Apple is working on allowing iPhone users to download apps from sources outside its own store with the upcoming iOS 17 update.<\/p>\n
That is according to Bloomberg’s resident Apple expert, Mark Gurman, who explained<\/strong><\/a> the change was necessary to comply with new European Union (EU) regulations, which came into effect in November 2022.<\/p>\n As explained by Macrumors<\/strong><\/a>, the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) make it mandatory for major “gatekeeper” companies to open up their services and platforms to other companies and developers.<\/p>\n That includes allowing their users to download apps from third-party stores or websites, a practice known as “sideloading”.<\/p>\n Failure to comply with these new regulations could leave Apple with a fine of up to 20% of its global revenue.<\/p>\n As it stands, Apple imposes strict security and privacy policies on developers that want to publish their apps on its App Store. It also prevents installing apps from any third-party sources on iPhones.<\/p>\n The company has argued that these policies protect users from software threats.<\/p>\n Apple CEO Tim Cook has specifically blamed the higher presence of malware on Android devices on sideloading of apps, which Google permits.<\/p>\n But critics of the approach have also pointed out that Apple earns a 15\u201330% commission from developers on purchases made through the App Store and from within apps.<\/p>\n They argue its real motivation for disallowing the practice is to prevent a significant loss in revenue.<\/p>\n To counteract the commission’s impact on their revenue, developers often charge more for subscriptions taken up through an iPhone app than when they do so directly via a website.<\/p>\n For example, Twitter Blue in the US costs $8 per month on the web but $11 when taken up through the App Store.<\/p>\n Currently, users who want to sideload apps on their iPhones have to perform a “jailbreak”, which means they have to gain unauthorised root access to the operating system.<\/p>\n That leaves them without most of Apple’s security protections, no automatic updates, a potential loss of their warranty, less battery life, and exposure to more system instability.<\/p>\n Apple will allow iPhone users to download apps from sources outside its own store with the upcoming iOS 17 update, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":488167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[397,605,167,85643,801,71480,85645],"class_list":["post-488151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-android","tag-apple","tag-google","tag-ios-17","tag-malware","tag-mark-gurman","tag-sideloading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488151"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488151"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":488215,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488151\/revisions\/488215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nNow read: iPhones enjoy faster Wi-Fi than Android in South Africa<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"