[losingthefight]

I see this argument a lot, and I think it's fine if not a tad flawed. If that's what you want, you can keep it. I don't really see anyone saying "kill the review process" and "open everything by default". This would all go away if Apple simply made it a setting to allow other IPAs AND allowed outside payment / subscription management. Keep the garden if you want it. Don't enable outside installs. If you don't want to support a company not using Apple Pay and the like, then don't! You're the consumer! The difference here is Apple doesn't give you a choice. Even if the developer does all the legwork to build a payment system (for example, they have a web app as well) and market the app on their own, they have to give Apple their cut. You don't get a choice and neither does the developer.

[jakebasile]

That's not how it would work though. You'd see things similar to what Epic themselves did on Android originally, where they required people who wanted to play Fortnite to download the APK directly from Epic, which of course led to hundreds of fake and infected apps on the net, harming users.

[thekyle]

So which is better: having no Fortnite at all or having no Fortnite in the App Store with the option to sideload. If you strictly want to stay in the App Store then nothing changes for you and the situation is neither worse nor better. If you just want to play Fortnite on your iPhone and don't care about the App Store then the latter option is a better.

[pfranz]

> So which is better: having no Fortnite at all or having no Fortnite in the App Store with the option to sideload

It's too simplistic and disingenuous to present it that way. Last month there was Fornite in the App Store and no option to sideload.

Right now I count 34 Adobe apps in the Apple's phone App Store. I'm very confident if this precedent is set Adobe will have their own app store and very likely will not have anything but a placeholder in Apple's App Store.

[jakebasile]

I'd rather have less apps available than to have every app of a certain revenue or above distributed independently. I don't want my iPhone to turn into my Windows gaming machine.

I want an iPhone primarily _because_ the App Store is the only place to get apps.

[judge2020]

The last part of the GP comment still stands:

> which of course led to hundreds of fake and infected apps on the net, harming users.

> If you just want to play Fortnite on your iPhone and don't care about the App Store then the latter option is a better.

Not unless you get a Fortnite that has an ad at the bottom of the screen and ships as much PII as it can to some third-party company, or offers 2x v-bucks and steals CC info.

[donmcronald]

> which of course led to hundreds of fake and infected apps on the net, harming users.

The app stores are facilitating that in a way though. They're keeping the users as dumb as possible and not making any effort to differentiate between legitimate or malicious apps that are sideloaded.

If it were a matter of going to epicgames.com, clicking "Install for Android", and confirming a prompt that says "You're about to install an app from epicgames.com", I think it would be a lot easier to train users to understand that.

[lolsal]

> This would all go away if Apple simply made it a setting to allow other IPAs

It's not that simple. Right now when I look at the apps on my phone, I have a very, very high confidence that they are not malware. It's not 100% though - right? Because I have to trust some entity. I choose to trust Apple. If apple opens up side loading of apps, I have _much less_ confidence that when I look at my phone, the apps are not malware.

Unless I'm enrolling in an MDM, I implicitly trust everything on my device.

> This would all go away if Apple simply made it a setting to allow other IPAs

Again I think you're missing the point. Do you know how _awesome_ it is as a user that Apple manages my payment method and paying for random apps, and random subscriptions is managed by my Apple ID? I don't have to hunt down 'unsubscribe' emails, or call any phone numbers, or any of that garbage - I go into the control panel and click a button and now I'm no longer paying for that subscription. Allowing that stuff to happen outside of Apple would be a huge _negative_ for me.

> Keep the garden if you want it. Don't enable outside installs.

The wall around the garden is important. Sure, I could get my leg amputated in the street by a doctor with tools from my garage - but I'd rather have that done in a hospital where ingress and egress are more controlled and contamination is less likely.

> The difference here is Apple doesn't give you a choice.

Maybe the difference here is I made my choice already - I picked Apple. I don't want to have to think about every little feature and whether or not it increase my exposure to risk. If you value all that other stuff, go play in the Android world. I don't, so I don't even think about it until these threads come up.

> Even if the developer does all the legwork to build a payment system (for example, they have a web app as well) and market the app on their own, they have to give Apple their cut. You don't get a choice and neither does the developer.

You're conveniently omitting a huge feature of having Apple manage all of that stuff: _Apple manages all of that stuff_, not Epic or the kid that implements the next subscription-based flappy bird.

[drenvuk]

In every single one of your responses you've omitted the possibility of there being an option for people to run sideloaded apps while allowing you the ability to stay in Apple's safe embrace.

Just like you say "we can use Android" why can't we say "you can just stay on the app store"?

[lolsal]

You're not understanding what I'm saying; I'm not communicating the point well enough.

The fact that is impossible to side load apps is a feature to me. If Apple enables you and others to side load apps, it removes a feature and something I value.