As someone who never got into the Apple ecosystem, the title is really amusing --- they're announcing it like it's a new feature and it actually comes with a lot of gotchas, when "download apps directly from websites" with absolute freedom has been the norm for just about every other computer in widespread use, for the past few decades.
The average/majority of the population were not going to navigate to shitty mobile websites or desktop websites on their mobile browser to download apps in 2008. If the app store was such a bad place to put apps then why did they boom? Why do people use the Android play store at all if they can sideload, if the need to do so is so highly valued.
I do think people forget that when the iPhone app store was released it was a game changer. The whole idea of a single place to download all apps and games was huge for most people including developers. It meant that everything was there, in the one place and managed through that one app.
Now a decade has passed and we're asking for change. That's fine, but we can't forget that when the app store first came out there wasn't this hysteria around the need to sideload. The app store as a place for developers to publish their apps was huge, Apple did the publishing for you. How that we all have more choice, we're expecting Apple to change to provide more choice.
But we can't forget how beneficial the app store and the "walled" approach was.
Now there could be an aspect of predatory behavior by Apple in the way they charge developers etc, but that's where I feel the problem should be tackled.
