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That’s related to anti-tivolization in GPLv3 and basically Apple is forced to stop shipping things that’s updated to GPLv3. That’s not just about scared, assuming being scared means they are irrational and they could have adopted it if they want. Legally they cannot ship it unless they are changing their business model.

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They could though. They're just being overly cautious.

All it forbids is blocking users from running modified FOSS code which macOS doesn't do. You can compile what you want and run it in Xcode. Even on iOS you can do this.

What TiVo did was shipping FOSS code but not giving users any access to their device.

But Apple enforces code-signing, and that prevents them to ship those binaries under GPLv3 in the OS. The users can always compile them on their own (or via their favorite package manager) but Apple just can't ship it (without changing how they operate fundamentally.)

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