https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30017171
Then you have a truth. The extent to which people want Apple to curate which apps they can install will control the amount of leverage Apple has to do it with. If people really want it, they'll put up a strong resistance to installing apps from other sources, even if Apple isn't forcing them to. Then Apple will have leverage to enforce good behavior. Or people will only switch to other high quality stores that also reject bad apps.
If it turns out hardly anybody cares, they won't. But then the argument that most people are buying Apple products specifically because they want a curated experience would disintegrate against empirical evidence.
People will do whatever it takes to use these big apps so long as the friction is perceived to not be to great and by the time the cons are experienced we will all be too entrenched. And no the law will not move to protect consumers, not until it’s far too late, just as this bill is.
> If it turns out hardly anybody cares, they won't. But then the argument that most people are buying Apple products specifically because they want a curated experience would disintegrate against empirical evidence.
And then it goes both ways. If people go out and buy an iPhone because it's shiny and they're uninformed, without realizing it gives a huge corporation the ability to control what they can do with it while collecting rents on everything they buy and hiding all of that from them, that's at least as much of a problem as some app wants to show you ads for shoes because you did a search for shoes.
The solution for both is to do something about the information problem while still giving people choices, not declaring Apple to be Father and all living under corporate patriarchy.
If nobody cares then convince them to care or lose. Locking them in a gilded cage "for their own good" is not a valid solution.