Please give me examples of apps I’m missing out on as an average consumer because I’m all for missing out on malwares

Apps for porn site/porn games aren't allowed on iOS. There's many 4chan apps for Android, but none for iPhone. And apps frequently have to gimp themselves to get around this requirement, like Telegram where on iOS you cannot see 18+ chats you can see everywhere else.

Ah 4chan, the app that every average user would like to install

Any example that will be provided the fanboys will explain why they themselves don't need that application. The big example are web browsers (but you all are happy with the new IE) , GPL apps and some very popular game called Fortnite you might have hear of. I am wondering if you can refund your iPhone because a month ago you could play this game and now it will be blocked.

The new IE is Chrome actually.

With 20% global market share, plenty of countries don't care about Safari support.

The new IE from the dragging things down point of view. Microsoft did not dare to not allow other browsers on Windows and because of that we can complain about Chrome.

Internet explorer was actually a decent browser in its peak. The whole "dragging things down" happened later on because people kept on using really old versions of IE (mostly the one bundled with Windows XP).

The main problem with Internet Explorer in its hay day was that they did not play nice with other browser vendors and implemented features outside of the standard. Those features were then relied upon by website developers, causing many websites to only work on Internet Explorer. After all - most people were using internet explorer, why cater to anyone else?

Chrome is not quite in the same position as Internet Explorer was back then, but it's getting frighteningly close. There are several websites that only work on Chrome, and despite me not using Chrome as my primary browser I do have Chrome installed because for some websites I simply need Chrome. This is obviously very dangerous to the freedom of the internet.

Funnily enough Apple forcing iOS users to use Safari actually helps here. Because so many people use iOS and they need to use Safari, website developers need to cater to at least one non-Chrome web browser. That in turn makes it more likely they will also cater to others (e.g. Firefox) rather than relying on Chrome-only features.

I seen recently change logs like "reverting from webp to jpeg to support iOS users", so it seems to me that the lowest common denominator now is Safari.

No doubt it is, I'm just explaining why comparing Chrome to Internet Explorer makes a lot of sense. Having a single browser used by the vast majority of people is a bad situation to be in. Especially when that browser is developed by a company like Google.

Personally, I would like to be able to use the new streaming gaming apps, such as Microsoft xcloud, Google stadia, PlayStation now, etc.

Emulators are one large category that’s not allowed by Apple, for example.

You got that inverted: F-droid is where I know I'll be free of malware, the Play Store is the one that is infested with malware and predatory stuff.

Do you use a computer with MacOS, Linux, or Windows? Are you using any application not natively installed on your machine on install or not offered through the officially designating app store on your OS?

There is your list.

Can't speak for today (since I don't have an iOS device at the moment) and I understand that some of these things were eventually added as options, but when I used an iPad 2 back in the day, some of the things I jailbroke it for:

Systemwide adblocking, non-Safari browser that wasn't artificially limited, ability to connect bluetooth mouse (mostly for when I used the iPad to remote into other computers), modified keyboard with a number row, file manager, some minor homescreen/launcher tweaks for usability, and one that allowed non-iPad apps to run at a higher resolution (at the time, non-universal apps would run in the old iPhone res, but scaled up instead of running at the higher, newer phone resolution).

I'm sure there were other little tweaks, but the main thing was that there weren't any decent Android or Windows tablet options at the time and while the iPad did many things quite well, there were all sorts of little quality of life things that I was just used to having. They weren't included in iOS and there was no way to (officially) change the launcher or keyboard or any of those other things.

It would have been quite nice to have other software repos besides just the App Store which didn't require me to exploit security flaws to use. Instead I just stopped buying iOS devices after that iPad.

I'm floored that nobody else here on HN has pointed out that Syncthing is missing. Android, Windows, Linux, and MacOS all have native clients, but there's nothing for iPhone.

So much for "There's an app for that".

Ironically, one example is an app that was useful for detecting malware or other security problems: https://www.sektioneins.de/en/blog/16-08-11-sysinfo-what-hap...

You can't have real Gecko-based Firefox on iOS because Apple only allows competing browsers as thin wrappers around Safari.

Apps that the totalitarian government ruling over you without your consent have decided should be banned.

The problem is that it creates a single point at which a state can impose restrictions on freedom, with no way to get around it for dissidents and other people who don't agree with it.

You the average consumer would love to play Fortnite. Your kid has been pretty downer lately since Apple banned it. All your child's friends play it but you would prefer not to spend extra money just to buy a console. You the average consumer need Fornite.