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Comment by smtddr | Hacker News Reader

I need some help understanding this.

So, at my job the way I install iOS apps onto phones that are not at the AppStore is that the developers give me the .ipa file and I do:

  ideviceinstaller -i /path/to/ipafile

(You can get this prog by doing "brew install ideviceinstaller", takes awhile)

Is there some reason the bitcoin devs can't upload the ipa somewhere and have everyone do that?

EDIT: Ah yes, joshstrange & jreed91 are correct. the iOS devices I use are all registered to apple's dev portal and the apps are signed.

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In order for this to work you have to either register for Apple's enterprise distribution program or register your device with a developer account. But since each developer account is limited to 100 registered devices this doesn't really work as a distribution method.

This is actually my only real dealbreaker issue with iOS. The freedom to install my own software on my own hardware without the permission of a third party seems like a pretty fundamental computing right to me.

IIRC you have to have the phone in question registered as a developer phone to do that. There are sites that will add your phone to their dev account for ~$10 (vs the $100/yr dev program) but it's just a barrier to entry that's a little too high for the average person. Whereas 5 minutes with a one click jailbreak tool + Cydia can make the process much easier and you get app updates (it's been a while since I did iOS work and as I was leaving the scene things like test flight were making it even easier to distribute dev/test/beta copies of an app and even offer a way to update them so my last comment might be out of date).

Your phone is not only registered to the apple dev portal but also as one of 100 to the developers certificate.

With an enterprise certificate distribution is technically possible and many do distibute their beta software this way. But I am sure Apple will revoke enterprise certificates if they are used to distribute apps en masse outside the App Store.

Well, I don't know the dev perspective on this but most things do not readily have .ipas available. For example f.lux is an application I use all the time on my Mac. But I haven't been able to get it into my phone for a while. Couldn't find a .ipa.

Maybe developers want to be able to charge for their apps at some point in the future through the Cydia store ? Just 'cause you can't get your app into the app store doesn't mean you shouldn't make money off it if people love it :) (just speculating, maybe that's not the reason..)

I'm guessing it has to be signed to run on the device. But that's my uneducated guess.

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