So I am planning on buying an ipad, never owned one before. I have always been an android guy and from what I have heard Ipad os or ios is pretty restrictive in nature so I was wondering how much does it hamper the piracy experience. For example on android I can torrent files of any nature or size without any restrictions and sideload the apk’s of paid apps to enjoy them for free, can I still do all this on an ipad or should I just drop the idea and get an android tablet instead ?
Torrent clients are banned from the Apple Store and you can’t sideload apps. It’s a very restrictive device in many respects.
You can sideload apps but it’s really annoying without having a developer account or without a bought udid (which is I think not really allowed). This would however allow you to have sideload more apps and you only have to refresh the certificates every year. You can still sideload with sideloadly or altstore but as I said, it’s really annoying because you need to refresh the certificates every few days and you can only have 3 apps sideloaded.
On the other hand, as of June 2023, general dev accounts have become free. They only cost 100 USD when you want to submit apps to the App Store. It’s still a hassle, compared to Android, but it’s not as bad anymore.
This general dev account can sign any ipa?
I don’t think that’s the case, but I’d like to be proven wrong. You can use a free icloud account to temporarily sign apps for a week using Alterserver, but afaik you still need a paid account to sign them for a year.
This should get somewhat easier in 2024, in the EU at least.
I doubt torrent apps would work well on an iPad though unless it’s running in the foreground.
Yikes.
uuff, that apple silicon is the only thing that made me wanna buy an ipad in the first place but I can’t deal with their restrictive software environment.
Get a used M1 Macbook Air. MacOs isnt restricted like their mobile devices. Its passivly cooled, relativly cheap, portable and also capable for more serious productive work.
relatively cheap
Unless you require storage (or memory)
Definetly get the base model, use a NAS for storage and just download more RAM
how do you download more RAM?
Yep didn’t knew that when I brought my first apple device(iPad). But android space was bad when I brought it so there’s that.
LOL I wouldn’t recommend it. Stay with Android if you want to do practically anything outside the official app store. I use an iphone and an android tablet.
edit: Jailbreaking is a thing, but it’s a pain in the ass and you’re stuck on old iOS versions until the jailbreaks get updated, which could be a long while.
thanks for the heads up.
No problem, Android is definitely more for sailors because they can use extensions in Firefox, do torrents, install emulators, etc. I have an ipad for business but an android tablet for fun.
Stremio, Realdebrid and Infuse is what I use for streaming movies and series on our iPad and Apple TV’s. I mostly use the iPad though for making music, or as a controller for my home studio with very low latency. I like the cleaner UI and no ads.
I guess though for what you want the Android experience is better suited, even watching torrents on Apple is jumping through hoops although it works solid after configuration. My son uses an iPad since a few weeks and was surprised how useful it is, using PC, Google TV and Android phone.
What apps do you use to stream realdebrid on iPad? I have a realdebrid account but I have to use Kodi to stream.
Infuse.
stremio web
If you want to download cracked apps and torrents avoid the iPad.
That said, I love my iPad. I have a number of pay-one-time apps that I use and I have a linux server at home for torrenting. I stream it all to the TV and occasionally to iPad. You see, iPad (iphone etc) are not made for data storage.
Don’t. It’s almost unusable. You’ll have to pay money to sideload apps. Imagine paying for piracy.
I sideload apps on my ipad pro, but as others have stated, it’s nowhere near as straightforward as doing so on Android. I mainly decided to do it after my wife continued to spend $$ on “coins” and “gold bars” for Candy Crush on her ipad. It was cheaper for me to buy a developer account and sideload modded versions that have unlimited coins, etc. She’s stuck in the apple ecosystem, even though I did try giving her and Android tablet to try out.
If you decide to try sideloading on IOS devices, and you spend the $99 for a developer account, I recommend using Sideloadly or something like Altstore to sideload apps to your device vs. a service that requires you to provide your certificates from your developer account to attach it to their ecosystem. Maybe some are legit and won’t compromise your developer account credentials, but I prefer standalone tools that I self host, for security reasons. They are more work thought.
A compromise might be to use a services like Singulous that sells you a “slot” on a developer account for $10-20. The problem with those is they periodically get revoked and your sideloaded apps must be reloaded. For more info, you might look at reddit /r sideloaded.
Best of luck!
I used Singulous on my iPad and my sideload apps that were signed by Singulous still work 5 months after my subscription to Singulous ran out, definitely easier then using Altstore, which always gave me trouble
I’d say if you want to sail the high seas keep away from ipads. They’re so locked down it’s crazy. But, others may know more. Will be interesting to see other’s feedback.
Thanks, I will wait for better android tablets.
you can buy a premium Android Tablet used for a good price, try Swappa.
You can’t use torrents on iOS. You would need to have a pc and load files in.
Pirating apps is a lot harder.
It’s not ideal, But iOS is nice to use, and iPads are very nice… as long as you not trying to break any laws.
I use Seedr on my iPad Pro. The. Download to iCloud folder which is shared with my media server (Mac mini). It’s a pretty good setup for my use case.
I have paid $20 for a signing service to sideload apps on my iPad.
Android is way better in terms of piracy apps, but it can be done on Apple,.but it’s just a pain in the ass, I just switched to Samsung.
Overall the ipad is pretty limited but I’ve found this method useful for videos specifically. Basically you use a debrid service as a torrent downloader, and then you download the file directly from them and save it on your ipad.
You need a real-debrid account or similar. Most people on piracy forums freak out that any part of piracy cost money. I thought the same when i was a broke teen. But if you have the dough, it’s ~3€ a month to make it way easier.
With real debrid you copy magnet links from torrent sites and download them through real debrid. For some stupid reason you can’t copy the magnet link from your favorite torrent websites on Safari in iOS. There used to be a “Shortcuts” script that worked but not last time I checked, so i end up having to do this from my computer or ask a buddy who’s on a computer. Once you get the magnet link to a torrent, you go to the torrent tab in real-debrid and paste the link/upload the torrent file. Most of the time the file is already cached by RD and become available immediately. Then you can download and play with VLC. If filed are zipped, use an unzipper there are a few. Good way to load up on movies/shows before flights, and VLC handles subtitles.
