Studies on Android's more open ecosystem consistently show higher malware rates than iOS, so the security tradeoff isn't theoretical, it's already playing out in the real world and we're just pretending otherwise for the sake of 'competition.'
My grandma uses her iPad to pay for things and she absolutely cannot tell a legitimate payment screen from a fake one, so yeah, I'm pretty emotional about this — the people pushing for 'freedom' aren't thinking about who gets hurt.
Forcing open payment systems is basically handing scammers a government-mandated attack surface — this isn't about corporate greed, it's about the fact that security and convenience are genuinely at odds here.
The whole point of a curated payment system is that there's ONE throat to choke if something goes wrong. Fragment that across dozens of third-party processors and good luck ever getting your money back when a developer ghosts you.
I've had my credit card skimmed twice in my life and both times it was through sketchy third-party processors — no thank you, I'll keep Apple's walled garden if it means I don't get burned again.
Security is important but it cannot be used as a blank check to justify permanent monopoly control — we regulate banks, utilities, and telecoms for the same reason, and app stores should be no different.
Small developers are getting absolutely crushed by these fees and it's killing app innovation, so yeah, I'll accept a slightly higher personal responsibility for my downloads if it means indie creators can actually survive.
We let people buy stuff online through literally thousands of different payment processors already — somehow forcing everything through one company's checkout doesn't magically make it safer, it just makes it more profitable for them.
I've been using third-party payment systems on Android in Europe since the law changed and nothing bad has happened to my phone, so maybe the sky-is-falling security argument is just lobbyist talking points.
Apple and Google are literally taxing every digital purchase on the planet at 30% and calling it a 'security feature' — that's not protection, that's a racket with good PR.