[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.