Anyone that’s actually listening to the other side of this conversation would already know what responses to expect from what you’ve said. By saying what you’re saying you’re really making out like you only seek to throw your opinion over the fence and walk off. There are legitimate cases to be made on both sides, but your comment is not one. Calling this clear a win for user choice is naive and frankly a tad self-centred. For the average iPhone user, a user that mind you realistically wasn’t asking anything of their device that was being stopped by Apple’s rules, realistically has more to lose here than they do to gain. Who the hell uses browser extensions in 2023 let alone ones that weren’t already available in Mobile Safari?

This is above all a “win” for companies like Meta who will use their market power to create a more user-hostile experience for the common user. I don’t care if you don’t use Facebook anymore because you don’t like it. The reality is that a lot of people do, and the restrictions put in place by iOS definitely stop the Facebook app from being as bad as Meta would like it to. Now all it’s going to take is Meta to say “Instagram is only available on the Meta store”, or some variant thereof, for things to get a whole lot worse, quickly.

Delusional indie developers see this as a win when in reality it was hard enough to get people to use their apps in the first place.

Just as delusional are the tech enthusiasts that have along the way somehow conflated “cool new iOS features that I’m going to spend some time geeking out over” with “something that will legitimately make the experience better for end users at large”.

Above all, the view that anyone that disagrees with you isn’t a smart utility-belt-wearing techie such as yourself is such an absurd hill to die on and avenue to assert your elitism. I’ve spent considerable time using Android devices and customised them out the wazoo. I know how computers work. Gentoo was my daily driver for a long time. I grew up obsessed with computers and everyone around me knew it. By any of the silly tribal measures that I’m sure you’d use to establish who is a “real nerd”, I’m probably going to quality. Please consider that the fact that you can’t comprehend why supposedly smart people disagree with you may be a sign that you aren’t interrogating your own view enough, rather than it being a sign that you’re the only sane person in a world going insane.