While alternative app stores operate independently and are required by EU law, Apple is still in a position to exert some control. This became apparent a few weeks ago, when iTorrent users suddenly ran into trouble when installing the app.

Thought this was an interesting story, since it's pretty analagous to the recent Android situation, with third party app stores being enabled to some extent, but the company retaining ultimate censorship power.

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[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Yes. If you're a free developer (you have to register as a developer to even do this), you have to re-authorise the app every 7 days or it gets "revoked" which means the app will not launch.

You also have to install a certificate that certifies the app(s) to you. This is generally safe, but you should be careful with trust certificates. You're basically taking full responsibility for the code that's being executed on your device. If you haven't audited the source code (or if someone you trust hasn't), it might be a risk.

If you used a signing service, someone has bought a bunch of paid developer licenses and they've given you the certificate for one of them. Once Apple discovers this, they'll revoke that developer license which revokes your apps. The signing service will then issue you a new certificate. Revokes aren't super common, or so they say (I've never used a signing service).

[–] ModernRisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 8 hours ago

They recently (two days ago) did a massive revoke on the paid certificates. All known sellers got hit with the massive revoke and it is at the moment a bit of a mess.

Rumor goes that Apple also hit actual developers with the revoke hit. So curious how that goes.

[–] xistera@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 hours ago

Interesting. I don't really remember what I did to put it on my phone, but it does appear separately in the app library under my name instead of the 'entertainment' category. I haven't wanted to do anything with it since it still works.