It was a hypothetical question; one we all already know the answer too. The point is many people were upset when this transition was announced because something worked great for them and was completely changed. Sure I don't have to upgrade, and I won't because magiskhide worked 100% for me, as it did for most people. We all know why TJW stopped development of magisk and it had nothing to do with the app.
John doesn't do much on the App anyway... He pretty much offloaded that to Diareuse a couple of years ago.
And apart from a break of only weeks, he actually didn't stop development even after beginning his Google tenure. - If you check his commits after mid May, you'll see he'd been working on major framework changes (to support Zygisk etc) and began merging fixes / changes from July... These were hidden from the public until after he announced 'Magisk is back!' at end of August and unhid them.
So in reality, much of the time he had been required to stop contributing to his open source project pending a review of his management chain, copyright, legal, code of conduct, and possibly much more (standard big tech company procedure for new employees with open source projects, and more especially for jobs entailing software [Android] security), he had been working on it, but had simply closed it in the interim...
Turned out Google was as good as the word of some senior staff who posted that Google has no interest in stopping either Magisk Development or root use AFAICS.
Incidentally, some people labelled him a traitor for working for Apple... now for Google!? ... Do we expect a dev like him to operate only in amateur circles?
The point is many people were upset when this transition was announced because something worked great for them and was completely changed. Sure I don't have to upgrade, and I won't because magiskhide worked 100% for me, as it did for most people... this just seems like a regression or at best a lateral tech shift.
But it will stop 'working great' for you one way or another, sooner or later...
If bank apps you use move to custom detection methods harder to circumvent, eg detecting Isolated process leaks (many do already) or other, then you will likely come to appreciate the new the Magisk w/ Zygisk framework which enables more powerful hiding ability (as John explained a couple of years ago when first proposing Magisk in Zygote). Nb. Improved hiding was actually the original object of this quantum shift, but of course it also gives modules more power to do all sorts of things...
So we actually have (much) better hiding potential, it's just that John won't lead the hiding effort any longer (and he's been at pains to explain why he's not interested in doing this any longer - at least since Google began began testing HKA implementation, ie. long before he became a 'Googler' with access to their proprietary source code...). He has, however, pointed out that others need / 'can start to do their job', and that we already have such 3rd party solutions. (Neither John nor Google are out to prevent this, at least until HKA is enforced.)
Really, apart from maintaining SafetyNet passing for new devices / OS changes (which is 'trivial' in John's estimation) and hiding of Magisk App / Manager, John has not been improving Magisks ability to hide modified TEE for years now anyway.
The real innovations / research / testing have actually been led by Devs like RikkaW with her knowledge of injecting into Zygote / pre-Zygisk Riru XHook framework solution supporting her own Storage Isolation (Storage Redirect) app as well as other dev's hiding modules, vvb2060 with her Lite Magisk fork, Riru-Unshare etc, Canyie with her Riru-MomoHider, Nullptr (Dr-TSNG) with HideMyApplist, Shana (LoveSy, LoveSyKun) principal LSPosed contributor (team behind current Shamiko hiding solution), etc...
New Magisk is actually John improving the framework for these (module) Devs!... And I must say, given the complexities of hiding new detections should we expect effective hiding from just one dev?! ... The Cat is no longer just Google, but an ever increasing number of banks running one mouse ragged...
Wait... Why not let more MICE out of the bag and run the
cats ragged???
I believe John's strategy to improve the Magisk framework does just this... And it seems there's now an endless supply of such 16 - 25 year old female Anime / Manga (the new Monty Python for coders?) loving genius mice keen to play!... He's been communicating with many of them in his native Chinese just today...
Requirements / for running proprietary code in a TEE and efforts to enforce this are constantly changing / being strengthened (even Windows 11 is a move towards ensuring this thru HKA on PCs).
Subverting detection of modified TEE was fun for TJW for some time, but it's NOT the real purpose of Magisk and never was!... John is now 'taking Magisk more seriously now' as he put it, and leaving the TEE spoofing game to others. (Can you blame him?)
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I did say 'sooner or later'. I hope I've covered 'sooner', how
many Devs are now carrying the Magisk hide / TEE spoofing baton, and why John's work
continues to support / enable such efforts in reality.
Re. 'later', the TEE spoofing game ('fun') will undoubtedly be over for good once Google enforces HKA. This has already been years in the making, but may occur at any tick of the clock...
Magisk, on the other hand, is set to live on / continue to be essential for Android custom modders!
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