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Comment by Angostura | Hacker News Reader

A lot of this article appears to be based on the belief that the security architecture of iOS and MacOS are identical. This seems ... an unlikely assumption

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The security architectures of both are reasonably well documented[1] by apple, do you have any relevant distinctions to point out?

[1] https://help.apple.com/pdf/security/en_US/apple-platform-sec... [PDF]

I suspect that there are too many differences for me to really list., but for starters MacOS supports multiple user accounts and has beeen built from its inception to allow people to install software from anywhere.

For several years now, MacOS has blocked unsigned apps from running. You have to manually enable every single app installed this way inside System Preferences > Security.

Android handles it the same way.

Nope - yuo just right-click on the app and chose 'Open' from the menu. No need to go into preferences.

No the article is under the belief that because something has not been a security problem for Mac it will not be a security problem for iOS, this does not necessarily have to be because the security architectures of both are the same.

I think a more problematic assumption is that iOS and MacOS users are equally aware and knowledgeable about potential security threats. It’s true that the sky hasn’t fallen because MacOS users are exposed to these risks. But they are not new risks on MacOS. They will be on iOS.

Maybe people on this site are aware but I can assure you average Joe has no clue.

Exactly. And average Joe has grown accustomed to not needing a clue.

It hasn't protected Average Joe anyways. There is malware being actively distributed, today, that uses nothing other than first-party Apple services to attain persistence.

Average Joe has to grow up. Scam websites and scam callers aren't going away, and even scam apps are being approved and distributed on Apple's App Store. On iOS, you have to do your due diligence to avoid being exploited (and even that might not help against some threats).

They don’t need to use a different browser engine.

You’re talking about a user who has gone out of their way through multiple scary Apple warnings to change their browser engine.

And even once they do that, they’re likely to be installing one of Firefox, Chrome, or Edge, all of which have as good if not better security histories than Safari.

The sky hasn't fallen for the 70% of smartphone users who have an Android.

If the argument is that in reality the security architecture of iOS is much much worse than MacOS, I'd be interested to hear the details of that rationale...

Parent's point is that Apple successfuly maintains two different security levels for mac and iOS, and claiming that it absolutely can't lower iOS at any cost is just Apple's opinion.

For sure Apple doesn't like the macos security model and would want way tighter control on what's allowed to run, if it could get away with it. But it's not about what Apple wants, it's about what they're asked to do.

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