Back when the iPhone app store first happened many developers (including me) asked Apple why they needed to gatekeep software installs. Of course now we know it

Back when the iPhone app store first happened many developers (including me) asked Apple why they needed to gatekeep software installs. Of course now we know it was because Apple wanted that 30% revenue stream, but at the time Apple said -- repeatedly -- that it was because they needed to "protect the integrity of the cell phone networks." Some developers knew this was horseshit because they knew the baseband processor was a separate chip that was easily isolatable from the main CPU. We complained but there were not enough of us to rattle Apple's cage sufficiently. Here's the proof that Apple was lying about this: The iPod Touch (remember that thing?) had exactly the same App Store lockdown mechanism and it didn't have a baseband processor at all. IOW it wasn't protecting the cell phone networks because it couldn't even participate in the cell phone networks. The iPod touch was just a plain desktop computer that happened to fit in your pocket, but we let Apple become the arbiter of what software we could install on it. And now Apple wants very much to make this true on the Mac as well. I can't believe we fell for this shit. It's not too late to stop it.