[overgard]

I mean, in general I dislike some of the more extreme app store gating.. but if apps are getting vibe coded with little effort I think gatekeeping is more important than ever. I think "is the author willing to put in the work to pass review" might be a useful heuristic, and it could also prevent things like vulnerable software being published. Plus it amuses me to imagine big tech having to deal with the slop apocalypse they've created!

[hal-eisen]

My problem with the gatekeeping is that it isn't applied fairly. It's a central control point where a government can put pressure on the gatekeeper to suppress undesirable content. Plus, there are billions of people in the world who cannot qualify for Google's latest guidelines for becoming a registered developer. My team's app https://www.appdevforall.org/code-on-the-go/ is about empowering those people and if sideloading goes away then they won't be able to build and share the apps they need.

[robgough]

Review times have already spiked, apparently, although I've never found them particularly good. There used to be a third-party website that tracked this via user submissions, though that was shut down when they made genuine efforts to improve timings several years ago as it was deemed no longer neccesary.

I think it's a fair criticism that there will be a lot of people putting "lower-quality" apps on there. I do think Claude did a better job of this than I would have managed. It certainly seems to work well enough.

I do believe Apple will have to rethink exactly what they want to gatekeep and why. If nothing else, in the context of allowing people to get more out of their powerful devices. For example, I wish my iPad Pro could actually do more useful things with it's M4 processor. Hopefully that's something the new CEO has on his list.