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Comment by withinboredom | Hacker News Reader

> The CTF is an element of the alternative business terms in the EU that reflects the value Apple provides developers through tools, technologies, and services that enable them to build and share innovative apps.

Is there an option NOT to use the "tools, technologies, and services" to build an app that runs on iOS?

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You'd think they could cover it with the yearly developer fee and constant hardware updates (Gotta get a new Mac if you want the latest version of Xcode to support the latest iPhone, which you'll also need to run the latest iOS since the simulator is never enough).

This is just greed.

> This is just greed.

Nah, just garden variety extortion.

No kidding. That would be interesting even if it would be a monstrous task - a third party iOS SDK.

In theory, it's possible. Apple would be livid though.

I'm down to try. However, I think we'd have to take them to court just to get a code signing cert blessed by them because I wouldn't even want to need a copy of xcode.

Good luck getting anything signed.

I think it would be possible. It took some effort, but eventually Microsoft caved and provided a key for blessing safe-boot for Linux. Getting to that point, on the other hand, would probably require a pretty significant court case; meaning someone would need some deep pockets.

Of course it's technically possible if apple gives in. I just don't think they ever will. I'd love it if they would instead switch to something similar like android where apks have to be signed, apks distributed via the play store are (nowadays) signed by google, but if you distribute it yourself you can just sign it yourself and the only requirement of the signature is that it must be the same for subsequent updates.

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