Craig Federighi was on the stand today at the Epic Games vs. Apple trial. During the session, Craig was asked if Mac has any level of threat, to which he replied that Mac currently has a level of malware that Apple “does not find acceptable.”

You would never expect Craig to downplay macOS, right? But all of this boils down to one thing. Federighi’s goal was to picture to the judges that the iOS ecosystem is secure. When asked about a vulnerability on macOS, he said that Mac’s ability to install third-party apps is one of the “problems” that the operating system has and it is “regularly exploited.”

Federighi explained, “iOS has established a dramatically higher bar for customer protection. The Mac is not meeting that bar today.” He then went on to say that if iOS worked similar to macOS, it would be overrun with malware and vulnerabilities, particularly because there are far more iOS devices.

The Apple executive even downplayed Android by citing its malware example. He said, “It’s well understood in the security community that Android has a malware problem. iOS has succeeded so far in staying ahead of the malware problem.”

He then explained what goes behind keeping the Mac secure. He said that Apple was in an “endless game of whack-a-mole” with malware and vulnerabilities on Mac. “Apple has to block many instances of infections that can affect hundreds of thousands of people every week,” he added.

At last, Federighi was asked if Apple would allow side-loading on iOS. To this, he said that it would change things “dramatically” simply because no App Store Review team would be able to check what kind of apps people would be downloading on their iPhone.

What are your thoughts on Craig’s words? Would you want to install third-party apps on your iPhone? Let us know in the comments section below!