The news: Tim Cook has once again confirmed that Apple has no plans to implement side loading on iPhone, during his appearance at the NYT DealBook Online Summit.
- “If you want to sideload, you can buy an Android phone….from our point of view, it would be like if I were an automobile manufacturer telling me not to put airbags and seat belts in the car. He would never think about doing this in today’s time…and so it would not be an iPhone if it didn’t maximize security and privacy” Cook says
- Sideloading on iPhones has been a topic of contention: in recent history, Apple has been facing scrutiny over the App Store and the power they hold as the only way to download apps on their phones
Our take: I respect Cook’s continued dedication to his long-standing take on sideloading. But as someone who wants the most out of my iPhone, I wish there was a way that I could sideload apps. Make it hard, give me a thousand pop-ups, tell me I’m going to be more at risk: just let me choose what I’d like to do with my phone. That being said, I never believe this should be a default feature or even easy to enable out of the box.
