joolsg4

rob53 said:

Just because I will never allow sideloading on my iPhone doesn't mean that my iPhone won't be subjected to malware from people who now have malware on theirs sending their malware to my iPhone through email and messages.

If that is your line of thinking, then there's nothing to stop people with jailbroken phones and people using commercial hacking tools from doing exactly the same now. In fact, alternative app stores have strict controls that jailbroken phones don't. Apple Mail and Message are no less sandboxed in iOS 17.4 than they are in previous versions - maybe more so, as security generally gets better with each iOS release. There have already been many documented instances of certain individuals (politicians, journalists) being targeted by so-called "state sponsored actors" using commercially available zero-day exploits in current and previous versions of iOS.

Plus Apple aren't allowing sideloading as such - they're allowing alternative app stores. People won't be able to download just any app from anywhere. It will have to be from an Apple approved App Marketplace and the stakes for creating one aren't insignificant, nor will using an alternative app marketplace be mandatory.