Lol are you serious rn? Go look up the history of iOS jailbreaking, people made apps before there was an App Store. Installer was the first app store, Cydia was second and only then came the App Store.
Did you bother to read the comment you replied to? I'm not sacrificing the good UX, constant updates and the ecosystem to gain freedom. You gain one thing and lose everything else.
Oh so you want all the good stuff Apple does but don’t want to play by their rules?
That's not how it works. It's not a store if it only has one app. A store is a product a third party builds for others to sell things in it. There already exist alternative stores on Android. Developers can choose to use those stores or distribute their app directly in apk form. They do neither of those things even though it would take no effort. The answer is simple, a big company would lose the users' trust if they didn't go through the official channel. Alternative app stores exist for small apps not allowed in the proper channels.
Yes, my device, my rules. Epic is 100% right.
But Apple doesn't let you. And if you fully own the hardware then whatever restrictions they put, I can bypass.
Nobody will be forced to use sideloading. Nobody is forced to use it on Android, it wouldn't be any different on iOS. Sideloading would only be used by small companies or apps that aren't allowed on the official channels (e.g. emulators, torrenting apps), which is a minority. Even though apps like Facebook would totally want to ruin your privacy, the moment they force users to install their app outside the official channels they would raise a major red flag and lose a significant number of users. So there's nothing to gain for them.
It's not a store, it's direct distribution. It doesn't require them to create an entirely new infrastructure to sell their app. All they do is just upload the package to their website and put a download link.
I agree but I don't see the relevance of the consumer standpoint, I think you're forgetting your first argument. I said "companies won't force users to sideload on iOS just like they don't on Android", you said "they don't force on it Android because why would they spend effort building a store just for one platform" and I explained how they wouldn't need to create an entire infrastructure like the App Store, all they need is to upload the app on their website and put a download link.
McDonald’s DOES have over 40% of the fast food market, though. I guess 40% is not enough in the “arbitrarily hand over control of a company’s product to the government” market.
I personally don't see how Apple dominating the mobile OS market is relevant. They dominate 100% of the iOS app market. I'm not saying they shouldn't control the App Store like the other comment is claiming we're claiming, we want alternatives to the App Store *on iOS*. Apple can do whatever they want with the App Store as long as we can build our own iOS app store (which we can't)
The issue is it's impossible to install an alternative OS because iOS devices are locked down on the hardware level. I'd be more than happy if I could install a modded OS even if it required me to do it manually.
I would argue that this would be an issue even if Apple had no dominance on the mobile OS market. They still have 100% dominance on the iOS app market.
That's their problem. They should know what they're doing.
Actually, the Mac App Store, while somewhat popular, still hasn’t really become the central method of application deployment. Same goes with the Microsoft Store on Windows. Generally speaking, most people (especially the people open to spending money on additional software) are just as likely to do the Mac equivalent of sideloading as anything else, especially if you consider that the first task most people do with a brand new computer is, unfortunately, to download Chrome (or perhaps Firefox).
People are used to doing it that way on computers. On Android people barely sideload