Up until now, you could change the settings to something dev friendly, while leaving them strict for people like my father, who clicks on things he shouldn't click on. It is not short sighted, it's a useful protection against malware. The only time he got in trouble was when he ran an installer, entered the admin password and installed one of these "protect your mac" apps that don't protect, but only pester you into paying a subscription. I had to remove that file by file. OTOH, the amount of shit my in-laws' PC went through is unbelievable. They no longer use it: they've got an iPad.

You do realize that there are millions of satisfied Mac, iPhone, and iPad customers out there, right? The profits speak for themselves: clearly there is value both for freedom and for security. And it never was a binary question anyway.

Besides, you can still run non-notarized binaries if you want to. The UI does make it difficult, but not impossible.

If you want a totally open computer, that's fine (to the extent you don’t spread it via negligence), but everything has tradeoffs. If you're comfortable with the risk of malware, that's also fine; but not everyone is -- and certainly not the business world.