No, the fundamental error you are making is you, the developer, are incorrectly assuming, that I, the user, cares about whether Apple lets you make money or do whatever they want on my device.
Even the way the worded your response you are making a plea as a developer to a user "hey take your app own to the gallows and kill it.". I don't have an app. What I do understand is; given the last 20 years of computing is that developers broadly cannot be trusted to run software on my device and I don't have the time to inspect the source code of every app. What I have decided is that I can trust Apple to be the gatekeeper to my device and if you can't play by their rules you won't have access to their official distribution processes.
If I, the user, decide that Apple isn't in my best interest then I'll switch devices. But I have no incentive to adopt a more developer friendly workflow when it's been broadly anonymous developers that have been sucking up and spying on me every chance they get. If some innocent apps get caught in the cross fire, it's unfortunate.
I don't care what you think, honestly. (And don't misjudge my tone here - I mean this in the friendliest way.)
I care about the fact that the US government has let this gorilla grow into King Kong and start throwing us into walls and trampling on our industry.
If this trend continues, the giants will swallow us completely. Our industry has always been special, and the barriers have historically been low. Now that Apple enjoys a position at the top, they're putting up fences and walls for the rest of us.
Apple is shitting into all of our faces, and we're being told to just take it.
Because if you want to enter the mobile market you HAVE to? This “the customers will choose the best” thing has never been true, even in its source. The context is “in a fair competition between competing products” (which won’t be true again, because humans are not rational - otherwise marketing would not matter)
Also, it’s not like I have any chance ever to compete with Apple, even if I were to be the cleverest people on Earth.
It’s not a desire, it is a must. There are certain kinds of application that simply would be meaningless, if they could not target 50% of the population. Like what would a messenger clone do with only half the people? (And I am fairly sure, that if nothing else, financially most apps or app ideas are in this category)
We agree on your last point, an open platform should finally emerge (and it is pretty much happening with pinephone) - but it would be a fairy tale to believe that it can gain foothold in the recent future against these monster corps
There are plenty of messenger apps that don’t have 50% of the US population.
iMessage is one of them, as is Facebook messenger.
There are many other messengers with far smaller user bases. There is no reason at all that a messaging app needs to address 50% of the population immediately.
The best way to prevent the emergence of an open alternative would be to remove the incentive for people to work on it.
The best way to remove the incentive for people to work on an open alternative would be to reduce the restrictions on what people can build for iPhone while still leaving Apple in control of the OS.
Even the way the worded your response you are making a plea as a developer to a user "hey take your app own to the gallows and kill it.". I don't have an app. What I do understand is; given the last 20 years of computing is that developers broadly cannot be trusted to run software on my device and I don't have the time to inspect the source code of every app. What I have decided is that I can trust Apple to be the gatekeeper to my device and if you can't play by their rules you won't have access to their official distribution processes.
If I, the user, decide that Apple isn't in my best interest then I'll switch devices. But I have no incentive to adopt a more developer friendly workflow when it's been broadly anonymous developers that have been sucking up and spying on me every chance they get. If some innocent apps get caught in the cross fire, it's unfortunate.