The value proposition of iOS is that the app store is the place to go, and that my experience will be seamless. I want a centralised place to manage my subscriptions. Here's an example:
I subscribed to NYT Cooking in the web a few years back. I went to cancel only to find out that I have to phone them. If I subscribed on an app store it would have been one click and done. I'm actually still subscribed to it.
Why is your choice more important than my choice?
The larger point is this: in a free market, if you have a bad experience with a product (like NYT Cooking in your example), you can bring your business elsewhere. That's how it works, and that's what Apple is interfering with.
They explicitly carved out their own market by making it a tightly integrated walled garden that's closed to outside integration, it seems hypocritical to now claim that users are free to leave at any time. They're not and that's by design.
I don't want the Meta store where Meta decide what level of API access their apps get). I explicitly choose the iOS ecosystem _because_ of this. If you want the alternative, you have a choice right now with Android. If this changes, then I _dont_ get a choice. Your choice removes my only option of a curated app marketplace in favour of a marketplace that will allow for billion dollar companies to set their own rules on how I interact with their apps, rather than me delegating that to one trusted gatekeeper.
Are you asking why we have antitrust laws?
> I don't want the Meta store where Meta decide what level of API access their apps get
And they shouldn't! Users should have full control over what data their apps can access, how often, with optional spoofing where it makes sense to stop apps from gating functionality behind invasive data collection. This should be an OS-level feature, not (poorly) enforced by the app store.
Apple's superficial review process isn't going to spot malicious abuses of your data unless it's plainly obvious.
> Your choice removes my only option of a curated app marketplace in favour of a marketplace that will allow for billion dollar companies to set their own rules on how I interact with their apps, rather than me delegating that to one trusted gatekeeper.
How so? You can continue using whichever marketplace you trust. Meanwhile your privacy and security should be technological, OS-level guarantees. You don't need Apple's app store to stop apps from stealing your banking information. You need a secure operating system (which iOS advertises itself to be) which employs sandboxing and that offers fine-grained permissions which users can freely grant, deny, or spoof.
you're putting words in my mouth here.
> How so? You can continue using whichever marketplace you trust.
No. I get to use whichever marketplace the publisher decides to use. Epic aren't going to publish on the App Store (see Fortnite on PC), Meta are going to publish on their own store. 37signals are going to use their own store. I currently can use a marketplace I trust. If iOS opens to allow other stores, then those stores either need to be curated by Apple or the store apps are sideloaded and have wider permissions. I don't want Meta's store with those permissions, I'm fine with using WhatsApp and not giving them my location.
This won't be a choice for users, this will be a choice for large developers.