I've never felt less in control of my own hardware
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I turned off auto-updates on my phone.
So this happened. Last year or so I traveled to SF and tried to call an Uber home after a long day of walking around. My phone had 5% battery left. I opened the app and there it was... The maps and everything showed up, but then it blocked the UI with the message: "You haven't updated the app in a month. Uber won't work if you don't update it right now." It really rustled my jimmies. In the next 15 minutes, 3 of us (2 are foreigners with no cell connection) had to stand in the freezing rain when the damn thing was updating with my 2.5G connection. When the Uber arrived, I had 1% left and not long after I got in the car, my phone shut down. I was so worried the phone would die before the car arrived.
The other day I talked about how backward-compatible Google Maps is and unfortunately it made the news on Slashdot. Some people were like, oh yeah, Windows is backward compatible with 30 years old apps. Are you a millennial/a shill for praising them for supporting their API for 10 years? Yeah, keep talking about Windows, until you fucking use some of the apps nowadays that wouldn't work when you haven't updated them in a month.
> "Tinder has been updated. Deal with it".
is an interesting choice of example. The anger at updates only really makes sense for apps that are entirely local to your hardware. As soon as you have an app where part of it runs on a server that you don't control, that logic goes out the window. They can stop your non-updated app from working with no effort, just by making the server API incompatible. As long as you are depending on someone else's server to be up and responding and not changing, you give up your rights to be in control of local updates.
It sucks, but that's the reality of SaaS. I'm a fan of using local apps whenever possible. For instance, Google Docs is just too damn useful not to use sometimes. But I still, majority of the time, will choose to use a local word processor whenever I can get away with it. And when I'm done working on a Google Docs project, I download it in several formats and put it in the drawer.
In the meantime I'd really like to see more take-up of open source, federated hosted solutions based on open document standards and open protocols. But so far the big corporations are winning that game.
This may be the current sucky reality of SaaS, but it could be fixed if the market demanded it.
I'm not so much angry about server-based apps changing things, although I see your point, but I am angry about too many server-based apps in the first place. At least when it's not necessary. Hard to argue when it's literally for a social network.
* Although in practice this only works for so long as it gets more and more painful as time passes.. there are still users of Windows XP! But I'm sure it's far from a pleasant experience these days.
Meaning, effectively, that it will not be fixed.
I understand the frustration. I work on a mobile application that, like Uber, relies on a lot of server-side communication and deliberately stops working if the client is out of date. And I do know that this sucks.
But the reality is, our API is non-public, and so there is no pressure from anyone to maintain backward compatibility. And I have a thousand features that need to ship, with not enough time as it is, or I will start getting heat from management. Abandoning the cadence of "constant breaking changes bundled with client updates" would slow development considerably, for no gain except the one-hundredth-of-one-percent of HN weirdos who care about this stuff. It's just not going to happen.
Ignoring the lame slur, it's not just people that care about computing freedom. It's also people with terrible connections and extremely limited data plans. Being forced to download a 40MB app update just to look at a few KB of data is a deal-breaker for many people.
The market (my mom for example) is unaware there is a fix.
> there is no pressure from anyone to maintain backward compatibility.
You and your manager are both part of the problem. And the phone makers, because they invented a market place for shit companies that wants to ship unfinished software and push daily updates to their users to eventually reach a point where their API is stable.
There used to exist software developers who took great pride in (API) backwards compatibility. These days, where are they? My guess is they have been overrun by the a huge crowd of new people who have never maintained a backwards compatible API and who don't know how to. Management love fast-moving people who say "yes sir" and "not a problem sir".
1. Software that would work, un-modified, for decades.
2. Software that worked without access to some back-end.
3. Software that didn't require permission from a third party to run.
4. Software that didn't collect personal data from users.
5. Having root/admin access to your own computer/devices.
We can still prevent this from coming true, but it's going to happen if nobody pushes back on these practices.
