As far as I can tell this basically means that all apps must be approved by Apple to follow their “platform policies for security and privacy” even if publishing on a third party app store. They will also disable updating apps from third party app stores if you stay outside the EU for too long (even if you are a citizen of an EU country, with an Apple account set to the EU region).

The idea that preventing app updates is in line with their claims of protecting security is utterly absurd. “Never attibute to malice what can be explained with stupidity,” but Apple isn’t stupid.

  • but App Store doesn’t guarantee that the code on Github matches the app in the Store

    This is why I like fdroid. They insist on building the app themselves, ensuring that it does indeed match what’s on github. Now you need to trust only fdroid to do the right thing. Then again, if they do something bad, someone will recognize it.