> Of course they have to put a scary checkbox, otherwise they would be held liable for any sketchy app that is actually malware people accidentally downloaded.

What do you mean by "held liable"? It can't be in the legal sense, because Microsoft has never been held legally liable for Windows malware, and Apple has never been held legally liable for Mac malware.

Held liable just like this:

"In 2014 the US Federal Trade Commission ordered Apple to pay out $32.3m (£24.6m) to reimburse American parents for unauthorised app purchases made by their children."[0]

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/mar/11/my-kids-spent-...

This is the complete opposite of holding Apple liable for sideloaded apps. Apple was a direct party to these transactions.

If Apple isn't the payment processor, they're off the hook.

Please, in what way is Apple liable for this other than the fact they need to hold someone accountable for the damages? You really can’t imagine this taking place for malware that compromises payment information? They may not be ordered to pay but the headlines would read the same and the negative PR is worth way more than a few million.

But again, Mac malware exists, Windows malware exists. Yet "sideloading" is still much easier on those platforms than on Android. So obviously this kind of "liability", i.e., bad PR, doesn't and hasn't required the same implementation, and certainly doesn't force them to make the platforms App Store only.

> And I guarantee if the checkbox wasn’t there, you would be complaining that there aren’t enough safeguards to keep people safe.

I hope what you mean is that someone else would be making the argument that the checkbox is necessary: claiming a crowd of people are a single inconsistent argument is disingenuous.

But the opposing crowd exists and maybe you personally don't have to deal with it but these companies do. Apple and Google deal with billions of ordinary people, not just tech nerds.

No, there is no reason for them to do that. Microsoft has proven otherwise over their entire existence.

Microsoft also has a "scary checkbox", in the form of "are you sure you want to run this exe that came from the Internet?" popup.