This is an admirable sentiment. Thank you for making HN a better place.
> But everything comes at a cost that has to be weighted against the corresponding benefit, and the apparent benefit (to management) in this case is near-zero
Software can have virtues that do not present short-term benefits, but instead contribute to a wholesome UX, even to captive users. It is the responsibility of the software developer to make these hard calls and stick to their guns in the face of management pressure.
Now, you often buy only a license to use something until the company that made it decides not to let you use it anymore.
In some sense, we live at the mercy of people we've never met.
People providing services can argue a lot about the limitations for them of this situation and the advantages of having more control:
https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
http://paulgraham.com/road.html
(Analemma_'s comment elsewhere in this thread also expresses this.)
But it also comes at a cost to users' power and autonomy:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
Out of curiosity, would you pay for a standalone Google Docs that worked locally and pushed data to a server (say, a daemon you can also purchase and run in your home computer or droplet) only when you wanted to sync? If you are willing to pay, Microsoft offers much of this through Sharepoint + Office.
But anyway, my workplace brought some version with a clear requirement of getting an eternal license on it. Yet, it breaks all the time because it can't get licenses on the cloud. I am still not sure how MS isn't evading the requirements, but well, it's not my job to check it.
Hard for companies to give up that juicy user monitoring, though.
Even if you turn off auto-updates, some things still auto update silently. A long time ago, I wrote a small utility which listened to the PACKAGE_ADDED and PACKAGE_REMOVED events (I don't know if it's still possible to listen to these events on recent Android versions). IIRC, there were two packages that always updated silently (wihout a notification icon) and automatically, even with automatic updates disabled: com.android.vending (Android Market/Google Play Store), and com.google.android.gms (Google Play Services).
Now, I do still care of being in control of my own hardware, but I do so on my server. I don't know of a cell phone that delivers what I want without being sold as a service rather than a standalone product. Best I can do is back up all my data to my own box and keep buying new phones when the batteries die.
On the individual scale, the sensor data was noisy, but in a dense environment with lots of sensors, the noise is identifiable and filterable to get solid pressure trends (actual pressure values is considerably harder).
They insist on updating to newer versions of the Play Store on very old hardware that doesn't actually have the hardware power to run it.
It's a huge problem if I tell a computer to do something and it doesn't do it, it does it half way, or it usually does it but sometimes doesn't. We engineers need to have a Hippocratic Oath that starts with: 1. Never put the company's need over the user's intent.
And, yes, I understand disk caches and why we have a graceful shutdown process. What irks me is that the computer might be in the middle of doing something despite my not having told it to be doing anything.
It could easily and even possibly be fairly argued that there's a massive difference between updating 3rd party apps and updating the operating system itself.
The Play services were originally an immutable part of the core OS, but it meant that security updates relied on the manufacturer to push updates, which were useless useless at doing.
I am minded that everyone would laugh at me if I took an un-patched Windows XP system on the internet, yet using ancient Android 4 is still common place. A PC can function offline where as most people can't isolate a phone (from multiple networks) without loosing the core functionality. The PC can be blank; phones usually contain all sorts of personal and private information.
Personally I want OS's to leave me the hell alone, but actually, I can't really blame them for trying to protect their users.
Updates to the OS come as OTA notifications that I can choose how and when to apply (download+install separately, for example). I don't monitor my Play Services version, but I assume that it's silently updating in the background, unlike either my apps or the OS itself.
You’ll notice that apps that target stable protocols—POP3/IMAP mail clients, RSS newsreaders, vCard calendar apps—never force you to update. They don’t need to. The app will keep working as long as the server they are configured to talk to keeps speaking the same protocol (and it will, because public, RFCed protocols evolve really slowly.)
