Sure, except that once you get past the idea of trusting others for your security, and instead learning and securing stuff yourself, you quickly realize that "tightly controlled" is just a synonym for "you don't really own your device, we just let you use it how we see fit". As so recently demonstrated by Apples ability to remove the HKmap.live app.
In general really wonder why people still defend Apple these days. Even if you overlook a combination of stuff like infinite attempts for icloud logins that led to the Fappening, their role in HK protests, and of course their pretty terrible labor practices that go so far as even to supposedly break the Chinese labor laws (which is a feat in itself), there is still issues with stuff they produce. Their hardware and software quality has been on a hard decline, especially if you compare it to alternatives rather than on its own merit. They don't really innovate despite opposite marketing claims, and they still participate in this "technology as a jewelry" thing with their $1000 monitor stands.
You pay attention to what you install, and take advantage of things like unlocking/rooting to remove apps or use a firewall app to limit access of other apps.
They certainly didn't know it was malware but yes, according to the article they installed the software intentionally (they even had to do extra steps and follow instructions on a random website to circumvent the google store).
You can theoretically have the best of both worlds, apples strong vetting without their draconian control. Strong vetting and allowing side loading are not mutually exclusive.
It's basically how linux systems work, most stuff comes from the package manager which has been pretty good at keeping out malware and users can install whatever they want from elsewhere.
In general really wonder why people still defend Apple these days. Even if you overlook a combination of stuff like infinite attempts for icloud logins that led to the Fappening, their role in HK protests, and of course their pretty terrible labor practices that go so far as even to supposedly break the Chinese labor laws (which is a feat in itself), there is still issues with stuff they produce. Their hardware and software quality has been on a hard decline, especially if you compare it to alternatives rather than on its own merit. They don't really innovate despite opposite marketing claims, and they still participate in this "technology as a jewelry" thing with their $1000 monitor stands.