The app stores/systems on all of the walled gardens are problematic, but the way I see it it's largely because they don't want to create a web of trust including all of the other app stores (the weakest one's security would cause a loss of profit for all).

> What about X or Y

This behavior is largely a feature of the market and a failure of governments to choose to do anything about it. We are ~12 years into the iOS app ecosystem, and much further (~30 years) when it comes to packaged disk software/games which were sold separately for Apple/Windows/game consoles.

I'm more worried about the trajectory -- governments don't seem to identify this as a problem (except for a few select legislators) and other industries seem to be moving in this direction (John Deere DRM, Tesla apps, AWS Marketplace, etc).

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202915

[2] https://support.apple.com/guide/itunes/itunes-plus-itns1ec4e...