I can already see the pitch: “We fly your iPhone to the closest EU territory and will sideload the Game Boy emulator of your choice for only…”

there should be a French territory in North America somewhere

No should, there is

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Pierre_and_Miquelon

It is french, but it does not seem to be EU.

French law still applies there, therefore this one. Failing that there's a few islands in the Caribbean, and French Guiana that are in the EU.

Tourists usually can't open bank accounts, so one way of doing this is by checking the payment method's country which is what I think they already do.

The same laws say the user doesn't have to use first party payment methods for IAPs anymore and you can, of course, buy an iPhone without a bank account so it's very possible there will be no payment method on file and requiring one for the device to comply with local law would not fly. I think the article is right they might rely on the new location based service restriction. Even if you don't use location in your apps your phone can still know the location. Barring GNSS just connecting to a cellular network would be enough to know if it's in a region that needs to comply with this.

Depends on how they check it. I was able to bypass major audiobook provider regional lock on some audiobooks by just changing my billing address to US (in their UI, not at my bank) - of a card that was issued by EU bank.

> become a resident for a year

Not really a tourist situation. ;)

Turns out they are already geolocking. EU and US have different app stores. When I visited Poland I needed to install an app to install eSIM for my phone and couldn’t do it.

Had to change the country on my account and it dropped all my subscriptions. Then I had issue when I came back with apps not updating. So I had to fiddle with it again.

Extremely annoying.

Interestingly, this exact problem would be solved if they really allowed side loading. This is not an issue at all on desktop platforms and it shouldn't be on mobile.

I haven’t tried this yet but apparently easier way is to create a separate account, log into it to download required app then log back into your main account.

My pain hinges between EV charging apps and family sharing.

Why would you have to be resident? Laws apply as soon as you're in the country. This will probably be tied to the region you have your phone set to though, hopefully without having to factory reset it to change.