Users sideloading apps on their phones is likely to be a benefit to like 5,000 people and an attack vector for 3 billion.
As for Steam, you don't have to use it as a game publisher, as in you could always sell physical media (up until the past few years) or a download. As a consumer I'll pretty much always prefer buying a game through Steam. I hate all these other launchers that you have to now use for like one title because they suck.
This same "me too" philosophy is ruining online content distribution where once Netflix was so good. Just look at the difficulty in finding out if a given movie or TV show is on any of your services. There's really no good way to do that. I've seen websites that try but they also include Amazon, Google Play and iTunes where you can buy that content when all I'm interested in is where it streams for free. It just sucks.
Apple can handle it. They could just put enough stringent protections at the OS layer against malicious apps. Not to mention, any sideloading feature would be well guarded from within the interface so that no one other than power users would actually find it and enable it.
> This same "me too" philosophy is ruining online content distribution where once Netflix was so good.
Ease of service does not justify monopoly.
> Just look at the difficulty in finding out if a given movie or TV show is on any of your services.
It is indeed annoying, but that's not so much an issue directly caused by competition between different streaming services, so much as the studios/networks hoarding their IP. Even if Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. never existed, you'd still see efforts like HBO Max, Peacock from NBC, Paramount Plus from CBS, etc. to try to monopolize their own IP by keeping it off of Netflix.
As for Steam, you don't have to use it as a game publisher, as in you could always sell physical media (up until the past few years) or a download. As a consumer I'll pretty much always prefer buying a game through Steam. I hate all these other launchers that you have to now use for like one title because they suck.
This same "me too" philosophy is ruining online content distribution where once Netflix was so good. Just look at the difficulty in finding out if a given movie or TV show is on any of your services. There's really no good way to do that. I've seen websites that try but they also include Amazon, Google Play and iTunes where you can buy that content when all I'm interested in is where it streams for free. It just sucks.
More is not always better.