rather not deal with it.

All your points are valid though and perhaps some real competition will force Apple's hand with regard to improving the App Store, their policies and treatment of third-party developers.

So it’s the $100 a year fee that stops “talented developers” who would also have to have a phone that costs at least $400 and a computer that costs at least $700?

Used and repaired hardware is very common in less wealthy areas.

The $700 computer is a big barrier for a lot of people actually!

That $100 fee might be literally impossible for people to pay. Iran has a population of ~85 million - you can do the math!

A computer can in principle be shared among several people. Unix is a multi-user system after all.

A dev account can be shared too…

Even a better time to escape the walled garden and develop for mobile Linux: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30364337

You are implying that the walled garden keeps developers in, whereas in reality those walls are for keeping developers out. One does not escape walled garden; one infiltrates it.

I think it's both.

What would this look like practically? Say I want to port an iOS app to mobile linux? I know it's early days but what does the toolchain and distribution look like?

Perhaps this page has an answer for you: https://linmobapps.frama.io/.

Thanks

Aside from perhaps using some GNUstep classes for the non-visual parts, you'd need to separate the application's logic from its OS integration and then use whatever library you want to target.

One way to go for it would be to make your app use Qt (which is also available on Linux) instead of iOS-specific functionality and then port that Qt app to Linux. But whatever you do, if your app is made for iOS (or any other specific OS), you'd need first to untangle iOS from it and then make a port.

But FWIW i think fsflover had new applications in mind instead of porting existing ones.

As a user of a GNU/Linux phone, I would be happy to have both, new and ported apps.

Thanks for the info, from a quick look it also seems as if some people have managed to get simple Flutter apps running so that looks promising.

Just write the app for Linux (or even better, build a web page instead.)

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