To me it smells like flat out dishonesty. They are pretending the App Store is this premium high quality service that the riff-raff wants to get unfair access to, while they have actually been fighting tooth, claw, and nail to make any other alternative way of getting apps onto the iPhone physically impossible. If I wanna make an app for my mom's iPhone, I *can't* because Apple is preventing me. All while saying I'm trying to take advantage of them by wanting to get my app on the App Store. While working hard to make sure I have no other options.

It's one small step removed from "stop hitting yourself" logic.