Similar arguments could have been made when Andy Rubin’s little-known Camera OS project called Android was held together by duct tape as the entrenched BlackBerry had battle-hardened a pretty solid microkernel over a decade or two.
Like another commentator points out, there’s value in credible alternatives (however imperfect), even if it may seem like the iOS/Android duopoly is insurmountable. I’d point out the utter comic show Android & iOS security postures were back when they started out. In fact, most tech starts out looking like toy projects. The investment, in all sorts of goals like reliability & security, increases with relevance (and funding).
May be you’re right.
I met folks from Furi Labs and Jolla at FOSDEM earlier this month and got to discuss the technical details and both those projects seemed very impressive and the engs working on them very driven. I’d not as easily belittle their effort (not saying that you are!), especially given the team sizes and budget.
The CLOUD Act is worrisome to the point EFF opines that it is a legal (if not a technical) backdoor. Ditto for the UK’s COPA, and the EU’s e-Evidence Regulation, which EFTA members (signatories of the 2007 Lugano Convention like Switzerland) are also subject to.
Anyone who says end-to-end encryption is the answer is not paying attention. For instance, EU’s e-Evidence directive from 2026, specifically authored for “network-based services” like “proxy services”, requires storing even the encrypted data (which clearly, they plan to decrypt if they could obtain the keys, too; which, in some schemes, are derived from or locked behind end-user passwords).