[sahila]

This seems like a leap that consumers buy them

>"because they want a walled garden"

I doubt most consumers would care if you could sideload apps on their iOS device or play PlayStation and Nintendo games on their Xbox. In fact most consumers would be all for it!

They buy these things because they find there's already enough value there.

[sodality2]

I don't think so - the hugely negative perception of virus-laden wildlands on Android (which is somewhat true! most people could be tricked into bypassing the security prompts) makes people choose a safer option time after time.

You could absolutely make the case that users ought to be smarter, use technology as a power user, etc, but that's not the reality at the moment.

[bigyabai]

> the hugely negative perception of virus-laden wildlands on Android

I... don't see this in real life? There have always been San Bernadino-emboldened Apple customers that love to dunk on Android security, but recently that's gone away. Trojan horses are making it through[0] Apple's manual review, NSO Group has working exploits more often than not, the US government has wiretapped Push Notifications[1] and Apple has seemingly slowed their persecution of organized hacking groups.

iOS is in a post-Pegasus world. Android was perceived to be vulnerable if you downloaded the wrong app; iOS was proven to be vulnerable if you received an SMS payload from any user. And Apple has admitted that they cannot even really detect it[2] anymore. Neither educated users nor common people are associating Apple with security, especially now.

[0] https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-imper...

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...

[2] https://9to5mac.com/2025/02/20/apple-currently-only-able-to-...

[sodality2]

Sorry but comparing NSO Group's state actor malware to the tens of thousands of Android malware campaigns targeting everyone's bank account is so completely bad-faith. Every single thing you point to on iOS is about 10000x worse on Android; even if you look straight to state actors, Cellebrite can crack almost every android ever, whereas iPhones take at least a few years and the latest models are almost always protected.

That's ignoring the fact that literally zero average consumers are even targeted by these groups, nor do they have any perception of it. The average person is worried about exactly one thing: common consumer malware.

[api]

Non technical users are absolutely unable to discern security things or keep malware out. They’re sitting ducks.

If our OSes were not polished glorified 1970s Unix and had real security isolation we could allow more freedom, paradoxically. But given that our security is awful, freedom for non technical users means the freedom to get spyware and malware.