The Cupertino company will set up a system to force you to pay a developer account to be able to install the betas of the future iOS update.
Apple obviously doesn’t like that you can install iOS developer betas easily without a developer account. To put an end to the circumvention technique widely used until now, the Cupertino company will change the way in which it will authorize the installation of pre-release versions of iOS 17. These changes are already visible. in the latest iOS 16.4 beta.
The end of configuration profiles
To successfully block unauthorized installation of iOS developer betas, Apple will abandon configuration profiles. Until now, it was enough to download this small file from Safari and authorize its use by iOS for the operating system to be able to recover the betas online. From now on, only registered developers, and having paid their access to the program of the developers of Apple, will be able to install these preview versions of iOS. For what ? Quite simply because Apple made the decision to integrate a menu directly into the iOS settings. Introduced in the iOS 16.4 beta, this new “Beta Update” menu can be accessed from Settings > General > Software Update.
But there is a wolf. Because this menu will only be displayed in the iPhone Settings if the user is logged in with an Apple ID registered in the program reserved for developers. Thus, in the next versions of iOS, this menu will be the only way to install the beta developers pushed by Cupertino. Therefore, if you absolutely want to be able to install these versions of iOS reserved for developers, you will have no other choice but to offload the 99 euros requested by Apple to enroll you in its developer program.
A predictable decision
This change in methodology for installing iOS developer betas is not very surprising. Last year, Apple had already taken the necessary steps to shut down websites that made iOS 16 developer beta configuration profiles available to the general public. Users who downloaded these configuration profiles from these sites could install iOS previews reserved for developers without having to pay the annual subscription required by Apple.
Without the possibility of circumventing the restrictions put in place, users will therefore have no choice but to be patient until Apple deploys the public betas of its operating system. Unless it is still possible to circumvent this obstacle using a good old technique oldschool : installation from iOS from a file in IPSW format.
MacRumors
