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iPhone App Sideloading Coming to Users in the EU in First Half of 2024 (www.macrumors.com)
submitted 2 years ago by [B] to c/apple@hardware.watch
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[–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (13 children)

Question to everyone: Are there any particular apps/programs, you would want to sideload?

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago

    There are some third party apps on Android that allow you to upload custom firmware to devices like electric scooters in order to change default settings. Those simply don’t exist on iOS, I assume because they aren’t allowed. I would definitely like to try that.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    Reddit app? App devs will be taken down if they let users use their own api token, but with sideloading devs can do just that and not worry about Reddit getting them taken down.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Virtualization so I can run Linux

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago

    Ooooh that's gonna be super useful for pentesting.

    Also, if the required APIs are available for USB host mode shenanigans, I've always wanted an app that can emulate a USB stick given an ISO. I'd start the app, select the ISO, and connect to a PC and boot from the ISO. The app could also keep the ISOs of specific operating systems up to date, and also allow me to add custom ISOs and even regular writable filesystem images.

    Not to mention BadUSB scripts.

    If an iPhone could do that, that would be AMAZING!

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (3 children)
    • Actual alternative browsers is the big one for me, I want real WebExtension-support
    • Cloud gaming
    • Programming language interpreters
    • I have a friend that says they want porn apps, so for my friend, that
    • Anything requiring NFC card emulation besides the few blessed use cases Apple graciously allow
    • Proper photo backups (apps that aren't Photos.app can't automatically backup, you have to manually launch them)
    • Emulators
    • Open source software, because the vast majority of projects don't have any actual income stream to pay for developer accounts
    • Anything that Apple deems is already "OS functionality", see the MDM app crackdown a while back
    • etc.
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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago

    This may open up a lot of inhouse development in places. Before, you had to have these limited developer licenses and bless devices to be able to install beta apps and a lot of places did this for internal only apps. That’s revenue to Apple just on the developer license and doing nothing else besides a webpage being maintained to hold all these profiles and stuff. And you were limited to the amount of devices you could use the beta software on.

    But, now, at least in the UK, you could see that cumbersome step removed and that means it may be worthwhile. Suddenly using an iPad for an internal only tool on a large scale is a possibility.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Who would want a porn app that has more permissions to track everything you do?

    This is this weirdest one for me

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago

    Apps have worse ability to track you than a browser, not better.

    • no possibility of using third party cookies
    • no possibility to fingerprint you using what modifications your extensions do to the DOM

    The only extra information they get about you is a consistent but unique (as in not possible to correlate) identifier, meaning they know its the same device accessing the app that it was the other day as well. But they often know this from IP on the web anyway, and since it can't be correlated, it doesn't tell them much.

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  • [–] [B] 1 point 2 years ago

    There are already apps you can side load with services like signulous. I mainly use a modified YouTube app that supports background play, Adblock and Sponsorblock. Works very well

    There are also 3rd party apps for other social media platforms.

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