Never publish anything on Apple's ecosystem as there no alternative... so don't publish at all is what you mean?
All these crazy ideas come from people who don't work in app development, clearly.
Since the dawn of computers, it has always been possible to write and publish software directly from the developer to the consumer. This is the normal state.
Apple has broken this on iOS with their model where they are the sole arbiter, gatekeeper and tax extractor, of every application.
Out of the box it is not. As root I can't read or write files that the permissions say I can, among other problems. It is still possible to disable all this but they make it more and more difficult.
If I were to bet, I'd bet that the roadmap is to eventually make OSX be iOS, where you can't do anything except what apple specifically lets you do.
iOS releases. Yes, and by choice.
And if they keep at it with OSX I won't continue releasing to that either.
Call me crazy but I'm not the one writing sob stories on HN about how Apple cucked my app which seems to be a HN weekly.