It's not just about that. I am sure if the court would force them to allow sideloading, they'll make sure to never promote your app if you decide to offer both options to the users.

It's a tradeoff. You may have the knowledge and risk awareness to install anything, circumvent protections like you still can on MacOS, but the vast majority does not and should not have that power; this led to huge botnets during the Windows XP era when many internet connections were first set up. They overcompensated with Vista, asking permissions for everything so people developed a kneejerk "just hit accept". The iPhone came out not long after, with a safety by default - which invariably meant restricting what a user can and cannot do and install on their system.

I think it's been a net positive overall. The percentage of people that want to do and install more with it is small.

> > But people should also be able to get apps from whatever store they want.

The web. Without scare walls or hidden "enable downloads" menu settings.

And apps should no longer have to use first party payment rails, first party authentication/sign in rails, or be forced to jump through review or upgrade hoops.

I don't think the Mac is a great counter example. It started as a fully open platform, so the expectations are different. The iPhone was never anything other than an appliance, Apple is not trying to turn an open garden into a walled one, because it started that way.

Counter example to what? Why should they not be able to run both a relatively open ecosystem and a mostly closed one?

I don’t think Apple is arguing that it is impossible to allow more open ways to install apps on iPhones. I think they’re saying that they don’t want to, and that they shouldn’t have to.

People are free to buy Apple (or an Android flavour, or no smartphone at all). But there are many many things which goes into a buying decision than what manner of software delivery is available.

This duopoly does not truly offer a lot of choice, so any criticism must happen from within the confines of the current reality.

I’m not going to tell a pedestrian who wants safer roads to stop being a participant in traffic, I accept that they have very little real choice.

Having to uncritically accept anything and everything the manufacturer of your device does is not really viable and is a recipe for a worse future.

They also go out of the way to make these stores prohibitively expensive to set up and still applies app review to apps distributed through those stores (even though they claim they don't and won't)

> how pathetic Apple's software/service ecosystem has been

Compared to what?

Also, are we certain that a better alternative would really appear? E.g. I’m aware of f-droid and I’d install a similar ios libre software store, but I’m not aware of any, even in the EU where alt stores are possible.

But the OS is the main thing that sets Apple apart from other phones; you can get equivalent hardware for half the price, and you get to install whatever OS you want already. The prison is mainly in your head in this case.

apple isn't allowed to choose whatever I can install on the device that I own and that I purchased with my own money. I am not renting the device. Get your dirty fingers off of what I can or can't do with it.

https://www.darlinghq.org/

seems like you can get it to run on windows via wsl if you want to run apps built for macs on your windows machine

is there a need to complain? windows might not be putting in support for it, but unlike apple in their store, they arent actively preventing you from doing so

Ridiculous argument. Microsoft isn't stopping me from running Apple programs on my Windows PC.

That's not the argument, and you know it. It's not complaints that cross-platform binaries don't run, it's that Apple gatekeeps development in terms of users actually being able to use the fruits of that development (without onerous work arounds like having to reinstall once per week, or jailbreak).

Okay. Now flip this free-enterprise metaphor.

Apple is dictating the behavior of every business operating in the digital market (Apple itself brags that this amounts to over $1 trillion, with a T, in economic activity), with the App Store, which has 70-80% profit margins, and numerous dev horror stories. Rejecting your update over something they previously approved, or something they let all your competitors do. Forcing their IAP system on you. Dictating what links you can put in your app, how you present prices (don't call out the Apple tax), what you can tell consumers in emails. Forcing their direct competitors to have an inferior user experiences (can't subscribe in Spotify, can't buy books in Kindle; oh, and bundling Apple Music/Books/TV with the OS, and advertising them throughout the OS). Threatening retaliation if you complain publicly ("If you run to the press, it never helps.") Blocking VPNs or secure messaging in authoritarian countries, and you can't sideload. Sabotaging the web to keep their monopoly (even trying to kill PWAs recently).

Apple feels entitled to a higher profit margin on your business than your business will ever achieve for itself! That's nuts!

Large corporations with large marketshare can easily do significantly uncompetitive things, with little effort on their part.

No monopoly required.

All that is required is that they have large marketshare, an important product, and it is difficult for users to change to alternatives, or avoid its uncompetitive behavior.

Choosing a phone involves balancing numerous features of devices. There is no phone market with the thousands of competing devices it would take to really cover what a customer might ideally want. So choices often balance so many things, involve so much practical investment, that they make switching devices over a few things, or even many things, from awfully unpleasant to very difficult.

And, with great market power, comes great responsibility: to not become a barrier to competitive innovation and hard work.

By definition, Apple's strict gatekeeping App Store, a significant feature on a significant general purpose computing platform, is anti-competitive. There is no technical reason why side loading or side-stores couldn't thrive, on such a general purpose device intertwined in all our lives.

Onerous fees and terms and selective limitation (relative to Apple's own offerings) for developers make it even more anticompetitive.

Of course, anyone who likes having fewer options, or just the options they have now, is free to not explore others. For now and forever. Amen.

> Broadly speaking, we are in a position where we, the general public with the backing of the government, want to change how a private corporation uses it's products that it sold to us

Yes, because it's "we the people" not "we the corporations".