The problem is that most people who are competent are not the problem. But Apple has built their system (the iOS specifically) for people who don't know or don't really want to learn or tweak or change their phones, they just want them to pick up and work. There are two types of these people. Those who don't want to be bothered, and never do anything special with their OS but are technical enough. The second set are those who are not technical at all, have no desire to be, and are generally inept at any level of debug / fixing. Sadly, there is a HUGE population of the last type. Anyone born before 1990 could fall into this category and the further back you go, the ore technically illiterate you are (as in terms of the population not the individual). Also there are still those who just don't want to learn who were born later. This is where a walled garden really helps these people. It protects them from themselves. For those who don't remember OS 6 & 7 for the Mac, or Windows 3 and '95.... It was a nightmare with viruses and malware everywhere, and it was very easy to install without knowing what you were doing. And in many cases that was BEFORE the internet was so popular. Now imagine if Apple opens the door to let any application install, from anywhere. You're going to have websites with hidden buttons to install malware on these phones that people click on without paying attention or other deceptive advertisements. Even if there is a security popup, the vast majority will just click accept and keep on going. Now what will happen when these phones are bricked, their battery life dies, or is held by ransomeware? Who do you think these people are going to A) turn too, and B) blame? The answer is Apple. Remember these are NOT the technical people, they don't know anything but the name written on the phone. Then they see the big Apple store sign and walk in and say fix this thing that I broke. Apple either will turn them away, or charge them a bunch of money; and they will scream and yell and bitch to everyone they can that Apple sucks. So this will swamp Apple support, costing them a lot of money, and it will make their name look bad. There is NOTHING positive about this for Apple. People who are technical and know the OS and chose to use Apple BECAUSE of the walled garden aren't the problem, they know what they are getting into (for the record, this is me, I just don't want to be bothered with it, I have too many other things to do), they aren't the problem, because generally even if they let their wall down, these people will still follow standard safety practices. One might say that Android has the same problems; which, it does.. BUT here is the difference. Someone buys a Samsung phone and something goes wrong, what do they do? Where do they turn too? There aren't Samsung stores all around the world like the Apple stores, they can't go in and expect it to be fixed. Either they need someone to fix it for them, like Best Buy, or they don't even know they have a problem, or they just live with it. Often they do bitch about it, lots of Android problems are 3rd party based and people do bitch about their phones. Also, they often jump from one brand to another, Samsung, Google, LG, Huawei, HTC, etc.... thinking that one will fix their problems that the previous one didn't have. When in reality all they are really buying is a wiped OS and starting over. People here, and on other websites, often forget two things. First is how nefarious hackers / marketing / website developers are at tricking people to install things. And two how, well, stupid, the average person is, the vast majority get lost doing so many everyday tasks (just yesterday was flabbergasted as how many people can't understand the metric system . . . not like it is hard at all!). People need to be protected from themselves, quite a bit. Many of the laws are out there to protect us from us. This really isn't any different.