...and then a ton of apps decide "screw the app store, I'm going solo!" and people start enabling sideloading so they can try those apps, then sideloading becomes normalized and malware starts to spread without Apple having the ability to prevent it. Users who have issues with apps start hitting up Apple's support lines, and they start getting pissed off when Apple says "Sorry we can't help you, go talk to the developer. Not that we know who they are, and maybe you actually don't either, but either way you're on your own."

Plus, developers lose access to a lot of Apple's functionality, like the fact that XCode can upload LLVM bytecode so that Apple can re-optimize through new or updated LLVM backends to deliver optimized versions for new platforms, etc.

Suddenly, all the goodness that's "baked in" to the iPhone experience is gone, and the whole system starts looking like an inconsistent mess compared to the way it was before.

I wonder if some kind of hybrid approach would work; for example, a workflow like this:

1. Developers develop locally as usual 2. Developers upload to Apple via XCode as usual 3. Apple does its standard automated checks (private APIs, etc) 4. The developer can file for that app to be held "off the store"; this is rejected by Apple for some reasons (like private API usage, malware, etc.) but generally approved. Apps which do this likely lose access to some system APIs (e.g. iCloud storage, IAP) but it's a tradeoff. 5. The developer can now get an App Store link which they can give to users to find their app on the store. This is the only way to find the app; it doesn't appear in lists, search, "top paid", features, or anything of the sort. 6. Users get an app that isn't (overtly) malicious and won't definitely break in future OS updates, developers get the infrastructure benefits and automatic updates, Apple can wash their hands of any downstream issues because they know for certain that the user arrived via the developer and can make that clear to the user ("if you have problems, go talk to them. If they're misbehaving, come talk to us.")

This would make the value proposition for most developers pretty clear, but for huge entities like Epic or Microsoft, they can just bypass the system because people can come to them directly.

Is what you're describing common on Android though? Among the Android users I know, nobody seems to ever have installed an app outside of Google Play, and in my case there are only a handful of apps that I have installed outside of Google Play or F-Droid, and they are alpha quality FOSS apps that were only distributed from GitHub.

It's not clear to me that what you're describing is actually a problem that happens.

This isn't a problem on Android, at least from what I can see. IMO at the small scale the benefits of the play store (payment processing, discoverability, bandwidth, hosting) outweigh anything you could gain by offering your apk for direct download somewhere else.

Plus, even if you try to deploy malware you still need to get through the regular permission dialogs and other bits of Android security. I have no idea how easy/hard this is but I would be surprised if iOS performs substantially worse here.

You have situations where Samsung Store had a free subscription to the app Lifesum whilst the Play Store you have to pay.

In fact some of the apps could only be found on Samsung Store and it’s bundled in and from my recollection couldn’t be removed easily.

Some apps would even demand your contacts to start on Android to send to China, but on iOS wouldn’t because it’s a breach of the ToS to completely stop working with partial permissions.

Then you have the latest Android which crashes the sideloaded apps that ask for permission: https://bgr.com/2020/06/04/android-11-beta-sideloading-apps-...

I’m happy that the major mobile os is all about choice, but Apple shouldn’t follow in Googles fragmented, “let the user shoot themselves in the foot”-ways.

Would Apple become the most popular mobile os I’d hope they gave more freedom and fragmented the system but until then it’s the garden of eve that I feel comfortable with. I’m happy software companies for once gets some demands that cannot be rounded instead of this wild wild west.

I mean, that hasn’t been a terrible problem on macOS. Require doing a csrutil style procedure to disable code signing requirements, and that’d be enough to scare off 99 percent of people. By default, only allow App Store and Apple registered developers (or even just the App Store).

> then sideloading becomes normalized

that is what I dearly hope for!

> You have to enable it explicitly for any app you want to sideload from

Problem is e.g. Facebook will immediately require side loading so they can install all manner of spyware that wouldn’t make it through the App Store’s vetting process.

No they won't. Facebook is in the Play Store on Android, and they used the Windows 10 Store up until they abandoned their desktop client. They want the largest user-base possible, which means they want finding and installing their app to be as frictionless as possible.

Here’s a link to the Onavo app from Facebook https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo#Privacy_concerns

No mention of sideloading in that link, instead it mentions a Play Store and an App Store listing. It's almost as if there is a lot of dangerous crap in those stores as well...

Expand the “Facebook research” section.

I have conflicted feelings about "Facebook Research", but where I always end up is this: if citizens of a free society want to give away their data in exchange for a couple extra dollars a month, they should have that ability in a free society. People can and should be educated of the risks so they can make informed decisions, but trying to stop it is ultimately a fruitless errand (Even as Facebook is a pile a scum, don't misunderstand me.)

And it's all somewhat beside the point, isn't it? Facebook Research was usable on iOS. By the time Apple put an end to it, the backlash had become so significant that Facebook pulled the program from Android anyway.

The real problem I think is that it is extremely hard to get users to understand what exactly they are signing up for when they do that…

This assumes that side-loaded applications have less restrictions than store apps. The same sandbox restrictions and permission prompts could be applied to a side-loaded app as a store app.

I have android devices too I know that all you need to do is tick a box, and there are apps on the Google Play Store that literally direct you to do that. Not to mention once that is a possibility the system is less secure, you btw can also side load apps without that tick box if you know what you are doing especially if developer options have been enabled.