> …except if they value a device that enforces audited software only, because they find it safe and convenient.

There's a lot of selective reasoning on both sides of this debate. We both know that consumers don't think about security enough that they would consciously avoid an alternate app store in order to keep themselves safe. We've all worked with tech-illiterate people long enough to know that they don't have survival instincts around security, they will happily walk out of a walled garden at the first opportunity, disable their firewalls, and install malware.

But it's also pretty obvious that consumers don't think about security enough that the majority of them are consciously opting into a curated app store as an informed decision. If Apple suddenly decided to throw open the flood gates and became even more open than Android, these users would not switch to Android. I have never heard an ordinary, non-techy, non-HN user tell me that they're buying an iPhone because it doesn't support sideloading.

The reality is, consumers don't think about this at all and they probably don't have much of a conscious preference for any outcome. Some tech users do, but the majority of Apple users are neither so security conscious that they would inconvenience themselves in any way to avoid 3rd-party installs, nor so conscious of consumer freedoms that they would inconvenience themselves in order to buy a device that supports sideloading.

I do not believe that this is a behavior that the market selects for in either direction. The smartphone market is not a reflection of social preference towards either security or freedom.

So I think it's just kind of nonsense to act like this is a question of consumer choice. If Apple is allowed to run a curated store, customers will keep buying Apple products and they'll ignore any apps that they can't install and they'll lose zero sleep about that arrangement. If Apple is forced to run a more open store, customers will keep buying Apple products and they'll install anything they want regardless of the warnings, and they will once again lose zero sleep over it.

And of course that's the case because there's no other way to square the idea that people willingly buy into the Apple ecosystem and also that those same people wouldn't avoid sideloaded apps if given the choice. There's no way we can pretend that one of those decisions is a consumer preference and the other one is the opposite and their brains have magically turned off -- the only explanation that explains both behaviors is that consumers are not making either of these decisions based on security/freedom.

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Most consumers are apathetic to this entire debate. Again, there are some tech users that doesn't apply to. They are an extreme minority, but they exist. Some people use Android out of principle, some people consciously choose to use Apple devices because they don't want sideloading. Most people do not fall into either of those categories, and I just think it's a mistake to interpret consumer buying trends of Android/iOS devices like it's some kind of general expression of customer will about technical issues that they don't even understand in the first place.

You have to remember the majority of both Apple and Android customers probably don't even know what sideloading is; they certainly are not making informed decisions about it in any direction. To the extent that they are thinking about privacy or security at all, they are primarily thinking about the number of TV ads that they've seen for each product that used the word "privacy."

So when we talk about regulation, it's more valuable to talk about the effects on the overall market for smartphone apps and software innovation, the practical effects on security regardless of people's supposed choices about the risks they want to take, and about whether the market/security benefits outweigh the downsides. "What consumers want" is a misdirection; consumers don't want anything to do with this debate and they couldn't care less about whether or not Apple has an API for 3rd-party web browsers or whether or not the app store allows distributing GPL apps. They don't know or care what those words mean.