>>Tomorrow I can guarantee they will immediately cut costs and ship out piles of sideloaded garbage

Yeah except that's absolute nonsense because you could already do that on Android and yet I recall only one instance where a developer explicitly asked me to sideload an app(for Fortnite, no less). It's going to remain an incredible niche that will affect 0.00001% users at most.

Then what’s the point of forcing these companies to allow it? If it only affects such a small user base then money regulating it is clearly being wasted and should be used for something that will affect more people’s lives?

Clearly they believe that number is much higher.

I think you are looking at it from the wrong perspective. It will affect hundreds of millions of iOS users. Whether these users choose to use their newly given freedom to install software not controlled by Apple is up to them - but the legislation affects 100% of iOS userbase.

(in hindsight I shouldn't have said it will affect 0.0001% users - maybe I should have said that I guess only that many users will choose to sideload software instead)

Just like happens daily on Androi... nevermind, it doesn't happen. Beautiful strawman you've built yourself there.

Actually yes it does. 3rd party app stores is where the majority of Android malware comes from. The vast majority of mobile malware is all Android for this reason. Whenever I need low hanging fruit for mobile malware analysis it’s always start at a third party Android App Store. It’s a dumpster fire.

iOS’ advantage is it’s walled garden. It’s a place where a lot of trust is curated for the nontechnical. This evaporates that.

What appears good for the highly technical is not always good for the user.

We can’t be expecting grandmothers to check signatures, ensure an app has certificates pinned, trust that a company won’t let its update domains lapse, and understand public key crypto to set up their GPG keys for a messaging alternative much less handle them properly. Hell I’ve had senior engineers send me their private GPG key when requesting their public key.

Delightful movement of the goal posts, highly technical move.

Your argument was that the moment there is no longer a need to be constrained by Apple's App Store rules, your Samsung dishwasher will make you install its app through Shady Store Incorporated, because it's easier, and it'll make your grandma install it.

Except that doesn't happen. Noone has done that. The highest profile case is Fortnite, and it makes you install it either through Epic Games, or the Samsung Galaxy Store, and the only reason for that is that Google feels entitled to taking 30% of transactions too.

Nobody is going to ship their commercial apps outside the app store, because else nobody would be able to find their app.

I'm thinking more of a smart fridge, or car app, or some other crap. I'm 99% sure a lot of them will stop going through the painful iOS process and just give you a QR code for their app