Having (alt store) presence in Australia, Brazil, EU and Japan is in fact more than enough for many indies - one can even begin to imagine ignoring the US as a region.
First, Apple does not follow the same rules they set for developers.
Second, Apple does not treat all developers equally. We have functionality we’re unable to offer to iOS users.
The same feature, including technical implementation mechanism, is available in Claude and Gemini. It’s unfair.
https://github.com/PoomSmart/YTUHD/issues/72#issuecomment-46...
Installing something is a perfectly normal operation - it's the App Store that's the special case :).
Lets call it what it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_neutrality
I guess Apple prefered the pejorative "sideloading"
[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Bluetoo...
As someone from that region, this is probably a good idea for all parties, right now. I'm not fond of our current trajectory, and the outside pressure to change isn't sounding unreasonable.
Combine with that other markets also getting bigger like South America.
The reality is that NA had their smartphone / mobile boom already and the rest of the world is still catching up. There are more smartphones, apps, features, services, etc. to be gained by selling to the massive influx of new customers versus trying to cater to the old audience of North America.
In the vast majority of cases, Asia and SA won't touch your product if you don't have deep familiarity with their markets, their idiosyncrasies and have a competitive business model there. Getting folks in these markets to pay isn't easy, friend.
And that's why we keep having these conversations in English on a US site about products made by US companies.
I agree that if you just check a few boxes and make your app available in those markets you won't see much success.
Right now we have a relatively high confidence that as long as the devices are not jailbroken and are kept up to date they are relatively secure.
What this change means for people like me is that either there is some capability to detect whether third-party app stores are in use on a device and we will set a policy that disallows anyone using such things from accessing company data/services, or we have to lock out the devices altogether.
> Moreover, because iOS apps are sandboxed, as implemented in other jurisdictions, apps available through alternative distribution will be sandboxed, which further strengthens security and reduces the likelihood that any app will compromise other apps [...]
Personal devices shouldn't be used for work purposes to begin with. If work has security requirements regarding what phone and what condition it is in, they better be supplying their own phone to ensure those requirements are satisfied.
No, they don't benefit (cause it means they check work mail on weekends or evenings), but their employer do...
On the contrary, it allows app and payment security to be better than what Apple offers.