But it dosent take away from my point that an alternative store does not affect the quality of apps in the main store.
As for an alt store becoming normalized I feel that users will only install the necessary app from the alt store and not anything else. A lot of alt stores tried to set themselves up in android but didn't succeed. I think it mostly comes down to incentives. Apple can easily change them to make sure no other store gets the upper hand
Have you ever had to wipe a relative's computer to get rid of the malware-infested browser toolbars they installed, not knowing any better? Or worse, pay a ransom in bitcoins to unlock the billing systems that help control a gasoline distribution pipeline? You may be somewhat overestimating the sophistication of users when it comes to technology.
iOS is an OS for people who are non-technical or for applications where people don’t want to worry about that stuff. If you want full control run Linux. MacOS and Windows also offer a balance that is skewed a lot more toward user control because they’re for “pro” use cases.
For the apps I am using now, there will be probably:
Netflix Store, Amazon Store, Google Store, Epic Store, EA Store ... and list goes on
Another maybe-more-realistic version of this would be if some business software used their power over line workers to install things (since end-users are not really the customers in corporate software sales). Microsoft sets up their own store as the only source of Office Redux, and millions of iOS users are forced into this store via their employers. Same process as above: beachhead, gamble, dilution of Apple’s store.
It’s not hard to see how the process could snowball, though it’s certainly not guaranteed as there must be the right combination of events.