"Do you closely examine the safety of chemicals.."
No, but they need to list the ingredients, get it certified by authorities, and labs can freely test for the ingredients without the company's input. Software is just not the same as chemicals.
True, trusting FastMail is no different than trusting Apple. I didnt mean to say that FastMail was magically more secure. Just that they have no incentive to sell me out. I could've used any company for this. Just trying to not put all eggs in one basket. It is certainly a better choice than Google which creepily builds a profile of me to make money.
Everyday users experience massive troubles with security issues, and incur painful losses, at the hands of criminals and black hats! I have no awareness of a major corporation “going rogue” and deliberately harming their users, ever.
The incentive structure is the opposite: companies generally try to help their customers.
That’s not to say they don’t fuck up, particularly when the incentive structure gets “skewed.”
To see that there is actually an inverse correlation between personal control of software and security, just observe the crypto currency space.
The losses suffered by users from bugs, security failures, and hacking are comically large.
English is not my first language, and I was ambiguous in what I wrote. By "Apple could go rogue", I meant that Apple could change their policies on user privacy and muck around with making money of user data. True that it is bad PR, and reversal of their current state, but what if there is a leadership change and the new ones think it is a goldmine waiting to be opened? After all, we have seen Apple do exact things they said they wont. Big iPhones, mini ipad, give up on user privacy to the government in China...
"The incentive structure is the opposite: companies generally try to help their customers."
I think that's a bit too abstract. Companies try to help customers as long as it is in their business interest.
What do I wish would exist? A hardware company in the class of Apple that stays with hardware, and a company like RedHat that builds mobile Linux OS with a GNU app store, where users can buy apps from the developers straight and install it themselves. That way no one is in complete control. Phones are pretty powerful these days to start using the features we have developed for laptops..
For a user who doesn't have the foggiest idea about technology, to whom the whole thing is "magic," why isn't this rational? Do you closely examine the safety of chemicals in all of your cleaning products, household items, clothes, your car, and the devices in your home? For most people, probably no more than in a cursory sense, as it's not normally one's area of expertise.
We have to "outsource" many aspects of daily life to experts.
Paying for their email service - I use Fastmail.
You've effectively outsourced your email security to Fastmail. How is that any different?