Contrarily, MSFT being the one to approve all code would be good in that it would destroy the current Windows code signing racket that only six companies have access to[0].

0: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/da...

(thankfully MSFT is indeed working on their own first-party code signing solution https://youtu.be/Wi-4WdpKm5E)

> Can you imagine using macOS without homebrew because everything has to come from Apple's app store?

No, because I would have never used macOS if there were limitations that prevented me from being able to do my job. And imagining a world where Apple restricted macOS in such a way is a rather unlikely hypothetical.

The big difference is that iOS has _never_ had these capabilities. Many people have opted into the current model of iOS because they don't consider it a general purpose computing device - they consider it a phone, an iPod, an internet browser, or an angry birds player.

> Can you imagine using Ubuntu without apt because everything has to come from the Canonical's software center?

No, for the same reason. Their customer base would refuse to upgrade, servers would be migrated off, etc.

A closer equivalent there to the current game app stores would be always-on licensing servers which used physical dongles - the game stores are running basically as licensing servers. And professionals _hated_ these. Even software-based licensing servers over the LAN is much less common in professional software these days.

> A closer equivalent there to the current game app stores would be always-on licensing servers which used physical dongles - the game stores are running basically as licensing servers. And professionals _hated_ these. Even software-based licensing servers over the LAN is much less common in professional software these days.

While it's true that apps for PC game stores often double as DRM, I don't think that's relevant to a discussion of whether or not Apple should be compelled to allow for third-party app distribution platforms and the "side loading" of apps on iOS.

After all, there is little stopping you from implementing always-on DRM on an iOS app. You'd just have to implement it in the app directly, which is how PC games used to do it before modern platforms became popular. The rise of those platforms (Steam in particular) had a lot to do with the downfall of oft-maligned DRM solutions like SecuROM. Software-embedded DRM tech like Denuvo are still a blight on PC gaming, but they're at least less common than they once were.

> everything has to come from Apple’s app store?

See SetApp for MacOS and for iOS:

- https://setapp.com/

- https://setapp.com/how-it-works

Absolutely yes. As a user, I really wish Microsoft required the use of their store. Having a single place to go is a lot easier

Same here. As a user, I would rather have direct download/installation, aka sideloading. But absent that, I would much prefer to have all my applciations available on one store. Having to download multiple stores in order to get multiple applications is pretty much the worst outcome.

What you are wishing for though is the death of computing.

Maybe you'd be interested in joining the dozens of other Windows 10 S users.

Quibble: I cannot stand the Microsoft store because I cannot simply delete the apps or even understand why they are there even after I told it to uninstall. I also cannot easily move apps between drives or even control which drive something is installed on sometimes. Steam is the best this way, IMO.

That's actually one thing I quite liked about it - there's some option to just switch an app from one drive to another, and it's one of the only things I've found in Windows which actually "just works"

What you want is Windows 10 S mode.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/s-mode

Only works if it's enforced for all users though. Having all the Windows apps in the single official store is really the only possible way for it to function

Obviously never going to happen, but it'd be a much nicer ecosystem if it did work that way