AltStore PAL, the first alternative app marketplace on iPhone, is available now
mastodon.socialLinks to announcement from AltStore themselves:
"For developers who choose to agree to the new business terms, membership in the Apple Developer Program includes one million first annual installs per year for free for apps distributed from the App Store, Web Distribution, and/or alternative marketplaces."
https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/
This is what some commenters here don't understand when they criticize the developer for not offering a free App Store version in the EU. Once a developer distributes outside the App Store in the EU, Apple applies the CTF to everything the developer distributes in the EU, whether inside or outside the App Store. Financially, there's no way that they could offer a free version in the EU.
Also note: "Developers of alternative app marketplaces will pay the Core Technology Fee for every first annual install of their app marketplace, including installs that occur before one million."
There is nothing stopping you having multiple developer accounts.
And there is the option of setting up a non-profit which removes the CTF.
It seems much more like the aim is to drive usage towards the AltStore.
Why in the world would the developer want to jump through these hoops just to support the crApp Store in the EU?
Apple has made this situation way more difficult than it needs to be. Don't blame the victims. Also, the EU is already investigating, and it's not clear that Apple's Rube Goldberg machine will ultimately stand up to DMA scrutiny.
I signed up, paid €1.50 and was only then told I wasn't eligible. I can imagine they're going to be doing a lot of €1.50 refunds
Outside the EU?
Looks like they make it incredibly easy to pay with no pre-verification, so yeah, probably a lot of refunds.
Yeah they really should be using Stripe to authorise the card payment and then capture it when the app is successfully installed
How do I request a refund, I am in the same boat...
Same here...
Hmm, my Apple ID is set to the UK, i paid using a UK card (Monzo), whilst connected to my home VPN (tunnelled) but currently abroad on holiday in Asia and it’s telling me I need to physically be in the EU to install it…
No matter what apple says about privacy being a right, they don't let your location be private to their business.
I remember years ago turning off location services on my iphone, and finding my iphone connecting to .ls.apple.com all the time (location services).
I just think people don't want to give up control. They just trick/force/wear down people/customers until they give up their* control.
It's too bad. I remember reading Matt Ridley's "the rational optimist" I think he said that when trading partners have trust, trading is unlimited.
If I was treated with respect by apple, I would have trust and buy all kinds of things from them. Instead, I have to do this careful calculus, with devices, upgrades, apps and usually do not.
Even if you turn them off you can still get tracked through SSIDs
Would that even work in the UK considering Brexit el al?
Besides Apple already mentioned that it's location based and if you go out of the EU you will only have about month of "trial" to use the apps... Apple can go to hell :D
Have you forgotten...brexit? We no longer get to enjoy the benefits of the EU.
To be honest, after the vote I didn’t really keep up as I thought (hoped) real change would take ages to kick in. Guess we’re finally, actually out. Will request a refund.
The vote was eight years ago. Brexit is already going to school and knows how to read and write.
It officially occurred at the end of January 2020. I think something else important happened around that time that made it easy to miss :) Pre-existing law (e.g. GDPR) continues to until we remove it. New regulations like the DMA won’t ever apply.
The UK hasn't been part of the EU for quite some time now.
Well, UK isn't in the EU.
Have you been abroad since before June 23rd 2016?
Yes, but I think the post-brexit transition phase tricked me into believing the change wouldn’t be this drastic. Sigh.
Fun fact: "British citizens had their .eu domains suspended on 1 January 2021 for three months, and then deleted on 1 March 2021 after a grace period to allow EU/EEA citizens to update the registration information to show their non-UK address."
You need a faraday cage and a GPS spoof.
Farage cage maybe?
Farageday cage maybe?
Love the 'PAL' reference - just like how many in North America were pining for the PAL video standard (initially Europe but later entire world except North America) but we were stuck with NTSC (and doubled down).
On the other hand, many cool games never made it to the PAL region, and a lot of PAL ports (and video releases) got technically botched in some way.
There's a sad bit of irony that the year is 2024 and the game console in your pocket could feasibly run anything you want, but the OEM region-locked it again.
