I call complete bullshit on this. I want the same thing, and so so many other people. The only reason we don’t have it is that it’s a lot of work and nobody has done it yet.
Blaming Apple for their business standing in the way of network effects is just an excuse.
If the software was built, we’d find a way to run it.
Nobody has built anything like the whole stack needed for a secure distributed App Store with private payments.
It’s obvious you can’t build such a thing on top of Apple’s store, it’s just not credible to claim to be trying and being stopped by Apple.
You could build one for Linux or Android. If you actually made it work, then it would be existence proof that a centralized model is not needed for a private and secure store.
That hasn’t been proven and the way to prove it is clearly to build it where it can be built, not to make arguments about Apple’s bad faith.
Offering services to fully anonymous counterparties is fraught with challenges.
Android is extremely vulnerable to third party attackers via apps.
> I can't only build apps and platforms that only work for half the potential users.
Are you sure even close to half of your potential users use (exclusively) iOS? I severely doubt that.
Exactly for the reasons you mention, people who want self-managed security don't use iOS.
And what apple is doing is not giving their customers and users a choice other than an extremely radical one of abandoning the platform completely.
FWIW, though: 1) even if you expected the vast majority of people to be using one system instead of the other, you can't build a communications platform or payment system or ecosystem generally at all that simply cuts them out as it causes problems for the people and companies trying to adopt it... if you build a platform for decentralized apps that doesn't support iOS or a chat system that doesn't support iOS or a payment system that doesn't support iOS, well, you now have to convince everyone else in the world not to support iOS: your hands are frankly tied here.