The fault here lies mostly, I think, with backend developers who have spent their entire careers working on web projects—where, if they want to make a breaking change, they can just ask the web frontend developers to make a matching change on the website that conforms it to the new wire-protocol, and at most the only problem users will have is that their webpage might spontaneously refresh itself if it was relying on a websocket connection. You can’t do that when you have a native frontend pointed at your backend service, but these backend engineers just don’t seem to put much weight on the needs of native frontends. It's web-frontend chauvinism, basically. (Either that or it’s their management forcing them to act as if they don’t.)
/edit: spelling
The issue isn't really one of backward compatibility but software design and function. As far as I know, Android maintains API compatibility all the way back to API v1. A simple app, like the calculator, written in API v1 should run on the latest Oreo device.
An app requires a remote service to function must maintain compatibility with that service to function. The trouble is compatibility updates and feature updates aren't delivered separately. So you can't avoid new features if a service compatibility prevents your old version of the app from functioning.
I've had my phone die well before the Uber arrived and it wasn't a problem, it showed up at the place I requested.
Once the ride is initiated the drivers phone becomes the primary client. It seems quite flexible with devices going offline (as it should, mobile networks are unreliable).
> use some of the apps nowadays that wouldn't work when you haven't updated them for a month.
This is a worrying trend but I don't think it's really that bad yet. My primary phone died recently (famous Nexus 6p bootloop) and I used my old Samsung S3 with stock Android circa 2014 and I was surprised how many of the apps still functioned properly without updates (including the ancient built-in pre-Chrome webview Browser app).
... basically my expectation these days was that they wouldn't work. But in practice 99% of my phone use is SMS/Messengers + Maps + Browsers, and they all worked perfectly fine, web standards don't advance that quickly at all, and the messengers are all using simple protocols where they had no problem.
So it's typically the edge case 1-5% 3rd-party apps like Uber that are of concern.
It's really not hard to develop APIs that are versioned. This is becoming a standard best practice among mobile/web app developers (via SemVer standard). And there's no excuse for a big company like Uber to not support ~1-2yr old apps.
All of those things shouldn't be a problem in the first place.
But otherwise it's not a massive problem, yet. But one we in the software community should promote as best practice and provide social pressure/ridicule when not done.
When do you think it starts becoming ridiculous to demand the rights to not update to the user? Do you think that a juicer that stops working because its firmware hasn't been updated recently, and they just changed their expiration date API, is reasonable? After all, yeah, I'm using their health-friendly juicer as a service, just as I'm using a TV to decode the airwaves as a service.
If it can't do its job at all without an internet connection then denying functionality if you don't update is entirely reasonable in my book. If it can do its primary job without an internet connection then no it's not.
I think an one-month-old app that refuses to work is a bit too much.
You didn't update your apps for a month, it shouldn't be that big of a deal but security fixes, bugs, and new features are several reasons why they need you to keep it up to date.
For example they introduced a new feature allowing drivers to see you on the map so they can find you more easily (you can disable it) most user will add extra pressure on the support by contacting them telling them they don't have that feature while it's 100% their fault for not updating, now if they force updates that's will reduce their costs.
Your view of it is simplistic and you only see your own benefit and not the full picture.
Yes the things you use everyday could stay the same for you and just work but that won't bring any income to the companies, if you buy a juicer that needs to be connected to the internet to work that's your own stupid decision.
Your device, workflow, and lifestyle are generally pretty integral to your devices, work, and life, so it's natural to want to exercise control over them?
I'd argue that the real problem is that software is eating the world, and companies are becoming less relevant to everyday life, but trying to force ways to stay relevant.
As an end-user, I'd like things the way they are. If I'm used to the app and it works, why should I be forced to update the damn thing so that it keeps working?
It's not really Windows' fault that the applications are being bad actors, though, so I don't see how that suddenly invalidates the backwards compatibility of the OS. Also, I'm sure if you use a 30-year old app, it's not going to prompt you to update before using it.
God forbid other technology communities tolerate frank, accurate, and warranted cynicism.
