It all started back in 2007, when the iPhone went public. It shoved the path of our modern smartphones, creating a closed and safe environment for all of its users with what we always knew as iOS. It was and it still is a little bit too guarded, a little bit too sealed for signor computer scientists used to a machine like Windows, Mac or Linux, where they have full freedom to control over the operating system with countless possibilities for customization and script/app developments.
It was inevitable.
If you create an enclosed and safe environment some people are always going to find ways to break in-n-out of it, for no particular reason but to gain the reassurance of being the one who is still being in control having a sort of independence. I get it, we all want to customize our devices as we please but Apple made that hard to their customers for mixed reasons, and no wonder why is still one of the tech companies with the best customer satisfaction. Look at Android for instance, you can install it literally everywhere, but at the finale developers struggle to keep up with all of its devices that often ends in either have to test their apps on every possible gadget, leading to consume lots of team resources, or that their app that might not be fully compatible for all of its users, leaving many unexpected bugs and crashes behind.
So, Revolution it is. Fortnite didn’t started it, it was just a sparkle that made the fire stronger. Cydia and Jailbreaks were the pioneers of it, then there was that amazing app called Delta that never made it to the App Store because of its strict guidelines, so people found ways to install it anyways, App Store or not.
Despite the fact that iOS is still not as customizable as a Mac, and no intention from Apple to merge the two, we have many different options to: buy, install or create our own cool apps that Apple won’t allow releasing on its own store. We have Shortcuts, you can play around for pretty much everything with them, then TestFlight Apple’s own app that makes possible for developers to distribute their apps prior the debut to the App Store for the sole scope to let users beta test their algorithms. And with TestFlight another indie App Store was born, a place where every app is free and not fully overseen by the App Store big eyes (aka strict guidelines), so now developers have even more control on their creations with Airport.
As a user you have to submit a request to join their TestFlight beta (that is beta just for incognito reasons at Apple) and you’re all in. I’ve been personally addicted by checking even multiple times a day, what developers can do with it, and we’re off to a great start, a beginning of a cold war of App Stores.