I absolutely am.

Part of the appeal about iOS for me is that apps are reviewed for quality and don't have obvious scams or spywear inside.

I'm happy to guide my parents to use and download apps from the app store without worrying about it. Compare this to the constant education and guidance I need to provide about websites, phone calls, text messages etc. The amount of targeted scams and spam we receive nowadays is excessive.

I think this is the problem: people want access to the 'app store' while forgetting/ignoring that the tight security and rigid processes are a feature, not a liability.

Then stick to the official app store and don't install a third party store?

That doesn't work if core apps start moving to third party app stores.

That didn’t happen on Android, why would it happen now?

The problem is that big publishers have different rules than the smaller ones. As a small company you an risk losing everything. Big publishers have private accountmanagers working at Apple. There are literally 1000 stories of this.

> I'm happy to guide my parents to use and download apps from the app store without worrying about it.

You shouldn't be. There have been plenty of scams in the App Store.

Many users, myself included, choose iOS because it’s free of viruses and malware - that is the benefit of the review process. If you don’t want that, you can use Android.

Their review process is historically flawed.

And where did you heard iOS is free from viruses?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)

From the top of my head there's also AdThief and AceDeceiver.

Not only that but App store is full of Anti-virus offerings.

If you don't want viruses, don't use non-App Store apps? Why is this not an option?

And let's not pretend that IOS hasn't been jailbroken for 15 years and there aren't already spy/malware apps.

I think you are missing the point that they want to impose this reviewing process on the off-brand App Store too

The regulation allows for apple to still do malware scanning and blocking on apps installed even by third party stores. Google also does the same thing, this point is a nothingburger. The human review part of the app store review does nothing to catch viruses.

> Google does the same thing

They don't block, and you can disable scanning fully.

> choose iOS because it’s free of viruses and malware

It's not.