Last night I was in a discussion about the whole shift in market power that a central role playing app like WeChat could enable: the premise of debate was that Alexa and competitors are potentially a step towards a new interest in text interfaces. Only our own generation has had our vision occluded by growing up in the command line interface, which is too involving and too complicated for widespread use. The word involving, we chose to describe the experience of working with a CLI, which, having stripped away every attribute we could, we concluded that you had to be involved in a continuous thought process to gain any utility from a CLI. Whereas we figured casual users wish to receive answers to questions, or refine queries without any parsing or precise expressions. So if we had a text interface that was more, so to speak, open ended, then also voice might be workable, and the interface become a widely used interaction. This then could really create the foundation for individual customisation, as local processing power can be applied to learning from the user's total interaction with many different types of connected application, as well as from existing phone voice command systems. We imagined further, that the opportunity might exist for a newcomer to enter this space, as the need for a independent and unaffiliated party for brokering online interaction is potentially a strongly perceived need, whilst we figured it remains one that is subject to the same negative perception of big internet names in a era when I more than my colleagues think that saturation reporting of privacies dying by the thousand cuts has engendered public apathy. We all agreed that public apathy or cynicism, even straight up hostility towards any attempt at selling a "do no evil" message, is a significant hurdle. The question we retired to consider, is how you can organically grow the required trust, in a market where giant capital can leave you alone with outmoded paradigms and entirely whole technologies behind the willing big spenders. As we have seen, there's no marketing to generational segments, when it comes to a web where the generations would not willingly be separated by communications islands - at least presently you couldn't sell a safebook social network to seniors and expect them to get their grandchildren on the platform.
Once gone our ways to home, a few hopeful texts were thrown around, wondering if there was some way to get sufficient a body of technology figureheads to be part of a board approving technologies for some kind of do no harm branding evaluation. This died the moment one of our more cynical lot linked a sheet of the quick results of his rough and ready search for directorships held by the first ten names we'd bandied about. He signed off, "you already know each advertising budget for those."
Step 2: ask someone for a charger and meanwhile use the wifi to update the app, also buy something from the cafe
Step 3: enjoy the thing you bought for a bit while your phone charges and you now have a place to wait your Uber without freezing in the rain
At least I don't have that problem with my Linux computer and I love it. It works exactly when I expect it to, and it updates exactly when I expect it to.
Auto Updates without user interaction is the biggest
security benefit I can think of for a normal user.
So it's a shame so many companies shit all over auto updates by rolling out poorly tested changes that introduce new problems, and similar behaviour that motivates users to disable auto updates.
"Should" in an ideal world doesn't equal "should" in a world with deadlines and limited resources. It's enough work to ensure that all the features work with ONE version of an app. If you had to also test every version of the app without this or that feature update installed, you just continually multiply the testing requirements by the number of optional features.
And don't say unit testing solves this problem. The problem is in INTEGRATION testing with the whole app, which 99% of the time can only adequately be done by making the build and having a human use it. Even automated integration tools won't find things like formatting errors and buttons too small for humans to click.
I'd like to continue to maintain ONE app, please, and not `n!` app permutations.
The trouble with today's highly connected world is that it has bred a culture of shipping software that isn't really production quality, on the basis that it can be fixed (or not) later and that's sufficient. This leads to arguments like your final paragraph: you (the developer) would obviously prefer to only maintain the latest and greatest of what you do, but stated without taking into account the consequences of that policy for your users/customers.
While I have a lot of sympathy for your desire, as a developer myself, I think you can only justify that sort of position if your previous releases are sufficiently good that they don't need maintenance. Otherwise, if you have customers paying for one thing, and that thing is defective, and you then want to use those defects as leverage to push your customers to something that is not what they paid for, then I think you're on very shaky ground. There are a lot of ethical, economic and legal issues raised by that sort of business strategy.
