You can do that already.

If you own a mac, run a specific software at least once a week, and limited to like 3 apps. For all practical purposes, this means “you can’t”.

> If you own a Mac

If you own an iPhone, it's actually very practical to also have a Mac.

> run a specific software at least once a week, and limited to like 3 apps.

What?

You get a license for a week only (without paying for a dev account), and has a limit of concurrently signing at most 7 apps (my parameters might not be exactly correct, but are roughly this), but a single application might require multiple signatures.

The most common way to make all this signing a bit more bearable is to have AltStore installed on your mac, which will automatically re-signs the select few apps you want in some hacky way (needs your Apple id and password).

The most common way is to pay $99 and use Xcode. I think in the long run, limiting the freedom of developers to choose whichever tools they like is actually hurting Apple, but let's not pretend that there is no practical way of running your own software on iOS.

Is that were true there would be no need for a European version, since sideloading is about a "practical way of running your own software".

My answers refer to ihatepython's original comment, and own software is understood there as "software I develop myself". I am not talking about own software in the sense of software you obtained from other people, which is what sideloading is about.

> The most common way is to pay $99 and use Xcode.

Don't you find it ridiculous that the "common" way to run software written by you on a $1k device that you bought is via buying $2k machine and paying 99$ yearly?

Not only do you have to own a mac, you have to keep everything updated to the latest version. This is problematic, considering that the OS gets worse and worse with every release, and some things break with new versions.

If I pay the fee and/or use something like altstore?

Yes.