To keep with the analogy: does the police approve or deny your every attempt at leaving your own house and every attempt at entering a market (grocery store… shopping mall?). Do they require any financial transaction with which you’re making money go through and be approved by them? All in the name of public safety, without proper legal recourse?
If you break the law, yes. You can be on house arrest. If your a known hacker. Your computer use can be tracked or revoked. Your accounts can be seized or frozen. All "with" proper legal recourse. But, of course if you're already found guilty, then all that recourse has already happened.
To be fair, they (Police) enforce the law. In this analogy, the subject broke the law. Apple has a store, they created the rules of the road for said store based upon rules other stores already operate under. Which gives them to legal right to allow specific products to be located within the store. They don't have to sell any and everything if they don't want to. And if any merchant sells a product deemed bad, that said store owner has the right to remove that product.
The store owner decides what payments are acceptable. For instance, not all stores accept say American Express or Discover. Some may just pick Master Card and or Visa. Many don't accept PayPal or Venmo as a POS (Point of Sale) means of purchase. Just because they exist and "work", doesn't mean every store has to use all of these options. If they wanted to just accept cash only, they could. It would make life more difficult for them of course, but they can do it.
More importantly, does the police make its own (discriminatory) laws, that they can change anytime?
Not to get off topic here, but it can sure feel that way sometimes. Actually it can be that way sometimes.
But to answer the question, No they (Police) don't make the laws, they enforce them.
In this analogy, Apples store policy is the contract (law) that the developers follow. If they decide to join up and sell products on the store. They are expected to follow the rules. They don't have to like the rules. They don't have to be on the store either. If they break the rules, they can be removed from the store.
Or do they have full discretion on what‘s acceptable and what‘s not, because it’s their jurisdiction?
Cops have to (at least that's the idea) follow the law. They are not above it. They can be flexible (at their discretion) in some instances. Say, you're speeding. Or you're Jay Walking. Or if someone does not want to press charges. They can allow someone to get off with a warning or something like that. Other times, they can just follow the letter of the law. And other times take the law into their own hands and turn into Batman (kidding sort of.)
Analogy, Apple "could" allow some developers/apps to have exceptions to the general rules. It is their store, they make the rules. Is it fair. You can argue for or against that. Just like you can with the situation above.
No, police are bound to laws. And these laws aren’t made by the police themselves. But by lawmakers that don’t do the policing themselves - which is otherwise known as separation of powers.
And from my previous comments above, the is generally agreed too. However, we know that doesn't always work 100%. Should we just throw out the baby with the bathwater on this too?
The analogy, should we separate Apple's products from Apples AppStore? Well, I would argue no. Why? Well, Apple made the product, and there business model has been to be the whole widget kind of company. They like making all of to work as seamlessly as they know how to make it. Any 3rd party will not work as well as Apple. Just look at their history. Motorola made the CPU's. They sucked after awhile. Apple went with IBM, that sucked after awhile too. So they went with intel. That worked for awhile and then it sucked. So they said, F this. We will do it ourselves.
With the iPhone and the AppStore. Why would Apple want to have to work around/with/through/for a 3rd party company when it comes to the product they produce? Forever more Apple will have to work with another company on how that store will be able to work on their iOS/Platform. If the store group wanted feature X, Apple will have to figure out a way to make that happen WHILE keeping the rest of the system working as expected. If Apple wanted to improve feature Y and Z on the iOS side, it WILL have to also work with the store (or Stores). If we all haven't noticed by now, Apple is not a fan of doing business this way. They like to move at their speed and in the direction they point too. Not in tandem with others. They are not Microsoft. They care much less about legacy. IF they find a better way at whatever they want to do. They do it. If it happens to work with the old stuff, cool bonus. If not (Like GPU's not working on Metal, well good bye Nvidia!!).
It‘s (entertainment) for mature audiences. Not different, but a subset.
It's well classified as different. As in going to the movies you will generally NOT find Porn as an option.
As exciting as the idea of a 4D IMAX gang bang sounds. It's not something you will see in the US (anyway, I don't know about other countries). So it will not be something found on the AppStore or being sold in the iTunes Movie section in Apples ecosystem. Besides, WWW works just fine.