I initially thought of my RG35XX+ when I read "the game console in your pocket" and thought "no, it's not region locked". Then I realized this was a discussion about iPhones and yes, they are region locked now.
But, FWIW, I've been really happy with acmeplus's beta of Batocera Linux on my RG35XX+. My son and I have been taking turns playing through old gems like Pokemon and Aladdin on it, and I'm hoping to finally beat Final Fantasy VII one of these days.
Most, if not all, emulators ignore / bypass region locking. I've yet to come across any emulator that strictly enforces it
Emulators using region-specific BIOS files can still have issues though.
Yeah, as a European retro game enthusiast I tend to avoid the PAL versions of anything older than the sixth gen of consoles like the plague.
By the PS2/GameCube/Xbox era most games were fine and PAL60 was becoming a thing anyway, but older than that and there’s a good chance the game just runs 17% slower due to the 50/60Hz difference, or has some weird letterboxing due to not accounting for 576 vs 480 lines.
Really? As someone who grew up with PAL, we were pining for your 60fps NTSC output, especially in fast games like beatem-ups etc (PAL is 50).
I still remember the first time I saw an imported Japanese PS1 playing Teken 2, and how much smoother it looked on NTSC. I could never look at my PAL copy the same way again, I couldn't unsee the NTSC version. For me personally, those extra 10 frames trump the extra 100 scanlines in PAL etc.
I think gamers preferred NTSC (and 60Hz) but video/movie buffs adored PAL (higher resolution and 25fps being closer to film).
Honest question: is 25fps a net positive over 29.97 for 24fps content? No 3:2 pulldown judder/tearing, but speed/pitch are wrong. (Not to mention color differences, necessity of a tint knob, etc etc.) I don't recall having heard it discussed; wouldn't surprise me if some types of content are better on each system or it simply comes down to how relatively much the particular person is bothered by the downsides of each.
It was kind of a non-issue at the time, for the simple reason the DVD format used by all the players only supported PAL 25fps or NTSC 29.976 IIRC. There was very few "official" ways to get native 24fps content into the home until Blu-Ray, and by then many TVs offered a 24p mode to go with it. Neither PAL nor NTSC is ideal for 24fps content.
Yeah but what I was interested in was what people who came into contact with both considered superior. I'm gonna nip back across the pond tomorrow so should I watch my Betamax movie tonight or wait until after my Concorde lands? :)
PAL60 was a thing, but a lot of older TVs didn't support it. A bunch of playstation (ps2, mainly) games had button combos you held down on startup to enable it or, more rarely, a menu option to switch. I learned about it while playing burnout 4, and that it only worked on one of the house TVs.
A lot of PAL ports of games ran slower because they weren't re-timed correctly if at all. On the flipside, being the last major region to get games, there was often additional content by the time they got here. Like the infamous "European extreme" difficulty in MGS3.
Exactly. I remember that many PAL PS2 games at the time had big black bars at the top and the bottom, and as a result a distorted image overall. The video game experience was not great for PAL gamers at the time because most developers made bad PAL ports. Most gamers wanted undistorted images and 60fps, which was solved when we came to the PS3/360 era with digital output via HDMI and newer flat screen TVs.
Isn't Japan also NTSC as well?
Sure is.
I always wanted to watch movies just a bit faster. (and yes, with more consistent color, and a higher vertical resolution)
Although, I'm sure US commercial TV stations frame drop movies to speed them up so they can insert more commercials these days anyway.
Although, I'm sure US commercial TV stations frame drop movies to speed them up so they can insert more commercials these days anyway.
I can't say how it's done today, but at the TV station where I worked in the 1990's, we did. But we never dropped frames of content. That would cause all kinds of copyright and contract problems.
We did, however, drop frames of black and superblack. In an average hour, we were able to get back enough frames to insert an extra 15-second commercial at the top of the hour.
What is "superblack"?
In a TV signal, the brightness is encoded using certain signal levels. So you'll have a set black point, and white point representing the darkest and brightest values to be displayed respectively.
