[ycombi3]

I'd say that they are more than moderate failures. I've heard from many acquaintances who aren't as tech literate as myself that one of the major reasons they got rid of their iPhone was not being able to install applications from outside sources.

Myself, I would never want to trust anything centralized.

[tinus_hn]

Clearly the iPhone is a massive failure and everyone is getting rid of theirs. In what country are you seeing this?

[ycombi3]

I never said it was a massive failure, but many people have switched over the years to some form of Android after getting fed up.

[jtbayly]

>>I'd say that they are more than moderate failures.

So... major failure? Is that what's in between moderate and massive?

If so, I'd love to have a major failure. :)

[ycombi3]

Meaning the central stores they attempt to force on us, not the devices themselves.

[Razengan]

> Myself, I would never want to trust anything centralized.

How is that different from trusting multiple sources? You'd just be multiplying your concerns. Any of them could slip in some malware.

The only advantage I can think of is censorship resistance, or access to older versions and discontinued products.

[AnthonyMouse]

It enables competition, which keeps everyone honest. If Amazon had an app store which was known to be full of malware then people would stop trusting them, but when there is real competition they need that trust to make money, so they would put in more effort to prevent that. If you find that your platform's app store is full of malware today when there is no competition, what is your alternative? Throw away your phone? Never install any apps?

The exposure is also not any worse when the people you trust are equally trustworthy. If you install ten apps from one distributor or ten apps from ten distributors and all of the distributors are equally trustworthy, the chance of an app you installed being approved even though it was malware is the same. It may even be lower because the distributors have to worry more about their reputations when there is competition.

And it also applies the other way. Right now they can reject apps that you want not because the apps are malicious but because they compete with the distributor's own. If there were five other trustworthy distributors then you could install it from any of them. So you could always get e-readers that compete with Amazon from Google, search apps that compete with Google from Microsoft, web browsers that compete with Apple from Mozilla and so on, no matter what kind of device you have.

[Razengan]

> acquaintances who aren't as tech literate as myself that one of the major reasons they got rid of their iPhone was not being able to install applications from outside sources

Which applications did they want to install from outside sources? Which sources?

Where does something advertise itself as an iPhone app but not available on the App Store?