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Comment by emsy | Hacker News Reader

This article does not answer the question how Apple‘s privacy and security model would be impacted by 3rd party stores. In fact, there already have been 3rd party stores with business certificates and you can sideload without a developer subscription, although the app will stop working after a week. None of this has impacted the App Store model so far. I have yet to hear a good argument that this will be the case.

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Because most people are not tech-savvy and will accidentally end up installing malware and whatnot?

I’ve had to help factory reset quite a few Android phones because they were being spammed with sex ads notifications and the search engine was being hijacked (wouldn’t be surprised if they had also been infected with keyloggers and secretly uploading photos and such).

As I said these issue already exists with sideloading and private App Stores. Some of those issues are alleviated with the OS model, which simply doesn't allow to change the search engine and install keyloggers. If someone chooses to leave the App Store and be vulnerable to issues such as sex ad notifications and secretly uploading photos the issue should be how it's communicated. I haven't used an Android device in a while, but the last time I used one it was a simple dialog and you could install whatever you like. On the Mac you have to open the settings and permit every unsigned application if gatekeeper is active. Something like this seems like a reasonable solution.

There are apps on the Play Store which will put ads right on your lock screen…

A huge amount of the security model on iOS is by virtue of the AppStore - it’s the AppStore process that ensures apps don’t give themselves entitlements that completely break the platform security model - eg give themselves system service entitlements, get access to user data, etc

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