People are only now realizing this?

They've realized this many times, only to forget the next day.

People have been saying this for years. For the 98% of non technical users, the App Store is suitable for them because its GUI is incredibly easy to use and understand. For the 2% of people who want to be able to sideload apps and to truly do things with root privilege on their android or ios phones, enforced app stores are a terrible thing.

2% is being incredibly generous. If I asked my entire office of 200 people what rooting their phone meant, I'd be flabbergasted if 4 of them knew what I was even saying. HN and forums like it really live in a tiny, tiny bubble of vocal minorities. I've been in this industry for twenty years, and I have absolutely no interest in monkeying around with my phone. I just want it to work.

200 people is a very small sample size, and since you all work in the same office, it's likely you all have similar backgrounds and experiences. In short, probably not representative enough of the total population (on top of being a small sample size).

A sample size of 200 is a 93% confidence level. The company is international, and so is the diversity. I guarantee we don't all have the same experiences and backgrounds.

Here's a counter anecdote to yours: the organization I work in has around 1000 people, I'd say about 30% easily know what 'rooting your phone' means, and at least 5% (probably closer to 10%) do it. Also an international organization here. Your sample group, like mine, is not good enough to come to any conclusions.

Sounds like your organization is not diverse, but more of a technical one.

> For the 2% of people who want to be able to sideload apps and to truly do things with root privilege on their android or ios phones, enforced app stores are a terrible thing

Not even that: for the 2% who want to install software that hasn't annoyed {Apple, the local government}.

In addition to what others said, side loading apps is definitively possible on both platforms without a lot of effort (and doesn’t require JBs either).