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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

I'm always amazed that in the land of the brave and free butchering general purpose computing machines is supposed to be justified by the fact grandma doesn't install the wrong apps.

Funny is this argument always exclusively pops up when it comes to Apple smartphones. Are we supposed to lock every desktop down too because mom and pop installed a wrong toolbar? It's like the reverse 'but think of the children', and people keep using it who would scoff at it in every other context, just to engage in this constant Apple apologia that has infected tech people who should know better but don't because they've grown up with macbooks with shitty stickers on it. The sort of brand influence that Apple exercises and the stuff it gets away with is truly astonishing.

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It's not about grandma. I also don't want to deal with bullshit myself.

- In the country I grew up I have to install rootkits in my computer in order to use the bank website. Some of them are borderline impossible to uninstall, and some banks have rootkits that conflicted with the ones of other banks. How do I know if it's not spying on me or not? It's a multi-megabyte kernel extension. I can't even use Linux or a Virtual Machine to access the website!

- For some apps I use for music making I had to install iLok which is (or at least used to be) the biggest piece of shit ever and crashed my computer all the time, because it was terribly written. I still refuse to buy anything that uses physical DRM.

- Even today in macOS (which is supposed to have a sandbox) I keep finding stuff in the disk from programs I uninstalled several years ago, because developers can't keep their telemetry spying garbage off every single corner of my machine.

- Every single scummy websites (which is 99% of all sites, HN and Reddit are the only exceptions I can think of) requires a login with Email so they can send me spam and send my information to third parties. With iCloud Sign Up I can sign in without that fear.

So yes, most of the time I wish my desktop was limited the way my phone is locked because I own my computer, not some asshole developer who decided my computer is their playground.

As long as I keep developing my software and compiling open source stuff, I'm good. Other developers can embrace the sandbox or piss off.

On Mac and Windows, I have to think twice about whatever applications I install because, as you said, any application could royally screw with the system.

On iOS I can download effectively whatever I like from the App Store without worrying about it screwing up my system. That peace of mind is worth a lot of money, and is why people pay a premium to be in this walled garden.

I have no desire for for my iPhone to have the same threats presented to my Mac or PC. I also have no desire for my Mac or PC to be as locked down as my iPhone. There is room in the market for both. Trying to legislatively eliminate this option is ridiculous. If you don't like the device's security policy, then don't buy it.

The problem with the 'don't buy it' argument is that Apple spearheads the 'what can you get away with' movement. Most companies follow Apple and customers bear the brunt. Examples are headphone jack removal, non-removable battery etc.

If iOS allowed sideloading, you could just stay in the app store though. Problem solved.

As a developer, I just want to be able to distribute my apps to myself, my family and my friends without having to pay $100 per year and without having to ask Apple's permission for us all to do whatever we want with our $1,000 phones.

Our government will sort this out eventually now that iPhones have over 60% of the active phones in the US and that number will not be shrinking since 90% of the youth market is on an iPhone.

Apple will be forced to open up sooner or later, just like when "Ma Bell" used to force you to rent a phone from them just to use the landline that you also leased from them - once they had a majority market share, they got broken up. Same thing with Microsoft bundling IE with Windows - they were forced to share their APIs with third party companies. Consumers and small developers don't decide this. Lots of small, medium and large businesses are affected by Apples restrictions and they'll keep fighting it for us.

I'm always amazed in the land of the free and a forum for people who build tech products that so many people favor taking away your right to create a product and sell it on your own terms. I'm just not comfortable forcing Apple to change the software on its phones (relaxing app signing) or forcing it to distribute someone else's software for free.

While I don't like the Apple tax, I really don't like the idea that forcing Apple to open up its App Store is the right solution.

I wish we could start with these ideas first:

- pricing transparency: force the UI to show exactly how much of every transaction goes to Apple. We already do this with many other taxes, so I don't see it as an intrusion.

- first sale doctrine fully applied: force Apple to allow users to install any OS they want on an iPhone. Prohibit locking, etc. But if you choose to use Apple's OS, then you have to accept their policies. This same policy should apply to game consoles and other hardware. (And this does contradict slightly my above point about app signing, but I'd argue that letting people use hardware unfettered is different than letting them use your software unfettered. But it's an admittedly weak and flawed compromise.)

