Comment by mirzap

>And yet no one would ever want or think of locking down MacOS like they have locked down iOS.

https://www.qubes-os.org/intro/, snapd and BSD jails are all forms of locking down a general computer OS ways similar to the way iOS is locked down, and things that individual users choose to do on their own computers. Sure those users can install anything else they want as well, but then there's also a reason why these things are niche, even within the nice of *nix users. Because the administration and management is a headache and people don't generally want to do that.

>Turns out that grown ups don't need Apple to babysit them for additional "security"

I think you have an over estimation of the average "grown ups" ability to judge the safety and security of their computer or the software they run on it. There are plenty of people out there who do not want or need to understand system security and administration and are much better served by having someone else manage that for them. There's a reason why Windows and MacOS are still more popular than Linux, and there's a reason why in the Linux world, Red Hat, CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu are more popular than Arch. People only have a limited amount of time and energy to dedicate to things and not everyone wants to dedicate theirs to our shared hobby.

I wouldn't want it, but I can see both Apple and heads of a lot of IT departments loving the concept of a locked-down MacOS.

I don’t carry my MacBook around with me everywhere I go, though, so it’s different.

This is basically what an iPad with a keyboard attachment is, and iPads sell very well.

> And yet no one would ever want or think of locking down MacOS like they have locked down iOS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux

the delightful irony is you’re literally so wrong they put it right in the name. Security Enhanced.

The military knows damn well that limiting unprivileged users to running a limited selection of vetted and approved apps and restricting their ability to make tools that might aid their ability to jump the sandbox increases security. They literally built the canonical OS extension to do it. It’s not sufficient for security by itself, but it does additively increase security vs a non-policy-enforced environment with higher freedom.

It is, however, necessary for security. Literally every enterprise sysadmin, every single one, windows or Linux or otherwise, knows that letting users set policies on their own devices decreases security. And in the real world, those policies/access control are either: (a) mandatory, or (b) ineffective. If you allow a mechanism for users to opt out - they will opt out 100% of the time, and it’s ineffective. There is no middle ground, if there is a way to go around then users will do it, it's either a matter of policy or it functionally doesn't exist.

Facebook et al will certainly exploit their network power to push users to do that, just like any other attacker. No different than Chinese agents going after a debt-laden private. They literally already got caught using their dev credentials trying to pull a sneaky and tunnel users data via a VPN for data mining purposes.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-...

But I’m sure you know infosec better than the NSA. This is HN after all.

And again - such escape valves already exist. You can sideload apps on an iphone without paying any extra money. Altstore/Appstore++ exist to refresh your app notarization automatically etc.

Almost as if this is really all about the transaction fees and apple's cut of money that tim sweeney sees as rightfully his, and not user freedom at all... but I'm sure there's a very good, very pro-consumer reason Sony and Microsoft exempted themselves from the DMA?

[flagged]

Exactly, this is marketing talk. Pixel is secure, get regular updates, lesser target than iphone and in terms of privacy can be "hardened" just by going over the Google services setting menu and opting out of everything. Rest can be achieved by using Firefox (which actually runs on Android not like FF on iOS which is a shell) with ad blockers and choosing a different search engine.

I would argue it's much more secure and more private this way

i wouldn't put much stake a zerodium numbers as the benchmark of platform security. People who sell these kind of gray market mobile zero days for big bucks aren't going public about it. Mostly because the only buyers that aren't the OEM are nation states, maybe the top end of criminal land and of course the NSO group. Plus android's at least 10x the market when you start talking IOT and point sale etc.

Wouldn't the value of a zero day be the expected return on what you can get from it? So a lower cost on iOS zero days means less buyers want them, presumably because they're less capable than a zero day on Android?