BTW: I’m personally conflicted on the sideloading/allowing other app stores topic as well. On the one hand, I’m absolutely in the camp of “it’s my device and my choice to use it anyway I want to”.
OTOH, in our customer base and even among my friends and family, EVERY single instance of spyware or malware on Android being present has come from sideloading of essentially “poisoned apps”.
Sites like apkmirror try to filter and manage that in their links, but it’s a whack a mole pretty much.
And especially with phones where generally speaking far more personal data of all kinds is present on a phone than a PC, it’s a reasonable argument that they are saving users from themselves. For instance Bank Of America told one of our consultants recently that nearly 75% of their customers do their banking via the smartphone app versus on a PC.
So TLDR this is multi-faceted topic, and bringing it back to Apple and sideloading, Apple has achieved something with the iPhone that they always wanted for the Mac but never achieved which is to be the “approved standard” and they are loathe to do anything to endanger that.