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> You're not forced to use the App Store

Is this true if you're a developer? I've stayed away from macs because you need xcode to get any sort of dev tools and xcode is only available on the App store (at least this was the case the last time I tried to develop on a mac).

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I meant for providing your apps to users. Apple's software is only available via the App Store, but you can put your app up for download anywhere you want. As an example, Slack can be downloaded from both their site or via the App Store. [1]

[1]: https://slack.com/downloads/osx

XCode is through the app store AFAIK, but CLI tools are available without it, and have been so for at least a couple years now.

Also there are a few other IDEs that do their own thing, it's objective-c and that's a language with multiple implementations (though one overwhelmingly popular one, obv). E.g. AppCode has been around for a while: https://www.jetbrains.com/objc/

Xcode doesn't need to come from the App Store, it can also be downloaded from the Apple website: https://developer.apple.com/download/more/

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