I don't like this attitude either, though. Developers have gotten fat and lazy not dealing with any sort of variation in deployment, let alone versions. Everything is all Android or iOS. All Chrome and maybe Firefox. x86 or ... maybe arm. And not be connected to the Internet? That's unpossible!
With hindsight and better tooling we should be able to handle more complexity in how products are used, not less.
Automatically installed Windows patches are fantastic. I hardly even notice them. Sometimes a patch will cause an issue with some software but that's an acceptable trade off.
But then I get Candy Crush, or have to go through the setup again, or have all my display setting reset, get new "notifications", etc. These are not part of those security updates.
To stick with the Uber example, I don't live in a city with Uber, but have it on my phone for when I am. Why do I need to be burdened with using my data to constantly update an app I use once a year. This applies to a lot of apps (airlines, games, etc.). Games are really the worst offender as they tend to be quite large. Where release notes are provided in the app store, I will update if it is related to a critical security vulnerability, or something legitimate, but find it hard to rationalize constantly downloading 100+MB apps doing this for minor bug fixes that impact 0.001% of an apps user base.
There's usually a setting that forces updates to only download over a Wifi connection.
I agree with the comment below about this being an argument for delta updates.
It's a matter of perception and ignorance. We've been trained, for lack of a better word, to perceive the execution of software on the hardware we own as something completely orthogonal to our ownership of that hardware.
Btw. when thinking of Tesla cars.. they auto update their software remotely ;)
That is one reason I will never buy one.
It's not as if the danger here is hypothetical. Leaving aside the immaturity of technologies like autonomous vehicles, I've seen way too many cars being compromised in more mundane ways, from theft because the remote unlocking mechanism was laughably easy to crack, right up to literally stranding a vehicle in the middle of a high speed road using a laptop that is somewhere else entirely. The consequences the first time someone compromises one of these remote systems and decides that every <some popular model> in the city should turn hard left or accelerate to 100mph or slam on the brakes are horrifying.
Get back to me when we have the same level of scrutiny of these modern vehicles as we see in air travel, and when not getting security right poses an existential threat to the manufacturer's business, and then we can talk...
This reminds me of the first Jurassic Park movie, where IIRC everything was controlled by a single mainframe, from the PABX to the electric fences of the dinosaur pens, and a disgruntled programmer pretending to fix the former disabled the later. We seem to be steadily moving towards that kind of world.
To illustrate my point in terms of your analogy, if people could get free upgrades for their brakes that make the car safer, I like to think that they would still prefer to be given control over it, because they see it as "my car" and not "my car, but with brakes licensed from someone else". And I also like to think that they would object to arbitrary changes to the insides of their car with vague explanations of how the new insides are better.
Except that it wasn't, isn't, and by all evidence won't be.
Yes, but let's be clear about "without user interaction". That had better include "without user disruption".
Windows 10 is one of the worst abusers here: Updates are forced, and during updates, the computer is suddenly unusable. That is not okay.
Debian (derivatives, similar distros, etc.) has done it right for decades. Updates never block the user. Updates are consolidated, since every piece of software is a tracked package.
The reason your parents don't want to update Java is because they remember how much of a pain it was 10 years ago, and it doesn't really feel different.
Perhaps not intentionally but I always have "sudo pkill unattended-upgrades" close to hand when it pegs all my CPU cores whilst I'm trying to get something done.
Most new features on chrome are not for your security. They disable all referrer control options. Want to only send referrer to the domain you are at now? though lucky, google makes money on cross-domain referrer reporting so they can track conversion from their ads.
1. ads play by default, with an option to pay to remove
then to:
2. forced ads with no option to remove, and the car won't run unless they're playing
Have you?
I think the fundamental problem is that to make these technical products like mobile OS's and email apps you need to be so far into tech that you can't really imagine what it's like to be a casual user. This is why I don't consider software engineering to be on the same tier as other disciplines of engineering. Yes, civil engineers make bridges, but they use them in daily life exactly the same as regular people do - the same goes for electrical engineers and power in the home, and mechanical engineers and vacuums/air conditioners/bicycles. When you make software, you look at all software differently and you lose the perspective of a regular person.
