Secure folder is the only thing I truly loved about Samsung which I miss on other phones. I mean I hate the galaxy app store notification which pops up randomly rather than secure folder one which pops up only when I boot.

Resource allocation. You can’t keep a massive team to maintain operating systems for different lineups. Even if they did, coordination would be a nightmare to give the same experience across different devices i.e, one having an issue for something which the other does not. Plus it’s a business, Samsung needs to make a profit for doing all this else it’s a moot point. So you first develop on the common codebase and then tackle device specific features. 50-70% of the developers would be the same who will work on these devices. So you need to stagger the releases simply because you don’t or in fact can’t have separate resources which the Apple can afford with just one lineup.

Probably there should be alternatives. But Android has that and I don’t see any good that came out of it. The experience of 3rd party stores are sub par and I’m being generous. Google is not setting the standards high anyway. All I’m saying is that when Apple is doing a totally good job (I’m a through and through Android user btw, just have developed apps on iOS) there could be a risk of becoming lenient. 3rd party stores drive the pricing model share down resulting in Apple just pulling out necessary resources required to maintain what they are doing today. iOS users can afford the premium and I believe they should get the very best service in that regard. It could go both ways but we already have a use case in Android ecosystem where it’s woefully incompetent which includes the playstore.

Not altruistic but a reality. Apple has very stringent code quality, privacy and security reviews on apps submitted to the app store. I really appreciate what they are doing on that front considering Google just allows any tom dick and harry apps on the playstore. Seriously the amount of shitty and scammy apps on playstore far outnumber genuine and useful apps. I for one would never ever ever use any 3rd party stores when it comes to iOS purely because of how good a job Apple does compared to Google.

Don’t even get me started on the huge pile of crap that is Samsung and Amazon stores. I guess they have spare money to throw away in the development and maintenance of a scam platform.

As to 30% cut of every payment, yes it’s quite monstrous and that needs to change absolutely. But having 3rd party stores is not the solution. Everyone is greedy at the end of the day. Developers won’t offer differential pricing based on the platforms. They’ll keep the pricing the same and keep a higher cut. So for the end users there’s no difference and that’s why app store should always be preferred over any 3rd party stores.