I suspect that it's all about "brand reinforcement."
Apple is (arguably) the world's most valuable brand. Those don't come in Cracker Jack boxes.
They don't want some knucklehead running around, showing some crapplet that makes the brand look bad, and they certainly don't want them installing said crapplet on their friends' phones, so there's a bunch of folks running around, making them look bad.
This makes that a lot less likely. If they restrict it to paid accounts, then they have an assumption that the people writing the apps are "serious" about developing decent software.
I suspect that a big part of them buying up TestFlight was because they didn't want a company out there, making it easy to install un-vetted crapplets into a wide range of devices (which the old TestFlight allowed).
I have some experience with this. I used to work for a world-renowned corporation that made photographic equipment. Their brand is right up there, with Apple.
They would go nuts about sample photos getting out of the company. It was really difficult to report bugs, or even share test results, because the sample photos couldn't make our cameras look bad.
There's a great deal of controversy about Apple's iron-fisted control issues, but I do understand. I'm not always happy about it, but you can't argue with the results.
I don't think that's their goal.
I suspect that it's all about "brand reinforcement."
Apple is (arguably) the world's most valuable brand. Those don't come in Cracker Jack boxes.
They don't want some knucklehead running around, showing some crapplet that makes the brand look bad, and they certainly don't want them installing said crapplet on their friends' phones, so there's a bunch of folks running around, making them look bad.
This makes that a lot less likely. If they restrict it to paid accounts, then they have an assumption that the people writing the apps are "serious" about developing decent software.
I suspect that a big part of them buying up TestFlight was because they didn't want a company out there, making it easy to install un-vetted crapplets into a wide range of devices (which the old TestFlight allowed).
I have some experience with this. I used to work for a world-renowned corporation that made photographic equipment. Their brand is right up there, with Apple.
They would go nuts about sample photos getting out of the company. It was really difficult to report bugs, or even share test results, because the sample photos couldn't make our cameras look bad.
There's a great deal of controversy about Apple's iron-fisted control issues, but I do understand. I'm not always happy about it, but you can't argue with the results.