That's a common fallacy perpetuated by Apple and similar companies but it's simply not true. Having the ability to unlock your device, install apps after you enable unknown sources and hange other parts of it do not have to come at the cost for "average user" (whoever that is). You can make a secure simple default and still not waste development time and resources locking down the devices.
It's hard enough for IT professionals to maintain the security of general purpose computing devices, let alone non-technical users achieving the same goal.
Lets take a real-world exmaple. Look at the incidence of malware on a platform that allows unrestricted software installation (e.g. Android), with one that doesn't (e.g. iOS).
The problem is that making informed choices about whether a given piece of software is "trustworthy" is extremely difficult. Delegating that to a 3rd party (e.g. Apple) is for most people, likely the best option.
We managed to somehow survive 30 years of unprecedented innovation and computer usage and NOW we suddenly need locked down devices where a single company decides which applications may be used on them and can forbid and innovative competition at will?
Why would you defend that?
OSX and Linux are both vulnerable to malware and have incidences of it, however (for desktop) they're relatively small targets, so get less attention. The idea that they're somehow resistent to malware is amusing.
and yep times are changing. I started in IT in 1995 and the environment now is massively more hostile than it was then, also the number of users has gone up a lot too, so there are a lot more people who aren't well placed to secure general purpose computing devices.
I'd argue that there's plenty of competition and if someone wants to use a nice open computing device, they can. The fact that most people choose not to, should tell you something about their priorities.
My personal opinion is that, unfortunately, regulation is the only way to solve that issue, as the market does not appear to be addressing it well.
But wait I'm novice who can't decide what is best for himself :(
Apple patches the newests version of iOS. Sometimes older versions get a security update here or there, maybe. So you'd have to be running the latest version of you want security fixes. Which isn't always possible due to compatibility or performance/stability.
If your iPhone is 3 or more years old you can forget any support from Apple whatsoever.
Why not please your customers? Give them what they want? I don't even think the average customer would need a TOS of all the negatives using an older operating system brings.
They have a huge war chest. If a customer wants to be on the operating system that came on their device ten years ago; why make it difficult?
Could it be they want us to upgrade/buy regularly? For myself, I don't think I will ever buy another new Apple product. I will still give them as gifts though.
Also I wouldn't make install without a local prefix, something like ./configure --prefix=/home/$USER/usr/ or something along the lines. I mean common prefix is /usr/local, but still you shouldn't install anything globally without using your package manager.
What most people want/need from a smartphone is a device that lets them do things (e.g. send messages, keep up with friends, make phonecalls, browse the Internet) without getting in their way. They're not really in the market for a general purpose computing device like a PC.
If you want that kind of device in a smartphone there are less mainstream options, but I don't regard it as surprising that larger companies don't actively cater to them (it's a niche market place)
Personally I've got a range of computing devices that I use for different tasks. When I want to read a book, or surf the Internet I use my iPad. When I want to write some code or do my technical job, I use Linux.
Now there's the obvious argument that people should have the freedom to control all their computing devices, but that freedom comes at a cost, which is that freer devices are, I would suggest, harder to maintain.(i.e. you need to understand more about the operation of the device in order to manage it). If you're a technical person, you may not see this as a problem, but remember mass-market consumers aren't necessarily very technical...