Essentially as long as nothing threatens Apple's ability to tell other companies, including other tech giants, to play ball or pound sand, I'm fine with it.
Is your premise is that the vast majority of iOS users want the Apple control of apps exactly as it is today?
If that premise is true, then having additional app stores available will not change your experience at all. The vast majority, as you assert, of iOS users will want no part in the alternative app stores, thus the Apple app store retains dominance and Apple doesn't need to change their behavior at all. So nothing changes for you. And the few oddballs who want to run non-Apple-approved software, still can, but they'll be a fringe.
But if you're worried that there will be a mass exodus to the non-Apple app store, (if that was allowed) then I'm hearing that there is in fact large percentages of unhappy users, which is itself proof that removing control from Apple is required.
What doesn't make sense it simultaneously assert that nearly all iOS users are happy with the Apple iron fist but large percentage of them are itching to break away from it the second they could. One or the other can be true, not both.
Authoritarian governments would probably require side loaded apps.
And people will go willingly into that dark night.
It’s the experience.
- Apple has built a world wide empire selling these products in this way people seem to like
- As a result Apple has funneled that money and made world class hardware that's better than everyone else and leads in security/privacy
- Therefore we should force them to break their model because the others that didn't follow suit have hardware that sucks
That's not the most charitable interpretation, but there's some truth to it.
There’s some extra irony that the others in this case fuck over their users by leveraging their data to target ads.