What ultimately made me pull out of the Mac App Store was the fact that publishing with Apple meant “app with customizations to accommodate stupid rules”, and $EVERYWHERE_ELSE meant “upload and be done with it”. If you haven’t checked lately, the Mac App Store is a pathetic ghost town for the most part.
On iOS I guarantee that if the App Store had even one alternative, many apps would do the same and bail on Apple, and you’d see a similar ghost store.
Also, since Apple loves to compare its grand scheme to how physical stores used to behave, let’s examine that: there isn’t a single physical store that demands to have complete control over everything in the boxes on their shelves. If you open a product box and it contains a card with information, such as a link to the company web site or other stuff, then that’s what you get. If apps followed this sane model, Apple would just let apps put whatever they want “in the box”, including sensible things like INFORMATION about account sign-ups and other products, and links.
On iOS I guarantee that if the App Store had even one alternative, many apps would do the same and bail on Apple, and you’d see a similar ghost store.
Also, since Apple loves to compare its grand scheme to how physical stores used to behave, let’s examine that: there isn’t a single physical store that demands to have complete control over everything in the boxes on their shelves. If you open a product box and it contains a card with information, such as a link to the company web site or other stuff, then that’s what you get. If apps followed this sane model, Apple would just let apps put whatever they want “in the box”, including sensible things like INFORMATION about account sign-ups and other products, and links.