> And ultimately it's their store and their rules.
It wouldn't be as bad if their store weren't also the only store available for the platform. Because of this forced monoculture, the criticisms are well within scope.
Criticisms of the rule are valid. Criticisms of Apple for enforcing existing rules are counter-productive. It's to everyone's benefit that all devs play by the same rules.
Yeah, so we can have one store with strict policies that protect users and the value of the hardware; and a bunch of other shit stores that offer apps that can hijack our devices. That makes sense!
And then Apple is to blame, and can spend tons of dollahs and man hours to fix problems caused by your "open" alternatives.
remember a few years back when windows was trying to promote their mobile app store and they were paying people to write shit apps just to have them hosted in the store? Or android where (at least they used to ) have fake apps that tell you how to "get" the real app ?