I personally hate that I cannot reasonably run software _I_ write for _my_ phone without having/using an Apple developer account.

There now you've heard a complaint. I'm sure if you were to pay attention, you'd see this same complaint voiced quite often.

Yes, there's a lot of crap on the Play Store, but there's also a lot stuff that I don't like about Android that makes me not want to use it, much less gladly.

There is a lot of prohibitions in the iOS guidelines that serve no purpose but Apple's business interest, such as running a "platform" app that has other apps embedded. Of course, if you're WeChat, you get to ignore that rule.

To pass off all this as "security" or "curation" is just dishonest. There's a lot of crap on the App Store too, but that crap can't be as malicious because iOS has a better sandbox, not because Apple does the literally impossible task of scanning for hidden malicious behavior in its review process.

Of course users are not complaining about having no access to apps that were never developed in the first place, because 80% of the revenue is on iOS and going Android-only makes little sense.