To hop on this train: people like you and I love customizing our devices and tailoring our experiences to exactly what we'd like, and that's completely fine. To a lot of people, though, their mobile device is just a tool—a tool that they can use to do other things. In that usecase, the phone needs to work as simply and reliably as possible, and by reducing the amount of things that can go wrong (live wallpapers draining the phone's battery and sketchy application launchers come to mind) the more approachable that system is.

My take is this: computers (especially phones) are like cars: some people love to tinker with them and take on a project car that they tweak to their liking, but most people need a reliable and inexpensive car that can get them to and from the grocery store.

> like cars

Now some people never open the hood of their car. And for those who do, a lot of car manufacturers have just the answer -- they have a second hood under the first hood (it's plastic and only has holes for maybe the wiper fluid).

but apple is bolting the hood shut. and welding it.

(it's such a shame, really)

> This just isn't an issue for 99.9% of users.

Until years later we have fewer people interested in learning how computers work, because the only devices they ever owned were locked down walled gardens.

Maybe these people don't even know what they're missing, because they've never even seen it?

Maybe right now. Bet that does not last.

Those of us who understand the implications now would benefit ourselves and many others by helping more people find that spark, that need, want to tinker.

While most useres don't want to "tinker" themselves, limiting the ability to do so can limit the experience of all users. Because a too strict app review does limit the range of apps available for a system, and that has the potential to affect all users.