It’s pretty simple. Side-loading can be exploited by social engineering.
Two very bad consequences for me if sideloading were easy:
1. There would be no safe product to recommend to my aging parents who would be vulnerable to social engineering.
2. A company with a popular produce like Facebook could go outside the store, which would normalize side-loading, thus rendering argument like ‘people who want safety can stick to the store’ moot.
The arguments about not wanting to control what other people do are moot. If you want a platform with side-loading, buy android.
Side loading is already possible. Yes, you can only do it for a few days at a time, but that's why there's an easy tool that will refresh the application for you.
I haven't heart of social engineering involving https://github.com/altstoreio/AltStore but maybe you know something I don't. Either way, installing apps onto iOS devices over the network exists today.
Wouldn't it be fairly straightforward to lock down a particular device with the unlocking step tied to another phone ? Like let's say I buy a phone for my kid and I lock it down using my iphone. For installing any app on my kids phone they require some form of authentication from my device. With more people in the loop I feel social engineering becomes more difficult
My family buys their own phones but I’m assumed to be tech support when things go wrong. I do not want the responsibility of locking down their phones (and neither they do).
Two very bad consequences for me if sideloading were easy:
1. There would be no safe product to recommend to my aging parents who would be vulnerable to social engineering.
2. A company with a popular produce like Facebook could go outside the store, which would normalize side-loading, thus rendering argument like ‘people who want safety can stick to the store’ moot.
The arguments about not wanting to control what other people do are moot. If you want a platform with side-loading, buy android.