I said a small group, not just Epic. That group would be made up of the usual suspects - Epic, Amazon, Google, Facebook, various other TenCent properties etc.
Nothing about it would make it either developer friendly, nor consumer friendly.
That doesn't sound too bad to me from either side TBH. As a developer, it would be useful to have a choice between multiple publishers with the advantage of only needing to deal with one at a time instead of three. I also think competition in app stores would spur a bunch of innovation.
As a consumer with an Android phone, a Windows PC, and an iPad as a tablet, the idea of buying all my stuff from one company's app store and having the licensing work across all 3 devices is extremely appealing.
I think one of the biggest fears of Apple, Google, etc. is that it's very possible someone will come along and build a better app store with better policies for both developers and consumers.
Here's a concrete example of "better". Judging by this [1] apps in iOS 14 can specify a DoH resolver to use for DNS.
> Apps will be able to specify a DoH resolver that will override the DNS resolver set by DHCP or RA for queries made from their app.
Guess what that means? Apple is going to let developers override MY choice as a network admin and DoH is going to be used for un-blockable ads. Why should they be able to do that? I would absolutely buy into an app store that forbid that behavior and forced apps to observe DHCP settings over app settings.
I'd also be fine with an app store that didn't force the use of sign in with Apple or Apple Pay. And that's where the problem is for Apple. Forcing developers to use Apple technologies isn't benefitting anyone but Apple. You might argue that it's better for consumers, but if those are features wanted by developers' customers, developers will add them without being forced to.
If each one commands a significant percentage of user attention, you’ll have to deal with them all.
People don't buy luxury jeans because they are better jeans than Levi's. People buy luxury jeans because of marketing. The same applies here. Consider how many people in the HN comments say they like iPhone because of privacy even though it is so clearly worse for privacy (can't install an app on your device without telling Apple, can't get your GPS location without telling Apple, etc.).
Also you seem to be just wrong. iOS doesn’t inform Apple when apps make GPS location requests.
You are wrong about GPS location requests:
"By enabling Location Services for your devices, you agree and consent to the transmission, collection, maintenance, processing, and use of your location data and location search queries by Apple and its partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based and road traffic-based products and services."
It will also send your location to Apple when no app is requesting your location:
"If Location Services is on, your iPhone will periodically send the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple, to be used for augmenting this crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations."
Unlike on Android, you cannot get your location without sending this data to Apple:
"To use features such as these, you must enable Location Services on your iPhone"
You seem to be ignoring these important words:
“...in an anonymous and encrypted form”
Apple doesn’t end up knowing where you are.
Even though colloquially we can say they ‘send your location’, they don’t actually learn where you are.
This invalidates support for your claim about how iOS privacy is worse than Android.
This is not so hard to reverse given that Apple also has your location tied to your identity from other Apple services you use. Once you match that location to the encrypted user, who is often seen requesting their location data from work or home, you get the encrypted user's location data identified.
Compare to Android, where you don't have to send your location data anywhere to get your GPS location. iOS location privacy is strictly worse.
You also ignored the fact that every app install gets reported to Apple tied to your identity, which is arguably even more egregious.
I'd rather an iOS app have location listed as a capability in the manifest than have Android send my location to Google for the purpose of selling advertising based on store visits.