Can you say where I said a walled garden was the only way to solve any of the problems?
In fact I have consistently agreed about the problems levied against the walled garden model.
I haven’t asserted that the user has more control with a walled garden, although I think they do in practice have more control with an App Store than with nothing.
I’d be curious how you came to the impression that I did - can you explain where I made that claim?
My claim is that walled gardens do introduce problems, but that they currently solve much greater problems for both users and developers than the ones they introduce.
The claim that it’s just safe for people to install software because it’s not dangerous out there is obviously false.
You can say this is just me saying ‘I’m right and you are wrong’, or you can do the most basic research on the amount of cybercrime and plain old scams and how much of it involves malware or impersonation of one kind or another.
If you think this problem doen’t exist, it would make sense that you don’t see the benefit of App stores, however to deny that it exists in this way is quite surprising, to say the very least.
The issue of reputation isn’t a matter of opinion. It’s a fact. How can I say that? All industries with a significant number of creators and a significant number of consumers have intermediaries. Only the most famous independent producers are independent.
If you can find a counterexample, I would be interested to know about it.
As for believing that the only solution to the issue of impersonation is a walled garden - I don’t know the answer to that.
Maybe some kind of distributed reputation and trust system that doesn’t involve a powerful intermediary is possible.
Perhaps some kind of blockchain or web of trust can be developed.
I’m not at all sure that this is possible - Apple’s attestation mechanism uses hardware keys to to create signatures that join a device, a particular user and an app binary.
Without the ability to link all three of these it’s hard to see how a software only solution would work.
But even if an alternative is technically possible, it quite obviously doesn’t exist today. If it did, you’d have just linked to it, and I’d have probably ordered whatever device would allow me to participate.
If you want to continue claim that App stores solve no real problems or that the problems are trivial, there are no dangers out there etc, then be my guest. I can’t change that belief in you.
If on the other hand, we have good solutions to those problems that don’t require an App Store, then I would love to know about them and if it’s true, I’ll happily concede that I’m wrong.