> This entire fight about Apple being required to allow third party "App Stores" -- how about simply the user can load whatever software they want to on the device which they are the owner of?

The Atari 2600 was an immensely popular home computer for a decade(ish), but it didn't exactly spark the personal computer revolution. Why? Because it used the iphone software distribution model. You could only buy licensed software (in the form of cartridges) even though technically it was of course a programmable computer. So it was as open as an iphone.

All the actual progress happened on Apple ][, C64, the Radio Shack computers and later the IBM clones. Because, obviously, anyone could write and sell any software they wanted so the market growth went exponential.

A lesson to society, there.

> You could only buy licensed software (in the form of cartridges) even though technically it was of course a programmable computer.

In fact just the opposite. Activision was one of the first third-party game manufacturers and Atari tried to sue them into the ground for it.

It's widely believed that the massive glut of 3rd party games (with effectively zero quality control) for the 2600 partially contributed to the video game crash of 83 [1].

It's also one of the reasons Nintendo learned from this mistake and enforced everything from limitations around the total number of games a company could produce per year, to the seal of approval, etc. on their Nintendo Entertainment System.

Also having grown up with the Atari 2600 - I don't know anybody who would have described it as home computer. It was a video game console first and foremost. Are you possibly thinking of the Atari ST line? [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit_computers

The original iPhone didn't launch with an app store, and they weren't even planning to have one, only to allow big providers like AT&T to write software for it. Jailbreakers and reverse-engineers figured out the API and how to compile apps for the iPhone, and then they figured out they could rent-seek 30% and created a new department in their company that provides them billions of income stream.

I don't think that's true. Third parties produced unlicensed 2600 carts in droves. It was Nintendo that enacted strict licensing requirements.

The 2600 just sucked as a computer.