Tim Sweeney would disagree with you. Though I'm usually critical of his views, but this is one I'm in support of. You use gaming consoles to do fairly specific things: mostly play games and possibly watch movies. And you can view consoles as having a subset of features of a general computing device such as PC or Mac. Developers who can distribute apps on consoles are generally only going to deploy games.
Now, modern smart phones are considered as general-purpose computing devices. And because they are placed in this category (and rightly so for their capability in both hardware and OS), a lot of people are going to expect freeform app distribution.
> If you have some burning desire to hack the hardware, get a dev account and you can lode arbitrary code. Or just buy a different phone.
You see, sometimes it's not just about the end-users. Developers cannot distribute apps to the general public on iOS without going through the App Store. Yes App Store adds friction to the app distribution process and that can prevent some malicious apps, but that's about it. Does it really lead to higher quality apps? Well no, just look at all the garbage apps on there. Quality of the store is always a balancing act; it has nothing to do with being a monolithic walled garden.
And all this comes with severe limitations. Localized developers are forced to conform to a suite of rules and guidelines placed by Apple for a global audience. Developers are forced to use monetization models (and has no say in the revenue split) provided by Apple. If devs can distribute apps freely or choose another app store just like they can on Android devices, I can't say for sure whether the end-user experience or security will be higher or lower, but developers will certainly have more freedom and enjoy it more.
One uses consoles for gaming and movies because those capabilities are the least likely to disappear in the future, as evidenced by the PS3 Linux / supercomputer mess
Now, modern smart phones are considered as general-purpose computing devices. And because they are placed in this category (and rightly so for their capability in both hardware and OS), a lot of people are going to expect freeform app distribution.
> If you have some burning desire to hack the hardware, get a dev account and you can lode arbitrary code. Or just buy a different phone.
You see, sometimes it's not just about the end-users. Developers cannot distribute apps to the general public on iOS without going through the App Store. Yes App Store adds friction to the app distribution process and that can prevent some malicious apps, but that's about it. Does it really lead to higher quality apps? Well no, just look at all the garbage apps on there. Quality of the store is always a balancing act; it has nothing to do with being a monolithic walled garden.
And all this comes with severe limitations. Localized developers are forced to conform to a suite of rules and guidelines placed by Apple for a global audience. Developers are forced to use monetization models (and has no say in the revenue split) provided by Apple. If devs can distribute apps freely or choose another app store just like they can on Android devices, I can't say for sure whether the end-user experience or security will be higher or lower, but developers will certainly have more freedom and enjoy it more.