Craig Federighi: We don't find acceptable the level of malware on the Mac

The trial between Apple and Epic continues, with several executives from both companies testifying in court. Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering, is one of them and he made an interesting statement related to how secure is macOS while replying to a question from Judge Rodgers.

Craig Federighi admitted that the level of malware on the Mac is not satisfactory, at least for Apple’s standards. Trying to elaborate further on this statement Federighi claimed that the single App Store available on iOS is safeguarding users from installing malware on their devices. On the contrary, you can install a Mac App through several alternatives on macOS other than the Mac App Store. The most straightforward alternative is downloading and installing software directly from the website of the developer.

This is the crucial factor that makes macOS less secure as a platform compared to iOS and iPadOS. The latter is a closed ecosystem where Apple approves all the applications that are available to download and install apart from a small percentage of enterprise and education apps (unless you own a jailbroken device).

Here’s the relevant question from Judge Rogers and full answer from Craig Federighi:

Question from Judge Rogers: “There are multiple stores on the Mac. So, if that can happen on the Mac, why should we not allow the same stores to exist on the phone?”

Craig Federighi’s response: “Yeah, it’s certainly how we’ve done it on the Mac and it’s regularly exploited on the Mac. iOS has established a dramatically higher bar for customer protection. The Mac is not meeting that bar today. And that’s despite the fact that Mac users inherently download less software and are subject to a way less economically motivated attacker base. If you took Mac security techniques and applied them to the iOS ecosystem, with all those devices, all that value, it would get run over to a degree dramatically worse than is already happening on the Mac. And as I say, today, we have a level of malware on the Mac that we don’t find acceptable and is much worse than iOS. Put that same situation in place for iOS and it would be a very bad situation for our customers.”

“The Mac is a car”

Federighi also claims that the Mac still remains the safest computer in existence and describes computers as cars:

"The Mac is a car. You can take it off road if you want and you can drive wherever you want. That's what you wanted to buy. There's a certain level of responsibility required. With iOS, you wanted to buy something where children can operate an iOS device and feel safe doing so. It's really a different product."

“Even infants are able to operate an iOS device”

He also mentions that smartphones and therefore iPhones are far more personal than computers and contain a lot of personal information. Opening up these ecosystems could mean increased security risks. Apple’s VP of Software Engineering compares iOS with children:

“With iOS, we were able to create something where children, heck, even infants, are able to operate an iOS device and be safe in doing so. It’s really a different product”