The app screening and approval process has problems, sure, but they're dwarfed by the upside. Users think nothing of downloading and installing a new app on the

The app screening and approval process has problems, sure, but they're dwarfed by the upside. Users think nothing of downloading and installing a new app on their iThing, and when they don't want they app, they delete it and it's gone for real. Contrast this to the Windows desktop that formed a lot of people's learning experiences, where a new app can fuck things up tremendously and where it's gratuitously hard to make sure that something is gone for real. That trust that users have in the app ecosystem is, from Apple's point of view, a tremendously valuable asset, and so they are taking logical steps to preserve it. If they lose it, people stop buying apps, the virtuous circle goes to pot, and Apple is in deep trouble. Sure, being assholes about the app approval process has costs, and it's really annoying from the developer side - but from Apple's point of view, the cost of not being hardasses about the approval process, is absolutely ruinous.