but... installing zoom is already asking for my consent, through an OS prompt. Do you want to have to type your user password two times for every app you install or what ?
In fact I never understood why the HN crowd finds this policy so inoffensive. I've always considered it a massive intrusion on computing freedom.
I find it really shocking that "it is ok for a single entity to decide which software you can run on a device you own, with no accountability whatsoever", is now apparently a mainstream opinion on a tech forum. And more disturbingly, you make your case by arguing against the very notion of broadly-available general-purpose computing.
It comes down to how you perceive the technology. My MacBook Pro is a tool I use for work that needs to be highly flexible and configurable, so I’m willing to work to maintain it. My iPhone is a convenience. I will not put work into maintaining a convenience, that defeats the point.
Others view their phones differently, they may elect for more configuration at the expense of maintenance burden. That’s their choice to make. I for example view the idea of wanting to root ones phone to be absolutely insane.
I use Linux as my main OS even though I don't really customize it that much and never looked at the source code, because I think it's important that critical infrastructure (as operating systems are) should be open. I don't use Spotify, not because I think it's too expensive or inconvenient, but because I worry that the convenience of streaming can train us to not insist on our freedom to listen to music in DRM-free formats (I don't know if it exists already, but I kind of expect platform-exclusive music to be a thing soon). I use Firefox, not because I think it's better than Chromium but because I want to help avoid Google completely dominating the web, even at its endpoints, etc etc.
In the iPhone case, my worry is that if people get used to a smartphone not being a general purpose computing device, they can also be trained to view their laptop that way. I hope I don't need to argue why that would be a bad thing.
I dreamed about having a portable computer, somewhat like what my phone is now, when I was a kid. It ended up even cooler than I imagined it. The eventual device that came along has amazing battery life, oodles of CPU, RAM, and secondary storage, a wide array of sensors, multiple cameras with high resolution sensors and great optics, water resistance, exceptional build quality, a very small form factor, and it's at a price point that's reasonable. It's all great, except that I don't actually own it and can't use it for what I want.
Giving up control of the devices we own is dangerous. It most certainly is a slippery slope. The manufacturers will use "security" and "privacy" as a way to erect walled gardens on our heretofore general purpose computing devices. They will use the walled gardens to extract more revenue from developers and end users, and they'll act as police over what are "acceptable" applications. The average non-technical person doesn't understand why it's a problem, and those of us who are technical should be championing ownership instead of giving up control.
Chromebooks had a physical interlock that enabled/disabled the "trusted" functionality (perhaps they still do-- I haven't followed them). That is an acceptable solution, to me. It wouldn't be difficult to do, either. The fact that manufacturers don't include such functionality speaks volumes about their motivations.
It certainly looks like a slippery slope from where I'm standing. People have gotten used to not having full ownership of their phones, and tablets are kinda just big phones, so people have gotten used to not having full ownership of their tablets. But a tablet is also kind of like a small, highly portable laptop, and in fact many people use them as such. The boundary between the two is also blurring, with tablets becoming more laptop-like and laptops becoming more tablet-like.
I don't think it's a huge leap from here to fear that we are witnessing a trend, and that our ownership of our true general-purpose computing devices, such as our laptops, is not something we should take for granted.
Manufacturers could include physical interlocks to allow this "trusted" functionality. Early (all?) Chromebooks had this kind of functionality. Manufacturers aren't including it because it locks-in their revenue streams, and owners aren't demanding it because the average non-technical user (and, apparently, technical people too) don't understand the value of the ability to control the devices you own.
Fact is that the 3rd party apple ecosystem just moves more slowly, breaking less, but fixing less too.
Tradeoffs, not superiority, are the choices offered to consumers currently.