Apple has always boasted that iOS is a walled garden. For stability, for security, for providing a unified and coherent experience… there are many reasons we’ve heard over the years that those at Cupertino justify the tight control they exercise over their portable devices and systems. … the agents who drive them. And you can be for, against or understand that it has good and bad things, but what is indisputable is that Apple has fought this point from day one and until now fiercely.

However, the winds of change seem to be coming. Regulators in many regions see this closed ecosystem as a potentially monopolistic measure, and as a result are working to create new legal frameworks that force Apple to step back in this regard, allowing alternative payment platforms to its own, as well as the presence of third parties. app stores within iOS and its derivatives, a point where Google already has a significant advantage, as Android has always allowed third-party stores and has been testing app systems integration for some time. third party payment.

Behind the door, Apple continues to push its case for iOS to retain the advantages that the technology says it has due to these ironclad limitations. And this is of course completely understandable, in the end, the company also provides a model that is effectively safer for users and their privacy, as well as for their own economic interests, because all the purchase operations of applications and digital assets and services in them, represent a good pinch of their income.

New story: Apple is preparing to allow alternative app stores and sideloading on iOS — along with a host of other changes to make the iPhone more open — in response to new European Union requirements coming in 2024. https://t.co /hZpXrKdHGj

—Mark Gurman (@markgurman) December 13, 2022

However, just because its defense is so strong does not mean that the company will rule out any change in this regard. On the contrary, and given the directions the regulators are taking, Cupertino must be more than aware that the days of this model are numbered and that sooner rather than later they will be forced to lift the barriers and allow business to come. operated by third parties on iOS. And of course they will have to study the method to make it happen in the least bloody way possible for their own interests.

Thus as indicated popular analyst Mark Gurman, Apple is preparing to allow alternative app stores and sideloading on iOS. This, along with other changes, would be a response to the legal framework that will come into force in Europe in 2024. However, it is expected that Apple intends to impose certain conditions for these new app stores to be deployed in its operating system, conditions that they will certainly have to do with both security and Apple’s participation in the charges placed upon them.

So the situation does not seem to be similar to what we already know in Android, but even so it will mean a real revolution, which, moreover, may not last too long, because some of Gurman’s sources confirm that it is planned to be available from the very the arrival of iOS 17, which will be presented at WWDC 2023 and will reach users sometime in September next year.