[eric__cartman]

I doubt that'll happen. Android has had the possibility to create alternative app stores since the very beginning and even though there are other stores like F-Droid or whatever Samsung calls their bloatware nowadays almost no one uses them. Apple will not bloat their devices with that crap (talking about the Samsung stuff F-Droid is great and I'd love to see an equivalent for iPhones) from the factory and the vast majority of users will still use the default because it's what they are accustomed to and what's recommended by the manufacturer.

All mainstream apps will remain in the Apple store and everything will be pretty much the same with the ability to side-load whatever you please to the device you bought.

[The_Colonel]

Google Play is much less restrictive. You can download real Firefox from there, so there's no point using a different app store for that.

This might be a good side effect - to compete with other app stores (to discourage users from installing them), they might ease up the restrictions.

[cozzyd]

Does the App Store still ban GPL apps? If so, F-Droid is even more needed on iDevices...