There probably are people who purchase the iPhone for the App Store and I don't doubt that some are in this thread, I'm just not convinced this accurately reflects how people's purchase decisions are actually made out in the wild.
People buy iPhones for all sorts of reasons and making it about a singular issue really misses the point for most people. Some people buy it for the cameras, or because it works well with their Mac, or because they've always had an iPhone, or because it's a pretty lifestyle product or, yes, because they like the app distribution model. The fact is people don't have a choice, for better or worse (!), and that gives Apple (and all the gatekeepers in other areas) quite a bit of power over all sorts of things.
From the perspective of a regulator of an entire market -- one that has a vested interest in enabling more competition and innovation particularly from local companies -- the argument that all people had to do was to switch their entire ecosystem is not really credible.
And here we are.
You talk about people buying iPhones for all sorts of different reasons - again, if you buy something without checking to see if it fits your needs,
especially when you're spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on said item, and it turns out that it doesn't meet your needs,
that's on you. Again, if you bought a Tesla, because you really the big flat-panel display or the "self driving" mode, or the sunroof, or whatever, and then you complained that you can't fill it up at the gas station, don't expect any sympathy, and don't go trying to get the government to require gasoline engines in Teslas. And I'm not saying "they just need to change their entire ecosystem", I'm saying if they picked the wrong ecosystem (or the wrong type of vehicle), they need to deal with the consequences of their actions themselves, not mandate some sort of government deus ex machina to clear up their mess for them. The time to do research about how to spend a whole bunch of money is
before you spend all that money.
Insisting that there must be government controlled competition
inside of the ecosystem that Apple has built is like insisting that Taco Bell must be allowed to set up a stand and sell their food
inside of McDonalds. That's not how you compete - that's more like looking for government sanctioned ways to loot a market that someone else did all the work to set up. Go build your own hardware/software ecosystem or look for one more to your liking.
Apple built an entire ecosystem, they researched, designed, and built phones that a lot of people said were completely nuts and would never work, at the time. They negotiated with phone carriers to get a level of access that the carriers never allowed previously (frankly, without that behind-the-scenes work by Apple, we'd probably all still be using flip phones and buying $2 midi ringtones). They built the OS and all the system software to run on their phones, and they worked through many iterations over the years to make their phones popular, by adding compelling features that people wanted. They added an App Store, and let anyone willing to jump through a few hoops write apps to run on said phones. This became a very lucrative market that many people want to get in to, because of all the work Apple has put in building the iPhone and making it a compelling device and ecosystem. It's a valuable ecosystem
because Apple built it. It didn't just happen by coincidence or magically appear one day. (And to be clear, I'm not saying that only Apple is capable of building such a thing, just that few others have put in the work to do so.) Google has also built a compelling ecosystem, running on somewhat different principles. Good for them. I don't want an Android phone, but it sounds like a perfect fit for you.
Outside of tech forums like these, you're not seeing a huge groundswell of people arguing that they need sideloading, what you're seeing is the end results of big competitors to Apple lobbying politicians hard to gain advantage for themselves - the easy way, by getting politicians to decree something, rather than by putting in the work to build their own ecosystem. They're not doing this in the interests of the end users, they're doing this so other big companies can make lots more money.
Apple is not shutting out competition (in this respect - there are other areas where perhaps they are - that's a separate discussion), the competition is
Android, and the competition is
winning.
People like you are trying to take away a choice that many of us made quite intentionally (to be sure, some made the choice without thinking - that's on them), and justifying it because you believe you know what is better for us than we do ourselves.
