The risk of installing applications outside the App Store if you plan to travel outside the EU for a long time

iPhones have been updated to iOS 17.4, the most important update in years in European countries such as Spain. Responsibility for this lies with the European Union’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA), which forced Apple to open up its operating system to other app stores. This discovery is here, but Apple warns restrictions that users will face if they leave the community.

iOS 17.4 will now allow you to install apps outside of the App Store, which was not possible until now. This is new legislation does not apply to iPadOS 17.4.as only the iOS App Store was considered a significant gatekeeper in the eyes of EU law.

Europeans will be able to download apps from other stores, although the list of App Store alternatives is still limited. Yes OK, This discovery applies only to new EU legislation, Apple limits these developments to member countries. If you move outside or move to another territory, the options will be reversed.

The availability of these changes will be geographically limited to the European Union, that is, to the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. As long as your Apple ID is in one of these countries and you physically reside there, the new app stores will be available.

Apple says that will give a “grace period” for short trips, for work or tourism, but in case of a long stay outside the EU, access to this app store outside its ecosystem will be revoked. The exact time period is not specified.

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This means that, in addition to not being able to install new app stores, apps that were previously installed from one of these third-party stores will not update themselves, which may result in bugs or security issues, if any.

Ensure that temporary travelers do not acquire these features when passing through the EU, Apple will check the location of the terminal on the device itselfwhich means the exact location will not be shared with Apple servers for that person’s safety.

This change also means that users located in the European Union will be able to install web browsers that use other browser engines in addition to WebKit, Apple’s rendering engine. This paves the way for Google-developed Chromium to arrive in mobile browsers on iOS.

Third, another big change in iOS 17.4 concerns the use of payment methods external to Apple Pay. NFC can be used in third-party payment services and for many other tasks. In addition to the fact that the NFC chip in the iPhone will no longer be limited to payments, using Apple’s proprietary payment service will not be mandatory. And these are far from the only changes.