I totally understand the concerns and have some fears about side-loading. But I came to the conclusion that the solution to this isn't to prevent side-loading.

I totally understand the concerns and have some fears about side-loading. But I came to the conclusion that the solution to this isn't to prevent side-loading. It is to allow side-loading and introduce legislation for better consumer rights. You can force developers to offer refunds, fair trials that don't trap you into a subscription, subscriptions that you can cancel on every billing date with the click of a button, leave privacy choice to the user and preventing app developers from restricting functionality based on these. Maybe a cheap legal way to force a big company to review your account ban. Basically all the consumer friendly practices Apple forces onto developers offering Apps in the App Store and more. But I'm against legislation that only forces Apple to offer side-loading and functions as a way for big developers like Adobe or Epic Games to potentially circumvent restrictions on dark patterns they would like to use in their apps. Bring this developer and consumer rights combo bill and I'm all for it. Also: Restricting users from running third-party code is a really effective way to stop malware infections. Yes there are zero-days, but most malware related problems are caused by someone accidentally running code. These locked down devices completely stop this kind of attack. This makes locking down devices a huge plus for the majority of the user base. It's only a problem for developers that sell software in the App store and advanced users that want to run their own software.