[mywittyname]

If you don't care about sideloading? Don't sideload, just use the Apple Store.

Users like you have zero skin in the game. Nothing in your workflow will change, other than you might get cheaper applications.

[darknessmonk]

Nope. Hurts overall experience. Not only the App's won't be curated the same as the other ones, but now I would have to maybe reach to some webside to download a .ipa file or to download a secondary App store to get a apps that otherwise would be available on App Store.

[chungus_khan]

Then keep using the curated store? It only hurts if Apple's store can't compete with alternative ones. There's no such problem on Android because developers and users are fine with the Play Store.

Epic even tried doing a sideloaded Fortnite for Android and people didn't download it, so they came back.

[zepto]

This keeps getting repeated but is false.

New stores will pay for exclusives rights to popular apps just as video streaming platforms do for video.

Users will have no choice but to use a jumble of different stores.

[chungus_khan]

Then why hasn't it happened? Android has always had sideloading and this is not the case. Just asserting it to be false isn't convincing.

[zepto]

Why doesn’t Epic have an Android App Store?

If they want an independent store, there is no reason for them not to create one for Android.

If Android was a model for what Epic wants, they would have built a store there.

It’s pretty obvious that this is just about them going where the money is.

[chungus_khan]

As I said, they tried and failed because nobody downloaded it. I'm not sure why you're suddenly bringing Epic's motives into a comment chain about the desirability of sideloading though? Epic is obviously looking to skirt store fees and doesn't actually prefer to run their own store, but that has nothing to do with anything above in the chain.

[dieortin]

Until you’re forced to download the FB App Store for Facebook apps, the Epic Games store for theirs, the Google App Store for Google applications...

It’s not true users who don’t want to side load have zero skin in the game. The entire ecosystem would suffer.

[chungus_khan]

Why hasn't it on Android then?

[kingsleyopara]

Supposedly (if you buy into Epics recent lawsuit against Google) because Google have abused their power to prevent it...

[bezout]

Maybe the majority of users doesn’t care and uses the Play Store. They probably don’t know about F-droid and co.