> by using your own developer-signing certificate

That still requires you to pay Apple for a developer account ($99 USD/year), requires you to own a Mac, and requires you to abide by all of Apple's rules. Meaning that Apple _can_ still prevent you from installing a sketchy browser downloaded from Github since they control everything about the build-and-signing system on the iPhone.

https://developer.apple.com/help/account/create-certificates...

https://developer.apple.com/support/certificates/

> You can already do that today (yes, on iOS) by using your own developer-signing certificate (because if it's from github, you can build it from source; or re-link/assembly prebuilt linkable binaries if you really feel like it).

Not if you want a browser with a JIT Javascript compiler, which for better or worse is a basic requirement for a broadly usable browser.

Tbh my mom doesn't even understand how to install an app from the app store. And she comes running for everything that she is not used to. I am not concerned that she would download anything from outside. But I do get your point that many people are incapable of evaluating what aoftware is trustworthy (and hell you cant always know there is a risk even with open source software that seems trustworthy unless you actually read all the source code, which I very rarely do and only for small programs or small parts of programs). However I do not think it is Apple's responsibility or right to be the guardian here.

The entitlements for browser development are almost certainly not going to be given out to people on the free tier and probably not even to all paid developer program accounts. Any entitlement that's available to free tier becomes something that you can sideload with AltStore, which works almost exactly as you suggest.

They do the same thing with the VPN entitlement. If you want to filter network traffic on-device, you have to apply for it and identify yourself to Apple. If they didn't do this China would be banning iPhones left and right.

I think this is pretty measured.

A whole bunch of tech guys fundamentally don’t understand how naïve many users are and how hostile the environment is.

What we need is a fundamentally different model for device security in our users. Their device is insecure and everything they might do online will expose them to an attacker.

But that overturns 40 years of UI improvement so people can use their devices without thinking.

> You can already do that today

Not if you want to use a JIT compiler or multiprocess support