Recently Apple has been in the news for cases against Epic and for rulings in the EU which will require them to allow sideloading on iphones (in the EU). From the perspective of a developer that has been steeped in open-source, and a user of open platforms (Linux, Android), this is a no-brainer. Obviously people should be able to install whatever software they like on devices they own. Obviously the tools to do so should be free or at-cost; more developers and more apps bring more value to the ecosystem.
But that's not what the Apple consumers see. They see a benevolent king curating and protecting them from bad apps (nevermind that "bad apps" is nebulously defined at best, and that Apple's track record is nothing to be proud of). They do not give a shit about developers. They somehow think that the ability to voluntarily leave their prison will negatively impact them even if they don't use it. In my opinion they are thoroughly institutionalized. They don't think they can make it on the outside. And honestly that's fine. No one is forcing them to. Apple will still run the app store. They'll still have rules and curate etc. These people are against the concept of freedom. One example that comes up from this side over and over is that Facebook would leave the official app store, require users to install it from another source, and then abuse their app to spy on the users worse than they're allowed to in the app store. But the idea of not using an app from a company they consider untrustworthy apparently never occurs to them. The fact that this has not happened on Android does not comfort them. The technical reality of permissions existing at an OS level that would prevent unauthorized usage regardless of install source is lost on them.
But that's not what I want to talk about. One of the more coherent arguments that Apple apologists suggest is that game consoles are exactly the same. Game consoles could technically run arbitrary software, but you don't expect to be allowed to run whatever you want on your Nintendo, PlayStation, or Xbox. And this is true! So my thoughts on this analogy: First, we absolutely should expect to be able to run whatever we want on hardware we own. This should be fixed. But from a consumer perspective, games consoles were never marketed as anything other than a way to play the games that the company has permitted. Iphones, on the other hand, were marketed as powerful handheld computers that can do anything. "There's an app for that". Or maybe they weren't. Maybe that was a message that was inferred by developers that know that under the hood it must be a general purpose computer. Apple's marketing certainly courted developers of all stripes by promoting their audience and revenue numbers. They promoted this to the general developer audience all over the internet, not at industry insider conferences. The developers they courted to get apps on the app store were accustomed to general purpose computer markets. And buying a general purpose computer, one obviously expects to be able to run any software that one desires. But the non-developer consumers didn't see that. They see a "handheld apps console", more akin to a Nintendo Switch than to their laptop.
So that's the crux of it. What is an iPhone? Is it an "apps console" or is it a computer? If Apple were honest and explicitly promoted it as using the console model, I think many developers would accept their policies more readily.
Let's also talk about a product that actually does what I'd have liked Apple to have done: the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck is definitely marketed as a games console. But, it's implemented as a general purpose Linux computer with some nice UI and ergonomics. Go to the developer site thinking it's a games console, one might expect to have to buy a heavily marked up "development console", and pay out the nose for development tools, and pass through arbitrary gatekeeping to get your game in front of users. But no! One can develop for the Steam Deck without any particular hardware (as opposed to Apple, which requires a Mac to run their build tools). The console itself is also the development console. You can even use it as your coding environment. No special open version required. No special controlled certificate signing required.
And you know what? The Steam games market is thriving.
If the Steam Deck had a 5G modem, I'd seriously consider one instead of my next Android phone.