I also "don’t want government committees dictating the security model", but IMHO it's a big leap from that to advocating against consumer choice within a general purpose product.
It's clearly monopolistic - exploitative, monolithic, controlling.
The app store is the biggest source of friction standing between app developers and their customers.
Now - this wouldn't be a problem if Apple did the job they claim they do, improved search so it worked well, provided easy visibility for relevant apps, and threw out the scams and the trash.
That isn't what's happening. And that is a problem.
The security angle is a non-issue. Returning the app ecosystem to some semblance of functionality and fairness would is an orthogonal issue.
Apple can keep its walled garden. But it needs to start treating it like a valuable garden, not like a pile of burning trash that happens to generate huge amounts of free money.
When Apple says they rejected 1 million app submissions in 2020 and cancelled 470,000 developer accounts for fraud in the same period, do you think they’re lying?
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/11/apple-rejected-nearly-1-mill...
If you want to legislate for consumer choice do so but can we stop pretending this is some battle for choice when it's literally about two behemoth corporations arguing over how they split our money.
We disagree about what constitutes "properly empowered".
People have always wished Apple would sell computers with this or that feature, this or that peripheral or option. That’s not how it works though. If they don’t sell a device that suits your needs, you have the same recourse the rest of us have.
But do you really think they would stop with specifications for side loading and App Store APIs, security profiles and associated OS services? How about specs for police and security services back doors, tracking and surveillance. They won’t be able to help themselves. And if the US can pass laws demanding these things, that creates a precedent for Russia, China, Saudi Arabia etc to follow suit.