Even if you develop for bare metal, you’re at the mercy of hardware manufacturers, who sometimes change specs without warnings.

Windows and Linux are third-party platforms too. I mostly develop for these two platforms (been doing for couple decades now), and never had the unfortunate experience of GP.

None of those are quite as arbitrary as the App Store, though.

It's one thing if an app stops working on newer versions of the system due to fundamental change to that system. It's totally different if you get banned simply because the gatekeeper doesn't like your face.

OK, so that's a good argument for not tying your product to the "bare-metal" / Win32 / (specific distro?) APIs, and using something higher level and portable. Which, frankly, everybody should be doing anyway, if you're not in the business of writing kernel drivers.

Should also be a lesson to anyone trying to build a third party platform that if you build a walled garden, people will start to resent it

Conversely, we wouldn't be here bickering about such platforms if it wasn't immensely profitable. So, depending on your morals, it's a lesson on what to aim for. I wouldn't run a platform that stifles use, but I'm sure there are industrious people who will be able to exploit such a business _device_ to bring more good into the world.

Industrious people like Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Larry Page, and Sundar Pichai?