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Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

There’s never been more diverse software, more readily and easily available, than there is today (mainly due to the web and app stores). Software has never been easier to write, to distribute, or to monetize.

Users don’t care about if the platform is “open” or if they can install Linux. In fact, in many cases, the things are a massive source of pain to end users that want devices that just work, which the iPhone and iPad largely do.

It’s also, by the way, never been easier to build your own hardware from ready-made components and platforms.

I don’t know why we should lament users choosing devices that are easy, fun and reliable to use, and that provide them with single tap access to massive software libraries and entice them to pay for that software. Seems like an absolute win to me.

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>I don’t know why we should lament users choosing devices that are easy, fun and reliable to use, and that provide them with single tap access to massive software libraries and entice them to pay for that software. Seems like an absolute win to me.

I'm finding it difficult to see this as an absolute win given that Apple's absolute control over these devices facilitates human rights abuses and a general trend towards censorship and authoritarianism all over the world.

As a developer I don't see it as an absolute win if my distribution channels are dominated by an oligopoly of two all powerful gatekeepers. But I completely understand that consumers don't care about that or even like it.

I also understand that consumers don't care much about Apple's cultural anti-porn bias. It's all on the web anyway.

But what about human and civil rights? Can we really celebrate something as an absolute win if it hands absolute control over our access to encryption to anyone who happens to control Apple?

> But what about human and civil rights? Can we really celebrate something as an absolute win if it hands absolute control over our access to encryption to anyone who happens to control Apple?

How exactly is Apple going to ban encryption? Isn't HTTPS outside of Apple's control?

And how would Apple manage to "ban encryption" on Windows, Linux, or Android devices?

Obviously not https, but if end-to-end encryption or some consumer VPNs are banned then people whose only personal computing device is a locked down Apple device will instantly lose access.

It‘s not going to be up to individual users to decide wether or not to use it anyway and perhaps fight for their constitutional rights in the courts.

Exactly. This is why I'm wary of all these arguments for opening up the iPhone. There is large value (in the form of security and minimum quality bar in app review) in the closed ecosystem.

If you don't like it, it's never been easier to build a replacement, or install a dev certificate on your iPhone and load whatever you want.

Build a replacement…what? iPhone? Exploit for letting you have private entitlements?

Take why Android phone that allows rooting and install your own stuff.

When software has political agenda, stop it is a harm to free speech. Not stopping it will be a threat to business (said to china). Hence all customers not care. Try to deal with the post china world.

If the early pioneers of Computers & Internet thought the same way we wouldn't be even having this conversation. I think they made conscious decisions to keep computing out of total control by capitalism.

Unfortunately we've failed them & ourself with our consumer decisions.

Uh, not really. Usually quite the opposite actually. For instance, Linux, the modern land of free/open computing, comes to us from Unix... which was made by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, two early pioneers of OSs... who worked for Bell Labs, owned by AT&T (and maybe shared with Western Electric? I forget).

Computers back then were far too expensive for them to be anything but reliant on capitalism. It was only with the commoditization of hardware that free and open computing really even became an option.

True, but Bell labs is hardly an example of normal capitalism. As I understand it, AT&T during the Bell labs era was more like the East India Company, or a PRC-style state-controlled corporation, or Pacific Gas and Electric.

(I find that this is an under-explored option in discussions of socialism-vs-anarchism-vs-capitalism these days. State-controlled corporations seems to have a very good track record. But I haven't seriously studied this.)

I believe they were actually prohibited from entering the computer market.

I disagree. The landscape has changed significantly since the 80s. A locked down platform makes a lot more business sense now than it did back then (unfortunately). Its not like computing company pioneers were so ideological that they turned down $$$$ for freedom. Nor is it like there weren't more closed platforms back then, the closed off platforms just got outcompeted.

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