If you send a signal outside those bands, it's known as a superblack/superwhite. The "blanking interval" (when the beam is meant to start at the top of the screen again) has a signal blacker than any black that would show up in a broadcast. If that were not the case, a black screen in a show would mess up your TVs tracking.
Thanks!
No SECAM though so it would only be in black and white in France.
Delta for free in the regular App Store everywhere but the EU where we have to download a paid app store to install it, so it begins.
Don't you find the timing of them suddenly allowing emulators suspicious? If it weren't for that alt app store, would the U.S. app store have emulators at all?
Not a chance. This is Apple making their users stick with the App Store as their only store.
In other words, another example of competitive pressure forcing a company to actually try and win over consumers.
This is private enterprise squirming as regulators are prying them open.
Until recently (that is, until today), Delta wasn't even available in the app store to begin with. And most likely it and that would still be without the alternative store, since Apple is only eventually allowing it to make a point.
> since Apple is only eventually allowing it to make a point.
No.. no they are not.
They clearly made a policy change and allowed another emulator on the App Store https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/04/apple-removes-the-fir...
Why did they do that? Did they just decide to after 6 years randomly with no inciting incident? Or did they decide to because they were being forced to allow alternative app stores which would allow emulator installation anyway?
Probably, and I am not arguing that.
I think it is important to point out that clearly there could be improvements to the App Store without opening it wide open.
However, this has nothing to do with my core problem here of now in the EU having no choice but to use an alternative store. When every other country can just download it from the App Store.
My problem here is not that alternative store exist. my problem is that we are already seeing a developer making the choice for me of where I can download the app from.
Which is why I replied with an article, if Apple was just focusing on "making a point" the previous emulator would not have been approved.
- Alternative app marketplaces become allowed.
- Apple sees emulators as a potential market for alternative app stores and proactively chooses to allow them in the Apple App Store.
- This is a clear example of how competition in the app market place being a positive thing.
- Developer creates an alternative app marketplace, with an emulator as one of its main apps on launch, realizing the competition that forced Apple to update their rules to allow emulators in their own store.
I'm sorry you feel forced to download a separate app store, but don't you see how you in the end are benefitting from this change even without using the AltStore? Give it some time and you will probably have another emulator in the app store you can choose to download.
>I'm sorry you feel forced to download a separate app store, but don't you see how you in the end are benefitting from this change even without using the AltStore?
Not really, so far. Are there any game systems that don't require some level of special hardware to back them up? Dreamcast? I don't think I know anyone who has ever made themselves a 'backup copy' of a game they've purchased, much less then played that backup copy on another device. I'm sure they exist, but in numbers even smaller than linux isos on BitTorrent.
This is a little bit apple's fault - if any app is distributed outside the app store, the developer now has to pay a fee per-install even for installs from the app store (50¢ per install!). He could have chosen not to put Delta in AltStore and only put it in the app store, then it could be free on the app store. Either way, you don't get a choice. You install from the app store, or you install from AltStore, but it can't be on both because of apple policy. This is what apple wants, and is why the fee exists. Hopefully it violates the DMA and they'll be forced to change that.
Why is it not available in the EU? Is this just the Delta developer wanting to promote/push people to their App Store, or is there some other reason e.g. Apple don’t allow the app in the EU? I’m a bit confused why it would be on alternative store at all, if Apple now allow these apps… can someone ELI5?
(I’m in the UK so can download from the App Store, finally a benefit of you-know-what lol)
I think they cannot put it on both stores per Apple rules. And since the Delta developer is the same person as the Alt Store developer he chose to put it on his own store.
I see! I guess I don’t understand why the developer would bother with their own store if the App Store now allows emulators, and the Delta app is free - but I guess this was only a recent change, maybe allowed by Apple purely as a way to try to stop people going to alt stores?
I guess maybe the developer feels it’s their duty to follow the alt store thing through to keep pressure on Apple? Or maybe they stand to make money (either now or in future with other apps) from their store?
