>And then users won't trust apps from those stores because they're full of spyware and garbage so developers will still have to use a store the user trusts in order to get the user to install their app.

Windows. Full of spyware and garbage, but it's where critical apps were, so users had to go in turn. You talk a lot about basic market 101 or even pre-101 stuff, but you'd better served by actually considering some more advanced concepts here, not least of which is that software is full of non-substitutable goods. There is are a great number of mutually reinforcing cycles which form the core of network effects. Exclusives for a platform will drive people to that platform, which then can help drive more exclusives.

>The thing where markets fail is where you have a monopoly that can then abuse everybody else because they lack competitive pressure.

But "monopolies" are everywhere in software, and necessarily so because nobody has come up with a better general way to solve the resource allocation problem for information generation. That's what copyright is. If someone's work depends on specific proprietary applications, those can well be more important then anything else. One way to counter that is other monopolies. This has happened repeatedly in the last few decades.

>Developers distribute their apps to multiple platforms. Apple's store isn't an alternative to Google's or Amazon's because it doesn't reach the same customers -- to reach the entire population you need to reach each platform, not one or the other. To be a real competitor it has to distribute apps to the market of people with iOS devices.

This is just your own entitled arbitrary view. A walled garden has always been an extremely explicit part of the iOS package. Why shouldn't iOS users be able to actively choose that?

>You're treating developers as a monolith. The entire point is that you could use multiple stores at the same time.

No, I'm treating them as individual self-interested entities operating within a system, which has all the potential for a variety of local minimums favoring different actors within it. Multiple stores would dilute the power of any given store, which would favor the power of developers. That is what you are directly arguing for.

>but still refuse to install the Facebook app from the same store because you trust Mozilla and not Facebook.

And if Facebook, or (since I don't use Facebook) Adobe or whomever decide to only support said less restrictive store and use that freedom to collect more data and demand location access and crappier payment systems and so on and so forth, now what? Under the current system, they can either comply with restrictions, or give up on the entire iOS market. On your suggestion, they can do as they wish and users that want to use them will be forced to go along with it. For Mozilla that might be a good thing, but for Facebook it probably wouldn't.

It's very strange how you completely ignore that there are all sorts of powerful actors who can command audiences independently of platform to one degree or another.

>Apple is not your union. It's not just a principal-agent problem (though that exists) -- they have no duty to you at all and they're in it for themselves. The bargaining power accrues to them, not you, and it comes at your expense as much as anyone's.

Utterly childish bollocks. Apple has interests, and I have interests. To the extent our interests align there is every possibility for a win-win, that is the market functioning at its best. Apple makes most of their money directly from their customers, via hardware and (at a higher rate in recent years) subscriptions to their services within their platforms. Apple makes almost nothing from government contracts or direct enterprise services, nor from advertising. We're not friends, but unions aren't friends either. It's all a spectrum of interests. Apple can be useful. Hence why I'd like to see careful, surgical legislation that addresses specific weak points or externalities.

>If you had alternate stores then you only need one to resist bad requirements and you can still install the app.

Incorrect. Every alternate store must resist bad requirements, or else every app & service must be fully substitutable. Because if there are apps that users must use, or that are so valuable that there are powerful incentives to put up with a significant amount of downside, then they themselves can drive stores if there are options not the other way around.

>If you have to use Apple then it's a single point of control and in cases when they fail to resist government pressure[1], the user has no alternative.

Indeed, like I said a centralized point faces censorship risks too. Hence why I'd like the option for root key control for hardware, software, both, or neither. Apple's centralization is why there is a great deal of content censorship on iOS and restrictions in many countries without great workarounds. Apple's centralized power and incentives also gave them a powerful reason and position to tell the FBI to fuck off. None of this is simple, which is why I'm opposed to broad stroke big hammers.

Thank you by the way for your detailed reply much later. I don't agree with you in all aspects, but I do appreciate the time you took!