Comment by fastball
1 month ago
Much harder to make a secure device that is resistant to getting pwn'd if you can run any code you want. I personally prefer my iPhone to be more secure than to be more open.
Buy a more open phone if you want one, but stop trying to use legal means to force the software on my phone to be worse for my use-case just because you want to have your cake and eat it too.
Once you decide to trade your liberty for security, it becomes the norm and then no one has liberty.
Apple is a company, not a government. I haven't traded my liberty for anything. Again, you can buy a different phone – that is where liberty comes into this equation.
If the USG decides to pass a law saying you can only buy iPhones, then we will have more to talk about w.r.t. liberty.
Nothing actually prevents you from modifying your iPhone however you see fit, btw. If you are incapable of breaking Apple's security without bricking the phone, that's a "you" problem.
> If the USG decides to pass a law saying you can only buy iPhones, then we will have more to talk about w.r.t. liberty.
Is what the US government does the only concern to you? This feels like a very semantic argument that tries to define the government as the sole arbiter of what's expected in our society. Majority consensus has an equal if not greater reach in telling us what we can and can't do. Case in point: the only two types of smartphones you can reasonably use nowadays are iOS devices and Android devices (and that is Google-sanctioned Android devices, custom ROMs are being rooted out as we speak). Sure, you can technically buy a random dumbphone, and just accept losing access to most of society, including services where using specific apps on specific platforms is mandatory. Is that liberty to you? Everyone telling you that you must pick from one of these options, but you're not forced to at gunpoint, so it's fine?
> Nothing actually prevents you from modifying your iPhone however you see fit, btw. If you are incapable of breaking Apple's security without bricking the phone, that's a "you" problem.
I would agree if we were still in the 2000s, when people could actually plug their phones in and flash whatever firmware they desired on them. Current-day phones, iPhones especially, are black boxes that are designed to be impenetrable by anyone by Apple, under the guise of 'security'. Everything is cross-checked to ensure that you can't as much as screw your phone open without consequences. The threat vectors they're supposedly addressing are utterly ludicrous. It's gotta be stuff like "Oh, what if a malicious actor steals grandma's iPhone, opens it, installs a battery that wasn't blessed by Apple, and explodes it after giving it back to her?".
Everyone knows they're doing this because they want every facet their devices to be in their tight grip, so that you just obtain temporary permission to do some things with it under their watchful eye, as long as you stay in your lane. Best of all, they can just incessantly scream something about "safety", "security" or "integrity" and that will be good enough justification.
And 99% of people don't even have the capacity to care about any of this, they'll just pick "security" and cheer on for any new "secure" update that tightens corporate control over you and what you can do. The 1% is too small of a market to care about, they will just reluctantly use the socially acceptable option because what choice do they have?
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When there is a natural monopoly/oligopoly, it needs to be regulated as a utility, otherwise we’re all doomed.
Completely agree. This is a general issue with technology in general, if someone uses a new technology to their advantage and at your disadvantage, you are essentially forced to adopt said technology just to keep up. In that sense a lot of technological change isn't voluntary. This also explains why a lot of open source/proprietary software is always chasing each other to keep up.
Closed devices are secure, yes. Apps can use pinned https certs. Apple signs the binary. This ensures that when your personal data is exfiltrated, it will go undetected by malicious third parties such as yourself.
Nobody said that...
You can keep your device enslaved to Apple all you want. You don't have to use the administrator permissions on Windows if you don't want them. Some of us do want freedom
You've got it completely backwards that having the option to control your hardware means you, as an individual, are impacted by anything at all if you don't want to administrate your own device
How do you enable administrator permissions on your Windows computer?
Depends on settings, but usually just click "Ok" in a popup
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Install the version of Windows that allows you to do that.