I've literally never had an infected Android device, and neither has any member of my family despite the existence of sideloading.
Also, when's the last time anyone's installed a virus on Macs? They're infinitely more open than their mobile counterparts, yet there's barely any issues there.
I'm willing to bet the large majority of people don't even know what sideloading is in the first place, and even if you somehow accidentally happen upon an APK you need to go through some scary warning screens before it even lets you do it. I genuinely don't see this ever being an issue, it just sounds like shilling for Apple to keep their dominance and closed APIs
> They're infinitely more open than their mobile counterparts, yet there's barely any issues there.
That are marginally more open than mobile, but by default, there are still a lot of protections that (certain) developers complain about. Really, this is probably the model that you’re going to see — a phone that is locked down with a bright red shiny button that says “if you click this, you can run unsigned programs, but don’t ask us for help if you get hacked”. That’s basically how it works on Macs, except the button is grey. However, the OS is still far from open — certain developer rights are still blocked by signing keys/privileges.
The reason why they keep hearing people defend the App Store model is because it works.
iOS has the lowest malware share out of all of the major platforms by an utterly staggering margin. On the other side of the spectrum is Android and Windows.
It's not some random shill argument that Apple's model protects users, it's proven, we have the data.
Yet somehow these types want you to believe that if a single piece of malware slips into the App Store that the entire approach is negated, as if the alternative isn't an absolute clusterfk. Or worse that some side-loading middleground hasnt already been abused. (Does no one remember the certificates fiasco? It's why they have a device limit.)
At least they've stopped with the equally absurd argument that Apple's platforms aren't a target "because they have a smaller userbase".
Also super tired of counterarguments based on the pretence: "I've not had any malware experiences, therefore this extremely well studied field in computing is wrong."
Same could be said for Android. Moreover, exploit brokers are paying more for Android exploits than iOS ones [1], and that could be used as a good counter argument against Apple's security and privacy fearmongering.
I wish/hope that as the default family IT guy, I will be able to set policies on my parents devices that block 3rd party apps.