Comment by charcircuit
8 months ago
>In almost every other field
Phones are not designed to be a specialized tool of a field. They are gadgets designed for a general audience of billions of people.
>For some reason, technology has ended up different
Because with computers there is a lot of freedom in how things can be made to work without adding extra cost to the product. They can be designed to be user friendly.
Cars, knifes, power tools, and a million other things are also designed for a general audience of billions of people. And if you do not learn or use these responsibly you'll end up with a lot worse outcomes than getting some malware on your phone.
Take for example power tools. If a sawstop could be implemented to a power tool for free then all of them would offer the feature. Cars also have had a ton of safety features that have become required in order for them to be sold. Dangerous knifes also have been banned from being sold. It turns out that for other tools society didn't just accept that they were unsafe. They improved safety or legislated safety.
A sawstop doesn't spy on you and doesn't stop you from using your saw (why would you want to cut your own hand off?). Meanwhile there is a legitimate reason to want to install applications without the eye of Sauron always watching...