> Of course, no one will answer “yes” to a direct question “do you want more restrictions”.

I find this admission very interesting. When presented with direct evidence of paternalism, everyone rejects it. Of course. As they should.

> Many, however, will concede that being more secure and stable is more important than side loading, if given a choice. I thought this reasoning was implied.

Where exactly do you think the security and stability are coming from?

For better or worse, iPhone apps are sandboxed. As a developer, I can sideload my own apps onto my own devices using Xcode, but those sideloaded apps are as sandboxed and locked down as any App Store app.

Even on the Mac nowadays, all apps have to go through an automated malware check (notarization) before distribution. And Apple's new distribution methods in the EU also require notarization.

Thus, the alleged advantage of the App Store can come only from manual review by humans. In my experience as an App Store developer, however, reviewers are, frankly, ignorant idiots. They're clueless. They don't know anything.

"In a deposition in the Epic lawsuit, Shoemaker said that the qualifications needed to get hired as an app reviewer were that a person “could breathe [and] could think.”" https://www.wired.com/story/apples-app-store-review-fix-fail...

Even if app reviewers were competent, which they aren't, they wouldn't have the time to do their jobs competently. According to Apple itself, "Every week, over 500 dedicated experts around the world review over 100K apps." https://www.apple.com/app-store/ If you think about it, 500 reviewers doing nothing but reviewing for 40 hours per week could spend no more than 12 minutes per app on average. That's not much of a defense against clever attackers who can intentionally hide things. And after all, Epic Games itself managed to get its non-compliant version of Fortnite through app review (presumably because there was a server-side switch that triggered the new payment system).

The point of app review can't be security. They're no good at security. They're certainly not security experts. In my experience, the point of app review is mainly to enforce Apple's arbitrary rules. The first rule, or commandment, is thou shalt not avoid Apple's revenue cut.

As a natural result of this mediocre at best app review, the App Store is full of scams. These scams cost Apple users a very large amount of money collectively. I'm dubious about whether the App Store is safer than the so-called "wild west" outside the App Store. As far as I can see, the App Store is a honeypot for scammers, because once you make it past app review, you're home free, and you can easily exploit App Store search keywords, buy some of Apple's convenient Search Ads to promote your scam, give your app plenty of fake ratings and reviews, and have Apple collect your payments for you, which Apple happily does after subtracting its cut of the scam. Any anonymous person anywhere in the world with $99 can submit their scam to the App Store, and they do. And Apple tells users that the App Store is safe, which does users a disservice and lowers their guard against the scams.

> And the proof you ask for is in the popularity of the device.

That's not proof. Why would I ask for proof of something that I already know, something that's a verifiable public fact? The iPhone is very popular, of course. Duh.

> I'm sure design, life-style brand/marketing play a role as well, but to much lesser extent, in my opinion.

I wasn't asking for your opinion. I was asking for proof, which you still haven't provided.

> I have actually never heard a non-dev request side loading, for example.

Of course not. They probably don't even understand what sideloading is technically, so they're neither in favor of it nor against it, hence proving my point that people don't buy iPhones because they disallow sideloading. But as you already admitted, nobody wants more restrictions on their own usage, and they might say as much if you could explain the technical issues in a way that they can understand. Moreover, users don't know what they're missing. Literally, they don't know what apps could exist but don't exist, because Apple's arbitrary rules outlaw the existence of those apps. Only the developers know that.