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Protective compliance.

Protect the users from misguided legislation.

Protect the company from losing $10bn per year, more like it.
Both can be true.
Android is not overrun by independent app stores.

This is a non issue.

It’s nothing to do with being overrun by an independent app store. That is a total red herring.

The real issue… stay with me, it’s a lot of words… is that alternative unreviewed or poorly reviewed app distribution mechanisms open a pathway to pervasive abuse via installation of malicious privacy violating apps onto devices of unwitting targets by people other than the targeted device users.

Let’s ban PCs because this issue has been such a huge problem
Despite the fact that Chromebooks are generally mediocre-to-bad hardware, there are a lot of school systems where this is exactly what has been done for classroom hardware.

Even outside of school systems, there is a wide variety of virtual desktop systems where office employees essentially get a fresh install of the OS every morning with their files where they should be — because they can't be trusted to manage a dedicated piece of hardware without adding malware.

It does have a large amount of malware too, though
Motte and Bailey's also co-exist. But we know no one really lounges in the bailey when it's not requires.
What are those.
Alternative ways to download apps has nothing to do with user protection.

All Apple is doing is protecting their pockets.

You are mistaken. Malicious apps hurt their users and hurt their brand.
somehow the decade of jailbroken apps haven't done that. I doubt being able to search the web for an alt app store would do worse.
I don’t think you are aware of all the damage that has been done. Being unaware does not make it disappear. For you, maybe, but not for Apple.
What damage?

Apple losing 30% fee? Money lost for apple is money saved by people.

Why are you so invested in defending that company's shitty practices?

When someone already paid for their device they should be able to side load apps and use other app stores (without apple taking a 10% or 30% cut).

Are you an apple employee, marketer or investor? I bet that 30% cut on every app boosts their profits, but if people own phones they ahould be able to use them whatever way they want. Without apple taking a cut again just because.

I’m not any of those, no. But I agree with their stance on protecting privacy. You critics can’t stop thinking it’s only about money. But it’s not.
You a big user of napster?
How are users protected in this situation?

To me this only seems to twist the arms of large companies like epic and Facebook. A small malicious app with thousands of installs can exist completely for free.

It doesn’t completely protect them, as Apple repeatedly states in the document. It simply can’t protect users as much as it could prior to the legislation, is their claim. But it helps mitigate some aspects.
What I don't understand is how the pricing methods that our parent comment called egregious offer any type of protection or mitigation. Could you elaborate?
Yes it steers larger app publishers away from utilizing other app stores, which in turn makes those other app stores less enticing, making it harder for other app stores to survive.

The app publishers don't have to choose this new pricing. They can stay with the old pricing, if they stay exclusively on Apple's App Store.

The reason Apple wants fewer app stores is that if fewer third party app stores survive, then there are fewer app stores with questionable or lacking review processes out there hosting malicious apps.

Just to make the connection super explicit for completeness, having fewer avenues for malicious apps is a good thing for user privacy.

There are other better ways to do it, like controlling one app store that has only well reviewed apps, but it seems the EU with the DMA left Apple only this bad way.

Apple gets other benefits from controlling the App Store, beyond protecting user privacy, don't get me wrong. Money being one, but not in a greed sense, but more because mostly that money pays the costs of running the development program, which are huge costs involving many thousands of Apple engineering salaries, which in turn enables the app ecosystem that benefits everyone. Another benefit is they can minimize the appearance of bad user experiences on their platform, to protect their brand, which they have invested a lot in and care a lot about.