Just to be clear, wasn’t calling you that specifically. That was expressing a frustration against the general type who responds whenever I jump in to share info on what exists and doesn’t in reality.

In your case, I made exactly your point up front and even stated it didn’t meet my needs personally. AltStore does a decentish job of smoothing along the process, but it’s still too much burden for me. But I feel I am very correct in saying it meets the technical definition of side-loading and even the “common knowledge” definition as long as you acknowledge the caveats, which I do.

So what do I do? Well, as much as I’ve spent on phones, laptops, tablets, cell service, internet service, etc I find adding another $99/year on top is just noise. I’m fortunate enough that my career allows me that option, otherwise I don’t know what I’d do as Android has dealbreaker faults for me (I do own a few Android phones, but none would remotely be my daily driver).