[dingaling]

The fact that there is still the potential for jailbreaks in iOS surprises me and doesn't seem to help the secure-by-default argument.

Why is a trillion-dollar company which designs their own silicon only two steps ahead of some hackers? Instead of $200 billion in the bank, unspent, shouldn't those devices be reviewed and redesigned until impregnable?

Computing devices are usually insecure due to limits on experience, time and cost. None of those applies to Apple in any meaningful manner.

Personally I'll just stick with cheap Android phones running custom ROMs and treat them as insecure, disposable terminals.

[namedlambda]

So long there is a hardware input source (usb) it's impossible to guarantee security, this is the reality. There is not a single device with an input source such as USB that is secure. Physical access guarantees lack of security.

Also, it's not some hackers. There's quite a big community out there looking for bugs and every time, such 'hacking' requires unlocked phone.

[pcwalton]

> Instead of $200 billion in the bank, unspent, shouldn't those devices be reviewed and redesigned until impregnable?

The problem is the Mythical Man-Month. Apple's devices are built on a mountain of ancient C code. XNU is a bizarre Mach/BSD hybrid, built for the sake of expedience. (This is not to bash Apple; most other devices aren't much better.)

Apple has been working to improve the situation, but there's a limit as to how rapidly all those millions of lines of code can be changed.