That would make great sense, if there was a way for technical users to opt out of the walled garden. But it's the very opposite -- Apple spends a lot of time and money making it harder to jailbreak the phone, in ways that have nothing to do with defending against malware. If they do their best to make it impossible to opt out, then it's not about protecting your safety. It's about protecting the business model.

There's an argument for protecting the business model, of course -- making jailbreaking more difficult also makes piracy more difficult. The App Store has funneled a ton of money to developers, which in turn makes for better apps for everyone. But the notion that Apple has gone to absurd lengths to prevent jailbreaking because ... "We [developers] gave these freedoms away by using our talents to cheat and scam our customers"? No. That's not how freedom works. This is about money, plain and simple.

Apple has other motivations to maintain their walled garden, but their goals of controlling the whole experience also extend to things like that. They want there to be no question that any Apple device is "safe", regardless of legitimate user configuration.

And as long as users at large aren't demanding general purpose computers who can really blame them?

And if that would have been the case, remember the Antennagate? First they told their customers to hold the phone differently, then they said it was a software problem, and finally they said the problem was the antenna, but that all smartphones had a similar problem (which was a lie). So, in that case I would have expected Steve Jobs' reality distortion field in full power blaming everyone except Apple.

    > they usually blame themselves more than Microsoft.

    > remember the Antennagate

In any case, it's not Apple's responsibility to make open hardware, since there already are open alternatives. It's not economically viable for a company to support non-inteded purposes of use.

I doubt the point matters much, but for the specific case of preventing iOS jailbreaking (as opposed to, say, the iPodhash crap), Apple seems to be pretty lax when malware isn't being enabled. For example, after a jailbreak is released, Apple often doesn't patch the vulnerabilities until an update is rolled out for some separate reason - with the exception of the jailbreaks that remotely exploited the device via Safari (as opposed to requiring physical access to the device), which were patched quickly.

Of course, I would prefer if it were not necessary to use a vulnerability in the first place.

Sounds like every politician who tries to justify the current methods of the wars against terrorism, against drugs, against pedophilia and the general move towards censorship and surveillance.

Look, safety is good, but if you believe in freedom, you should leave the choice. Just like the root user in Linux and Android, I should be able to unlock superuser abilities in iOS.

The same applies in real life. There should indeed be certifications for food and drinks, but it's not a reason to remove rat poison or bleach and ammonia from supermarkets. Just put the proper notices and safeties.

Choice is key.

They are not a monopoly. Other than patents they haven't been given any special privlidges to get where they are today. As long as YOU as a consumer do in fact have a choice, and you DO, you don't get to tell Apple how to build their products.

I think Apple is keenly aware of this, and they don't want to be a monopoly more than anyone, because having a minority market share gives them the freedom to bundle and integrate software which they otherwise would be prohibited from doing.

Consider these examples:

1. Your web browser. 2. Java and .NET programs can be run in different trust-modes only allowing certain functions from the standard library, and obviously disallowing external libraries then. This is mostly used on servers to isolate websites on the same server today but if given a better user interface could have been used to secure desktop programs. 3. User permission levels in operating systems

- Benjamin Franklin

With a population lacking this mindset, no wonder this country is going to the dogs.

Nor did Benjamin Franklin for a large part of his life, too :)

I won't ask how you know…

  "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.
  As nations become corrupt and vicious,
  they have more need of masters."

EDIT: Not Franklin's!