While there’s still about zero percent chance of it happening in the near term, I have to think that long-term, Apple will port Gatekeeper to iOS. It’s a near-ideal balance of security on OS X: Non-technical users can stay in the walled garden of the Mac App Store, semi-technical users can allow signed binaries, and power users can run whatever they want.
I work in the mobile healthcare space, and right now, we’re starting to move away from iOS as a platform for future projects because of the restrictions and hassle of the App Store. We’re not making 99-cent games and artisan to-do lists, so the fact that iPhone users are far more likely to spend money on apps doesn’t matter to us – we need a platform that lets us communicate with medical devices and display information for healthcare professionals without a mercurial third party deciding what we can and can’t do.
I work in the mobile healthcare space, and right now, we’re starting to move away from iOS as a platform for future projects because of the restrictions and hassle of the App Store. We’re not making 99-cent games and artisan to-do lists, so the fact that iPhone users are far more likely to spend money on apps doesn’t matter to us – we need a platform that lets us communicate with medical devices and display information for healthcare professionals without a mercurial third party deciding what we can and can’t do.