Is anyone interested in also building a list of the positives?
There is a general call for the dismantling or regulation of the App Store or forcing it to be possible to install other app stores.
If we are going to list the burdens, we should also list the benefits.
For example - preventing governments from forcing privacy destroying apps on people. E.g. the UK is now using Apple and Google’s decentralized API rather than sending everyone’s location data to Palantir.
Forcing the use of APIs, also protects the user against resource misuse - I.e. app that drain the battery or waste bandwidth etc.
Any notion of a ‘burden’ is relative to some counterfactual.
Do we mean the burden would be reduced if we were dealing with more stores?
Or do we mean compared to how things were before there was an App Store?
Or do we mean we want the government to make the rules rather than Apple?
Apple is imperfectly protecting consumers from various kinds of harm done by bad developers.
In other industries
when there is no store or trusted broker the government ends up regulating the suppliers with licensing.
Would you prefer to need a software development license and liability insurance over complying with Apple’s rules?
What’s your opinion of cookie dialogs on every web app?
That’s the direct result of the web being an open space that is regulated by governments rather than Apple.
