APPLE HAS RECEIVED a glove slap from a developer who believes he’s found a way to beat the system.
Riley Testut has created AltStore, which, as its name implies, is an alternative app store for iOS users. Unlike other attempts at bypassing the stringent standards of the official App Store, Altstore doesn’t require you to jailbreak your phone.
It’s not without its caveats. It works by fooling your precious toy phone into thinking you’re a developer who is testing an app. To do that though, Altstore needs to get your apps re-signed once a week or they’ll stop working, and to do that, you need to hook it up to a computer once a week. Think of it like dialysis for your Apple.
Because Apple can’t do much about AltStore, there’s a risk that it’ll go after the Apple IDs of users instead. Fortunately, you don’t have to use your main Apple ID, so go ahead, make a burner, hell, make a few.
AltStore is already available, ahead of its official launch on Saturday. It’s free of charge, but if you back Riley Testut on Patreon, he’ll set you up to sideload any app using his technique, not just the ones exhibiting in the store.
The big draw, of course, is that you can play with applications that didn’t make the cut for the official Store. Don’t assume that it’s lots of subpar games and homebrew nonsense – of course, there’s some of that, but there are lots of other reasons why Apple may decide that something isn’t for them.
A perfect example is another Testut creation. Delta is actually a cracking little Nintendo emulator, but it would last five minutes in the App Store.
Just remember that this could last for years, or it could get hit with a takedown order before you can say ‘Pornhub app’. So we’d get amongst it while you can – all at your own risk of course. Just because there’s no jailbreaking, doesn’t make it safe. µ