@Anon: Indeed, but that possible switch to .dmg itself is problematic, as discussed above.

George: The big deal is we believe it's good to provide users with options, as well as the freedom to use their own machine however they like. As for "installers are fine", if only stating it made it so. However, a couple decades of experience have made it quite clear that installers are far from ideal for distributing software. We prefer not to say "screw 'em" to any of our customers, even those who aren't as technically inclined. Providing instructions and uninstallers is simply not as effective, nor as user-friendly as a zipped package application.

As for "s-ing" "tfu", well, no. We're attempting to improve upon the current situation for ourselves, for other developers, for users, and even for Apple. A poor implementation of this attempt at improving security is likely to be worse, and more problematic, than doing nothing at all. We're hoping to avoid that.

@John: Ultimately, that boils down to changing .dmg to act like .zip. That’s a nice enough idea, but it’s not something we can do on our end.

@Charlien: We definitely support users having control over their own machines. The locked-down nature of iOS has been a turn-off for us as developers as well.