So instead of going on evidence and public statements by Apple executives - statements that have repeatedly said the Mac is the Mac - you choose to believe random internet comments?
There is a delicate balance between protecting average users who have no clue what is safe software and what isn't vs allowing power users and developers to do what they want. Since the days of ActiveX controls we've know if you give users a "Please pwn me" dialog they'll just click "OK". They've been trained that computers put up lots of pointless dialogs they can't understand even if they take the time to read them so just click until it gets out of the way. Even with default security settings if opening an app from an "unidentified developer" fails you can go into System Preferences > Security and click "Allow".
macOS is trying to protect people by default while still allowing the HN crowd to turn these protections off if they so wish.
Apple Silicon Macs still allow you to disable SIP which turns off a lot of modern protections. You can still downgrade boot security. It is a deliberate decision to continue allowing ad-hoc code signing. Software can still be distributed outside the Mac App Store either with a Developer ID or without. The vast majority of Mac users don't know or care what any of these things are but the Mac has always allowed them and as Craig has said several times over: the Mac is still the Mac. It is still the system that supports hobbyists and developers - people who sometimes want to poke at the system, install their own kernel extensions, etc.
If your complaint is that things are not wide-open by default anymore then I don't know what to tell you. We don't live in the same software landscape we once did and there are far more malicious actors out there. Protecting users by default is the right thing to do IMHO.
Why can’t there be a solution between “I accept Apple’s vision for how I can use my device” and “turn all the security off”? Why can’t I run my own trustcache, or tell the OS to trust my developer certificate, or write little specially-entitled commands so I don’t have to turn off GateKeeper and SIP and AMFI. Can you really call a Mac a Mac if to do anything on it you have to completely roll back a decade of protections?
So instead of going on evidence and public statements by Apple executives - statements that have repeatedly said the Mac is the Mac - you choose to believe random internet comments?
There is a delicate balance between protecting average users who have no clue what is safe software and what isn't vs allowing power users and developers to do what they want. Since the days of ActiveX controls we've know if you give users a "Please pwn me" dialog they'll just click "OK". They've been trained that computers put up lots of pointless dialogs they can't understand even if they take the time to read them so just click until it gets out of the way. Even with default security settings if opening an app from an "unidentified developer" fails you can go into System Preferences > Security and click "Allow".
macOS is trying to protect people by default while still allowing the HN crowd to turn these protections off if they so wish.
Apple Silicon Macs still allow you to disable SIP which turns off a lot of modern protections. You can still downgrade boot security. It is a deliberate decision to continue allowing ad-hoc code signing. Software can still be distributed outside the Mac App Store either with a Developer ID or without. The vast majority of Mac users don't know or care what any of these things are but the Mac has always allowed them and as Craig has said several times over: the Mac is still the Mac. It is still the system that supports hobbyists and developers - people who sometimes want to poke at the system, install their own kernel extensions, etc.
If your complaint is that things are not wide-open by default anymore then I don't know what to tell you. We don't live in the same software landscape we once did and there are far more malicious actors out there. Protecting users by default is the right thing to do IMHO.