Comment by yazaddaruvala
4 years ago
I really don’t care much about Androids, I haven’t used/been educated about them in 6 years and don’t plan to.
That said, a general purpose personal computer is defined by its advertising not its hardware. My iPhone was never advertised to be able to run any arbitrary binary. The fact it can JIT some version of Python, or run a watered down variant of a program I want does not change what I purchased.
In fact my iPhone was advertised as a multi-purpose, specific device, “arbitrarily limited” to my satisfaction, with a walled garden for my personal protection. This is the device I very intentionally purchased and recommended to family and friends!
Forcing it to be ruined for billions of customers because a few hundred thousand developers are less happy is not only ok with me, I paid for that privilege, thank you.
If “developers” (which I am one of) wanted more open access computing devices, they should have self regulated and ensured viruses, scams, malware, bloat ware, etc were not so common as to drive away every user!
Now it’s time to switch jobs, or be successful with a 30% (which hopefully in the future is 3% - I’m happy for you and anyone to push for a reduction in this value). Now is not the time to complain that Apple is anti-competitive and should be forced to ruin a billion customers experiences, given its users are actively inviting Apple to their defense.
"-There's an app for that."
That in my opinion is Apple advertising the iPhone as a do anything software device, a personal computer. Considering the only thing holding back the iPhone from doing everything like running GCC, Blender, etc. is a locked bootloader keeping people from easily hacking Linux or Android on there doesn't IMO make it not a personal computer. Whether you are happy with the walled garden approach or not doesn't make it not a personal computer either. But it's frankly ridiculous IMO to state that an iPhone is not a personal computer because Apple's ad copy doesn't say so and not on what it does.
Firstly, you mean general purpose computing device. Personal computer just means a single person uses it. By the current definition my electric tooth brush is a personal computer.
Secondly can you please define general purpose computing device such that it doesn’t include my toaster, pressure/slow cooker, or oven?
> "-There's an app for that."
My definition for general purpose computing device is, when there needs to be an app for that, and if the app doesn’t exist, I (or anyone) can’t do it without Apple’s permission. Which is what Apple marketed me.
> a locked bootloader keeping people from easily hacking Linux or Android on there
I am actually for an unlocked boot loader on iDevices (with a voided warranty and no expectations for driver support).
I’m also for pushing Apple to reduce its fees from 30% or 15% or whatever to even lower. As long as it continues to be profitable for them to hold a high security/privacy bar and ideally raise it even higher.
I’m just very much not a fan of opening up iOS to sideloading. And I’m not a fan of reducing Apple’s control over developers on iOS.
You used personal computer above. I'm not typing out "general purpose computing device" every time. I think most rational people don't consider their oven to be a personal computer even if it has computer controlled parts.
> Secondly can you please define general purpose computing device such that it doesn’t include my toaster, pressure/slow cooker, or oven?
Sure. I'll use my toaster oven as an example, a Panasonic NB-G110P. I'm assuming no hardware hacking obviously.
My toaster oven doesn't have any built in way to store or add storage for a users program. No support for a cassette drive or even a paper tape reader. It doesn't have any sort of way for the user to run "programs" or instructions in memory outside the predefined functions from the manufacturer like "Waffle mode" that are probably burned into ROM and immutable to the user. While it DOES unusually have TWO 8 segment LCD displays for output there is no way for the user to output results or perhaps inspect memory addresses for anything beyond seeing the time remaining in "Waffle mode" or the like.
An iPhone by contrast has storage for user programs, ways to load and run instructions not included or designed by the manufacturer but a third party, ways to output the results of those programs and allow users to interact with them in some ways.
You also don't need Apple's permission to create a program of your liking for iOS but you do need Apple's permission to distribute it in a fashion that's reasonable for the non-technically inclined.
Apple's lock on software is in my opinion just as gross as Apple's or John Deere's lock on hardware. It's the manufacturer imposing constraints on what I can do with my device for mainly their benefit. There's a small security benefit to this approach but in my view what Apple is getting out of the arrangement is far too much weighted in their favour.
You're right bootloaders should be unlocked. But if they're not going to provide drivers then they have to provide documentation that would allow drivers to be written by those that can and care to. Keep iOS locked if they want but give a reasonable way out.
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