> why the developer would bother with their own store if the App Store now allows emulators
The keyword is now allows emulators. They didn't allow it 3 weeks ago. Or a year ago. Or 10 years ago.
Only now, with alternative stores launching and offering this, Apple has finally allowed emulators.
Perhaps the developer doesn't want to be beholden to Apple's whims? Especially after investing a lot of effort into setting up an alternative store?
Could you point at what part of the old rules was forbidding emulators?
I can’t point you to rules, but I can point you to news articles talking about the rule change from ~10 days ago:
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/04/05/app-store-guidelines-em...
Until now, emulators have been rejected under this rule
> 2.5.2 Apps should be self-contained in their bundles, and may not read or write data outside the designated container area, nor may they download, install, or execute code which introduces or changes features or functionality of the app, including other apps
I.e. "all the code this app ever runs has to be there when the app goes to app review"
This rule change on January 29 allowed for mini games and streaming games
> 4.7 Mini apps, mini games, streaming games, chatbots, and plug-ins: Apps may offer certain software that is not embedded in the binary, specifically mini apps and games, streaming games, chatbots, and plug-ins.
And then specifically this addition on April 10
> 4.7 [...] Additionally, retro game console emulator apps can offer to download games
is what allowed retro game emulators.
Technically they were not forbidden, but it was impossible to play copyrighted ROMs.
The rules forbid running arbitrary/user-loaded code and copyright forbids bundling the ROMs people wanted to use.
The new rules have an exception for specifically emulators
Ask the author of this emulator whose app was rejected multiple times in the past six years
Which part of the App Store makes you think that the rules are ever applied as written?
The developer also uses their app store, AltStore, to distribute a clipboard manager app, which isn't allowed in the app store.
FWIW You can put it on both stores.
Right?
This is exactly what I have been worried about and people tried to explain to tell me that, no this doesn't remove choice from me as a user.
When in fact it does, if I was in the EU (and if the US does something similar, likely here) if I wanted to download this I would have to use their store. The choice is being made for me by the developer.
It didn't take long to already have an example of this happening and bigger companies will likely follow suit.
So how exactly does this benefit users again and isn't all about appeasing developers?
Because... the developer didn't swallow Apple's fee for you?
Your decision is to pay Apple's fee that they claim is fair, or not use the app. I don't really see how we can shake our fists at the developers and publishers for not sponsoring the distribution of their FOSS app. It's very clearly the Unity-esque installation fee that is the problem here.
Um... no where did I mention anything about the fee...
They could have put the app on the app store on the EU and on their store. But did not.
They tried to put their app on the App store since 2016! Apple refused, for EIGHT years! Then they developed their own version of an indie app store so that they can actually distribute the emulator because of that.
Apple only allowed it to be published on the app store TODAY, just the day of the release of the AltStore because they are trying to make a point, the malice is on Apple's side here. But the comments here make it sounds like it works on their all most hardcore fanbase.
I think it was last week we were talking about a different emulator that was approved, so let's not try to jump to conclusions about why Apple may or may not have done something.
I have not seen anything that the release on the App Store was held up by apple and that this wasn't just instead an simultaneous release on both platforms by the developer.
Yes Apple did not previously allow this until they changed their policy recently to allow emulation (which I think was about a month ago).
This does not change the fact that the developer is choosing to put the app on the App Store everywhere except for the EU, and in the EU you have to use their store.
> I have not seen anything that the release on the App Store was held up by apple and that this wasn't just instead an simultaneous release on both platforms by the developer.
See this commit from 3 years ago[1]! On Delta's Repo:
> Delta was originally developed under the impression Apple would allow it into the App Store. Unfortunately Apple later changed their minds, leaving me no choice but to find a new way to distribute Delta. Long story short, this led me to create AltStore, which now serves as the official way to install Delta onto your device.
The main reason why you “have not seen anything that the release on the App Store was held up by apple” is that because you did not want to see it, because it goes against your believes (believes that have been manufactured by Apple's propaganda machine).
> Yes Apple did not previously allow this until they changed their policy recently to allow emulation (which I think was about a month ago).
