Was the iPhone the first device to come with that concept?
on the original iphone the only "apps" you could have were websites, as apple hated the carrier approach
Far from it.
Before Apple, carriers and handset makers 100% controlled what you could install. "App stores" like Verizon's Get It Now, BREW, and Nokia’s operator portals existed, but they were fragmented, clunky, often exploitative, and comparatively laughable in scope and scale.
Apple did what seemed impossible at the time, which was to persuade/cajole/force carriers and handset makers to give up their roles as gatekeepers. They created a single global marketplace with mostly-predictable rules and simple discovery, which finally allowed indie developers to reach users directly just as easily as global behemoths.
Verizon wanted you to have to pay a fee every time you used their software to transfer an image from your phone to your computer, or vice versa.
I'm actually pro-app store as long as it's helping apps to be malware-free. But I'm 100% against shutting out side-loading. Side-loading was never common let alone a common vector for malware, at least not that I've ever heard. But what it is, apparently (or we would not see these Google shenanigans), is a long-term threat to Google's own app store.
Some idiot executive decided this.
Except that it isn't. Epic v Apple proved this on the Apple side.
The fact that (according to Google) only 50% of Android malware comes from sideloading should also make you question where the other 50% is coming from. (Hint: a lot of it is from the Play Store)
The only similar claim I can find is they said is you're 50x more likely to encounter malware from internet-sideloaded sources than from the Play Store, but that's rather different.