Earlier quoted context omitted.
This argument doesn't hold water because it applies as much to the choice of phone as the choice of app store. There have been phones that come with malware preinstalled : https://www.zdnet.com/article/more-pre-installed-malware-has... A user who acts without knowledge or advice buys that phone and is infected. A user who acts without knowledge or advice buys an app from a store operated by the people who made that p…
> This argument doesn't hold water because it applies as much to the choice of phone as the choice of app store. That's silly. The number of people who might buy a specific no-name budget brand of phone with this problem is much, much smaller than the number of people that search for "how to install Fortnite" on Google or Youtube and end up clicking on a fake installer instead of the real one, because they can't find…
If you search for "how to install Fortnite" then you get this:
https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/download
Which is actually how you install Fortnite and not a fake installer.
People end up with the fake installer in the same ways they end up with the malware phone.
> Oh, you might accidentally buy a phone pre-loaded with malware, so we might as well give up and not bother taking any other steps to prevent the spread of malware on our phones?
There are a hundred ways to prevent the spread of malware without prohibiting multiple app stores. Allow third party apps but scan them for malware first. Get your apps from another app store, but that store checks it for malware. The only thing we give up on is the thing which is anti-competitive.
> So the fact that Windows has never had a single dominant app store means Windows users must be particularly experienced in how to be safe in installing apps from other sources? This does not match reality.
Have you used Windows lately? It comes with built in virus and malware detection for free and which doesn't expire. People are increasingly getting their software from stores like Steam and EGS which evict malware, which they can do even when they have competitors. Or getting it directly from well-known developers who they trust, like Mozilla or Adobe. Things that have no reason not to be web pages, are web pages. It works fine, even though you can still technically click through five warnings and run random garbage from the internet, because people have actually learned not to do that.
The people who haven't aren't the majority, they're the same people who buy the malware phone.