It's funny. Apple get a lot of (fairly justified) stick for their walled garden approach – but if they launched a pricey laptop with a version of macOS locked to the App Store, the Internet would collectively lose its mind.
This hasn't lessened their grip on the market at all, Android now dominates the mobile scene and Google keeps tight control.
So I just don't get Apple and Microsoft.
Google has a MASSIVE advantage over what competing services can do on Android – trust me, I’ve tried to replace them with FLOSS ones without rooting.
Meanwhile here's Apple, the only apps that can be installed have to come from the App store (where Apple gets their 30% cut).
Many companies even distribute their internal tools over the Play store. You can't expect normal users to go find some arcane setting and accept security warnings in order to enable standalone APK installation. Incidentally, the option is hidden in completely different submenus depending on Android version and customizations by the manufacturer.
The developer agreement for the Play store even comes with an "anti-competition clause," explicitly forbidding anyone from distributing software that could compete with Google's app distribution business. Unless you do it outside the Play store, in which case you have yourself a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.
If you try to install an app without unknown sources, you receive a notification telling you where to turn enable installation, if you desire. It's not nearly as complicated as you're making it out to be. As for the security warnings, it is a security risk to install apps from unknown publishers. It's extremely similar to what Microsoft does when you try to install an unknown exe.
1) Apple should have built an iBook after they built the Apple TV which broke the touch model.
>Second of all, in a walled garden macOS, you could not have most of the Unix tools, because they break the sandboxes.
Which tool breaks what sandbox? I think you're conflating root access with userland UNIX tools.