And guess why their changed their policy? Because of DMA put them in an untenable posture.
> This does not change the fact that the developer is choosing to put the app on the App Store everywhere except for the EU, and in the EU you have to use their store.
That's a genuine “fuck you Apple” move, which is understandable given how much “fuck you Delta” Apple gave them before, but it's also a bit of a problem. But here again this is 100% on Apple! They can 100% ban this kind of things by adding a policy to the app store that says “If you want to distribute on the App store outside of the EU, you have to provide your software on the app store in the EU as well” even if that doesn't prevent the release on an alternative store. The main reason why they don't do that, is because it would ruin their FUD about this exact situation.
You are being manipulated by a trillion dollar company, that not only hate your individual freedom, but also wants to make sure you hate it yourself so you never ask for it. And unfortunately that propaganda keeps proving highly effective…
[1] https://github.com/rileytestut/Delta/blob/abd7338a08a4948c55...
> The main reason why you “have not seen anything that the release on the App Store was held up by apple” is that because you did not want to see it, because it goes against your believes (believes that have been manufactured by Apple's propaganda machine).
I really feel like it should be obvious that I am talking about since apple made the policy change regarding emulators. It is well understood that before about a month or so ago there was a policy against emulators.
I am talking about since that policy change went into effect and the software was in place for it (as in the iOS version was rolled out).
Apple had allowed am emulator on the App Store within the last couple weeks, which doesn't line up with your conspiracy theory that the only reason this one was allowed was because of their own store.
And no this is not 100% on apple. The developer could have put it on the App Store in all regions. Again, Apple approved an emulator recently.
> which doesn't line up with your conspiracy theory that the only reason this one was allowed was because of their own store.
Literally, tell me you have never heard of Delta without telling me you've never heard of Delta.
The only reason this app exists is because of alternative App Stores. It is not a conspiracy theory, you can ask me, saurik, or any other iOS user that used the Altstore to attain basic functionality on their phone.
> And no this is not 100% on apple. The developer could have put it on the App Store in all regions. Again, Apple approved an emulator recently.
Yep. This is 100% on you. You are the only person that continues to enable and apologize for this behavior. So naturally, you are the only person that deserves to suffer on behalf of the users. I really hope you never sideload, and you get to watch the App Store become the same barren husk it is on MacOS while you desperately beg developers to pay for distributing their Free Software. Surely, those high-and-mighty developers will descend from their ivory tower and delete their altstores so that 'nerdjon' from Hacker News won't keep pissing and moaning about how his iPhone sucks now. Yes, that will fix it.
> So how exactly does this benefit users again and isn't all about appeasing developers?
You can blame Apple here, by adding a fee per install, if you choose to go outside the appstore, you pretty much have to remove the free appstore option otherwise why would anybody use the other one?
The weird economics Apple has created discourages using both.
Clearly though they are fine with charging a yearly fee to access the store. So why not just charge for the app in the EU IF that really is the problem here.
Give users that choice, that is all I am asking for here. Actually give users a choice instead of removing the choice from them. Which at this point in time, that choice is being removed from the user.
It's not that they are fine with charging, it's that they have no choice, they are charging the bare minimum to cover the new Apple fees.
Sure they could create a paid appstore option only in the EU (if that's not against the appstore guidelines somehow, I don't know) but that might not align well with their strategy.
Additionally I also feel it would kind of be a bad PR on their side as well to charge more on the appstore in the EU.
> Clearly though they are fine with charging a yearly fee to access the store. So why not just charge for the app in the EU IF that really is the problem here
Alternative app stores have to pay the CTF for every install starting from the very first one. Apps distributed in alternative app stores have to pay the CTF for every install after the first 1m.
The CTF is an annual fee.
In this instance, the app store developer is the same as the app developer, so the yearly fee for the store is being used to cover both sets of fees.
Whose fault is it that it has to be a paid app store? Blame Apple for their ridiculous policies that essentially require it.
I never mentioned anything about the fee, just that you have to use a different store.
