This thread is getting beastly but I want to weigh in to comment that The Web is an interesting alternative to this problem.
Rather than allowing dangerous apps and requiring them to undergo corporate review, The Web just assumes the app is nefarious, lets anyone at all run anything they want, but architects the runtime so that apps can't do anything unsafe.
There is heavy debate about what constitutes "unsafe"... privacy-wise, security-wise. And features like graphics shaders and camera stream take longer to diffuse. And different devices make different choices on these subjects.
But choosing to target the browser as The Computer is a vote against app stores. And a vote for bringing the safety and freedom of the sandbox closer to the metal, rather than going straight to the bottom while forfeiting our freedom.
Do you accept a class-based system where the privileged class gets "full" device access and hope the class divide gets fairer.... Or do you accept limited device access in exchange for a truly egalitarian distribution landscape, while hoping device access will improve? To me that's the choice for developers, and I choose the latter.
I feel like you are conflating two issues in your comparison. Building code for devices, and distributing that code on the App Store.
We (programmers) have great device access without undergoing corporate review. And this has only gotten better for the Apple ecosystem. I can go to Github, download an open source iOS project and build it for my device. They removed the $99/year barrier. An Apple ID is still needed, but the direction has been positive.
Publishing on the App Store is not really relevant. I can experiment, write code, and publish that code without Apple's blessing.
Any curated stores (stores for web apps are no exception — like the Chrome store) are going to put limits on what can be published. That is where their value lies. The curation entices users which creates demand that developers can service. Good curation is hard, and doing it well builds user trust. Developers can leverage that trust if they are willing to submit their work for review. And in the case of the App Store, developers can make income from that trust.
Publishing on the App Store is not really relevant. I can experiment, write code, and publish that code without Apple's blessing.
Any curated stores (stores for web apps are no exception — like the Chrome store) are going to put limits on what can be published. That is where their value lies.
Here's the dilemma: To have a degree of openness and accessibility for developers while also maintaining convenience for end-users, you have to accept the submissions of new developers that meet a certain (in practical terms, low) bar of standards. So to curate such an ecosystem, while being relatively open to new developers and users at the same time, the below-par apps have to be punished through discover-ability. This is what Apple has done, and it explains why their ecosystem is painful in exactly the ways it it painful. (It's not as painful if you are working at a good company with sharp marketers, or if you have an in with a community that exists outside the app store.)
The web simply has its 'knobs' set differently to mediate the curation/openness dilemma. Discover-ability is better. Curation is DIY/free-market. Caveat emptor.
Given the $99 limitation has been lifted it seems reasonable to make general federated "App Store App" that downloads source and puts a build of an app on the phone, wrapped with a pretty UI and clever control channel to your "dev" machine. Value of a particular "store" would be in its own curation. Seems Apple developer portal has enough API to get provisioning keys for Fastlane, might have more generally interesting stuff to make other features like APNS seamless.
Except, the runtime is based on standards that are entirely class-based because of which vendors control the runtime, and can bully their way into standards bodies and push their agenda.
I would say there is a space in the web world which is truly egalitarian, and then surrounding that are non-egalitarian structures.
The same is true in iOS development, with xCode you can put whatever you want on any phone, so if you ignore digital distribution, there is a space where iOS development tools are truly egalitarian. I could sell iPhone software to you by having someone physically attach your phone to a development machine and install my app.
But for most purposes, the egalitarian web space includes a means for reasonable distribution, whereas the egalitarian iOS space doesn't so I am rounding those off to "exists" and "doesn't exist" for the purposes of discussion, because I don't really think a software platform without a legal means of distribution is a "real" platform.
But sure, true egalitarianism is an impossible dream that can never exist? I agree, but I don't see how it changes the conversation.
Rather than allowing dangerous apps and requiring them to undergo corporate review, The Web just assumes the app is nefarious, lets anyone at all run anything they want, but architects the runtime so that apps can't do anything unsafe.
There is heavy debate about what constitutes "unsafe"... privacy-wise, security-wise. And features like graphics shaders and camera stream take longer to diffuse. And different devices make different choices on these subjects.
But choosing to target the browser as The Computer is a vote against app stores. And a vote for bringing the safety and freedom of the sandbox closer to the metal, rather than going straight to the bottom while forfeiting our freedom.
Do you accept a class-based system where the privileged class gets "full" device access and hope the class divide gets fairer.... Or do you accept limited device access in exchange for a truly egalitarian distribution landscape, while hoping device access will improve? To me that's the choice for developers, and I choose the latter.