Um no? Depends on what you mean by “locked down”. For custom ROM? Probabaly. But for me, I just want to install apps without the approval of a corporation. If the appstore servers shut down or gets DDOSed for some reason, you’re out of luck.
If you are an EU resident you could just keep your iPhone and wait for the sideloading law to kick in, then you don’t have to worry about that anymore either.
Oh, in that case I guess Apple might region lock the feature, so switching is still a good call. Although in the grand scheme of things I think the legislation will still have a positive impact elsewhere and possibly motivate some US states to follow suit, like what California did after the GDPR.
Did apple shut down sideloading then? When I was testing on iOS, dev local installation was a pain but I would assume that’s still an option if you enable the dev features
Um no? Depends on what you mean by “locked down”. For custom ROM? Probabaly. But for me, I just want to install apps without the approval of a corporation. If the appstore servers shut down or gets DDOSed for some reason, you’re out of luck.
If you are an EU resident you could just keep your iPhone and wait for the sideloading law to kick in, then you don’t have to worry about that anymore either.
I’m an American 😔.
Oh, in that case I guess Apple might region lock the feature, so switching is still a good call. Although in the grand scheme of things I think the legislation will still have a positive impact elsewhere and possibly motivate some US states to follow suit, like what California did after the GDPR.
Did apple shut down sideloading then? When I was testing on iOS, dev local installation was a pain but I would assume that’s still an option if you enable the dev features
Looks like (thanks to the EU again) that iOS will support side loading apps shortly which should at least give options should an app be removed from the store. As for the reality …. I guess we just need to wait and see https://www.macrumors.com/2023/04/17/app-sideloading-support-coming-ios-17/
Ah, if all you want is straightforward sideloading, I guess that works. That’s not enough for me ;)