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Comment by 015a | Hacker News Reader

I don't even buy the "security" argument; MacOS is a highly secure operating system, produced by the same company, which has no forced walled-garden App Store. There certainly are exploits and scams which happen; just like on iOS. The argument sounds great in theory, but in practice, it simply doesn't hold water; security & privacy can (and should) (and does) happen at the OS layer, not application distribution.

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But I don't think it's very controversial to argue that iOS is more secure than MacOS (to the point of inconvenience), and that this is a reason why integration with the health data on the iPhone will pose a challenge.

The iPhone is also much higher stakes than MacOS in terms of total number of users affected by any exploit.

Yes, given the number of articles posted on hacker news that detail apps which circumvent protections on Apple... That's a bold claim

macOS is definitely less secure than iOS.

What's your definition of "secure" here?

Same as everyone else's, I'd expect – less possibility (higher difficulty for attackers) of viruses / data exfiltration / etc.

How is that less possible? Did grandparent do a diff between the iOS and MacOS CVE list or is it a hunch based on which platform is more locked down?

This is architecturally speaking – specifically, more wholistic sandboxing.

You literally can't do a whole host of things on an iOS device without first jailbreaking it. Things which you can do on macOS by default.

Apple has added some limitations to macOS that do similar in the past few years (namely expanding the oversight of "Gatekeeper"), but it is still allows far more behaviors than an iOS device does.

A system with a smaller attack surface (made by the same company with fairly consistent engineering practices) is more secure. That is the assumption I am making here.

If it's less secure, why are they selling it? They claim their policies are to protect consumers. But then they keep launching new Macs with less secure operating systems for general purpose use. Isn't it hypocritical? iOS apps are themselves made using this "less secure" operating system. Won't someone hack your Mac and add malicious code inside your iOS apps? /sarcasm

For this to be true, Apple would have had to remove no scams. Not just let a few through.

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