This is why I think it's so misguided when people talk about and push for "alternative payment processors" or "alternative app stores" when what they really mean is "I don't want to pay 30%" and just hope it comes for free with the former.
Okay cool you can have alternative app stores, you still need a business relationship with Apple, have to submit your apps for review to get your app signed, and turn over I guess 27% of all digital goods sold. But you can have your own storefront and downloader. Congrats.
Which really goes to demonstrate how ridiculous this is.
The iPhone is a coin-operated software runtime. You pay for it at the register and buy the right to own the phone, but your ownership of the software is constantly jeopardized. Everything you use for free you take for granted, and everything you pay for is rent-extracted by the world's largest company.
It's a harmful business. You can argue there are benefits, but the surcharge for simply using the Apple runtime is asinine. It should be loathed and shunned from the highest court, rendered unconscionable for any company of any size. Apple and Google can charge a 90% tax on their app stores for all I care. Those stores simply need competition to compel non-harmful practice. Otherwise, they're completely unaccountable. They've already proven this with their non-cooperation in the browser industry.
All I know is iOS/iPadOS have made it possible for my parents and all the non native English literate, mostly uneducated elders in my family able to use modern computing devices without me ever having to worry about malware.
I think it uncontroversial that this experience is so rare that it doesn't justify forbidding sideloading on Android, Windows, and MacOS. Then it also doesn't justify it for iOS.
If it was so rare, then there would have been no need for the plethora of software made to get rid of malware like CCleaner and malwarebytes and ninite.com and so many others.
Not that any of those save you from malware, necessarily. Nor the App Store - NSO has proven that you don't even need to install anything to get your iOS devices compromised. At some point, we have to acknowledge that all cell phones rely on their user to not mess things up. Even on iOS you can respond to the Nigerian Prince on iMessage with an Apple Pay of $300 (to be repaid as $1,000,000 in the Kingsland, of course).
If people want to use only Apple-sanctioned apps, that should be an option. It should not be the impetus for keeping features off the iPhone though.
The alternative is a developer mode switch with a big "Don't Touch This, Grandma!" modal when you press it. People who want to install their own software do not conflict with your parents or the non-native English literate uneducated elders in your family.
Apple was forced to allow third party payment systems. And they did.
But they were still allowed to keep their commission and in fact no regulator or court anywhere has said otherwise.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitl...