Comment by Tijdreiziger
5 years ago
I'll believe it when I see it. I recently got an iPad, and sideloading apps is a ridiculous endeavor that involves a server app (that depends on iTunes and thus only works on macOS and Windows) that has to re-sign your sideloaded apps once every 7 days.
And regarding Microsoft, while I certainly embrace them being more open than before, VS Code still has proprietary bits, and you'll need to run your own extension store if you don't want to use those (which the VSCodium project does, I think). Of course, that's not even mentioning the forced telemetry in Windows...
Why did you buy it if you wanted to do sideloading?
Apple has literally written documents about why they think sideloading is a bad idea.
If you look at tablet OS reviews online, a recurring theme is that the app ecosystem is more developed on iPadOS, with reviewers lamenting the Android tablet app ecosystem. I also thought that iPadOS might be a bit better privacy-wise.
As it turns out, doing things in the browser is more convenient than apps anyway (given that it's a tablet), and I underestimated the restrictiveness of the OS, but those are the things that are hard to glean from reviews. It's my first tablet in a decade, so you'll have to forgive me for not having any prior knowledge on these things.
> I underestimated the restrictiveness of the OS
This may not be something that is made clear in reviews, but it’s hard to see how someone could read HN and not see hundreds of comments about this.
4 replies →
> VS Code still has proprietary bits, and you'll need to run your own extension store if you don't want to use those (which the VSCodium project does, I think). Of course, that's not even mentioning the forced telemetry in Windows...
VSCodium has just disabled that Microsoft store by default. You can enable it and use all the extensions normally, without proprietary bits.
Isn't part of the problem that some of the extensions themselves are proprietary? e.g. the Remote Development extensions.
Since apple stuff is expensive anyway, you can just consider the developer program a 99$/year sideloading feature unlock. I use TestFlight to push some private apps to my own and friends devices and find it quite convenient. It even updates in the background for them. 90 days is still kind of a chore but doable.
There are only 1-2 apps I want that are locked out of the App Store due to Apple's policies, so at that point it's cheaper to subscribe to the developer's Patreon to get access to their private beta TestFlight (which I might do, it's not expensive).