For example:

  • You MUST use Apple’s own apps (iMessage, Phone, etc.) as well as Apple’s own App Store
    • To be fair, the EU is doing work to solve this particular issue…but most of the reforms are only for EU customers
  • You have to use WebKit when developing a browser for macOS iOS and iPadOS, you can’t use Gecko or Blink
  • iOS apps must be developed using XCode IF YOU WANT TO PUBLISH IT ON THE APP STORE, which is only available on MacOS…

That last one is weird. Why can’t you compile Swift outside of MacOS (i.e. third party IDEs)? Why can only XCode do it?

edit: Gecko and Blink based browsers are available on macOS. I learnt something new today. Not for iOS or iPadOS though. Also, Xcode is only a requirement for publishing in the App Store. You are able to compile Swift in any OS. You’ll just need to distribute the app via sideloading and/or third-party app stores (in the EU)

  • paperplane@lemmy.world
    4·
    2 days ago

    Also the iOS SDK isn’t freely available, so you’d have to copy that out of an Xcode installation… but given enough time and effort, you could almost certainly hack together a cross-compilation config for Clang that compiles an unsigned iOS app on Linux. Signing it might in fact be the bigger issue, since I’m not aware of any tools that sign Mach-O binaries on Linux.

    • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.ggEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      Something to implement signing given the key to sign with could almost certainly be created.

      I think the biggest reason this stuff hasn’t really happened is … there’s not much motivation and Apple will likely respond to such efforts unkindly so you might need to be a bit of a curious masochist (or at least in strange circumstances) to attempt such an effort 😅