Apple finally opens up to third-party app stores, but only if you win the postcode lottery

It's taken slightly longer than with the iPhone, but Apple is finally cracking open the floodgates where third-party app stores on the iPad are concerned.

With the arrival of iPadOS 18, which will be available as an update for people to download and install today, Monday 16 September, users who are residents of EU states will be able to install other app stores if they choose to. Unfortunately though, that doesn't apply to US users, nor those in the UK at present. 

This all comes back to the long shadow of the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), which Apple has been wrestling with since it came into force, along with other tech giants. The DMA insists that platform owners relinquish their monopoly on certain services on those platforms. 

Apple was given six months to modify iPadOS to comply with the regulations, and therefore to add this third-party app store loophole along with a few other changes that aren't quite so user-facing. That deadline is approaching, which is why the change is now going live. 

Given how powerful newer iPad models are, such as the M4 iPad Pro, one big outcome of this change will be on the gaming front, where Epic Games has already confirmed that it'll bring its app store to the platform to let people download and play Fortnite without needing any workarounds. 

So, if you live in an EU country and own an iPad that is compatible with iPadOS 18, this is a great incentive to get the software update downloaded and installed when you can. 

If you need more, another outcome of the DMA, according to Engadget, is that third-party web browsers have been freed up to use more of their own tech, rather than being restricted to Apple's WebKit system.

This could mean that browsers like Chrome or Firefox get to bring a little more of their own personality to the platform down the line.