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22july2013 said:

That's a fair point. I empathize. But if someone started regulating Apple's app store, and Apple decided to withdraw its app store completely as its response to regulation, how would you deal with that? How do you force Apple to provide a service that it doesn't want to provide? Since I have no answer to that, I can't join you.

Doesn't the fact that Apple is providing a service like an app store, when it doesn't have to, count for anything?

Again, I had been a huge supporter of the walled garden approach until Apple's coordinated effort to destroy Parler. Their Walled garden approach is genuinely superior... but only if/when it is used to restrict apps for security, decency and also for the platform's overall health (profitability-maintenance) purposes.

Android advocates have traditionally critiqued Apple's approach saying that the walled garden affords them the ability to ban apps without cause. The supposed inferiority argument for Apple's approach has always been presented by the fact that Apple can ban an app because it might compete too successfully with an Apple product. Though that argument always seemed hyperbolic to me, I still defended Apple's approach if only because Apple's ownership of the entire platform affords them the right (morally, technically and legally) to restrict anything even if the ban was for little more than because it competed too well against Apple's products.

Those same android advocates said that I'm arguing against my self-interests but this wasn't true. My self interests are to use a secure platform. Apple's walled garden approach guarantees that. If it means I miss some apps that Apple doesn't approve of, it's a tradeoff I'm more than willing to make and even pay a slight premium for.

All of that defense of the walled garden is predicated on maintaining the health of the overall platform but we all need to admit that Apple DOES walk a moral grey line that requires a lot of trust... it requires that we trust that Apple not abuse that power. I defended Apple for years as they gave little reason to think they would abuse it. But they DID abuse it and not only did they abuse it but that abuse was egregious.

A mere WILLINGNESS to ban an app solely for political and/or social engineering reasons is an egregious-enough offense that they be regulated... but Apple actually followed through on it. There's no walking this back. This is not something they can even express a mea culpa, undo the ban and all is made right.

If regulation means Apple felt compelled to take their proverbial app store ball and go home... then so be it. A technological transition to a web-server-based app standard would inevitably occur. Such a transition would mean political speech and social engineering could no longer occur. (Or at least be less easy). Affecting that kind fo change is far FAR more important than maintaining the platform's app store profitability.