There is no other way to publish on iOS, by design.

If you want to access the most lucrative smartphone market segment in the richest country, you have to play ball with Apple. There is no other choice.

Many apps can be PWAs, these can be installed without any approvals.

It is used even for some quite demanding apps like low-latency game streaming by Nvidia GeForce Now, Xbox Cloud Gaming, Amazon Luna, etc. They don't use native apps because Apple rules are ridiculous.

Correct, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are not related

They enforce it when it suits them, and turn their head the other way when it increases revenue.

I remember when Apple used to be insanely customer-focused. Now they’re just another big tech company with an industrial design ethos.

Exactly, it’s selective and has no order or reason.

Meanwhile, they are taking 10x the going rate for credit card processing for the privilege of being in this shovelware list.

I wish someone would bring the hammer down on them.

You can be sure that the “anyone, anywhere” claimed is a lie.

Oh absolutely. They even explain it right in the press-release: "users in the U.S. can [...] with international expansion [...] starting later this month".

Of course it will be as far from "anyone" or "anywhere" as possible, because they will start the crypto expansion in a much more restrictive fashion than TradFi.

If you still buy it, you are being played for a fool. I don’t buy shady products like this.

If you do this with Apple they will deny it as “too similar”.

They have no obligation to sign anything, and they aren’t in the business of fighting city hall. Quite the opposite.

The article is about Thailand, not Indonesia.

Well, damn. I completely misread that. I now feel kinda dumb.

I'm relieved to see another educated person doing this.

It's gotten worse for me lately, where I keep mixing up train stations and locations with similar names or characteristics, so I can totally imagine hearing Thailand and thinking about Indonesia instead.

Financial privacy and national security are fundamentally at odds. With financial privacy and real freedom, you can hire a competing army.

The state will never allow large scale financial privacy because it poses an existential threat to the state.

It is a nuisance to the state.

I do not see how it is an existential threat.

Nation states existed for centuries in which money was frequently held as cash and even large transactions were often done in cash. its still common (or was until very recently) in a lot of (mostly poor) countries

> With financial privacy and real freedom, you can hire a competing army.

Having the money to pay an army is a long way from hiring one. Recruitment and buying military equipment at any scale would be obvious.

What, like building a factory in Texas that manufactures ICBMs? :D

How are people going to pay for things? With no power or network, card payments stop working, and so do ATMs.