The reason is that the discussion is nuanced, a smartphone plays a very different role in someone's life than a Nintendo Switch. For better or worse, a smartphone has become a requirement for critical services that we all rely on.
That doesn't really align with the arguments people actually put forth for sideloading on iPhones. "It's my device, I should be able to run whatever I want" is the most common, and doesn't leave room for the nuance you're referencing. Like it or not, most people arguing for iPhone sideloading are using arguments that also demand sideloading on game consoles. It's not at all a straw man.
The game console business model is an historical anomaly. In the beginning, all console games were produced in-house by the console manufacturers. The consoles weren't "platforms" at all. However, 4 Atari programmers got wind that the games they wrote made tens of $millions for Atari while the programmers were paid only a relatively small salary. When Atari management refused to give the programmers a cut, they left and formed Activision. Thus Activision became the original third-party console game development company.
Atari then sued Activision for theft of trade secrets, because the Activision founders were all former Atari programmers. The case was settled, with Atari getting a cut of Activision’s revenue but otherwise allowing Activision to continue developing console games. I suspect this was because the 4 programmers were considered irreplaceable to Atari (albeit too late, after they already quit).
Ironically, yes, from people who don’t like paying for things. It’s a booming market on Android.
And yes, I absolutely believe that saying Nintendo and Sony are allowed to make a locked down device, but Apple is not, is an arbitrary double standard, setting up a potential legal victory for Apple.
Can you be more specific? I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to.
> And yes, I absolutely believe that saying Nintendo and Sony are allowed to make a locked down device, but Apple is not, is an arbitrary double standard, setting up a potential legal victory for Apple.
What are you replying to? I didn't make any such claim in my comment. I wasn't defending the console business model, just explaining how it came about, which is very different from most computing platforms.
B. The law makes no distinction between a game console and a computing platform, nor should it. There is also no such thing legally as a “general purpose computer” like I’ve seen some people try to define iPads as, so as to somehow justify iPad sideloading but not Switch sideloading.
C. I don’t buy the 30% cut argument, because we have a counter example: Steam on PC. How many companies sell their games directly outside of Steam? How many give you a 25% discount on top of that? Nobody.
I can't speak for game consoles, but this is absolutely false with regard to iPhone lockdown.
Why do you think mobile games are so full of ads? In part, because ads stick around and are profitable, no matter where you got your app. As long as sideloading files is so heavily connected to piracy, we’ll be lucky to see alternative app stores, but never direct installation on iOS.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/5hozvo/absolutely_...
So they have no copy protection at all? Well, sure, if you rely on OS lockdown as your sole copy protection, and the OS is unlocked, then of course you're open to piracy.
Yes, they do need to "waste their time", as it were, protecting their own apps. This is something desktop developers figured out ages ago.
It's funny, because I remember computing in the 80s and 90s, when most software came in a box and was bought from a store or through mail order. Piracy was a problem then, and companies tried to invent all sorts of copy-protection schemes. Some of them worked decently well, but most (all?) were eventually defeated. That didn't stop the world from having a healthy market for software.
Phones are no different. If Android developers have a piracy problem, they should develop strong copy-protection schemes. Sure, none of those schemes will be perfect, but they generally have the effect of moving piracy further out to the margins.
Otherwise: tough shit. If people pirate your app, explore avenues through the legal system to get them to stop. If that doesn't work, that's just a cost of doing business.
Because most games are not games, but clones of other games purely as vehicles to show ads. The goal is to show ads more than it is to be a game.
Because they are not allowed to sell the game cheaper elsewhere if they also want to sell on Steam. Their dev ToS require that.
This is not an optimal solution, but it is more of a solution than, for example, the (maybe I'm wrong) lack of jailbreaks for iOS that are usable (eg. tethered jailbreaks are more work to maintain).
Meanwhile, old Switches have a hardware vulnerability [1] and all newer ones can be jailbroken to their fullest with a modchip. Such pervasive coverage doesn't exist for iDevices to my knowledge.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/1go8wy4/what_is_...
[1] https://switch.hacks.guide/user_guide/rcm/entering_rcm.html
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/SwitchPirates/comments/13n1smv/plea...
Many people can get upset and complain about many things at the same time. For me I have a smartphone and it is essential to have one for everyday life now. Gaming devices are not playing the same role in people's life.
But in principle I would agree that people should advocate for more control over all their devices.
1. There are lots of people who get upset that their Nintendo won't let them install other things. There are hacker/homebrew communities that have formed around pretty much every console.
2. Phones are general-purpose computing devices. Consoles are not, even though modern consoles have hardware that is more or less the same as what you might find in a general-purpose computer.
> However, I see no reason why Apple should be forced into helping you do that.
It's the opposite problem: the default is to just let people do that. Apple has instead gone to the effort and work to lock down iOS to prevent sideloading. So no, Apple shouldn't be forced to help people sideload, but they should be forced to stop hindering people from sideloading.
Now you sound like FBI director "we need backdoors for the good guys". By allowing a mechanism for side loading weakens the security of the device. If a good guy can use it, so can a bad guy.
No device manufacturer should have more control over that device's code execution than the end user of that device does after the sale.
Yes, it's a powerful computing device that is probably much more capable and can be made to do more things than the intended purpose. That's fine to be curious about, and if you are feeling adventurous enough to fight against the system to get it to do more, go right ahead. However, I see no reason why Apple should be forced into helping you do that. It's not an OSS system.