"Introducing: iLess - A $15/month optional subscription fee that removes sideloading from your phone."
Sure to be a smash hit, sounds like exactly what you're looking for!
The trouble is that the walled garden approach only works if the wall goes all the way around. If Facebook, Google, or the other big ad companies are allowed to access the iOS ecosystem without consumer protections, then they absolutely will and will force users to go along with it. This is about developer freedom, not user freedom.
Apple does. I buy a Macbook, and I can modify the bootloader to completely leave MacOS. It's a pain in the ass, and Apple certainly doesn't make it easy as it was on x86, but it's an option. Even if I use MacOS, I still have the option to disable system integrity, install unsigned apps and use third-party software managers.
That's a system that lets me escape the walled garden. They give me concessions inside their OS and an escape-hatch for third-party OSes if they really fuck things up. The iPhone has none of those things. If you buy an iPhone, your only way to leave the walled garden is to not use the iPhone. Buying an Android phone does not break your iPhone out of the walled garden.
Without this becoming a rant, what fraction of that "security" is protecting you from nothing more than apps that didn't pay the Apple tax. You must admit, the narrative that only approved apps are "good"/"safe" is insanely self serving and conveniently hard to falsify.
You have a point but without Apple’s restrictions, someone can build tracking free Facebook client too, if that’s something people want.
If it requires diving in to Settings or connecting the phone to a computer -- Facebook would never abandon the App Store, friction to using side-loading would be too high.
If Facebook makes a change that kills the low-tracking front-ends and insists everyone be tracked more, and in response you grovel to them and put up with their new app, then no amount of EU law or App store law was ever going to protect you from yourself. Apple store polices are a red herring, the problem you're actually highlighting is the adversarial relation you have with fb.
Reminder that Epic tried this with Fortnite and eventually went back on the play store. And this was on the platform that had sideloading since day one.
Epic Games is going to put their own storefront on iOS, and it's going to have few if any of the polices for customer protection that the App Store does.
Then an app like F-Droid will come along and offer even more protections than the App Store. Confound it!
For my part, this is a step in the right direction. With a few more fixes, iOS might even become usable enough for me to buy a device that runs it.
If you wanted to use an abusive subscription system currently you would have to do it outside the app via a web browser
Then [company] lose marketshare to those who don't care about anything outside of the App Store, and when media outlets and social networks pick up on how [company] app on this third party store tracks so much more information than it used to, even more people will uninstall. It's what we've seen on Android for years, there is a huge reputation factor when it comes to third party app stores. That reputation factor is the reason why F-Droid is the major choice outside of the Play Store.
There is incentive here for app developers to continue to provide solid services. Just not Facebook, as their primary goal is tracking.
The fact that Facebook can do any spying on you at all (because it can still track you, on your current Apple device, right now) is because government regulators are dropping the ball. It's not Apple's responsibility, it's not something they're good at, and it's not something that they should be doing.
The government, so far, has been rather toothless in terms of ensuring the privacy of people and have issued paltry fines to the companies that amounted to no more than a slap on the wrist and extracting a promise that they'll do better next time (with their hands behind their back and fingers crossed).
The reason I purchase apple devices is because they are the only ones that are taking my privacy seriously.
Government regulators are letting the market decide how valuable customer data is and Apple is saying "it is valuable and our customers value not letting random people getting it." Thus, I am voting with my wallet because in this case, votes for elected officials isn't doing much.
Well... https://www.macrumors.com/2022/11/21/icloud-for-windows-corr...
You don't need the App Store for security, it isn't a dichotomy.
I’m free to resolve my cancelled flight by either waiting a week for the free alternative or buying a combination of rail and ferry tickets to get me from Stansted to Berlin, but only because I have an understanding boss, enough money, and an app which can get me arbitrary hotels on route because that’s more than a day’s journey unless I plan to sleep in a train station.
I’m free to not remain in a country whose politics or laws I dislike. But only because I got lucky with a few things.
I’m free to not download any app which forces me to sideload. But only because they don’t exist yet on iOS (except for the ways that apparently never counted according to all the people demanding this) — there’s too many ways a theoretical “optional” can become an “actually mandatory”, from laws to employers to defacto monopolies, and those are just the ones I’ve seen examples of in other contexts.