[NotPractical]

I agree in principle that you should call out all companies equally when they do bad things, but there's hardly any love for Google here. Meanwhile Apple's product announcements routinely get over 1k upvotes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40636844, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40286029

If you search HN stories by popularity for "Google" and "Apple" on the first page you get:

Apple: 10 positive, 10 neutral, 10 negative.

Google: 2 positive, 10 neutral, 18 negative.

Not even close, but that pretty much aligns with my personal experience on the site.

> Is installing altstore to sideload really that offensive?

Yes. AltStore is a gross hack and will most likely be patched out by Apple if enough people start using it.