> If the App Store is forced open, say goodbye to privacy and security on iOS

There are shades of grey between "Apple takes 30%, gets to reject apps for any or no reason, and gets to auto-install Apple Music in competition with Spotify" and flipping the App Store to the Android model.

Apple has never rejected an app for no reason.

If apple was constrained from shipping apps that have competitors, they would effectively be prevented from shipping any apps at all.

> Apple has never rejected an app for no reason.

Sure they have.

https://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-app-rejections-2009-1...

> Why did the folks at Tweetie add swear words to their program? Actually, they didn't. But something crude happened to be trending on Twitter at the time the app was submitted for review.

Or Google Voice:

https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-blocks-google-voice-app-for-...

Nope. Not for no reason. By mistake, for sure, and in both cases the mistake was rectified.

You know if you reframe it as moving to a Windows/desktop model instead of moving to an Android model that could be seen as a positive. I like that I can install some obscure weekend GitHub project to do some task for me without having to fight my own OS over it

Sorry I left the Windows model 10 years ago mainly because of downsides any process easily metastasizing into an exploit vector.

Walled gardens have less thugs and shady alleys.

Why? Apple doesn’t vet apps for privacy or security. The API surface is what affects these.

They absolutely do. Every permission you request has to have a valid justification and the user can only be asked when the permission is actually needed. The API allows you to specify every single permission and require them at app launch, it's the human reviewer who makes sure they're being used appropriately.

I say this as someone who has had apps denied by reviews for requesting a permission that was not needed inside of the version of the app I submitted to the store. They absolutely do review and vet apps for privacy and security.

APIs that depend on policy to prevent abuse will now just not be available at all.

As it should be. Apple doesn’t have the ability to verify what you do with the data that gets to your app, so they should not pretend to be able to certify it.

What? Apple, today, has enforced the ability to ensure that a flashlight app isn't vacuuming up your location data.

See: macOS.