This is arguable. The amount of CVEs is pretty high for a closed-source platform. Several of those CVEs were exploited in the wild for years before being fixed.
It is really simple: By requiring signed binaries, it significantly raises the barrier of entry to malware authors.
Does it solve it? No. Also no one said it did. But it certainly makes it less of a free for all.
Do I trust Apple to make sound decisions to prevent myself from being owned by some random s-kiddie (without talent)? Yes. They have demonstrated they are serious about a robust defense of the user's privacy and device security.
Just my $.02
So to test this on my iPhone, I need 1. to buy a Mac and 2. pay for an annual Apple development permission subscription.
You really can’t make a platform worse than this, and I say that as an iPhone owner. It’s so frustrating!
Can’t they publish this as a “test-flight” beta like for instance iSH does?
That's what they mean by "no jailbreak required". Flipside is you gotta pay for a dev account to get your stuff signed to allow it to run.