All you're actually describing is that there's way less pressure for apps on the Google side to be as high quality as the Apple stuff. (Given the existence of the store alternatives, even if Google did enforce higher quality, those apps have plenty of other options to get on user's phones.) And that's kinda par for the course for the level of marketing-savvy that Google exhibits.

> The ability to install 3rd party apps has effectively zero effect on how well Apple curates their official app store.

You're missing the forest for the trees. Apple offers a curated environment largely through the curation of the app store. That curated environment is massively valuable to the average user. That's the asset Apple is trying to protect.

> You're missing the forest for the trees. Apple offers a curated environment largely through the curation of the app store. That curated environment is massively valuable to the average user. That's the asset Apple is trying to protect.

I am a big proponent of curation and one of the reason I'm an apple user is the high number of quality apps on the platform. But after encountering the apple publication process, it definitely feels like censorship and the lack of other options, even for applications I wrote, is stifling. I think it's better to encourage computer literacy than pretend that the outside world just does not exist (especially when there are so many scamming schemes on the app store).

Yeah, but Apple isn't hurting for devs or apps. It sucks for us trying to make apps, but that's our problem and it's not the actual principle being argued here. I do think it's telling though, that our motivation for opening up the app store is orthoganal to the justification being supplied.