A different store than what, Delta wasn't even available on the app store until earlier today!
And the irony is that they had to develop the entire store just so that they could bypass the walled garden.
> A different store than what, Delta wasn't even available on the app store until earlier today!
And unless I am missing something it wasn't available on this alternative store until today. What does that change about the conversation?
> And the irony is that they had to develop the entire store just so that they could bypass the walled garden.
Clearly not since it is available on the Apple App Store in every country other than the EU.
It was available on the not PAL AltStore. AltStore was originally created to distribute Delta because Apple wouldn't allow it.
> And unless I am missing something it wasn't available on this alternative store until today. What does that change about the conversation?
See the sibling response.
> Clearly not since it is available on the Apple App Store in every country other than the EU.
As of… TODAY! Day of the release of the alternative store. What a marvelous coincidence for an emulator that has been submitted years ago on the App store and blocked by Apple for all this time!
Yes, Apple recently changed their policy about emulators … as a result of the exact same Digital Market Act that allowed this alternative store to exist. Again, this isn't a coincidence, it's just how the consequences of the regulation are unfolding and how Apple is trying to cope with it (in a surprisingly clumsy way).
Is there any plan to distribute Delta via the App Store in the US now that emulators are officially allowed?
Or is Delta being used mainly as the incentive to use AltStore?
It's already there (everywhere except in the EU, apparently)!
Really? I can’t find it on the US store currently
App Store has this quirk where, when a brand new app releases, it doesn't show up in search results for a bit. So if you're ever trying to find an app that just released, try going to a link instead of using the App Store's search
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/delta-game-emulator/id10485246...
It is there.
According to the verge it is also identical: https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/17/24132984/delta-free-emula...
Curious why it is not available in the EU on the App Store (if it really isn't, I can't confirm)
Presumably to encourage people to subscribe to the AltStore, which doesn't feel like a very classy move. (Update below – it might be because of Apple's CTF.)
This is in addition to a somewhat dubious licensing clause on the Delta GitHub repo that violates the GPL, under which most of the emulator cores it uses are licensed: https://github.com/rileytestut/Delta/issues/296
On the other hand, due to how Apple's EU "compliance" is implemented (opting into the new business terms is all-or-nothing per legal entity, not per account), I believe it might be impossible for the developer to now publish any apps in the EU App Store without paying the CTF anyway, so it does all go back to Apple's malicious compliance in the end.
Regarding Delta and AGPLv3: I'm not entirely convinced the current Delta terms are actually in violation of AGPLv3.
For context:
> Due to the licensing of emulator cores used by Delta, I have no choice but to distribute Delta under the AGPLv3 license. That being said, I explicitly give permission for anyone to use, modify, and distribute all my original code for this project in any form, with or without attribution, without fear of legal consequences — unless you plan to submit your app to Apple’s App Store, in which case written permission from me is explicitly required. Dependencies remain under their original licenses.
Basically, "I grant you the combined work under AGPLv3, plus an exception for my original code." You can make use of the exception iff either that original code is separable from the rest of the work or all other involved copyright holders grant identical exceptions. The "No further restrictions" clause can only apply to code that Riley Testut does not own and is using under the AGPLv3 license.
Just tried, it is not available in the German App Store
It really isn't.
There seems to be an issue with the download. After purchasing it redirects to a download page but when clicking on download nothing happens. Other users on Reddit are reporting this too. Hope it gets fixed or refunded.
I had the same problem. I had to long press the download button and open in a new tab for it to do anything. It then showed the popup saying I needed to allow installation of the app in the settings before long-pressing download again.
I'm trying right now from Spain, using an iPhone SE with iOS 17.4.1 and faced the following problems:
- I used Firefox, which can't be used for this. OK, I go to Safari.
- In Safari, I tap the "Download" button and get a message indicating that I can't install because my settings. I only see two options "OK" and "More information", but no details about "which" setting I need to change.
- In the "More information" page, I only read a wall of text that doesn't explain what the fxxx I need to do to in order to perform the install.
