Riley Testut, an iOS app developer who has for years worked on mobile video game emulation, just released a project that has the potential to shake up the entire iOS ecosystem. He calls it AltStore, and it’s an alternative to Apple’s App Store that distributes software Testut says may “push the boundaries of iOS.” In particular, it supports Testut’s own Nintendo emulator, called Delta, which will let anyone with an iPhone or iPad play Super Mario and other classics. Also, it doesn’t require you jailbreak your iOS device. Anyone can download AltStore right now.
I definitely appreciate the work put into this, and it seems quite slick and usable. It’s been in the works for years, and in a blog post, Testut explains in more detail how it all works.
AltStore is a fully native, sandboxed iOS application that allows you to sideload apps by essentially “tricking” your phone into thinking it’s installing apps that you made yourself, when really they can be any apps whatsoever. Since this is an actually supported installation method by Apple, it’s far less fragile than other distribution methods in the past. Similarly, since there’s no single enterprise certificate to revoke (because technically every user now has their own developer certificate using this process), Apple can’t simply shut it down with the press of a button like they have with some 3rd party app stores (until they receive a new certificate in a week or so, of course).
To bypass several restrictions put in place by Apple to limit the use of this developer feature, you need to run an AltServer on your PC or Mac, which bypasses these restrictions and pushes new applications to your device using WiFi. It’s quite clever.
While I don’t share The Verge’s rather optimistic view that this “has the potential to shake up the entire iOS ecosystem”, it does seem like a very simple and easy way to bring iOS a few steps closer to Android when it comes to being a full, complete operating system.
Thom Holwerda,
Also, how long until apple closes the hole? Jailbreaking has been a cat and mouse game since the very beginning with neither side having a permanent victory..
It doesn’t sound like this is a hole but more of an unintended sideeffect that is (by design) not easily removed…
kikika,
It’s interesting to read what he’s saying, but it’s a terrible hack. His store needs impersonate users to apple’s developer services using their credentials. This is really bad security, not only does he get your account credentials, but depending on apple’s security protocols he may have to store the passwords in cleartext without hashes to impersonate a user….
My gut feeling is that it’s highly implausible that apple won’t get wind of this and take him to court and/or block his servers in the short term and then fix the hole with more robust authentication mechanisms in the developer services in the long term such that the cat and mouse game will continue the tradition of flip flopping.
IFAICT, the AltStore server is an open source program that you install on your own windows/mac machine (a PC in the same wifi segment as the iPhone you want to enable sideloading).
Thus, your credentials would be stored on your own machines.
OTOH, the main problem with this method is the “three simultaneous apps” limit. If you can only have at most three apps simultaneously installed in a iPhone using this method, it’s not a real challenger for the regular app store.
Antartica,
That wasn’t clear to me, but it would make more sense. It still sounds like author is envisioning some sort of “app store” in the conventional sense that he runs himself, but maybe the piece dealing with the apple developer certificates is something you install locally.
Does this mean his code consumes one of the three app slots allowed for xcode?
IMHO it’s good work as a proof of concept, but it really seems like a precarious method to actually want to build an “app store” with. So long as the phone doesn’t get jailbroken, apple has the upper hand in terms of blocking things and they’ve made it clear they don’t want any competing stores for IOS. It will be very interesting to follow up on this and see where it goes, but ultimately I think it’s another iteration of the cat & mouse game.
It reminds me a little of what I had to do with my Symbian Nokia.