[improbable22]

The fact that they make it hard is what guarantees that there's a large pool of people with stock iphones. And this pool is too big a market to ignore, which is why I can have good apps, even from companies I don't trust, and deny them permissions I don't want to grant.

I think Apple understands this. The freedom you desire has ecosystem effects which I don't want.

You may quibble about precisely how hard is hard enough. Maybe they could loosen up a little bit, walk some middle path, and satisfy both of our desires. Maybe. Has anyone done it? Apparently people will sign anything you ask them to in order to play farmville. And every jailbreak seems like a security hole I'd rather not have.

[darawk]

I see no reason to think that making this possible would alter their ecosystem at all. It would always be a small minority of users. A small minority that developers could always just ignore. Developers on Android don't bother to think about custom Android kernels, unless they're specifically targeting that user niche.

[improbable22]

I'm not too sure what exact freedom this minority of users is after. Does granting the ability to load a custom kernel require zero engineering effort from Apple? Including doing it in a way which won't leave the door open for the FBI, and whoever else, to break in?

[darawk]

It requires substantially less engineering effort than they've put into making sure people cannot do those things.