Comment by lrvick
4 hours ago
The fact so many technical people believe that security and freedom are mutually exclusive, and pay for that lie, is proof the Apple propaganda is working exactly as intended.
4 hours ago
The fact so many technical people believe that security and freedom are mutually exclusive, and pay for that lie, is proof the Apple propaganda is working exactly as intended.
> The fact so many technical people believe that security and freedom are mutually exclusive, and pay for that lie, is proof the Apple propaganda is working exactly as intended.
My Aunt Millie's iPhone is secure against herself because she can't install random garbage off the Internet and is in a walled garden.
As someone who works in IT: users are often their (and their organization's) own worst enemy. We've tried training and blacklisting (with anti-virus) for decades, and it appears that whitelisting and locking things down is what actually works.
I'd be happy with a 'compromise' where there's a factory reset where you can install your own code but it blows an e-fuse to indicate that device is no longer 'OEM certified secure' state.
Security and freedom are mutually exclusive for the vast majority of non-technical people who will happily infect themselves over and over with malware.
My Mac's very secure and I can install whatever I want. But it wouldn't be secure or private to do that on iPhone, because profit.
Except “my Mac’s very secure and I can install whatever I want” is a complete fallacy. It isn’t secure - case in point Muse recently trawling through people’s messages. Or Mac cleaner like apps that trick users into installing them and giving liberal access.
I think if you don’t get the point of protecting a device against the user, you’ve not had to help un-tech savvy relatives get out of situations where dark or confusing UI practices have got themselves into a mess.
In my case, it is the fact that a secure and free (as in speech) alternative does not exist that leads me to believe that. And not in the sense that it’s theoretically secure, I mean in the practical sense that I cannot trust my parents to use any currently available “free” device and not immediately load it up with malware.
> In my case, it is the fact that a secure and free (as in speech) alternative does not exist that leads me to believe that.
I don't think that is a logical statement. Just something doesn't exist, does not prove that it can't exist. You need a stronger proof than that to show that in my opinion. At some point, you have to empower your users and trust them to do the right thing.
>I don't think that is a logical statement. Just something doesn't exist, does not prove that it can't exist.
Let me expand the claim to include the caveats:
>The fact so many technical people believe that security and freedom are mutually exclusive [under current technological/financial/political constraints]
>At some point, you have to empower your users and trust them to do the right thing.
All I know is, my and my parents’ quality of life is far better after switching them to devices where they are not empowered.
You need to have a stronger argument than "it has never existed and doesn't exist now, but it MIGHT exist IN THEORY". That's an enormously weak argument. Borderline dishonest really.