IPAs are a complete joke

 So, recently I've had to install an ipa for a friend that uses an iphone because it wasn't available in the appstore. Now, the simplicity focused, UX-oriented company apple markets itself as, you'd think that only require the click of a button... Right? Well, not exactly. Let me tell you my incredible odyssey of installing an ipa without a PC. First up, for comparison, here's how you install an apk (the ipa equivalent of android) on Android:

Step 1: Download the apk

Step 2: confirm you want to install it

Now, let me tell you how apple handles it.

First up, pretty much the only way to install an ipa without needing a pc/mac is signulous. Coincidentally, it's also the easiest and most convenient one. First up, you'll need to pay about 5$ for a subscription to access it. Then, you will need to find your apple id and give it to signulous.

After that, you'll need to wait about three days for your dev account to get approved by apple. Then, you make signulous sign the app for you, then you need to go into your iphones settings, turn on developer mode, confirm you want to turn on developer mode, confirm you really want to turn on developer mode and then finally actually turn on developer mode. Then, you'll take the signed ipa you got from signulous and upload it to an ipa installer website, which will give you a link that you click on and then it will finally prompt you if you want to install the app. 

I'm not sure I even need to point this out, but that's fucking ridiculous.

I'd known before apple is an absolute anti-consumer nightmare of a company, but I'd never experienced their bullshit firsthand, so that was honestly quite an enlightening experience. A big selling point of apple products is often the ease of use and intuitive ui, but the second you do something they don't like, they will deliberately make the process as awful and overcomplicated as physically possible, it'd honestly be funny if it wasn't so sad.

So, moral of the story: don't ever buy anything apple makes. Seriously. Don't. Not only are you wasting your money on overpriced locked down hardware, you're also promoting anti consumer bullshit like this. Next time you're thinking about buying a Mac, just get 3 thinkpads. It's around the same price.

Anyways, I'm gonna go ahead and clear my schedule for the next week, I need to install another IPA.