We desperately need a code of conduct for engineers.
And/or we need certain types of businessmodel to become outlawed.
You can go Google-less on such devices if you want.
The only real limitation is that you cannot do anything about the super-privileged proprietary modem that simultaneously can spy on you at any time that also prevents you from running newer kernels on your hardware because of how evil every Android vendor is with their proprietary bits.
At least there is finally momentum to kill the ME / SP backdoors on desktops. Its going to be much harder to do that on mobile since the only way to use cellular networks is through these proprietary black box modems.
A firewall, for instance, is a basic necessity. Even the crude android flavors. It includes the ability to lock out your "vendors" selectively and accurately.
My build is, hm, approaching it's fourth year, I think. No auto updates save for select apps. No complaints. No surprises. But I'm special, I don't do "phone for fun" and so have a fairly limited and hardened short list of requirements.
The most annoying thing on android is Google XXANY - by a wide, wide margin. I'll be itching to build a google-go-around on my next handset, for certain.
Save all those apps you like, for sure, I still depend on side-loading quite a few that have since gone by the wayside. At this juncture I have to take absolutely every bit of control that I can get my filthy paws wrapped around.
But why should in 2018 be so hard for one to be able to simply pay once for hardware or software, that puts the user first? Is it impossible for such a company to succeed at scale?
Apple seems to follow that plan. For your "email/chat/spreadsheets/storage", they have iCloud mail, iMessage, Numbers and iCloud Drive. You pay once, and get software support quite a lot of years later. They don't seem to be selling or gathering much data. They won't show you ads.
Now, it won't be RMS approved, but that's another debate.
I'd like to be able to trade only my money for utility, and keep my freedom.
I though he was a bit extreme at the time, but over time I've come to appreciate his position. Having software be open and modifiable is really quite an amazing thing. those open building blocks lets us do amazing things with software quite easily.
Its time for an open source desktop os and software to go mainstream. We realize that apple is not reliable making developer grade notebooks and their unix underpinnings show that it is possible. Then onto phones. I feel open source software will keep the hardware from being too weird
It is frustrating that we still can't really get full control of the hardware, but at least from the kernel on up we can have pretty complete control of software.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Couldn't find anything specific in re: auto-updates though...
Serious question, do any phones exist that can fully owned by the user? For a period, I was excited about the Ubuntu phone because of the fact that I could have full control over it. Sad to see that project terminated.
I'm also interested in "dumbphones" that can use CDMA or GSM networks.
http://www.nytimes.com/1982/12/16/business/new-era-for-the-t...
In fact, some people still lease their phones: https://consumerist.com/2012/04/30/hundreds-of-thousands-of-...
Not sure this really changes your point, of course. :) It is funny to see the surprise in people when they hear that you used to lease the phone in your house. Especially if you are like me and detest cable companies for wanting me to do the same with their crap.
Many (HTC, Google, ASUS, etc. - NOT Samsung) unlocked android phone can be loaded with a variety of bootloaders and then flashed with the ROM of your choice where you have full root access. Of course without google apps (Google Play Store) your phone isn't all that useful, but you can install google apps ( maybe from a questionable legal/copyright stand point, I don't remember) and have more control over the device.
Not sure if this matches what you mean by fully owned though. Checkout XDA Forums (https://forum.xda-developers.com/) to see what interesting things are out there you can do. There's also LineageOS (https://www.lineageos.org/) formerly CyanogenMod.
For one, you'd know exactly what was in it.
> Serious question, do any phones exist that can fully owned by the user?
