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Tbh I feel like the market already has, otherwise the people who buy iPhones would have bought Androids instead. Only here in HN and other Apple enthusiast comments sections will you see ideas suggesting otherwise, but I’m convinced that they are a very small and inconsequential minority of hobbyists.

Anyway, I still think that Apple can benefit from this. An alternate app store paves the way for app developers to build and enforce their own walled gardens which would result in poor user experiences, so if Apple made more of the apps that third-party developers would otherwise do and such apps work seamlessly with each other and the OS, then people will have an incentive to buy into Apple’s own services ecosystem instead of that of some other third-party developer that does not have total control of the OS.

> otherwise the people who buy iPhones would have bought Androids instead

The problem with this sort of reasoning is that the ability to sideload is only one dimension that someone might use to decide which phone to buy.

Maybe someone values something else the iPhone offers slightly higher. But they're still not happy they have to make that trade off. And there's no technical reason why this trade off needs to be made, and no reason we (as a society) need to allow a company (a construct that we as a society allow to exist) to restrict our choices.

On the other side of the argument, I use Android specifically because I have more control over what I run on the device. But I am constantly uncomfortable that my choice reduces my privacy and security. Why should I have to choose between these two things? Again, there's no reason beyond a company's profit motive. And I don't think we (as a society) should put company profit motives above our own needs.

Frankly it does not matter if you are correct that no one cares about this stuff outside of hobbyists.

If you’re voting with your money to make the trade offs that come with an iPhone, then what you traded off wasn’t something that you badly wanted anyway and it was an opportunity cost that you were willing to incur. Literally free market economics already at work there, so frankly I don’t see why your point matters either.

I don’t think this would suffice since the regulations would apply to EVERY iOS device, not just a specific iPhone.

Agree - the time to have launched a "dev/gamer" phone (maybe call it the xPhone with xOs) was probably 2 years ago when they first got a whiff of these regulations.

They could then have done a more controlled experiment on a subset of willing participants and had a much smaller blast radius if things got really hacked.

Now that the regulations are here its too late.

I’m far more excited about what this may unlock for the iPad than the iPhone. I might actually be able to use it to the capabilities of its hardware.

Give every iPhone User the option to switch modes. ;)

If anyone from Apple marketing/leadership is out there... as a tech savvy but plain jane iPhone user - I really do just want a bubble wrapped, walled garden iPhone experience where everything just works and I don't have to read every scary sounding "iPhone has been hacked" click bait article in breathless suspense only to read the fine print to find the end user in question was dabbling in some sketchy third party app.

I feel the same. However, Apple has been playing with fire with their 30% cut and people have been warning for years that this would be a likely outcome in non-US regions. Now the outcome is worse for both Apple and users who prefer the security of the iOS ecosystem.

I really think that Apple could have/could still head this off by introducing a separately branded edgier "dev" phone for people who want to live on the cutting edge.

That ship has sailed. The new EU regulations require that both phones have side loading.

FWIW you can apply for Apple Small Business Program to reduce it to 15% cut.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/small-business-program...

I know, but I am still paying the 30% for every app I purchase that is not from a small business.

You're not paying the 30%; the vendor is paying 15-30%. Prices wouldn't drop by 30% if Apple removed the requirement, and I'd suggest that it's extremely naive to argue otherwise.

I think it's more complicated than that. Yes, sellers price at whatever they believe the market can bear. But certainly some do push (past?) that envelope because of that 30%. Without as much pressure on their final take, at least some sellers wouldn't feel pressured to price quite so high. Some may have to pad their pricing (and accept the fact of fewer buyers) simply because they can't make their business work otherwise.

Also consider, though, that we have nothing to compare to. Since app developers can't sell outside the App Store, we have no way of knowing what they'd do if they weren't subject to that 30% cut.

But for that comparison: consider food delivery apps. Restaurants have to pay similar portions of their take to the food delivery services. And many restaurants do inflate their menu prices on the food delivery apps. So clearly there's some elasticity in "what the market will bear", since they charge different prices for in-person or to-go dining vs. food bought through a third-party delivery service. There's no reason why this should be any different for apps sold on the App Store.

But... I just want a "plain jane" iPhone that won't stand out, but does what I want it to do.

Apple could just introduce an extra setting to unlock the phone for developer mode, the same way Sailfish does. Then there's an option to install a terminal with easy SSH access, and away we go!

No need to spend time on new non-Appley designs. This fits right into their existing environment, and probably already exists in some form.

I think the primary difference between why a dev mode switch would work for Sailfish but less so for Apple iOS is the size of the install base.

It's so large that any tech article with "iPhone"+"hack"+images of "this iPhone is the ver same iPhone as the one in your pocket" is going straight to the top in terms of tech news click cycle.

The fact that the "iPhone hack" only applies to users who have enabled "dev mode" will be buried at the bottom in the fine print.

Presenting different graphics/hardware form factor and branding would ideally prevent the majority of honest tech sites from using the images of the standard iPhone and they would have to use headlines like "xPhone has been hacked" or leave it at "An Apple smartphone has been hacked" which would cue me that I could safely ignore it.

I think that's a fair reason for why Apple doesn't want to do this.

But I don't particularly care. If there are negative consequences to actually allowing people to own the things they buy, then that should just be the price of doing business.

I think they did it well in macos. You can't accidentally run an unsigned app, but if you really want to, the os won't stop you.

Perhaps what would be interesting is a MacOS running on a phone and tablet form factor. Maybe call them the macPhone/macPad or mPhone/mPad?

How about running the desktop of macos when an external monitor is connected?