> I figured this sort of nonsense would kill the Amiga (like what happened to the Rainbow PC), and decided to not invest in making a compiler for it.
There is a lesson here for today's smartphone makers.
Today it's less peripherals (everything's integrated) and more drivers, but it's the same problem. Now the thing people can't use with your device is software. This happens at both the OS level and the app level.
If you're Samsung or Huawei and your devices can't run a vanilla Linux kernel then they can't run anything but Android. That, in turn, cements Android as the only OS anybody develops for your devices. Which makes you dependent on Google and allows them to extract concessions from you. Sort of the opposite of commoditize your complement; it's "let a third party monopolize your complement."
And this matters. PCs not working this way was what allowed Linux to take over the server market from Windows Server and proprietary Unix and everything else on defunct systems list. Which in turn means the hardware vendor isn't reliant on Microsoft. Important to PC hardware vendors both because Windows Server may not have out-competed proprietary Unix and because it's a huge license fee that cuts into the hardware vendor's margins.
So that's what Samsung is handing Google by not making it easy to replace the OS on their devices. And that in turn gives Google an effective monopoly on Android apps. That's problematic in a number of ways, many relevant to the hardware vendors, but let's start with this one. Samsung has an app store.
It only runs on Samsung devices because it's impractical to install it on other vendors' devices when they can all only run a specific version of Android that enshrines Google Play.
Now suppose that Samsung made it easy to run other operating systems on all their devices. Then other operating systems would exist. They might not overtake Android, but they would have millions of users, like desktop Linux. Enough to cause competing smartphone vendors to enable their phones to run it. And in turn to run competing app stores, allowing them to actually compete because they run on more than one vendor's device and developers have more incentive to use them.
They're really shooting themselves in the foot by not enabling this.