- No matter how I try, there's no results in the settings search for "external", "install" or "market".
- Oh, and the "Download" button no longer works after pressing it 2 or 3 times. I suppose this is to "protect me" from evil scammers, of course.
Dark patterns galore.
Update on my post: you need to enable "Screen time" in your phone :-O
Same issue here on an iPhone SE. Also tried on an iPad, where I got a pop up “you can only install this marketplace on an iPhone”, which is disappointing.
> Also tried on an iPad, where I got a pop up “you can only install this marketplace on an iPhone”, which is disappointing.
Apple claim that the iOS App Store is a separate entity to the iPadOS App Store, and thus, doesn’t qualify as a gatekeeper under the EU DMA. Apple have made alternative app stores only available to iPhones running iOS 17.4+.
Apple may benefit from you registering your disappointment with them directly, so that they can stop bragging about their immense customer satisfaction percentages in future product launches.
What a joke… Apple is so obviously abusing everything they can to avoid complying to the spirit of the law. That makes it so clear they in a dominant position here.
Offtopic: a while ago the mastodon web interface changed so you had to enable javascript to see anything. I stopped reading mastodon links. I've just noticed that the server will cough up the post if you add "/embed" to the url. For the fine article:
https://mastodon.social/@stroughtonsmith/112287515017810339/...
Honestly, if you're remotely interested in installing this then just get an Android phone and get real side-loading.
AltStore is more like a franchise of the App Store where Apple is still in charge, but doesn't directly run it.
What's funny is that here in Europe where this AltStore now exists, Android is clearly far more common than Apple already anyway.
> just get an Android phone
I hope you're joking. If you're an Apple user that's invested in their ecosystem "just getting an Android phone" could probably mean changing the way you do many things, resigning from services you were used to,, learning how to do things on the other side, and so on. That also applies when switching from Android to iPhone. It's just not that easy.
Positioning it as “Altstore” as in “alternative store” instead of “awesome store” seems like weak branding.
When will third party app stores be available in the United States?
Apple is only doing this because the EU forced them to, so unless the US forces them to as well, it will never happen. App Store is Apple's golden goose and they would never give even a slice of it up voluntarily
Poor destitute Apple, they have to keep the iPhone a walled garden to feed their families. They don't have anywhere near enough money already. The executives are surviving on cabbage soup. Tim Cook will literally have to eat cardboard for dinner if they don't make another hundred billion dollars next year.
When the DOJ kicks their ass in court (unless Trump wins and replaces DOJ/FTC leadership with incompetent clowns again)
Cydia was the first alternate app store.
You're forgetting Installer.app, which predated Cydia! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Installer.app
(I'd argue that wasn't a "store".)
In what sense? Testing my memory here, but it let you install stuff from various developers. Cydia cranked things up several notches (thanks for that, by the way), but are they both not "stores"?
I guess, to me, the defining characteristic of a "store" is that you can buy things at a store... it just feels awkward to say that a store is just a place that has things and lets you get them on request ;P.
AppTapp Installer was merely a package manager, and they did not implement any store functionality. FWIW, in Cydia's case, I didn't launch "Cydia Store" until about a year after I launched "Cydia Installer".
(AppTapp also wasn't the first package manager for the iPhone, but maybe it was the first one on-device? The one I had used involved USB and some web page I think, but I am forgetting the name.)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/store#Noun
>A place where items may be accumulated or routinely kept.
Didn't installer.app come configured for repositories of software you could install? I seem to remember one of the first things people installed was an app that gave you extra repos to choose from
Cydia was awesome. As a kid, the porting of apt and dpkg to ios was what got me into linux and debian, having only had access to an ipod touch before. Thank you for your work, it is inspiring.
This is specifically talking about alternate app stores through Apple's new official way of doing it. If we're talking about alternate app stores in general, even AltStore itself was before AltStore PAL
*Cydia was the first app store [on iPhones]
I wonder if Cydia would be allowed on the new alternative app marketplace...
Cydia installs deb packages which can modify system files. The EU method only allows installation of signed .ipa apps