Not without massive loss of users. Both Microsoft and Apple would love to lock down their platforms, but they have to do it in tandem or users will flock to the other. So we will see a slow lock-in creep until they look like current day smartphones.
Only way to stop this is to react strongly, so if most users are apathetic like you then it is inevitable. Of course I believe that you are right and most are this apathetic, so from my perspective this is inevitable. When they roll out the enforced appstore you will say something along the lines of "but this appstore is secure and I can get all the programs I wanted from it anyway, and even if I couldn't would I really want an insecure program?".
Apathetic — no. I’m aware of the control creep in the industry, but I do think that it seems unnecessarily alarmist to think that Apple just can’t wait to lock down macOS. There is nothing to gain by them doing so and I would be incredibly surprised if they didn’t already know that.
iOS is and has always been a closed platform. We knew that the day they announced the first iPhone and they have been consistent in their messaging about that ever since. iPads and iPhones are globally successful though, far more so than the Mac, and with a far wider target audience that encompasses most people. It would be great for power users to be able to side-load without jailbreaking, but there are plenty of less technical people out there for whom side-loading actually presents much more of a risk than a benefit. That’s what makes it a complicated issue.
The Mac, on the other hand, doesn’t stand to benefit from that same closed model in the slightest. The real target audiences for the Mac (i.e. software developers, professional photography/cinematography, music production, publishing) all live and depend on software that requires flexibility, plugins etc and they stand a much greater chance of knowing what they’re doing. They would walk away from Macs in an instant if the platform stops being useful to them.
Apple Silicon was the perfect opportunity for Apple to close the platform if they really felt strongly enough to do so, but here’s the thing: Microsoft tried to do it with WinRT, it was an absolute disaster and the market spoke accordingly. It doesn’t seem worth the risk.
> They would walk away from Macs in an instant if the platform stops being useful to them.
Only if there was a better alternative. That is the point, both Microsoft and Apple works towards there not being any better alternatives out there. It wont happen in 5 years, but almost surely in 20, as they have to do it slowly enough for all major programs to get into the appstores.
Just have to slowly make it more and more difficult shipping software that isn't in their appstores. Then you start paying for exclusives, imagine if Apple paid photoshop to only ship in their appstore and not distribute indipendent binaries for macOs for example, people would quickly learn to use the store. Ship cheaper variants of the OS with only access to the appstore etc. There are so many ways for them to reach that destination, and 20 years is an eternity in this space.
>Just have to slowly make it more and more difficult shipping software that isn't in their appstores.
Valve established their Linux presence because they thought MS might force developers ship only through appstore. What is stping others to make the same move if they sense the same danger? Big software companies won't be dilighted to be forced to use the app store. Nor would smaller companies.
