Most people (and certainly most iPhone developers) understand that the phone was a generational change in computing. But we tend to focus on the multitouch UI, where actually there were actually two generational changes: the UI and the software model.

For the first time you could press one button and get an app, ready to run, and *trust* the app, and trust the payment. An app couldn't break your computer. It couldn't steal your data or break other apps or slow everything down and kill your battery. This is freedom.

When people do talk about this, they focus on the sandbox on the device, but the app store is just as important a part of that model, and a actually, so is the payment.

The trouble is that Apple has spend ten years twisting itself into a pretzel with more and more convoluted rules and exceptions. it's no surprise we keep getting horror stories out of the review process - the rules have slowly evolved into an incoherent mess.

I think Apple should rewrite the rules from zero. But I also think dumping the store, let alone sandboxing, would be catastrophic. Who looks at the last few years and thinks it should be easier for any random developer to do whatever they want with your data? Who wants backdoors?

And yes - asking for no App Store, or for alternative app stores, is a back door. You're asking for a switch to turn off some of the security model - 'just for the good guys'