Leon Mika

“Vibe coding” I can take or leave, but this poster’s point on iOS distribution is spot on:

I recently built a small iOS app for myself. I can install it on my phone directly from Xcode but it expires after seven days because I’m using a free Apple Developer account. I’m not trying to avoid paying Apple, but there’s enough friction involved in switching to a paid account that I simply haven’t been bothered.

I had a passing interest at looking at the iPhone SDK when it came out. What steered me towards learning the Android SDK was learning that any app I built for the iPhone had to distributed via the App Store¹. That wouldn’t work for apps that I built for myself, or maybe a few friends, which is pretty much what I was interested in doing. Such apps are a completely different kettle of fish than building something meant for the whole world to use.

I don’t know what it’s like now, but despite how locked down Android is now, compared to those early years, it’s still seems to me to be much more opened to these sorts of apps than iOS.