Every person should have a right to consciously take responsibility over their own device and program it the way they see fit without asking anybody, based on their own judgement of how qualified they are. Unless only they are objectively disabled and obviously incapable of doing a sufficiently good job (maybe a child or a mentally senile senior).

I don't disagree with this, but there's such a wide gulf between theory and reality.

I would wager that 90% of people or more, are incapable of doing a sufficiently good job at this.

The OECD has done research on computer skills and even email is difficult to manage for most people.

Sideloading becoming too accessible can be a major attack vector and there aren't good mechanisms for preventing this. Even with various protections there are a wide array of Windows scams that funnel millions and millions of dollars from luddites to scammers.

> The OECD has done research on computer skills and even email is difficult to manage for most people.

Yet nobody actively prevents them from doing it, or even running their own e-mail servers. There are many things in our lives which are dangerous and fairly difficult for average people yet are and should be left unregulated and unsurveilled.

There are ways to protect the user from making dangerous choices without proper judgement, also to counter the threats as they materialize.

I don't object recognizing the danger though. I've read border security services of some countries happen to install spyware on travelers Android devices this way.

I believe there just should be a not-too-easy (while perfectly legal, not ridiculously complex and not breaking anything itself) way to unlock certain policies, lock them back and see what's set for people who know what are they doing. Making the whole system more transparent can also help to notice and sanitize it when it is compromised.

That's tantamount to saying that MacOS is "outrageously dangerous" to the majority of people because it allows "" sideloading"". Absurd.

Everybody buying into Apple's FUD needs to take a step back and look at the greater context; Apple themselves already sell devices and an OS which permits that which they and you claim is too dangerous to exist.

Some people want to own the device they paid a lot of money for. As long as Apple policies prevent you from sideloading, you do not own your device. They do.