I don't like it either, but don't fool yourself: lots of people don't care. They don't care if it's "their device" or not. They're perfectly happy to pay $1200 for a high-end device they don't have full control of, because it signals wealth, and does what they want it to do.
Just look at how many people lease cars instead of buying them. It's not that different; they don't own those cars, they're really just renting them. They're not allowed to modify them, and can get in trouble if they don't follow the maintenance schedule or drive them too much. But for those people, they're fine with that.
>Microsoft tried the same crap with their store, which was fortunately rejected to a large degree.
This is probably for at least two reasons. 1) There was already a huge ecosystem of Windows software out there, long before MS tried to ape Apple. Those companies were already successful in selling their apps directly to customers, without having to give MS a 30% cut. Why would they want to adopt MS's new strategy? 2) MS being MS, they most likely bungled it in some way. This happens every time they try to ape Apple or someone else; the first few iterations are absolutely terrible and a big joke. Sometimes they persist and it finally works out for them, other times they finally give up (e.g., PlaysForSure, Zune).
Microsoft tried the same crap with their store, which was fortunately rejected to a large degree. The future of software shouldn't look so backwards. I can understand users being drawn in by accessibility, which is hard to realize for more open systems. But I don't really understand developers choosing Apple aside from monetary opportunities.
Macs try to go in a similar direction, so these comments saying I shouldn't care about app notarization are nothing but short sighted in my opinion. Because the security benefit is minuscule and new dangers like this pretty impalpable but nevertheless very real and the degree of enforcement of these mechanism will certainly increase as soon as Apple sees the opportunity.
Overall a crappy platform to develop against.