Lostinlodos :
I think apple should allow side loading. And I think apple, Google, Amazon, and everyone else should pull the plug on software support and compatibility as soon as a user side loads anything.
It would be nice if apple allowed users to access iOS the way they can on MacOS! Use the app store. Get Support. Download and install on your own? No support. Sounds good to me all the way around.
So, either iOS or MacOS model, with nothing in between? This false dichotomy ignores the fact that MacOS is built around an architectural model that's 4 or 5 decades old, with processes running on bare metal, and a complete view of the filesystem. Moreover, the user has admin rights on their machine, without resorting to hacks, etc. So, it's a lot easier for a user to break things in MacOS.
Contrast that to the modern mobile OS, where apps are sandboxed, APIs are designed to tightly manage permissions, and where a user doesn't normally have root access. In this latter case, there should be no good reason to drop support, merely because someone didn't install an app from the official store. Sure, don't support the side-loaded apps, but as long as the device hasn't been rooted, Apple can & should still stand behind their software.
Again, I don't blame Apple for
trying to leverage their control over the platform to milk the lucrative apps, content, and now payments markets. I just don't think society needs to grant them this monopoly, just because they built the underlying platform. I'll even go so far as to say that if they weren't a American company, things would probably be different.