Android has allowed sideloading forever and those apps are a very strong minority. As for sidestepping privacy or security requirements, I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Isn’t permission handling happening at the OS level?
I've been happy with F-droid on Android, since it's open source apps with no subscriptions or ads. Very nice compared to the play store and Apple store, which seems like is either filled with ads or pushing subscriptions.
Hope they allow previously restricted features like JIT for 3rd party and sideloaded apps too. AltJIT is nice but you have to be on the same network as your Mac and the app can’t close or be purged from memory without having to start AltJIT again.
Hope that the only way it’s allowed is to toggle an option in your phone that disallows Apple’s own store from used at the same time.
Yes people should be allowed to load their own stuff but the process be so painful that only enthusiasts will ever do it and your parents and mine won’t even think about l, or be able to do it after being conned by someone developing some sort of malware.
Leave it to an Apple fanboy to paint choice as a bad thing.
Sideloading apps and alternative app stores onto an Android device is (and has been since Android's inception) almost completely painless once you click past the scary warning saying "hey, Google hasn't scanned this app, make sure you know what you're doing", and I've yet to meet a single non-enthusiast Android user who even knows that. I'd wager that not even grandmas are going to be fooled by something claiming to be the app store that isn't the app store (considering there'd be two app stores on their phone), and even if they are, big flashing warnings that say "Hey, this isn't us" are well within Apple's capabilities.
The fact of the matter is that people don't find APK downloads and alternative app stores without explicitly seeking them out, and that's more than enough to keep away the people who are so technologically illiterate they need to be saved from themselves.