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Comment by black_puppydog | Hacker News Reader

I was really torn on whether to up or downvote here...

On the one hand, no. Probably, statistically, apple will know better.

On the other hand, despite the above, if you want to call apple devices "owned" (vs "leased") then yes, the user must be the ultimate decision maker. They might want to delegate these things to apple (or someone else for that matter) most of the time. But they must have the possibility to simply run what they want.

I think we're seeing the "HN crowd" be so frustrated about this because it is a pretty transparently anti freedom thing to do, and HN folks do love themselves some freedom.

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This owned vs leased analogy is not a valid one.

The user is the ultimate decision maker - the user gets to decide whether they want MacOS or not.

The only people talking about constraining this freedom are the ones asking for the government to regulate software distribution.

What you are asking for is for Apple to make a design change to their software to support your use case.

That is a very reasonable thing to want, and to reject Apple for not providing, but it has nothing to do with some ideology of what it means to ‘own’ something.

My car has software problems I don’t like - the digital speedometer only reads kph, whereas I live in a place where mph is standard. There is no facility for changing the software.

Obviously I still own the car.

> Obviously I still own the car.

Do you still own the car if it'll just turn off the engines when attempt to drive into a sketchy neighbourhood?

Let's assume the car manufacturer knows the city/town's crime rates well and they have your best intentions in mind. They want you to be safe.

Do you still own the car?

If I bought a car knowing that is how it worked, then of course I do.

Note: I agree that scenario isn’t desirable. However there is no slippery slope.

For me, the slippery slope is exactly allowing this sort of transaction to be called "buying".

And yeah, when people lost access to their zune music, or their steam stuff, they did get upset.

Mind you, I would not outlaw the transaction. But calling it a "sale" is false advertising in my book.

I own my Mac. I can do anything I want with it.

How is that not ‘buying’?

> I can do anything I want with it.

Except run software when the server gets a little smokey.

I can’t make pizza with it either. It doesn’t mean I don’t own it.

Unfortunately, there kinda is.

This is what Tim Cook said about govt agencies wanting a backdoor - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZmeZyDGkQ0 - right around 4:25.

When I buy an Apple product, this is part of what I think Apple does to protect their customers' privacy - No matter what, not even if the govt says so.

Now suddenly, we're back to talking about whether we can trust Apple after they expressly told us not to trust ANYONE including Apple and why that was such a good thing.

What has this got to do with a certificate revocation server performing poorly?

Well, nothing other than certificate revocation server performing poorly has got to do anything with certificate revocation server performing poorly per se. None of your comments or mine for that matter. What is your point?

We're discussing the implications of it. You're welcome to not if you think it's irrelevant.

I’m asking you how it is relevant. You seem to be avoiding giving an explanation. Is that because there isn’t a real connection?

Don't forget that Apple is a multinational megacorp, and is user centric only when it suits them. Consider Tim Cook speaking at the conference used by the Chinese government to promote internet regulation, saying that the vision of the conference is one that Apple shares, and also the handing over of user data and encryption keys to Chinese servers (encrypted, but still out of their control).

The problem isn't that they make decisions about what the device can and can't do before the moment of purchase. As you correctly pointed out in another comment they made the implicit choice to not ship it with the ability to make pizzas and everybody thinks that's fine.

The problem is that they (have the ability to) continue to make those decisions afterwards. You could have "known" an iPhone could run Fortnite at the moment you bought it and then after you received it in the mail discovered that they had decided you were no longer allowed to do that.

You could then say "well I bought it knowing they had the ability to change anything at any time" but I'm not sure I agree that you can give informed consent to a blank check.

It’s pretty easy to conclude that Apple will remove software the deliberately breaches their terms of service.

Epic knew it, and the chose to breach the terms of service on purpose to cause this effect. Epic intentionally triggered a contract term that they knew would result in their software being removed from their customer’s devices.

They were given an opportunity by both Apple and the court to restore their software to compliance and still get to continue the lawsuit.

This is 100% Epic’s responsibility.

They could have sued Apple without deliberately breaching the contract, but they chose to make their customers into pawns in their legal strategy.

I don't support what Epic did but whether or not it was justified is irrelevant here. A modification was made to the functionality of your device after the moment of purchase, that remains true regardless. And you could not have foreseen that specific modification to your device unless you worked at Epic and had internal knowledge of their plans.

You effectively need to know what every company in the world is doing to have any real idea what your device is going to be able to do tomorrow. Under those conditions I don't think you can say you were informed when you purchased it.

Your standard can never be met. Even if no changes were made after the sale, no human can fully predict the behavior of even an open source modern operating system, let alone a closed source one.

But I disagree that people weren’t informed. It is common knowledge and widely advertised that Apple issues software updates, and it is widely known that Apple enforces its store rules.

The information about what changes could be made and by whom was readily available to purchasers.

You shouldn't downvote things you disagree with. This place would be a lot more interesting if less people did that.

Well I said I was torn. I opted to up+comment in the end. :)

Also, I think while we're exchanging meaningless and besides-the-point platitudes: "fewer people" ;)

So, if they started leasing their hardware to users, it would be fine?

I can see the argument, but at the same time, if they really did, I’m not sure I would agree.

I also am not sure that’s completely theoretical. Apple (almost?) has the money to do so (yearly revenues about $260 billion, cash reserves about $190 billion), and I think ‘the world’ is getting used to not owning stuff more and more. Many users already pay per month for their phones, anyways.

Personally I'd be very much more fine with them honestly stating: you get a compute resource, don't expect to control it, pay a monthly fee.

Would I sign up for that? Certainly not. But if that sounds unattractive, then they should just accept that when you sell something and the buyer owns it, you don't control over anymore.

I keep pushing this distinction in DRM contexts, too. It's kinda my personal soapbox. :)

The issue I have with this, is that anyone who is technical enough to install an operating system from source, must necessarily have an understanding what hardware they will be able to install it on. I’m curious if you have ever done this.

No such person would have any illusion about what Mac hardware they could use.

Everyone else, reasonably expects Apple to take care of the OS for them. Indeed that is arguably the selling point and key differentiator of the Mac.

Nobody is misled.

See elsewhere where I respond to the distinction you are making about ownership: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25093873

It's not about freedom it's about the fact that those computers cost thousands of dollars and every year Apple wants more and more control after I already gave them a huge wad of money. I am not upgrading to Big Sur, I didn't upgrade to Catalina either, but not upgrading creates its own complications in the long term.

I don't think the price was anything to do with it, we would be having the same discussions if it was Microsoft instead of Apple.

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