Developing for iOS has its share of tradeoffs: you get to put up a stall in the busiest app bazaar in the world, but only if you jump through Apple's many, many hoops. Or, as these clever underminers did, just find ways around them.
Maybe the best part of the WSJ's tour of the rule-benders? The big names that have gotten in on the action. Take Instagram, which doubled Apple's strict 100 registered testing devices limit by registering a second dev account. To make sure its testers stayed engaged, Instagram used third-party testing enabler TestFlight to get more detailed data than they could have dealing with Apple alone.
Another popular method is to bypass Apple's testing restrictions altogether; app makers can turn to companies like Pieceable Software to make browser-based versions of their apps so that anyone can take a spin.
The approaches that WSJ highlights might bend the rules, but they fall just short of breaking them; understandable, since anyone who's found a more insidious way around Apple's draconian approval process isn't likely to go public with them. Once you've found a loophole, you don't go publicizing it to the people who can close it. But if anyone out there has any more tips and tricks for skirting the App Store's rules and doesn't mind sharing anonymously, do let us know, won't you? [WSJ]