I've been thinking about this because I'm working on an internal company tool. It's a web app but I was thinking about creating mobile apps. In the age of agentic coding, that's no longer a massive undertaking like it used to be.
However, I'm completely blocked by Apple app store review. There's no way an app designed for 30 people would pass.
I can't get an internal app onto people's phone. I could release it as a test app but that might get blocked at any point.
I can at least release a PWA but as I understand even that might get notifications blocked at any point, with no recourse, and of course functionality is highly limited.
So the goal here is clear: don't allow people to write small apps.
Apple can then make sure they are only allowing apps that required enough work, both initially and ongoing, that nearly everyone will feel the need to charge, or include ads, and then Apple gets a 30% cut every time.
As for why a car company's app passes, obviously they don't want anyone with enough power to challenge this in court, politically, or in the media. So those get a pass.
There is Apple enterprise for this reason. Depending on the set of APIs you want to use (which should be limited since you spoke of webapps), it allows you to distribute internal business apps.
Don’t know how known this is. But we use it mainly for internal testing.
https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/
> The Apple Developer Enterprise Program allows large organizations to develop and deploy proprietary, internal-use apps to their employees
> Your organization must:
> Have 100 or more employees
Again, it's clear that they're providing this out so that organizations with power don't have to start a fight, while small organizations can't do anything.
Even aside from that, it's clearly going to be so much work that we wouldn't be able to do it. I'm the only developer at the company, I cannot get bogged down in Apple review processes.
For internal apps, you could go through ADEP [1] if you want to avoid the app store + review + custom apps route. But eligibility requriements have been tightened over the years IIRC.
[1] - https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/
You should be using an enterprise cert for this. You won’t have any issues with enrollment or distribution that way.
We don't meet the requirements. Large organizations only. Minimum of 100 employees.