> Are you saying you weren’t familiar with Epic’s case?

Epic's case is irrelevant to the larger debate at hand. They are not the only ones who want Apple to open up their platform, and not everyone who wants them to cares for third party stores to be "first-class App Store alternatives." You are arguing against a strawman if you insist that Epic's demands be the only metric for debate. Go take it up with Sweeney.

> This is a restatement of the Orwellian argument that if Apple doesn’t want to be forced to open their store, they must open their store.

That is reductionist interpretation of the situation. Apple can continue to fight the calls to open their store, not just from Epic but from the developer community and power users at large. And that is most likely what they will do. However, they would engender much more praise and respect if they were to do a partial opening. Instead they have chosen to persist in being Big Brother and not heed calls to open.

> Also it seems like although you downplay Epic’s role, you have deployed this argument repeatedly now, and it relies on there being someone to force Apple, such as Epic or an Antitrust authority.

Not really, the ultimate force is community goodwill and Doing the Right Thing. Apple could choose to satisfy unhappy developers and users by allowing more consumer choice. Even if the case was to be thrown out today and regulators to all look elsewhere, this groundswell of grassroots dissatisfaction will remain unless Apple deigns to Do the Right Thing.

> It could, or it could do a great deal of harm to the market.

Says you. It's a debatable point. We have been debating it, or at least attempting to, but you seem to have many tangents for us to quibble over instead.

> Perhaps Apple simply doesn’t agree with your assessment.

Apple is choosing the path of least resistance in holding on to the status quo. They usually choose this path. It's possible that they have not actually considered any alternative assessments.

> Yes. When I was a teenager I was enamored with communism. I grew out of that phase.

And yet you choose to unquestionably shackle yourself to a different monolith. Curious.

> What other markets do you have in mind?

Android. Desktop PC. Mac OS itself. These examples have been trotted out already.

> Not if they want commonly used Apps that are not in those stores.

Then they can default to using the App Store. No one is taking away the App Store in this scenario.

> No, it’s not similar because the iOS store does have all the apps.

It also has a lot of malware, which these third party app stores might not have.

> No, because then they wouldn’t have access to the wide range of apps.

> No you didn’t.

Those links also mention the networks effects issue, that it is unlikely for every single major publisher to create their own app store platform. Can you imagine all of the effort and resources it would take to do that? There is no Uber or Twitter only app stores on Android. Amazon, Samsung, other OEMs may have Android app markets, because they're OEMs. Unless we're talking about the special case of the Chinese market, or maybe PC games, you're going to have to do better than that in terms of justifying why a corporation of the size of Facebook or Microsoft would choose to go through the bother of building their own iOS app store, when they're already refraining from doing so on Android!

Not to mention, where's the Amazon app store for PC or Mac OS? Why would iOS be the only platform where you see dozens of app stores? Do you even have any idea of how the mobile app industry works? Can you give a business justification for this? Just because they "could", doesn't mean these companies would. Especially since the "could" isn't only barred by Apple's technical restrictions, but by real-world business decisions. So what, is Amazon just going to create an entire store for its Kindle and Alexa apps? Is Facebook going to build an entire store for its seven or eight apps? Are they going to add unnecessary restrictions when the majority of non-power users would be using the App Store anyway? Please.

This whole anti-third party app store/sideloading scenario seems to be a slippery slope argument constructed by wild speculative points:

1. Major developers both established or new hot new unicorn startups would build their own app stores, and make their apps exclusively available on those stores.

2. These stores will be a significant source of malware, because apparently only Apple is capable of decent curation. (And yet you deny that they're capable of creating a secure operating system.)

3. The ability to use third party stores or sideload apps would be readily available to iOS users, and not properly gated in such a way for Apple so that only power users would take advantage of this ability. (Or, as I theorize elsewhere, Apple wouldn't build in UX patterns so that users are stigmatized against non-App Store origin apps, as they already do on macOS via Gatekeeper towards unidentified developers.)

3.5. In the situation where they had to support non-App Store apps, Apple wouldn't simply build a Gatekeeper-type system for iOS anyway. Or otherwise devise other ingenious solutions to potential third-party app store security vulnerabilities. Or, as others have pointed out in this thread, restrict sideloading of apps only to those that have been properly code-signed/notarized.

4. The existence of third party app stores/sideloading would inevitably lead iOS to become more insecure, because for some reason a significant number of users will stop using the App Store and seek out insecure apps instead. And the existence of those insecure apps will also somehow impact users who continue exclusively using the App Store.

5. Perhaps a rehash of several of the previous points, but the assumption that the main source of security of iOS is the App Store review process itself, and not security features baked into iOS.

6. That all of this will actually significantly impact Apple's market share.

?. If we were to look at both PC and Mac desktop software, why would users even need to go to alternate third party app stores to get software? Couldn't they simply purchase software directly from publisher's sites, and download the .ipa's through there? Which could be a vector for insecurity, but in those cases it would be more of a per-publisher site basis, and not a question about shady third party app stores.

When crafting a hypothetical, it is important to remain objective. Worst-case scenarios about iOS opening up often lack the objectivity in seeing both the possible advantages and opportunities, choosing to focus on only disadvantages and threats. In doing so, they ironically often downplay the existing strengths of iOS, which go beyond the (aforementioned slipping) App Store review system. These arguments also fail to actually present a technical security threat model explaining how exactly would iOS be adversely affected.

As such, they are often fear-mongering and do not withstand close inspection. It would be nice if there were more of these arguments that attempted to provide evidence at a higher level, though.

> Are you suggesting you do not stand behind what you are saying?

It's important to remain objective in these discussions and not assign personal motivations.