Who is arguing against curation? No one is saying allow sideloading as the default. That is silly to be against. Sideloading being allowed doesn't change those who don't want it's device at all.
I think there is a completely legitimate concern that
certain popular apps will attempt to funnel users to sideloading mechanisms and thereby expose users to many of the problems Apple sought to avoid with the review process such as privacy abuses, hot phone/dead battery type issues, and so on. This is the peril Apple created when they allowed their financial interest in collecting rent to become entangled with the user's interest in avoiding those problems. Seems to me the fact that these problems are indeed problems should not be controversial, the only disagreement is who is responsible. wco81 and others believe Apple should be allowed to do as they see fit with no restraint. My take is that sufficiently onerous terms were never going to be tolerated by policymakers in the long term, which means Apple made this inevitable.
The fact I'm in the midst of being proven correct does not appear to have persuaded people like wco81 that my analysis from the policy perspective is a good one, even though as noted, I am in fact correct. The discussion seems to skip right over that part and into a philosophical argument over infantile notions like whether
laissez faire economic policy can avoid bad outcomes like privacy violating apps and the Earth becoming uninhabitable to humans.
