FWIW, I never had malware problems, neither on Windows, macOS/OSX nor Linux. I caught a harmless virus on Windows in 1998 or so, but that was it. Of course I'm not a "casual user", but I also didn't take any preventive actions except installing a browser adblocker (which really should be common sense by now).
Even though the vast majority of cars have a plethora of safety features there is is still a thriving amateur racing scene that isn't going away and is a path for those who want to be race car drivers. Meanwhile I get a car that I can turn on cruise control in traffic and not have to think as hard about speed and as a result get a much safer and more enjoyable experience on long car trips.
Because of Apple's abuse of its ownership of people's phones there are no popular decentralized chat apps. It's not feasible to maintain a chat app for iOS by volunteers because the app authors must also maintain infrastructure for push notifications (Apple does not allow this to be delegated to, for example, the chat server operators who already have volunteers that can handle this.)
I should be able to disable that
There are still teams so tight on budget they choose their track¹ based on it not requiring fireproof gloves as part of safety equipment, etc.
I have heard similar stories about needing to avoid tracks with safety rules due to unaffordable expense of:
- Safer bladder style fuel tanks - Head-and-neck restraints (to avoid having your head detach from your spine like Dale Sr.) - Fuel line and engine fire-wall sizing - Helmet and firesuit regulatory tag-checks (every additional second in a bad fire matters, old aren't safe, sometimes in more ways than one).
¹Or don't race at all, anymore.
Edit to add the reason no one is afraid of their terrible, awful lack of skill in this apparently dangerous activity is at least in part due to the risk homeostasis effect of increased safety features.
Some people just want to be able to use a computer without having their identity stolen and bank account drained.
Let people do what they want.
I'm very happy that the Nurburgring exists, and would be even happier if we could find similar ways to wall off those who like taking certain kinds of risks that have the potential to explode all over other people. Indeed, they should go do what they want... somewhere else.
But my machines were never rendered unusable, and of course I'm keeping the usual security mechanisms switched on (Windows SmartScreen, UAC and Defender).
I'm also not keeping anything really important on my computers though, the simple rule is "if this computer stops working now, I won't loose anything of value") - because this has actually happened a few times to me over the years, but always because of failing hardware.
The least useful thing for malware to do is to render your computer unusable. As that would prompt you to reinstall it or investigate the cause.
It's a great (if not perfect) way to provide some protection over software from outside the App Store, but he's right in suggesting that it just wouldn't scale to the sheer amount of mobile software people would install on iOS because a shady ad banner told them to.
(Basing this on Linux being free and as a result not coming with a monitoring team for notarisation of software in the wild).
MacOS and iOS are complementary and expand Apple’s market by addressing different segments. If MacOS worked exactly like iOS, Apple would lose computer customers to Windows or Linux.
Also, a reminder that Apple actually ships 5 different operating systems to deliver their segmentation strategy: MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS.
Trojan horses for Macs are a thing.
Just as they are a thing for every other OS that allows users to install anything from anywhere.
Malware scanners can never catch all the new variants, but as they are identified, updates to the malware scanner can remove them.
Is it throwing Android under the bus to note that you are much more likely to install a trojan horse when you sideload apps?