But then Epic will have detailed instructions on how to sideload apps, and if enough apps do this it will be common practice for users to do so. If users are trained to do this by safe apps, they won't be on the lookout for the malware that does the same thing.

Maybe a wacky idea, but what if Apple required you to go to an Apple store to sideload a new app or app store. That way the person at the store can stop really stupid mistakes.

They already basically do; they require you to go to the digital equivalent and ask Apple pretty please for a signature.

Pretty hard to know who the minority is in this case. Based on other HN opinions about Apple products, there seems to be a consensus that Apple customers are mostly not tech savvy. If they were, they wouldn’t buy Apple stuff.

Even though this is a stereotype not grounded in reality and there are plenty of techie people who buy Apple products.

Lots of tech folks buy apple and at the same time vast majority of Apple customers should not be trusted to do valid security assessment or maintain good operational security.

I am not particularly a fan of Apple. Still, I think Apple is better than Google. That is how sad the situation is. There is simply no choice other than iOS and Android. I really wish Microsoft hadn't given up so soon on windows phone. Microsoft isn't great either, but at least there would be three choices instead of two.

I hope projects like Librem 5 succeed, but they are a long way :(

Why is it hard to know? Apple has at most like a 20% market share globally, and around 50% in the United States. The overwhelming majority of smartphone owners have a non-Apple smartphone.

What is hard to know is whether Apple (iPhone) users are sophisticated enough to not be exploited by non-Apple App stores.

One possible solution is to start giving our money to companies that are not Apple or Google. Otherwise we'll be forever stuck with this duopoly and various alternative OS will keep being niche at best.

Show me a viable 3rd party OS phone that doesn't require me to jump through 1000 hoops and accept subpar reception/user experience and I'll hop right on it. Until then I'll choose iPhone for it's superior user privacy policy (compared to Android/Google)

I hope projects like librem 5 will catch on, at least amongst the tech savvy, might take a while though.

> So the solution is to force majority of the population to use Apple store, to protect minority of the population who aren't tech savvy?

You could always get an android.

I realise that this can come off as silly, but what, id not the walled garden differentiate the two systems? If you tear those walls down, you’re basically using a really expensive android device with all the tracking and malware that includes.

I do think the courts should force Apple to open up. Closed systems are evil, even though they are very nice to use. I just hope they do it in such a way that it’s optional and has no effect on the rest of us.

Why, exactly, are they evil? It's not as if people who buy Apple (like me, and I develop for iPhone/iPad too) don't know what they're getting. I like the walled garden Apple has because:

* It makes my life as a developer much easier. I only have one App Store to aim at, and with a few hiccups here and there from inexperienced or overzealous reviewers the guidelines are pretty clear. If I had to design for half a dozen or more apps I'd have that many more versions of guidelines to worry about.

* I don't need to worry nearly as much about scam or knock-off apps siphoning off users, since Apple is proactive about that. Not perfect, but very proactive.

Those are just two off the top of my head. There are more, but I'm getting hungry.

Because they are limiting. I’m personally in the iOS boat, and it’s great until you try programming on your iPad instead of your non-closed MacBook.

Phones, consoles, tablets are closed because the companies that build them didn’t have competition from open platforms. Computers are still open because they still have competition, if they didn’t they’d likely all be chrome books.

I know it’s sort of hypocritical, but the walled-garden is only nice until it’s curators considers your needs to be weeds.

You might not have seen this: https://developer.apple.com/swift-playgrounds/

It's pretty nice to be able to build entire Swift playgrounds on your iPad, then share them with your Mac/MacBook. The IDE is simple and very straightforward, and it's useful for prototyping things on your iPad or iPad Pro.