Funny you bring up land lines, considering that those essentially began the trend of operator-owned end-user equipment. See for example Model 500 phone:
> As with most telephones of the time in the United States, the 500-series telephones were owned by the local Bell Operating Company and leased on a monthly basis to customers
https://docs.ubuntu.com/phone/en/devices/devices https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices
I really, really wish i had never updated from that. It was faster, smoother, and more stable there than it was before and after. Definitely way better than Mavericks. I push this thing hard with premiere/ableton live/etc too.
Also, I absolutely despise the El Cap design. The flat look control widgets and icons, the barely visible grey text, the secret hidden controls that only appear when you mouse over them, it all makes me cringe. (Yes, Mav has a few hidden controls as well, but at least now I know where they all are. If I upgrade, I have to go on the secret control easter egg hunt all over again. Life is too short for that kind of bullshit.)
Sure, but most 2FA happens over SMS and that is already insecure. Updating your OS won't help if someone has hacked into the SS7 network.
At least on Android you can install "greenify app" but for that to work properly, you need to have root and for that you have to unlock the bootloader (for which you have to wait 14 days and also void your warranty). I mean wtf, it's my phone but the design is such that a shit ton of crap always needs to run in the background (looking at you google play services) and dozens of useless apps that are always connecting just to show me more push notifications.
I wish that Apple would give you an option to not allow an app to access the internet and not just disallow the use of mobile data.
Already happening. But everyone called RMS a kook. He looks funny. He talks funny. He's a socialist. He smells. And here we are. People are praising Apple--Apple--for letting people pay money for closed software that, at the very least, lives on their own device.
That's a low bar.
It sure makes law enforcement's job easier if more peoples' entire phones are subject to the Third Party Doctrine, rather than just what passes over the wire.
It seems that we need more guarantees (legally enforceable, i.e. you said you wouldn’t update your gizmo to do X but you did so I get compensation).
I started my "Linux phase" in 1999 and have never finished going through that phase.
What we need now is a "bill of rights" defining and preserving the notion of ownership for digital devices. Part of that should be that the device should only do what it's explicitly asked to do. Updates should be opt-in in nearly all cases, and mandatory updates should meet stringent requirements similar to vaccines. That is, only to combat major threats that apply to users as a group.
After pressing the "later" button every time I picked up my iPhone for a few weeks Apple quit asking and updated the "iOS" this past month.
It has "new features" they keep telling me I need and I've been pressing buttons to ignore their "Learn how to use the new..." prompts since then.
With the exception of security updates I'd like very much if Apple left my phone alone but it's not really "my phone". I just have a license to use it and it says they can make changes to it.
The way that's been working for me does not entice me to buy new phones from Apple.
It feels like we are losing more control and access over tech - both software and hardware. Some companies are trying their best to turn tech into a black box which we aren't allowed to peer into.
I dread the Internet of Things.
It is now possible to disable automatic updates in Windows 10? (Asking because forced updates is what made me switch to Linux in the first place.)
No more unwanted updates, no more telemetry.
Once in a while you might want to download a fresh .iso from Microsoft that has all the updates integrated. Re-install & repeat.
I must turn them all off by hand.
They had to replace the entire motherboard due to a corrupted BIOS. So it was caused by a bug? The repair cost were about 800 euro's..
Now if only they can keep from screwing with it and mucking up the great service with updates. They could literally do nothing else to it and I'll be a lifelong user. I'm not optimistic though...
Because the most important part of this writeup is that it's almost devoid of judgement calls on whether what the updates do are actually good or bad, it's about the lack of control and the lack of any ability to beforehand tell whether it's going to be good or bad.
If you love pocket, rock on, but maybe you would have also discovered that if you had been suggested to opt in to it for a few days, to see if you'd like it, rather than it suddenly being not just on your computer, but fully and irrevocably integrated into your web browser. And that maybe is literally that: maybe. We'll never know, because you were never given that option.
But that makes me wonder, is this just an age old gripe with change in general or does this actually add anything new to the conversation. Will we get articles in the next 10 years about how pocket was better and they don't feel in control of their computers because firefox moved to a new system and changed a menu entry?