I've heard apple developer accounts have been free for a while (previously $99/year)?<p>Seriously, why don't people do this:<p>- Put the unsigned binaries somewhere on the web<p>- Have the user get a developer account<p>- Make a little (macOS, Windows) app that takes the binaries, signs them with the user's developer key, and pushes them to their phone - pretending to the phone that the user is "developing" this app.<p>Wouldn't that work? Or do apps in-development with Xcode (but not yet in the store) only work tethered or something?<p>It would be a bit of a hassle, but I'd say to the user it's probably less work than rooting an Android phone, which plenty of users do. And you could run all the stuff (emulators, edgy content) that Apple forbids.<p>It's probably against some TOS (but it would be hard to define how you're exactly violating it - I can develop an app, and give you the Xcode project and let you help me develop it). But the allure of the forbidden might make this even more interesting.
Ultimately we get the over-sanitised walled gardens we deserve. As with overly prudish advertisers pulling ads from comedy TV programmes, though, the power of (and need for!) voting with your feet can be quite hard to discern for most consumers.
Ignoring the political aspect I find it hard to understand why so many people want to make native applications when usually a website will do it (and often better). The PhoneGap/Cordova approach is awesome as well because you can get App Store visibility while still making a single application for all platforms.<p>I found this story a striking anecdote of the advantages.
In other news, water is wet.<p>Seriously, what is the news here? Anyone remotely paying attention would know that these apps would not fly on the iOS App Store, satire or not. If you don't like that, then you shouldn't develop for iOS.<p>Personally, I don't use iOS for this very reason.
The truly annoying thing about the App Store isn't just the censorship, it is how inconsistently it is applied. App X gets in and App Y doesn't for reasons that would equally apply to X.