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Not even close. The vast majority of journalists, lawyers, activists, even public figures, don't have the knowledge to secure their digital lives, don't have access to an expert to do it for them, and in many cases aren't even fully aware of the nature of the threat (beyond some vague idea along the lines of "I'm probably being monitored").Citation needed. Because everything I have ever seen is that iOS users almost all leave on autoupdate and the move to the latest version is the overwhelming majority, very rapidly. Seriously, look at adoption each time over the last 5 years on a site like statista [0] or wherever, or various ones aimed at developers. If you want to claim that people at higher risk aren't part of the 60-85% I'd honestly be curious to see your numbers. Note I said "decent" not "best" practices. Whatever its flaws, mixed incentives, and issues (which are real), Apple has expended significant effort in making the normal default paths provide an ok baseline security for regular people and discouraging leaving them. Which isn't even something a lot of HNers like! If anything, I'd be unsurprised if HN types to lag in some respects because we want more control and to do things outside the well trod path. I've jailbroken a lot, is that something most people do? No.
In this specific case, the minimum needed to avoid a zero-day exploit is (by definition) merely to always have the OS updated and all security patches applied while staying firmly within the walled garden. Which it's objectively clear the super majority of regular people do. If you just go with the default and let Apple update your device whenever Apple wants, then it's a truism that anything you get hit by is something Apple hasn't yet patched. And in turn anything that raises the population probability that the 0-day actually gets noticed and potentially reported raises the risk of using the 0-day. The whole point of this feature is that it'd let a normal person who doesn't necessarily understand threat mechanics go "huh, that's funny" and then maybe say so on their social media/blog/wherever, at which point if even one person who follows them (and we're talking journalists or other types with enough influence to get targeted by major threat actors right?) recognizes what's going on and says "quick call Apple/security researcher/tell HN" now it's out there.
>because those practices have no observable effect to them
Literally the entire point of this new feature is to create an observable effect of tampering. Kind of a weird statement in context.
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0: https://www.statista.com/statistics/565270/apple-devices-ios...