Sideloading is a loaded word to make you think there is something suspicious and abnormal about installing a program on your own computer without asking for permission.
I believe sideloading in this context means extracting a DRMed app image (e.g. from a backup of your iOS device) and installing/running it on macOS.
It's almost like running an app in an emulator. From that perspective, I'm somewhat annoyed that Apple is preventing you from doing so, because it's an app that you paid for; even though it's only "licensed" we still call the "App Store" a "store" and not a "licensing service."
But here, it's not about that. It's about having paid for an iOS app and thinking that you now have the right to run it on a completely different type of device, and also presumably on many more devices (given how Apple allows installs for any device hooked to a given Apple ID).
Honestly, I'm shocked that so many people on HN are downvoting my comment that emphasizes the rights of software developers to not have their proprietary software used on device types that they were never meant to run on.
but developer has no power to command how legal owner of software runs it
and separately Apple for some reason thinks it's ok to control what binaries can be ran on a general purpose computer they sold
So if the given justification is weak, then what is the actual reason? It must be that they want to lock down the computers like phones are locked down. This way they can remove objectionable apps (trading favor for favor). And they can protect and extend their 30% cut into computer realm.
The reason is that many developers were already selling native Mac and native iOS versions of their apps, and who opted out of providing their iOS app in the Mac App Store — because they already had a Mac app in the Mac App Store! — and then Apple comes along and without permission undercuts the developer's own product.
Note that Apple allowing this to happen actually violates Apple's developer program agreement with third-party developers. Section 6.3 of the agreement covers iOS and iPadOS apps on Mac, while section 7.6 explicitly says No Other Distribution Authorized Under This Agreement. Apple was in breach of contract!
This is not further lockdown of the Mac, because from the beginning of iPhone in 2007, Macs never even had the ability to run iOS apps. 2007 to late 2020, no iOS apps on Mac, and nobody was crying lockdown about that. Intel Macs still can't do it. Apple wasn't violating your legal rights all those years.
There is a license agreement with the third-party developer, and unless the developer has opted in to providing the app on the Mac App Store, then distribution of the app to a non-licensed device is illegal. You are free to use licensed apps however you like, but only on licensed devices. For example, you can't copy the app you bought to an unlimited number of devices, to your friends devices, etc. It has never been true that you have unlimited use of licensed apps. You can only install a Mac App Store app on up 5 Macs, no more. That's not "OS lockdown".
We'd like to think that, but in reality the people doing the complicated stupid things are not always the same as the people using the product and complaining / demanding refunds from the developer. True story, back when the intel macs first came out, I was working for Apple retail. I had a customer come in angry as a hornet and demanding a refund because the computer they bought was crashing all the time, it still had viruses all over it and nothing worked any better than their old PC so why did they pay extra for a mac? Thing was, what they were describing seeing and doing on their computer didn't sound like they were using a mac at all. I asked the customer to show me what was going on, and when they pulled it out and turned it on, it booted right into windows.
Turns out after they bought their new computer, they gave it to their nephew to help set it up. Well apparently the nephew decided that what they really needed was to run windows on their new intel mac, and went through the process of installing boot camp, repartitioning the whole system to shrink the mac OS partition as small as boot camp would let them, and configure the computer to boot to windows automatically. My customer had effectively been using an expensive windows laptop for a few months, with all the problems that entailed, plus the additional problems of not getting proper system support. This was around the time that macbooks needed firmware updates to eliminate a crash, a firmware update that was only delivered via OS X software update, which the customer had no idea even existed on their computer.
So even though boot camp was a complicated procedure at the time, with lots of dialogs explaining exactly what you were doing, and what was and wasn't supported, the end user wasn't the one who went through the process. They were the one who was pissed off though. And I saw (and have seen elsewhere in tech) the same sort of thing play out over and over and over again, where someone's clever tech friend sets them up with some unsupported setup, and leaves them on their own to then try to get support from the manufacturer who rightfully doesn't support the issue.
Apple gives iOS developers a way to mark their apps as compatible or not with mac os, and they're implementing an actual check or block on that. I fail to see how that's any worse than Apple offering a "minimum OS version" check in their frameworks and enforcing not running an app that a developer specifies isn't compatible with an older version OS either.
Absolutely, it doesn’t make sense to allow it only if the user does some sort of complicated workaround. That’s also not exactly in Apple’s style - if you are allowed to do it it should be easy. If your not allowed to do it, you shouldn’t be allowed to full stop.
I think a developers expectation would probably be that if they upload an app to the iOS store, and explicitly say they don’t want users to be able to use it on their laptop, that users shouldn’t be able to use it on their laptop (either by installing it normally or via side loading).
Why should some workaround to this be allowed just because “it’s quite complicated so users won’t expect it to work”. Making things intentionally difficult and unreliable isn’t exactly what Apple is known for... It should either be allowed and simple to do, or not allowed at all.
You might think that with the "App Store" you were, you know, buying the App. You might think you could run it however you like, or even sell it to someone else if you wanted to (e.g. first sale doctrine.)
But of course the App Store isn't actually a "store" that sells "apps" at all rather but a "limited licensing service" enforced by Apple's DRM. You're getting a limited license to use the App, and if you use it on an Apple device then Apple's DRM will usually impose specific limits on how you can use it.
I like the App Store, but it's poorly named. I guess "App Limited License Store" wasn't catchy enough.