Their fears seem mostly unfounded, too. For most consumers, the convenience of an app store is massive.

The issue, I think, is not that Apple sets draconian rules in their store. Their store, their rules.

It's that I, a user, cannot choose to sideload an app I want to use on my device or choose to use a different store.

>It's that I, a user, cannot choose to sideload an app

That's only half the equation. I run android, but have no google account. I have always used a combination of aptoide, f-droid and manually downloaded apk's for my apps.

When all the covid apps were released and governments were encouraging people to download them, do you think they put the APK on a government website for people to download?

Nope, just links to the app store. Of course, most of those apps relied on google play services API's for a bunch of stuff, so it's not like they would have worked anyway.

It's not enough to merely allow sideloading. If the expectation isn't that mobile devices are a diverse ecosystem and that it's not good enough for developers to pick one store and bugger the rest, you've achieved very little. Most people could not be bothered going through what I do to keep my phone clean.

It is very troubling that to use public services, one must agree to an arbitrary and abusive private company contractual agreement (TOS).

I've not yet found that to be the case, although I fear that one day it will.

I generally find that all you need to do is tell people their solution is not acceptable. All the banks in Iceland are trying really hard to convince people that phone based 2FA is the only option. However, I went to my bank and informed them that I don't take my phone with me when I travel overseas and I require another option. They tried a few other variations of "but you could use your phone this way", but once they realized I wasn't joking when I said "I often just don't have a phone with me, find me something else" it turns out that the physical 2FA tokens totally still work, they just don't like telling people.

Generally speaking, the people providing these things have a boss who expects them to make sure things run smoothly. They'll try to force you to use the app if that's the easiest path, but as soon as they realise that trying to force you to use the app will be much more painful for them than just giving you another option, they'll find another option.

What should be possible is not to sidenote an app but an entry app store.

This also happens in credit card merchant contracts (from what I've read) and it seems like the kind of thing that I prefer governments regulate (rather than try to disrupt all app stores altogether).

I just want to know that my license to use an app purchased in 1 store means that the license follows me (or my account or my estate, etc), not limited to that one app store. If I buy a game on Steam, and later move to a PS and later move to XBox, I don't want the loss of value associated with losing all copies of my legally purchased/licensed content (or worse, if my account is closed/banned on one platform).

This is also what is destroying any potential value to electronic health records (although doctors seem to hate transcribing their notes, so the value may be limited anyway).

You can say there are options in a credit card enabled business . What You cannot do is make cash transfer cheaper by offering to reducing the price by the cut you pay the provider.

It is not a lock-in at all, and it also not strictly enforced or enforceable even , plenty of times I have given cash when a vendor offered me a 2 % discount on a large purchase where the extra hassle was worth it .

> it also not strictly enforced or enforceable even

Your assertion seems to be that just because you got away with it that it's "not enforceable". I would argue that just because it's a clause in a merchant contract (a very important contract for a small business), it's a significant threat.

I meant enforceable legally depending on the jurisdiction not practically.

The comparison is not the same at all, No merchant gateway is blocking cash transactions just forbid different pricing.

This is miles away from what Apple can do. A payment g/w can only at best stop payment processing as it happened wikileaks or more recently with SciHub.

Apple can kick you off the market effectively by blocking access to app store . Either the app store should be treated like a utility given its monopolistic nature or not be allowed to push their second service (payment g/w, lots of competition) because they have control over first one App store (no competition), in another era this would be classic anti-trust .

When you have a stronghold, it makes more sense to build an ever larger moat.