I strongly disagree with the OS remark, a device is nothing when not operating, device and operations should be free to be designed built and sold together for best customer experience and safety with no regulatory waterline falsely limiting progress by discriminating between behaviors/logic implemented in memory, firmware, or silicon.

First sale means I’m free to break my device, fine, but cannot mean it must be left more breakable.

> Funny is this argument always exclusively pops up when it comes to Apple smartphones. Are we supposed to lock every desktop down too because mom and pop installed a wrong toolbar?

Yeah I really wish we could... how many human hours have been wasted cleaning up infected garbage on friends and family desktop computers?

I bought my dad a chromebook 2 years ago, because it's the most locked down laptop form factor I could find. My tech support calls have dropped from monthly (yes, monthly) to once. Before it was "I can't find my email" (whatever windows' default url handler for mail:foo@bar wasn't logged into his account) or "office isn't working" (that's a zip file, not a document), or " every time I try to run X it does Y" (the final straw was windows defender stopped him from opening a docx file because it came from an untrusted source, which was his GP/doctor who had self hosted mail bring flagged as spam by Hotmail). Bought a chromebook, moved him to google sheets and google docs, and haven't had a call since. If there was a locked in, $200 phone that wasn't apple that I could buy for him that would have the same effect, I would.

Chromebooks are great! But funny thing about them, you can also unlock the bootloader if you want, and install whatever you like.

It's not an either or. I agree that most devices should probably be locked down by default, but there should still be an off switch. The so-called dancing bunnies problem everyone brings up doesn't appear to have caused a problem.

> I'm always amazed that in the land of the brave and free butchering general purpose computing machines is supposed to be justified by the fact grandma doesn't install the wrong apps.

This is because we have so much "freedom" that Apple is free to do this. I would argue this is a false freedom, like the freedom to own slaves.

Hardly comparable when a slave doesn't choose to be a slave while an Apple user has to pay hundreds and thousands of dollars to become one.

We also have the freedom to ignore people who want the freedom to blow off both feet and demand that everyone else also has this ability. Freedom is choice, but for some reason these people will not just choose another platform and finally STFU. I guess it is just too galling to see other people decide to treat a computer as if it was a hammer with which to accomplish a job and not a way of life around which you organize your self-worth.

> I'm always amazed that in the land of the brave and free butchering general purpose computing machines is supposed to be justified by the fact grandma doesn't install the wrong apps.

If you want a low-quality platform with limited security updates, multiple app stores, and other debris then buy an Android. I chose an iPhone so I wouldn't have to deal with these issues.

And I have an Android and I guess we probably spend all our time in the same apps

It really does seem that personal responsibility is a dirty word these days. Whether it comes to being able to critical review some news/social media someone has read online or maintaining the computer in your pocket.

I wonder if it's an off-shoot of the concept of 'victim blaming', meaning it's not allowed to lay the responsibility for someones actions on them, there should be safeguards that prevent someone from making a mistake in the first place, even if it's at the expense of people who know that they're doing. I haven't fully fleshed out in idea in my head yet.

there are absolutely controls you can turn on for macs that will do that. I have locked down employees computers because they couldn't be trusted.

That’s the point! There are no similar controls in iPhone, you just get the locked experience by default.

I'm always curious about this attitude. Why did you employ them if you felt you couldn't trust them?

People being good at anything else (let's say, accounting) is not correlated with safe/smart computer use habits. If you can prevent a lot of turmoil by not letting them install arbitrary programs and still keep them happy and working well on their main role, why get rid of an otherwise good employee?

Very good question!

I think it's useful to distinguish between types of trust. You might trust a mill operator with $5 million worth of automated equipment that has a well-documented UI backed with years of training and industry support. However, you might not trust that same operator with unfettered control of a $2000 general-purpose networked computing device that can silently leak company secrets and offer a foothold to attackers inside your firewall _even if the operator does nothing obviously wrong_.

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