Have dreams of sideloading a third-party app on your iPhone? Well, Apple is here to crush them.
On Wednesday, the company released a 16-page document talking up all the privacy and security benefits to Apple’s “walled garden” approach with the iOS App Store.
The document reiterates the company’s long standing argument that Apple’s walled garden protects iPhone users from all kinds of threats. Hence, sideloading, or the ability to download apps from third-party app stores, would open the floodgates, and unleash all kinds of scams on iOS users everywhere.
“Because of the large size of the iPhone user base and the sensitive data stored on their phones —photos, location data, health and financial information— allowing sideloading would spur a flood of new investment into attacks on the platform,” the company writes.
The document arrives as Apple’s control of the iOS app store is under threat. The company is facing an antitrust lawsuit from Epic Games, demanding the court end Apple’s alleged monopoly over the iOS ecosystem. Other lawsuits are also seeking to sue Cupertino for forcing iPhone owners to download apps from a single app store.
Apple certainly has good reasons to keep the iOS ecosystem locked down. For one, the company generates billions of dollars each year by taking a cut of all sales made over the iOS App Store.
But you won’t find any mention of this in Apple’s 16-page document, which doesn’t entertain any potential benefits to opening up the iOS ecosystem. Instead, the document focuses on several examples on why sideloading is allegedly bad for consumers.
The company paints a scenario where some apps are exclusively made available on third-party app stores. So consumers have no choice but to download them from sources outside Apple. However, the same third-party app stores have shoddy security, making them ripe to distribute programs that secretly contain malware or unwarranted data tracking.
“In the end, users would have to constantly be on the lookout for scams, never knowing who or what to trust, and as a result many users would download fewer apps from fewer developers,” the company writes.
Windows and Android users —who’ve long been able to sideload third-party apps— will probably roll their eyes at the argument. Ironically, Apple’s own macOS allows users to sideload apps too. But the 16-page document from the company glosses over this very fact.
Instead, Apple merely says the iPhone’s user base is so large “allowing sideloading would spur a flood of new investment into attacks on iPhone, well beyond the scale of attacks on other platforms like Mac.”