>People cannot be trusted with computers. They install everything that crosses their path. I think this is a point that people who advocate for breaking down t

>People cannot be trusted with computers. They install everything that crosses their path. I think this is a point that people who advocate for breaking down the walls of the Apple garden don't adequately consider. The iPhone is not really comparable to the desktop computer you could do whatever you want with in the 1990s. It's basically an extension of the person, with all their bank, emails, locations, web history. To make it a truly "open" platform, it would open its users -- who trust them -- to these kinds of problems, and would need to somehow solve them for those customers in a way that doesn't run afoul of the "open" aspect that people demand. That's a tightrope that becomes very difficult to walk when the headlines read "Apple app let hackers steal bank details, enable widespread fraud." It doesn't matter that it wasn't an Apple app. It doesn't matter that that App was downloaded on a 3rd party App Store. It doesn't matter that the user tapped through a dialog that said "This is a third party app that doesn't have Apple's protections on it, be careful!" Those are all nuances that are lost in that headline. It's asking Apple to risk the privacy of their users and their business profits, so that people can have marginally cheaper apps. I think the only way forward, really, is the model where smaller developers don't have to pay a fee until they reach $1m in sales. That tiered approach seems reasonable; after all, there's no reason to let huge developers off the hook for paying their fair share to keep the system running.