His particular degree of involvement in this decision has been well documented for years, long before the consequences of those decisions.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2019/05/06/elon-musks-war-on-lidar-who-is-right-and-why-do-they-think-that/#19deb44f2a3b

https://insideevs.com/news/658439/elon-musk-overruled-tesla-autopilot-engineers-radar-removal/

This has nothing to do with aesthetics and everything to do with reducing production costs. The sensors themselves add to costs, but then the data processing for all of this data adds to the computational needs of the system, sensor installs requiring calibration and flexibility for changes in sensors add costs. The list goes on.

Musk and Tesla are standing firm on their position that LiDAR is needless and that others will follow their lead here, but so far in practice the lack of LiDAR in Tesla vehicles has shown to be a serious disadvantage compared to other systems.

Tesla’s used to have LiDAR - they turned them off in software and stopped adding them to newer models.

I think everyone jumping on this and trying to argue that Apple is so very wrong in this assertion that people will get bombarded with malicious garbage is coming at this from the wrong angle. The part that I think we should be pushing back on in the argument that, in order to protect them from themselves, we should allow Apple to restrict them unilaterally.

People, in general, make just awful decisions in terms of security and quality of the apps they download. We’ve seen it since the very first app store and it continues today. “But Android apps can be side loaded and it’s not that bad” Yes, it is that bad. The fact that you, someone that is more informed and experienced than the average, can navigate this successfully and safely is not an indicator of the general population.

Ultimately, the argument that people will mess this up is objectively true. The place we should push back is the argument that we should allow Apple to protect us from ourselves.

If Apple believes they can cultivate a safer and higher quality app store, they should take that message to the people. Convince them that if they stay in Apple’s app store ecosystem, they will be happier and safer. If you can’t convince them, though, the law should not allow you to force them into compliance. If we have a variety of marketplaces, they will need to differentiate themselves from one another somehow. That’s most likely going to be on price, but we could also have someone step up to make a market focused on security, privacy, or some other value proposition.

“It won’t expose people to bad apps” is just the wrong argument. We should instead just say “Yeah. And?” The freedom to make that decision, and possibly make those mistakes, isn’t the problem - it’s the point