[Nextgrid]

We've had unlocked desktop PCs for decades and the only "bricking" you can imagine is BIOS updates going wrong, and even that is nowadays going away with things like fallback BIOSes.

It's perfectly possible to allow arbitrary third-party software without exposing the device to a risk of bricking.

[acdha]

It’s possible to compromise a device at the firmware level - as evidenced by the recent UEFI attacks in the wild - but the better comparison would be ransomeware. That’s shut down businesses, school systems, hospitals, etc. and is completely prevented by the iOS security model. Whether or not I like the impact on flexibility, there are inarguable benefits to the users from having devices which cannot be resold, permanently compromised, etc.

[sudosysgen]

Whether or not the uefi allows you to boot custom code has no impact on whether or not permanently compromising the uefi is possible.