Doesn’t this require the person building the code to own a Mac, a potentially expensive computer? Also I recall that years ago there was a $100 fee to register as an iOS developer, though I’ve no idea if that continues to be the case.

Yes, it still costs $100 per year, or else your apps expire after seven days and you can only have three (AltStore hacks notwithstanding—those will get closed soon I’m sure).

There are ways to sign apps without a Mac/xCode, namely Cydia Impactor. But Apple has very purposefully made this impractical for every day use.

and the cost of a macbook. for some people, it's a given.

but if you live in a 3rd world country, a macbook can cost as much as a car. it's just not viable.

> but if you live in a 3rd world country, a macbook can cost as much as a car. it's just not viable.

Not to be glib, but if a person can't afford a used/low end Mac how can they afford an iPhone?

Well my issue is I have no use for a Mac, I’m a Linux user.

Again, you don’t actually need a Macbook, you can use Cydia Impactor on any Windows or Linux machine.

How do you build the IPA without Xcode?

Hell, whatever that process is, I might even use it in a Mac (if I had one), just because I have Xcode so much.

If the actual goal is to sideload—which is what was being discussed—you don’t need to compile anything. You’d download a prebuilt but unsigned IPA, and then use Cydia Impactor to sign it with your developer certificate.

If you're ok trusting a third party (such as an alternative app store), they can build it, send you the binary, you sign it (on Windows or Linux), and install it on the phone.

Yes, it does require access to MacOS, and payment to Apple to register as a dev - even aside from having to build apps yourself, this is not a reasonable solution to escaping the walled garden

It doesn’t require a Mac or the $99 developer fee. You can use a free developer account and a non-Mac as the server.

Maybe we're talking about 2 different things here; to build for iOS, you need Xcode, and for Xcode you need MacOS and a dev subscription.

There is a $99 fee for the Apple Developer Membership. A Mac is only needed to run Xcode, which is Apple's IDE+toolchain for iOS/macOS/etc development. If you want to build from source, you do need a Mac. If you want to install a precompiled app (.ipa file) you can use Windows or Linux.

That's against TOS and it's something that Apple is trying to fix. This is not a solution. It's a hack.