> Well, what you ask is what's written in the very first prompt screenshotted in the blog post; [..] I don't see how this choice of words is much different from your proposal.
There are nuances about the UI and wording as discussed elsewhere in this thread, but my main objection is about Apple positioning themselves as the only one who decides which apps don't get that warning.
> [..] I don't think Apple will ever relinquish the strategic power to force developers to adopt APIs and track their lifecycle, and never again have to deal with the Flash scenario.
I don't see how alternative stores would prevent Apple from breaking backwards-compatibility on an OS they would still control. Even open source projects do BC breaks as they see fit. And I think Microsoft demonstrates that proper BC is something a company the size of Apple could well afford to do if they cared to.
The Flash case could be seen to support my position as well. Wasn't it a case of Adobe getting into a dominant position (for their particular niche) and then "abusing" it by letting Flash stagnate with awful security? It's good that we eventually got rid of Flash, but wouldn't it have all been much easier if Adobe had never become that dominant in the first place?
You can of course say Apple would never let something stagnate in that way, but all companies have their (sometimes shifting) priorities and interests. Often they'll align with you as the user - that's the nice thing about capitalism - but there's no guarantee that they always will (e.g. that Hong Kong example), and a dominant player in the absence of healty competition is always incentivized to charge as much as the market will bear.
> If they let the door open to "alternative stores" good luck explaining to the general public how it's not their fault if works like shite and kills hardware performance.
Is this really that big of a problem? Seems like something platforms already deal with by surfacing and by default restricting apps' energy use etc, though this too can be a double-edged sword. I have a few apps on Android that need to constantly show a pointless notification just so they can run in the background, and they have legit reasons to do so, and I'm OK with the battery drain.
Again I'm compelled to draw an analogy to society: freedom indeed requires some degree of responsibility and understanding from everyone. Benevolent dictators are a great place to "outsource" all that. The trouble is that they (or their successors) rarely stay benevolent for long, especially if you're not in their ingroup. I've yet to see power accumulation have good long-term consequences in history.