What about all those libs and executables you likely install via brew, npm, cargo etc? Those are all applications

Sure – Apple are trying to stop people who don't know what they're doing from getting hurt. Hence the strong scrutiny on what is allowed on the App Store (whether it's reasonable to charge 30% of revenue is an entirely different question).

People who are installing things using a terminal are probably (a) slightly computer savvy and (b) therefore aware that this might not be a totally safe operation.

And, despite being an avid homebrew user, I've never had a problem there.

All of us having this discussion are outliers.

The things we talk about here which annoy us are for the much larger set of people who need them!

Put another way, it is all about the set of us who cannot really participate in this discussion.

No one is stopping you from using only the app store if you value its protection, so you need a more relevant justification of forcing everyone else to do so

If I had 1.4B active users I would want to mitigate the ability of almost all of them to accidentally fuck up their devices instead of worrying about irritating a few tech folk because they can’t load broken apps on it.

Your stat is an order of magnitude type of fantasy, the apps aren't broken, and the inability to install also affects everyone, not a few folks, so again you're left with nothing but your personal desire for controlling other people

> Your personal desire for controlling other people.

Well that’s just childish, pouty, and not a very well thought out train of thought on the subject.

The control isn’t over people, it’s about finding a solution to creating and preserving market share via device reliability on the platform. There are 1.4B iPhone users (and that’s a real number, not a fantasy), and not every one of those people is savvy enough to vet their applications before installation. If installation of any app was wide open you would have a large portion of those 1.4B accidentally installing crap. They may have 100 apps on their phone but if 1 is a piece of shit and broken (and yes conservatively at least 1% of apps out there probably have a bug bad enough to wreck some havoc) and it renders the reliability of the phone to shit that’s bad. If the market perceives that the reliability of the device is shit, Apple loses either in increasing or preserving market share for the device. Apple needs those devices need to work reliably and it feels that one way to do that is vetting the apps that will be running on it. The hardware is great, the OS does its job making the hardware platform operational, but the one place where there is the opportunity to introduce instability is in the apps. So you do your best to control that area of instability opportunity on your platform.

Here is the beautiful thing for you…there plenty of other phones out there that will allow you to install whatever the hell you want. Apple only has 16% of the worldwide smartphone market share.

https://backlinko.com/iphone-users#iphone-key-stats

Man, talking about crashing trains of thought: you fail to grasp the fact that the conversation is about MacOS, not iOS, that there is no contradiction between "blah platform" and control over people, and even that the fact that other phones exist doesn't negate the deficiencies of this specific phone

> conservatively at least 1% of apps

That's another made up number of yours, with a similarly made up qualifier

> the market perceives that the reliability of the device is shit

Since the vast majority of devices aren't so locked down, isn't "the market" yelling at yout that you're wrong?

I was talking about iOS so yes, I missed that the conversation was about Mac. Shame on me. In a sense the use case for a Mac is less ubiquitous than a smartphone, so the need for vetting may not be as great because users of the device don’t perceive the apps running on it as the device itself.

However, I stand firm in my argument about why the iPhone is locked down and why it’s a good thing. Even if you spread into other smartphone manufacturers like Samsung, you still find similar attempts to control the lay users ability to install unvetted apps on the devices. It may even be more important for them to do that too since they don’t fully control the OS on their devices.

> That's another made up number of yours, with a similarly made up qualifier

Obvious it was made up and obviously it was set as an intentionally low bar for software quality because who would argue (especially on HN) that 100% of available software out there is bug free, but if you want to believe that all available software is 100% safe to use, I encourage you to download and install everything you come across no matter whether the device is a smartphone, a Mac, or any other device you use and rely upon. I am sure you will be fine.

> you still find similar attempts to control

Sure, though it doesn't mean what you want it to mean since you just ignore the $$$ elephant in the room that explains the desire for more control. For the same reason, you "stand firm" in ignorance as to "why the iPhone is locked down"

> Obvious it was made up

Glad you realise that.

> intentionally low bar

Intentionally appearing like one

> if you want to believe ... software is 100% safe to use

Again with your fantasies. I believe the justification should be grounded in reality, both in terms of the % estimate as well as in terms of the severity (so no, "bug free" is irrelevant, you need severe billions-afecting bugs that can only be eliminated by hard-forcing the app store, which you can't have since the reality doesn't align with you).

And as to your standing firm in your argument "why it’s a good thing", well, you don't really have an argument, just a desire for one with made up stats and corporate motivations

Alrighty, so I guess what we have learned that apparently some number at 100% or perhaps less of all software is apparently released bug free. However, we don’t know for sure “the perhaps less”, despite all of the numerous historical examples of shit software being released that has wrecked havoc that we or others have experienced. And since we don’t know that precise number we are not allowed to state any estimate no matter how modest that is below that 100% of software perfection. Therefore, a device manufacturer would never need or should do anything that attempts to protect the consumer and their market share by protecting the device’s perceived reliability by preventing buggy software from being installed, because buggy software doesn’t exist.

Thanks for the education in the importance of precision and the rejection of experience in determining reality. I’ll ignore my decades of having to clean up all the messes that apparently non-existent buggy shit software managed to do to novice and lay users who willy-nilly installed it…or maybe didn’t install it, since it was imaginary.

By the way…before you respond again you might read up a bit on situational irony. You seemed to have missed it on my prior comment…and this one is dripping with it.

Your drips don't land because you can't make up a valid argument, ignore what I said and resort back to your fantasy land again fighting your imaginary 100%s and do-nothings

Yeah that’s it. I am in awe of your reality.