3rd parties kind of shot themselves in the foot by abusing the fuck out of users in every way possible and now things have swung in the other direction where users all flock to marketplaces that prevent the abuse even if sellers get charged a huge fee.
On the one hand, having NE entitlements restricted to MAS and the associated pain of MAS distribution is real.
On the other hand, a few years ago, I once installed some garbage corporate VPN software on a Windows machine of mine so that a family member could connect to their office to resolve an urgent matter. I later realized it was impossible to uninstall. It seemed to have somehow managed to embed itself deep into the network stack initiation process, and since you can’t delete an open file on Windows, it was impossible to remove. I booted into the Windows equivalent of recovery mode and forcefully removed the files from a DOS prompt, but then the whole network stack was borked. Not knowing which registry keys to edit I had to reinstall the damn OS.
With that experience in mind, I’d really appreciate the peace of mind of knowing deeply system-altering software can be cleanly removed.
I had this experience a few times. I used to buy outside the standard marketplaces (was an early cydia user as well).
Reality - if they can scam you they will.
1) An annual subscription with no renewal notice AND that you couldn't cancel out of the 7 day period before renewal. So because I subscribed outside the app store I was screwed. After paying another $150 for a year I didn't want the service for, spending time arguing, I had to set a calendar invite for a year away to myself, then find out you can only cancel by CALLING them at a UK number! Of course it was acres of time being on hold.
I ended up just switching off that credit card and sending them an email saying I was canceling. They still send me past due bills saying my card was declined yadda yadda.
Contrast that with apple. You get an alert IN ADVANCE that you have subscriptions coming up. If you uninstall an app with a related subscription it asks if you want to cancel subscription PROACTIVELY etc. And you seem to get benefits via family sharing on subscriptions that automatically flow to family members without having to share passwords which is nice.
So yeah, subscriptions (as just one example) I go through app store if at all possible.
And of course, this extends to everything. On my windows machine we also have that corp VPN stuff -> which they then somehow use as a marketing channel to popup notifications around security etc that I need to buy or get anti-virus etc. I'm sure there are settings to turn this stuff off, but what a pain.
My parents it is even worse. On windows all the ads and toolbars that are "helpfully" installed I am convinced are 99% adware / malware. For some reason my parents (elderly) have no problems with their ipad by contrast.
