Comment by Aerroon
1 month ago
>“Hardware I own” sounds like you bought a pan and demand the right to cook any food you want.
Because I did. How come I can do what I want with my computer, but not my phone? Why are phones so inferior in this area?
My phone is more powerful than many of the computers I've had in the past, yet I need to jump through a million hoops to use it as a software development platform. Why?
Your smartwatch is probably more powerful than some of your past computers too. Same with your DSLR camera. Even your smart fridge. These are specialized hardware+software gadgets designed to a particular purpose, which is very different from being a development platform. Same with a phone.
A modern smartphone is mostly a general-purpose computer designed to run arbitrary software with a couple tightly integrated and/or regulated bits. That's very different from a DSLR, which is designed to take pictures.
That said, a camera with a fully open software stack would be fun.
Oh, so no specialized hardware? Just a general-purpose components for general computation tasks?
>These are specialized hardware+software gadgets designed to a particular purpose, which is very different from being a development platform.
Then I shouldn't be able to install software on it at all. For any given device either its functions are fixed, or they're modifiable at the sole discretion of the owner. There should be no middle ground.
> There should be no middle ground.
Why?
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Why shouldn't I be able to reflash my fridge? I own it. I did this with my vacuum robot for example.
It doesn't have to be easy or convenient, but it shouldn't be impossible.
What stops you from flashing your fridge, besides the fact you bought an unflashable fridge?
A smartphone is not a specialized hardware or software, it's a general computation device.
Its just a completely bogus argument. Its not a fucking smart fridge, come on
> a smartphone is ... a general computation device
Right, just a motherboard with CPU and memory put into small case, like in old good garage days.
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Yeah, this is the sleight of hand. They used to all be computers, now we have reduced freedom to "development platforms". No. It's hardware, I bought it, I should be able to run any code I want on my DSLR (and I do), my fridge, my oven, my smartwatch, anything I own.
Just a nit …
As this is HN - a very thoughtful and technically astute demographic - it’s very unlikely that your parent, or others reading, own a “smart fridge”.
> Because I did. How come I can do what I want with my computer, but not my phone? Why are phones so inferior in this area?
Apple and Microsoft are constantly working on fixing the issue with their appstores and requiring app signing in more places. The way industry going is to lock down more of laptops, than allowing phones to be like computers.
>How come I can do what I want with my computer, but not my phone?
It kind of started because phones interact with phone networks and the network companies didn't want hacked software mucking up their networks. I realise the baseband part is separate from the rest of the phone but it's always been that way with every cell phone I've had over 30 years, that they are part locked down.
Whereas none of the regular computers and laptops have been especially locked down.
It would be cool if you could just connect your laptop to a radio and connect to cell networks but I don't think any of them allow that?
A very profitable instance of market segmentation