Stupid Question 149: What is sideloading?

[To celebrate my first year of programming I will ask a ‘stupid’ questions daily on my blog for a year, to make sure I learn at least 365 new things during my second year as a developer]

What is sideloading?

I talked about sideloading in the previous blog post (http://www.irisclasson.com/2013/02/13/windows-store-app-enterprise-deployment-mini-guide/), but realized I hadn’t explained what sideloading is. Some devices such as tablets and mobile phones have their own OS specific distribution center, such as Windows Store, Marketplace, Google Play, App Store and so on. Sideloading is whenever you install an application not using the standard distribution method. Not all OS allow sideloading, some do when certain requirements are met, and some have to be ‘jailbreaked’ to allow you to sideload apps. Stupid Question 132: What is jailbreaking?

Comments

Hello Iris, interesting topic but who would benefit from being able to sideload on a device, would it be developers, consumers, cooporations. If so, how, just curious? 

Hello mate!

Jailbreaking allows people who use, for example, the iPad, to download and install a variety of apps, without paying for them. Lots of people do it for many reasons I suppose, but I don't. 

A typical example would be an organisation that develops its own in-house app. 

Oh thanks MacDona, I never thought of that initially. Same for SoCentral2, good example .. 

Last modified on 2013-02-13