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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

I am still waiting for someone to explain why an iPhone is a computer but not my Car, TV or Fridge.

All of them can access web content, facilitate payments, do shopping and run applications.

The reason it's important is because it would be the end of the gaming console model if they were forced to accept anything onto their app stores. Which would have pretty broad implications.

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Because the iPhone's purpose is to be a computer. A car's purpose is to move people. My toothbrush isn't a computer just because it has a chip in it which technically computes things.

I do agree the lines can be blurry and poorly defined.

Have fun doing your taxes on your car, your banking on your tv, and your dating on your fridge.

I definitely enjoy sending emails and shooting movies on my Nintendo.

Speaking of which, should I get Shovel Knight on Nintendo Switch, Wii U, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, or Nintendo 3DS? I have lots of these, and I'm not sure which inexpensive device is the best for playing Shovel Knight.

Cancel that. I'm not sure I like all of that choice. Which of my seven affordable iPhones from a wide variety of vendors should I download and install it to? Can I redeem my Steam credit?

Fuck Apple. Their behavior makes them a blemish upon our industry.

> Have fun doing your taxes on your car, your banking on your tv, and your dating on your fridge.

Thanks! Just got to finish the level of Doom first.

> Have fun doing your taxes on your car

My car’s 17-inch touchscreen-based web browser happily runs turbotax.

> The reason it's important is because it would be the end of the gaming console model if they were forced to accept anything onto their app stores. Which would have pretty broad implications.

Which implications precisely? Because consoles not being sold at a loss seem like a positive outcome.

> "the end of the gaming console model"

How so?

Sony, Microsoft etc sell their hardware at a loss and recoup through software licensing.

Which is not possible if you going to force them to do things like have alternative app stores or to allow any content to be used.

Game consoles aren't computers. They're much cheaper and last longer than phones. You can also buy and sell your games.

This is increasingly becoming less true as more people purchase the "digital only" version of most of their games. I haven't purchased a boxed copy of a game in many years, both on my consoles (PS3/PS4 + Switch) and my PC (Steam/Origin/Blizzard stores, etc). The only feasible way to resell a game tied to one of these digital accounts would be to sell the entire account.

You do you. But stop thinking that your economic choices and a lack of regulation don't impinge upon my freedoms. There are a lot of other people to consider outside of your circle.

I recently (6 years ago?) decided to purchase thousands of dollars of music on Google Play Music and look where that got me.

I can (and do) still play my Gamecube games.

This statement is a valid as: phones aren’t computers.

You can’t have such an arbitrary definition.

Smartphones are very much computers and intended for general purpose computing.

I think people with this notion either work at Apple, love their iPhone, or have lots of AAPL.

Please see what their behavior is doing to the rest of us. Fixing it is more important than any personal stake you have in this.

Game consoles run many applications that aren’t games (particularly entertainment), I’m still not seeing the distinction. Even their historical lockdown trends are similar; phones, even early smartphones, have traditionally been locked down and newer consoles are generally less so (e.g. UWP development on Xbox can be done without being a studio and buying a special console). In fact your ability to throw a dart on a board of phone models and hit one that you can root without fighting your manufacturer is as high as its ever been.

For what it’s worth I’ve never worked at Apple, down’t own any AAPL (unless you count indexes), and have bought Android phones off and on. So I’d focus less on acusing everyone who disagrees with you of alterior motives.

Ok, let's say this happens. Why is this a bad thing?

So consoles get slightly more expensive, or other revenue streams are created. Steam, Origin, Epic, UPlay and GOG all compete on the desktop while earning plenty, even though people can download games directly from the publisher today. Why can't the same model be applied to consoles which have always been basically pre-built mini computers anyway?

If you say that all these devices are computers then why have arbitrary treatment of desktops, phones and consoles?

I am all in favour of even going after game consoles if it helps other platforms but smartphones are worth fighting for first.

Smartphones are logical successors to PCs as general purpose computing devices. A lot of people just have them as their device for photo editing, emails, gaming, spreadsheet editing, web browsing etc.

PCs had open software and hardware access, I think it is reasonable for us to want their logical successors to atleast have open software access.

There is trillions of dollars of ecosystem which PC had which has largely extended/moved to smartphones. Everyone should get a chance to compete on fair and equal terms in this ecosystem.

All of these things are.

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