The magical rockstar engineers of Apple will listen for their best in the world UX and handcraft artisanal UI that will respectfully explain users what causes the popup.
Not to mention use plenty of dark patterns to steer them away from it.
Not to mention the vast majority of users will not bother to deal with alternative app stores when the vast overwhelming majority of existing apps will remain on the official App Store.
Nice condescending snark. Is it based on anything?
My own position, in comparison, actually is. Contrary to your insinuation, it is based on jadedness and cynicism. I’ll give you the Cliff’s Notes of this:
1. Facebook and Google, to put it bluntly, are not exactly product powerhouses these days and any attempts to present yet another platform will be met with skepticism and they simply will not have enough new apps to lure over users.
2. Without customer interest, third party developers will keep their apps on the official App Store, just as they do on Android on the Play Store, because that’s where the users are. They want the most eyeballs.
2.5. Sure, Facebook and co. can try to cut exclusive deals with third party devs to get apps on their store, but that is tricky, just see Microsoft’s or BlackBerry’s failure to woo devs to their platforms.
3. Consumers are tired of all of the accounts and services they have to deal with at this point, and dealing with more app stores will be a source of friction. Users are tired of this shit.
4. Facebook or Google trying to spur artificial growth of third party iOS stores by making their apps exclusive will likely run into regulator pushback, especially if those stores permit greater user tracking.
And they will immediately run into 1) ban-happy regulators who will probe them for monopolistic power (withholding something as crucial as WhatsApp or G-Suite from the main App Store is pretty suspect), and for data collection (everyone already suspects them anyway) and 2) burned-out, pissed-off consumers who are sick of juggling all of their user accounts and being jerked around by yet another platform.
I have yet to see a convincing argument that any of these corporations will be able to charm users into joining competing app stores. So instead they will try to force them. Leading to backlash, and within days you'd see them putting their apps back on the App Store and begging the public for forgiveness. These are not companies who are particularly good at delivering huge new products anymore, and the difficulty is compounded by the fact that they would be playing on Apple's own platform.
The magical rockstar engineers of Apple will listen for their best in the world UX and handcraft artisanal UI that will respectfully explain users what causes the popup.