That's a great choice to be able to make.

I could always buy an Android. The walled garden is one of Apple's (on mobile at least) selling points

Where is this walled garden claim on their marketing stuff?

Security and privacy mentioned constantly throughout marketing materials

So their macbooks are insecure because they accept any package installed? Seems like a weak argument and an even weaker security model, has it worked ever security through obscurity/ black box? Should I avoid surfing through the web on non approved websites? Seems like they made a weak system security wise

It’s because it is actually a somewhat bullshit security model that basically boils down to checking what APIs are you using in your code.

The next generation of runtimes (wasm for example) have this built in out of the box.

I can't take "the lack of a choice is a feature" seriously.

For corporate managed devices, sure. But for personal devices?

If you're happy with the defaults... don't ever change the defaults!

But someone else being able to make a different choice doesn't decrease your happiness.

Lots of apps get censored on the official store that I'm happy will be brought back on my Iphone.

I might have agreed with you if Apple was a good gardener. That would involve weeding out the scams in the app store, giving developers feedback on radars, and being more communicative and reasonable in app review.

Feels more like a walled trash heap these days tbh.

All the innovation is happening outside it.

It will be interesting to see if Facebook decides to release their own app store, replete with all of the tracking that Apple had been taking away. If they make their apps only available through that kind of custom app store and then "encourage" FB/Insta/WhatsApp users to migrate, it defeats the walled garden.

Meta and other Big Tech corpos will naturally have their own app stores, and distribute their apps through them exclusively once they can.

A year from the release of this capability, EU users will have 20 additional app stores on their phone. Each will be sending notifications, coordinating "enhanced user tracking" between their apps and partner apps, advertising additional 1st- and 3rd-party products, performing background tasks like polling for updates, etc.

Paradise!

Did not happen on Android.

Because you can’t download alternate app stores directly from Google’s Play Store. This is a really interesting point — if the EU doesn’t require Apple to allow competitive app stores on App Store, discovery barriers largely neuter potential impacts.

Do you make the same choice on Windows?

I like my phone experience to be simple and intuitive. It really lends itself to a walled approach. I'm out doing something else, and the phone is along for the ride.

On desktop, I have a keyboard, a big screen, and more time. I'm sitting down to work on the computer, so having to pay more attention to it is completely fine (for nerds like me). So the walled garden approach feels more restrictive than empowering in this context, at least for me.

> Can't wait to not use anything but the official app store.

But you don't have to wait, right??

Yeah same. Never understood why people need multiple stores on an iPhone when they could just use Android instead.

iOS and Android are fairly different platforms. There's a lot that works with one but not the other.

It's simple: I believe it would be an improvement

It's no different than "I want a folding screen iPhone" or "I want an iPhone with a bigger battery/screen/camera/whatever". A year ago I'd say USB-C iPhone. "Just get an Android" or more generally "why don't you leave" is a fallacy that doesn't actually address any criticisms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergo_decedo

Is EU also forcing companies that don't make folding phones to make folding phones because people want them? Or ferraris to make minivans? This argument doesn't make a lot of sense. You may want the world, why would a for-profit entity have to bend over for you? This seems to me to just be another way to control what you do - no longer can you start a company with your vision, you can only start a company that fits someone elses vision, like European Union's vision. Free will is a thing of the past.

Remember that this is only happening because Apple wants to continue selling in the EU.

Every year, the EU’s economic importance declines, partly due to stunts like this one.

So at some point (far in the future unfortunately), their diktats will simply be ignored.

I see your point and will also continue to use Apple's one except for a few apps such as emulators and a couple of others that Apple banned.