I think it’s useful to remember why so many people jumped to iPads, because we did that experiment for a couple decades. When people have the ability to install arbitrary code we know they will, and will click through almost any warning if they’ve been promised money, games, or porn. I think the sandboxing approach is getting closer to where you could potentially safely have third-party stores but I think that would still leave a lot of abuse if it allowed VPNs or content filters, full screen use, background operations, etc.

I don’t love where that leaves us but it does make me wonder whether a better compromise would be something like regulation requiring third-party app installs but with some kind of business liability & registration requirement so e.g. Epic could set one up but fly by night scammers couldn’t easily set something up and spam AARP members.