The possible future where that plan goes off the rails is if developers start pulling their software off the App Store and stop following Apple’s rules because they can. Right now they can’t while remaining iPhone developers.

Like I said, there’s a lot that’s a dumpster fire with developer relations between Apple and App Store developers, but you always know where Apple stands:

1. Apple

2. Apple’s Customers

3. Developers

Yeah I’d like them to loosen up some of the restrictions, but it’s still to my advantage as an iPhone customer that developers who choose to develop for iPhones from the smallest to the very largest to even the government are forced to deal with Apple on Apple’s terms to distribute software.

Apple’s dumpster fire in developer relations is also only half the story over the last decade; a lot of the largest developers of the most popular apps on the App Store have also been at the forefront of innovating new and creative ways to try and circumvent even the smallest limitations on iPhones leading to Apple spending the better part of the decade coming up with new APIs, new entitlements and new legal contracts walking this tightrope between enabling or keeping enabled useful APIs while also protecting user privacy and security. It’s not an easy task they’ve taken up, and short of the government literally outlawing most of the surveillance-oriented business practices a lot of Apple’s peers engage in (practices which the government also benefits from), this is basically the next best thing.