BitTorrent Apps in AltStore PAL
Specifically, the new additions include iTorrent, an iOS torrent client that can be used without jailbreaking iPhones or iPads, and qBitControl, a qBittorrent remote client for iOS devices. PeopleDrop is a dating-focused “social discovery platform” that connects you with other users in the real world as they pass by.
Apple has consistently banned torrent apps from its App Store, citing that they are “often used for the purpose of infringing third-party rights,” but the DMA has weakened Apple’s ability to maintain its walled garden approach, allowing alternative app marketplaces like AltStore PAL to offer apps that do not meet Apple’s guidelines.
I still think it’s wild that Apple banned an entire network protocol because some people used it for copyright infringement.
Previously:
- Delta 1.6 Rejected From the App Store
- Delta’s 10-Year Journey to the Top of the App Store
- AltStore PAL
- Emulation on iPhone
- BitTorrent and the App Store
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Are there stats somewhere on how much torrenting is infringing on copyright and how much is stuff like Linux distros? Because my gut feeling is it's some extraordinarily lopsided ratio in favor of "piracy."
And I would wager that that percentage only increases as you increase the number of people who do it, because of the relatively limited pool of people who have the technical ability and/or desire to do something like install Linux.
In other words, while there might be a small niche who would download torrenting apps in the App Store for non-copyright infringing use cases, making it widely available there means that most people wouldn't be. Hence Apple's restriction.
Of all the things they do that don't make sense, this actually does make sense to me.
Well, let’s consider the percentage of cryptocurrency usage that’s for scams or other illegal purposes. Yet Apple allows crypto apps. Why the difference?
"making it widely available there means that most people wouldn't be. Hence Apple's restriction."
I don't think anyone disagrees with the idea that most torrent traffic is for piracy, but that doesn't mean that most people who use BitTorrent don't also (or only) use it for legal downloads. Piracy is outsized because a small number of people generate a lot of traffic.
Hence also the "90% of my game are pirated copies" thing. Yeah, that's because there are a bunch of people who download every game, not because 90% of the people who actually regularly play your game have pirated it.
For me, if I buy a bunch of books on HumbleBundle, they always have torrent links, and I always use that link. It's stupid that Apple gets to decide that I can't download my HumbleBundle books to my phone using the more efficient protocol, just because I can theoretically also use that same app to download a bunch of pirated movies.
Linux distros aren't the only way torrents are used outside of piracy. There are plenty of other uses. Some off the top of my head are other open source software, anything public domain on the internet archive
There's also the issue that the most popular platform can't even be used for it, so it has lower adoption. Would apple allow a social network that uses the Torrent protocol to save on bandwidth?
Torrents are very robust and support less than perfect slow internet connections. They are great for large downloads that otherwise would time out.
This is incorrect. Apple did not ban an entire network protocol. They banned peer to peer file sharing apps. I emphatically disagree with Apple's decision, but for years I have used Resilio Sync (formerly BTSync) to sync files from my home server to my phone. It uses the BitTorrent network protocol to do so.
@Old Unix Geek Yes, also good for downloading Stack Overflow data and conference videos.
@squidelydoo Officially, they’ve banned apps that facilitate illegal file sharing. But that’s not actually what they’ve done because obviously Web browsers and Resilio Sync and many other apps can do that as well. In practice, I think they don’t allow any apps that use the original BitTorrent protocol—Resilio uses a variant.
