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Comment by jws | Hacker News Reader

So the first 1.8 million apps plus the ability to use the free development environment to compile and load any program you want (necessarily open source) on your devices wasn't enough?

I suppose there are people just itching to install closed source mystery code from unaccountable entities. Unfortunately most of them are the friends and family for whom I am first line technical support. I'm not looking forward to the change.

I'm willing to wait for the details, but at this moment, I am not a fan of unaccountable stores.

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> the ability to use the free development environment to compile and load any program you want

You can load any app you want, but it disappears after 3 days. Then you have to load it again. To keep the app on your phone, you need to load it onto your phone again every 3 days using your computer.

It's obviously set up for developer testing, not for someone trying to actually get use out of an app on their phone.

Not true [see edit below, retraction]. The apps I write and load onto my own devices outside the store stay on my devices until I get a new device. I think there might be a profile that has an expiration of one to three years, but in practice that never goes off for me. I either add a feature or get a new device before that goes off.

Edit: Ok, "true depending". If you are a registered developer then your apps last a year. If you are unregistered then you get one week, which would be a total pain in the ass.

Are you trying to say that a free development environment that you can install in order to compile and load any program you want for three days isn't enough?

It depends. It is enough to turn yourself into an experienced software developer, then you can get a job and afford the annual developer fee. But it sort of sucks if you are, say, retired and don't keep up your identity but would like to keep your apps.

I don't understand what risk they are mitigating by keeping the unverified developers to 3 days instead of one year. It is clearly an intentional action.

I guess you could have a business where you install unapprovable apps for people with a 1 year subscription and they have to physically come back to your kiosk and get an update from you each year.

> you could have a business where you install unapprovable apps for people

I've heard that there's somewhat of a black market for this already. One person buys a developer subscription, then signs apps for other people so that they can sideload them using something like AltStore. Then, Apple sees that many apps have been signed by one dev account and shutters the account for terms of service violations. Finally, someone else registers a new developer account and the process repeats.

I guess I'll have to buy a laptop to bring with me on my weekend trips...

The free provisioning for a sideloaded app only lasts a week IIRC.

> I suppose there are people just itching to install closed source mystery code from unaccountable entities. Unfortunately most of them are the friends and family for whom I am first line technical support. I'm not looking forward to the change.

What is this hypothetical even. Your nontechnical friends and family are also eager to go out of the App Store (after having to enable developer mode, which might be as difficult and full of disclaimers and warnings as Apple chooses to slap into it), then root around shady third party app stores and mobile websites to download mystery code? So they're simultaneously tech illiterate and power users?

Exactly! They run into "that other guy" who tells them "Oh, you should delete Safari and Mail and always use these other programs!" Then I get to help them with why "other browser's" keychain integration is rubbish and it displays blanks instead of web pages for some sites, and the content filters don't work right… and something weird is happening with the UI of "other mail".

They will totally hand their phone over to "other guy" who will "do something, I don't remember what he did"… and they'll be subscribed to SketchyAppStore2023-HGTWRE.

Who is that other guy? A TikTok influencer? A YouTuber? Why are your friends and family handing over their phones to such shadowy figures on the street? Just tell them not to do that and be done with it.

Macbooks are free now?

Well of course you need a computer to run the IDE. Xcode only runs on Macs. It is possible to develop and sign code without Xcode if you have access to a different sort of computer, but that is a level of masochism unrelated to productivity. (As opposed to Xcode which is a level of masochism related to productivity.)

Macs have a long shelf life, and ones capable of running current Xcode are thrown to the recycler, I assume you could nab one for minimal coin too. They'll be slower, like 1/3 the speed to build compared to new machines, but apps don't take long to build. Most of your time is "sitting and staring" followed by "typing". Neither of which is appreciably impacted by using an old machine.

I went from an 8 year old Mini to a new M1 when they came out. A world of difference! Buttery smooth window drags, gorgeous scrolling. But I don't really program apps any faster. Sure, I have a few seconds now and then on a build, but it doesn't add up to much. Then I switched up to a Studio with a brain the size of a planet… no real change for app programming.

Don't let lack of a computer be a problem. Grab an old mini and do your thing.

To get your app on ios you need a mac and an iphone. To get it on android any pc or even just the android device itself.

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