Which sounds fine until your mom hears about this cool App Store from her friend on Facebook, downloads a bunch of crap, and winds up at the Apple Store with Apple having to fix damage caused to her phone. I’m a little less sympathetic with the repairability stuff, but when it comes to the App Store, daddy Apple is doing a job that I want them to do, and changes here are not to my benefit and would make me less likely to buy the product.
I feel like my life would be a lot easier if I just got my parents and in-laws using Chromebooks. I don't like sacrificing family members on Google's altar, but the ecosystem really just fits their use cases.
I've considered something like Solus-based laptops for them, but I haven't gotten around to testing out a configuration yet.
> winds up at the Apple Store with Apple having to fix damage
What is this nebulous "damage"? If an app escapes the sandbox and totally hoses the operating system, the fix should be basically plugging the phone into a cable at home and waiting say 24 hours to prevent evil maid attacks. If the malicious app manages go further and screw up the "hardware", then that implies a serious security vulnerability and so should be covered under warranty.
A security model based around every bit of code on a device being vetted is fundamentally unscalable. The cracks are really starting to show, with increasing false positives and false negatives.
I'm not sure if you have parents or relatives that call you for iPhone tech support, but I do. Even something like resetting a locked iPad requires a call sometimes. It's crazy.
Now imagine people downloading all sorts of scam apps, having personal data uploaded, ransomware, you name it. And they are going to take that sucker straight to the Apple store if they don't have friends/family to fix it.
Aside from that, I personally view the Apple App Store as a feature and a benefit to me. I don't want another App Store even if it were available.
Any whole device reflash could also easily be done at an Apple store, even in a self-serve manner.
> people downloading all sorts of scam apps, having personal data uploaded, ransomware, you name it
Obviously if you just get rid of Apple's current solution and don't replace it with anything, then those things will happen like the jungle that was Windows. But that does not make for an argument in support of Apple's current solution.
The answer is to address those problems for arbitrary code (eg isolation and fine grained capabilities), rather than simplistically asserting that any code on the device must be "good" and then enforcing a singular top-down regime to assure that.
> I don't want another App Store even if it were available.
See if you still hold this opinion in ten years when large companies have been pushed to ban secure communication tools in the interest of "public safety". The writing is already on the wall.
(My current support load mainly consists of needing to help my dad because app UI elements are designed to be invisible. This is a problem caused by centralized control - banks create their own decommodified apps and want to look hip in the "design" world or whatever, as opposed to publishing a standardized API that would allow creation of independent apps for old people. And the same vacuous "security" FUD gets dragged out to justify that state of affairs as well)
If large companies are banning security tools in the interest of safety that’s a failure of government, and third party app stores will face the same restrictions.
Aside from that, the iPhone app ecosystem is perfect for me. Maybe it’s not perfect for you but I like it how it is and don’t want it to change and I don’t want more people in my family bothering me with tech stuff. If you want custom stuff why can’t you use Android and a Pixel 3 or something? Plenty of other options out there.
If there's an app that can cause damage to my phone, that is Apple's problem for having an exploit in their sandbox and I would certainly expect them to repair the damage
