I think the thing with macOS is, is that if sideloading ever became impossible on mac OS, they would instantly lose most if not all of the major applications making the platform irrelevant.

Are you worried that your app may not be available to all platform users anymore? I bet that immediately after this feature comes countries, mobile providers, etc. will roll out their own app stores and many users will not go with Apple's. Those stores will probably incentivize big apps like Facebook get on them but not regular solo developers. You may have to distribute your app through a dozen of app stores and comply with all their differing regulations and review processes instead of one, or pass on user share... (Or more likely you'll need to pay up some app store distribution middleman who will capitalize on the situation)

It should at the very least help with Safari. What a dreadful existence that browser is when you can't get extensions into the store without paying the 99/yr fee, which has stopped a lot of potential ports from happening.

Most ports right now are quite gnarly, you have to jump through a multi step build process just to do what other browsers can handle in a single click or drag and drop. Other methods I've seen involve relying on something like tampermonkey to run the scripts on the sites you want. Alternatively, making safari users mad by making your extension cost on the app store.

So I have high hopes! Finally developers should be able to release things for safari without feeling so suffocated.

That won't happen. People will install Chrome, and that's the end of it. Well, not the end of Google, of course, which will now have even more opportinuties to grab your data and sell your privacy.

I'm not sure you're really following. If developers are already jumping through hoops to make their extensions available for safari users, the only way this "will not happen" is if apple makes barriers to entry even worse.

Safari will become irrelevant. Users, some through ignorance, others coerced by incompetent front-end teams ("Safari is the new IE") will switch to Chrome. It will be the end of Safari. There will only be a few extension developers left.

When that happens, please switch to Firefox. It has more extensions than you'll ever need, and it's better for the tech environment and your privacy.

I use Safari as a daily driver because it tends to have a low impact on my machine. Whether Apple has the stomach for competing with Google directly after these changes remains to be seen, Microsoft threw in the towel after all.

Chrome on iOS will be the death of Safari and the final nail in web developers supporting anything other than "last two versions of Chrome."

I don't know if that'll be good or bad but it will for sure be a shift.

> I also build for macOS, which has always allowed sideloading

Isn't it funny that something that has been completely normal for decades - the freedom to (develop and) install the software we want - now has new term because corporates have forced themselves as a middle-man to dictate what we can or cannot install? (And worse, now even have automated ways to kill or uninstall a software without our permission. Remember when the Amazon Kindle app deleted the 1984 ebook from everyone's devices (Amazon Secretly Removes "1984" From the Kindle - https://gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-ki... )? That's the bleak future we are heading to ...)