It doesn’t follow at all that a worse time for developers means worse apps or less-happy consumers. Any time Apple enforces any kind of standard it’s “worse for developers”. I’m sure lots of developers are annoyed with Apple’s approach to fine-grained and highly visible app permissions, and wish they could just have full access to the user’s device. Screwing those people over is obviously good.

> It doesn’t follow at all that a worse time for developers means worse apps or less-happy consumers

Sure, it's not guaranteed to be a net positive for consumers but it's correlated.

Admittedly not exactly the same, but the Sega Saturn had trouble attracting developers because it was really difficult to develop on, despite the hardware being pretty good. As a result, people who bought a Saturn ended up getting fewer and worse versions of games.

I agree that they shouldn't necessarily always always do everything to appeal to developers, there's a balance, and I'm not suggesting that we get rid of community guidelines and the like, I'm just saying that the more difficult it is for a developer (or anyone) to do something, the less likely they are to do a good job at it, if they do it at at all. Worse apps means a worse experience.

As a developer I am happy that the end-user can trust the platform, this is always better for business.

I think it should be rephrased in this way: what is good for the ecosystem is good for the end-users.

And the execs at $adtech23 are absolutely furious about that; maybe the developers too, since it makes their job harder.

That's absolutely not true. Developers can and often do have a hostile relationship with consumers who use their software. The most obvious example of this is malware developers. Operating systems and software distribution platforms often have rules to prevent malware. That's clearly a restriction on developers but (if done well) it means better apps for consumers. I think the same can be said for less obvious cases, like adware, tracking, shady free trial or subscription plans, bait and switch pricing in e-commerce, and many other antipatterns or dark patterns.

"Developers" nowadays (except some indie shop) are just the enemy of user. They try to squeeze money out of users as much as possible.

On the other hand Apple try to squeeze money by asking consumer to pay the apple tax, but at least they try to be reasonable on the privacy issue.

Choose which side you like, or just use open source software.

Im pretty unhappy with epic store exlusives since they have no linux client.