Comment by kiratp
4 years ago
If we are arguing “it’s a Turing Machine!” Then you could argue that WiFi light bulbs are
> implemented on a very specific set of hardware, restricted in its use by software whose only purpose is to maintain the illusion
The Switch has a 720p touchscreen display, a reasonably powerful CPU, and 4GB of RAM. It's not fair to compare that to the specialized embedded hardware in a light bulb.
Do those characteristics somehow automatically equate to some expectation about the hackability of the device? Must hardware creators cater to a niche part of their user base just because they use those components?
Don’t get me wrong. I like to tinker, and I’ve had plenty of fun using hardware for unintended use cases. But I don’t understand the seeming entitlement that some feel that Nintendo is not worthy of their purchase.
In a vacuum, allowing for hackability is easier than building a walled garden. Locking a device down requires hardware and software to be developed that would otherwise be unnecessary. From that perspective, it's understandable that some people feel entitled to be able to use the hardware they paid for in whatever way they please.
Of course, in the real world, hardware like the Switch is subsidized by publishing fees and the like. I imagine that that revenue must outweigh the R&D costs of gimping the device.
Fortunately, I wasn't arguing "it's a turing machine". I'm arguing that a switch is a quite powerful computer that has been crippled by its software to do less. Much less. The result of this is the thing that you think of as a switch, but "being a switch" is not fundamentally different from being banned from a particular bar, or being allergic to peanuts, as a descriptor.