I understand the urge to crap on Apple all too well.. but at least have the facts straight. $100 gets you a year; 7 days is for free accounts.

That's very helpful, thanks. Still totally bullshit though.

No arguments from me; Apple needs to get over itself and let us side load our apps but they're too greedy.

An app with a dev account signature will not "delete itself in 7 days". You are talking about apps signed with a normal account.

While that may be correct it's still insane you can't port open source software to a device you own without paying a fee.

You don’t have to pay a fee. Any account can sign and side load an app for free, and every 7 days you have to let it check in with apples servers. If you pay $100/year for a developer account, the apps can sit much longer without needing to check in.

Thank you for the correction, as little as it does to change things.

Wait till you find out what dev kits cost for consoles.

Yes thats a bad thing, too. Two bad things.

It's not a developer tool. It's a consumer product.

We would laugh if someone bought a sedan and complained that it can't haul any pallets of goods. Why do we make that complaint for electronics?

Because that's not equivalent to what's happening here. In this scenario, we bought a 'luxury' sedan (apple watch) that is able carry goods (quake 1) but Toyota wants you to pay them $100 dollars a year for permission to do that (dev account). And they get to decide what goods you're allowed to carry (app store).

It's nonsense.

It is an intentional security design choice to make it difficult to run software outside the walled garden.

You might be savvy enough to not be concerned about being fooled into installing malware on your device. But this design decision was not for you.

Come on, burying side loading in a setting and having a giant red warning is good enough to keep the vast majority of users out of using it. No reason they can't offer that technically.

It doesn’t, scams and social engineering campaigns that deliver malware via that vector are extremely common.

Then let those users rot. To give up a fundamental component of computing because a few desperate users figure out how to sideload some garbage on their phones is one of the silliest arguments I've ever seen. Apple locks shit down because it makes them more money, plain and simple.

Those users are Apple's target market, you are not.

The main reason people buy Apple devices today is that the software ecosystem is consistent and predictable. This isn't silly, this is a core value proposition.

Meanwhile, millions of Android devices have shipped with with literal malware from the factory. I know because I used to develop custom ROMs to remove the malware that my own carrier installed on my phone.

I doubt Apple is primarily concerned about losing money to side-loading. The vast majority of users purchase apps from the default store on their phone.

To be clear, people buy iphones because it's a status symbol with good marketing.

But also nothing youve written prevents what both of us want. The average user can use their iPhone as they always have. Those of us who care about freedom could install what we want. Apple sells phones. You dont need to defend everything they do, eh, they dont actually care about you or me.