Apple does allow developer users to install IPA files outside of the App Store. I can easily take an app off Github, build it with Xcode, and install it on my iPhone, for example. There are even scripts to do this similar to a "configure; make; make install", eg: https://github.com/phonegap/ios-deploy
This doesn't require the $99 it used to either, anyone can do it, though it does require you to get a free signed developer certificate from Apple which signs the app (you'll also need to tell your device to trust your cert).
You can even distribute an IPA file and install it via iTunes and not the App Store, but it needs to be signed by a trusted authority (your company; your dev cert; or most likely Apple, as long as it is a non-revoked cert).
> This doesn't require the $99 it used to either, anyone can do it, though it does require you to get a free signed developer certificate from Apple which signs the app (you'll also need to tell your device to trust your cert).
There's a limit of 3 installs per device, though. And you'll have to re-sign the app every 7 days if you choose to go down this path.
> You can even distribute an IPA file and install it via iTunes and not the App Store, but it needs to be signed by a trusted authority (your company; your dev cert; or most likely Apple, as long as it is a non-revoked cert).
Doesn't this specifically require an Enterprise Developer account?
It should be noted that it's quite limited. You can only install a few of these apps on a given device, and they expire quickly. It's not really practical for sideloading in the general case.
In practice, what people do is they pay something like $5 a year to get added to a shared pool of developer accounts. In China they also had a really slick scam going for a long time involving pools of otherwise-unused enterprise certificates (though I haven't tracked this one recently, and so maybe they got hit even harder than the resigning services have been).
I will also point out that for many of the use cases of piracy, which involves games and other content where the user rapidly get "bored" and moves on to other content, a limit of three at a time for only seven days doesn't matter: people can pirate a few games and play them for a weekend, and then move on to pirate other games.
(If you are curious, I'm of course excited by these things and like explaining them as it further weakens the argument some people try to make that jailbreaking leads to mass piracy, something even the US Copyright Office doesn't believe; but this line of analysis makes the whole situation more obvious ;P;)
This doesn't require the $99 it used to either, anyone can do it, though it does require you to get a free signed developer certificate from Apple which signs the app (you'll also need to tell your device to trust your cert).
You can even distribute an IPA file and install it via iTunes and not the App Store, but it needs to be signed by a trusted authority (your company; your dev cert; or most likely Apple, as long as it is a non-revoked cert).