I never said Apple is the only platform users trust, but that there is value in the trust that the platform brings. Beyond that, there would be value in it being the platform that comes preinstalled, even if side loading was a thing.

> This could be solved if…

It can not. The brand damage comes from the sum of incompetence of all users (not just the diligent ones) multiplied by the capability to do damage. Plus, if you made it a hassle, the anti-competitive argument you raised with Google rears its head.

> I never said Apple is the only platform users trust, but that there is value in the trust that the platform brings.

Value is relative. Oxygen is extremely valuable if you don't have any, but it's also commonly available.

If Epic had an iOS app store that charged 10% instead of 30% and a reputation among users for not allowing malware, who is going to pay Apple 30%? It doesn't matter how good Apple is in absolute, it matters how good they are relative to the alternatives. Which makes prohibiting the alternatives a means to extract undue rents.

> Beyond that, there would be value in it being the platform that comes preinstalled, even if side loading was a thing.

But this is just the evil to be prevented.

> The brand damage comes from the sum of incompetence of all users (not just the diligent ones) multiplied by the capability to do damage.

The assumption here is that it's legitimate to blame the brand for your own actions, which is absurd. If your self-driving car drives itself into the sea, you can reasonably blame the manufacturer. If you get drunk and drive your car off a pier your own self, this is not the fault of the Ford Motor Company and any attempt to divert blame will be rightfully met with skepticism and ridicule.

Now, you can have a poor design and get blamed for that. For example, the way software is installed on Windows is much worse than the way it is on Linux.

On Windows the default is to run random opaque binaries from arbitrary websites. Windows is full of malware, and it's not just because it's "more popular" or whatever.

On Linux the default is to install software from the system package manager, which contains vetted packages. But you're not in any way limited to one of them. If you want Firefox nightly builds, Mozilla has their own repository. You can install the Nix package manager from the Debian package manager.

You can also download source code from github and compile and run it yourself, which can be dangerous, but that's quite technical and unusual for unsophisticated users to do, and is different from the usual way they install anything which makes them rightfully wary. And this combination works great because you can simultaneously do whatever you want and yet be confident that if you're only doing things in the default way, someone has vetted these things and it's highly unlikely to be malware.

> Plus, if you made it a hassle, the anti-competitive argument you raised with Google rears its head.

We can distinguish between making it a hassle to install random malware and making it a hassle to install a competing store from an established organization the user could plausibly trust to do the vetting for them instead of Apple.

> If Epic had an iOS app store that charged 10% instead of 30% and a reputation among users for not allowing malware, who is going to pay Apple 30%?

The Epic store on Windows is actually a good example to prove my point: They take only a 12% cut, they pay you to become an Epic exclusive, and they pay to literally give games away to acquire users. Steam does none of that and takes a 30% cut. Steam doesn't even come pre-installed on Windows. How does Steam get away with it? People are lazy. They already know Steam, they already have Steam, they already have a Steam library, they hesitate to get yet another account. They prefer Steam out of habit. They don't care if the developers lose another 18%, and most developers can't afford to not be on Steam just because of those 18%.

> The assumption here is that it's legitimate to blame the brand for your own actions, which is absurd.

It doesn't matter whether it's legitimate, if it's a real effect. People don't read past the headline. Windows is a pretty secure operating system if you use it properly, but people just don't, thus Mac gets the reputation of being "more secure", even if that's wholly unjustified on a technical level.

> On Windows the default is to run random opaque binaries from arbitrary websites.

Same as Mac OS. You get a warning if the binary is not signed.

> On Linux...

Nobody uses "Linux" and nobody ships software for "Linux". If there was a distribution of Linux that was comparable to Windows in terms of market penetration and users, it would be a similarly vulnerable platform. Actually, that distribution exists: It's called Android, where malware and scams proliferate.

> You can also download source code from github and compile and run it yourself...

I can. They can't. I won't. It's wholly irrelevant.

> making it a hassle to install a competing store from an established organization

So, who gets to decide who is "established"? Isn't that the whole point of side-loading, that you don't have a gatekeeper? If you have an open platform, your chain of trust can be as good as you want, if your kid wants to download "cheats for Fortnite", nature finds a way.

> Steam does none of that and takes a 30% cut. Steam doesn't even come pre-installed on Windows. How does Steam get away with it?

By not having any walls.

Games on Steam are allowed to be sold elsewhere, for a different price. The developer can even sell Steam keys for their game via a different channel without giving Valve a cut. As a result, there is little reason for a developer not to add a 30% markup to their game and sell it on Steam and let price-sensitive customers buy the lower priced key via some other channel.

If they tried to charge 30% and prevent you from selling your game any other way, they'd have fewer games, and so fewer users, and so not be able to charge anybody anything.

> It doesn't matter whether it's legitimate, if it's a real effect.

It isn't, and even if it was, it would be unavoidable.

If you throw your iPhone into a wood chipper, it will be damaged. Idiots can blame Apple for that but it isn't Apple's fault and there is not really anything Apple can do about it. Moreover, not many people are going to blame Apple for that, because that's ridiculous.

> Windows is a pretty secure operating system if you use it properly, but people just don't, thus Mac gets the reputation of being "more secure", even if that's wholly unjustified on a technical level.

Windows is a pretty secure operating system if you don't install random things from the internet, but then you're expected to install random things from the internet in the normal course of using it, and unsophisticated users don't have a good way to distinguish between what is and isn't sensible to install.

Mac avoids this by not having that much esoteric third party software to begin with, so installing Putty from "chiark home page" isn't a regular occurrence and doesn't condition users to do that.

> Nobody uses "Linux" and nobody ships software for "Linux".

Tens of millions of people use Linux on the desktop. That thing Valve charges 30% for ships for "Linux" and so do a large chunk of those games. And Firefox and Chrome and Maya and Blender and probably a higher proportion of open source software than even ships for Windows.

> If there was a distribution of Linux that was comparable to Windows in terms of market penetration and users, it would be a similarly vulnerable platform. Actually, that distribution exists: It's called Android, where malware and scams proliferate.

Actually, that distribution exists, it's called Android, and it has far fewer problems with malware than Windows despite the ability to side load apps.

> I can. They can't. I won't. It's wholly irrelevant.

It isn't irrelevant. It's an important part of the lifecycle of many apps.

The first version will barely compile and be full of bugs. Installing it will be a huge pain, it will have thirty seven worldwide users who are all tech workers, and those people will submit bug reports and patches and cause it to be improved into the state that it makes it into some kind of distribution repository where ordinary people can install it.

Unless you make it so people can't install such things on their devices even if they know what they're doing, at which point it has two worldwide users who are actually only the original developer with two devices and it withers on the vine and never comes to anything.

> So, who gets to decide who is "established"?

Granted it's hard to make an objective determination in edge cases, but is this supposed to be a difficult problem in the common case? Epic is an established company. Amazon, Google, Valve, Canonical, Mozilla -- these are not difficult to answer in the affirmative.

> Isn't that the whole point of side-loading, that you don't have a gatekeeper?

Side loading should be possible. It isn't the thing you have to make easy.

Installing the Epic Games Store should be easy. But you won't find "cheats for Fortnite" in it.