Tim Cook explained why users can’t install any app they want on iPhone

Tim Cook explained why users can’t install any app they want on iPhone

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22 June 2021

Apple CEO Tim Cook has decided to explain why it is impossible for iPhone and iPad users to download anything they want on their devices.

Cook said the limited ability to download apps and games to the App Store focuses on ensuring user safety, noting that:

“You can think of a world where privacy is not important, and the surveillance economy takes over, and it becomes a world where everyone is worried that somebody else is watching them, and so they begin to do less, they begin to think less, and nobody wants to live in a world where that freedom of expression narrows.”

According to Tim Cook, sideloading is a term used to describe the practice of installing apps that haven’t been approved in App Store. It is impossible to bypass apps on iPhone without "breaking" it in advance. However, Android allows it.

Sideloading “would destroy the security of the iPhone and a lot of the privacy initiatives that we’ve built into the App Store, where we have privacy nutrition labels and App Tracking Transparency… these things would not exist anymore,” he said.

Finally, the Apple CEO compared the iPhone to Android, where sideloading is possible, explaining that there’s more chance of malware on Google’s operating system than on iOS.

“Android has 47 times more malware than iOS does. It’s because we’ve designed iOS in such a way that there’s one app store, and all of the apps are reviewed prior to going on the store. And so that keeps a lot of this malware stuff out of our ecosystem, and customers have told us very continuously how much they value that, and so we’re going to be standing up for the user in the discussions”, he said.

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