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Comment by matthewfcarlson | Hacker News Reader

It's frustrating to me (as a UEFI engineer) to see and read the fear-mongering on blogs like these. Much of what I do is focused on open-sourcing and making the industry as a whole better.

I tend to side with others in the thread that the "end of general purpose computing" isn't a result of manufacturers pushing in a direction but rather following consumers. The percentage of computer scientists, programmers, and enthusiasts that consider the openness of their hardware a deal breaker grow smaller each year. For the rest of the population, they can find something that's general enough for their use cases.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for opening hardware up and making it transparent. But until we as general consumers (not just the fine folks of Hacker News) care enough to let that sway our buying decisions, this trend is going to continue.

There will always be general hardware. It's just going to get more expensive.

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> the "end of general purpose computing" isn't a result of manufacturers pushing in a direction but rather following consumers.

This is an even stronger claim than that consumers don't care if their hardware is closed. Consumers aren't begging for their hardware to be closed, and companies aren't passively trying to please them. The vast majority of consumers don't care if their hardware is closed until they discover something that their hardware is capable of doing that they're not allowed to do with it or something that their hardware is doing that they're not allowed to keep it from doing. Companies close as much as they can while trying not to upset consumers enough that they leave or complain to the government - which means either that they have to find ways to 1) add or limit functionality in a closed way, or that 2) they have to get all competitors to agree to prevent or allow the same things (to eliminate alternatives), or 3) they have to advocate a POV (and lobby for it in government) that whatever functionality is missing or required is dangerous to add or remove.

This is following consumers in a way; like building a wall behind them every time they move in a particular direction could be considered following them.

The consumer value of locked down platforms where you can only install approved software is that you mostly don't need to worry about viruses. It's really hard to protect systems against malware if they make it easy to run arbitrary code. People paying $60 per year for antivirus software is a symptom of this.

Of course, Android malware exists too. But Google's approval process, application sandboxing and the ability to remotely remove applications after they're found to be malicious makes it a much smaller problem. It's not something consumers cheer about, but rather something we mostly don't think about when using phones and tablets.

How does one find a job like yours?

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