5 ms·

This is excellent. As an app developer, I'm looking forward to side-loading, other browser engines and not being forced to use in-app-purchases.

• synu 4y ago
  As a regular user I’m looking forward to all the same!
  • efields 4y ago
    As a regular user, I have no intention of side loading anything! Don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything! Enlighten me.
    • corrral 4y ago
      It's great for pirating mobile video games. My Android-using friends' only use of this feature is to turn their phone into a Gameboy Advance. Which is pretty great, to be fair, but nowhere near enough to tempt me back to putting up with Android the entire rest of the time I'm using my phone.
      • tombert 4y ago
        It doesn't have to be piracy. I have plenty of Sega Genesis/Mega Drive ROMs that I purchased from Steam years ago, and it would be nice to be able to play them on my phone on the go.
    • synu 4y ago
      I travel back and forth between App Store regions frequently, and some things are only available in one place or the other. I’d also like the ability to actually use a different browser, not just reskinned Safari. There would probably also be some interesting open source stuff you could install.
    • tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
      There are some edge cases where the app stores don't allow desirable applications to be distributed. One example would be e.g. NewPipe (an open source third party ad-free YouTube client) on Android. Another would be alternative browsers or programming language interpreters on iOS (the rules on the latter changed repeatedly). Termux is also being distributed outside of the Play store due to some restriction and IIRC not feasible on iOS due to the App store restrictions.
      • smoldesu 4y ago
        Newpipe is amazing, if iOS users had access to it then YouTube might actually be forced to improve their mobile app. Out-of-the-box, you get video downloading, PiP, background playback, and so much more. No need to pay Google a dime for the best YouTube features on the market.
        • efields 4y ago
          Sure. Just violate the TOS of YouTube and you can do all kinds of fun.
          • smoldesu 4y ago
            Yep. And Google can do nothing about it, because Newpipe (deliberately) doesn't support user login. The tradeoff is incredibly worth-it, in my eyes.
          • synu 4y ago
            I won't tell on you if you don't tell on me.
        • vmladenov 4y ago
          You can get PiP and background playback with a simple JS snippet in Shortcuts let v = document.querySelector('video'); v.addEventListener('webkitpresentationmodechanged', (e)=>e.stopPropagation(), true); setTimeout(()=>v.webkitSetPresentationMode('picture-in-picture'), 3000); completion()
  • cmdli 4y ago
    As a regular user, I am dreading the day when I am forced to sideload an app with no privacy regulations in order to use key services.
    • synu 4y ago
      Who would be forcing you to do that in theory?
    • Aulig 4y ago
      Well I the OS will still have the permission system in place even for sideloaded apps, so I don't see a huge issue here to be honest.