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Comment by camillomiller | Hacker News Reader

Another peak self-absorbed Hacker News comment, in which we learn that curiosity only means tinkering with devices, learning how they work to the bits, plus some random Linux thrown in. This comment is ignoring that a device that does all that without you having to worry about how it works is a tool way more powerful than one in which you need to at least know how to build everything from scratch with an enormous learning curve. Curiosity can be about design, the arts, literature, drawing, composing music, making and editing videos. All of which you can do so much better and so much more democratically on these “opinionated” devices. So please, enough with this narrative, it’s really outdated and based on such a limited world view.

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It's about having choice: Microsoft used to be quite good at making stuff usable but the underlying geekery was still there and could allow control to the max if you wanted it.

It worked for mom & pops and techs alike but corporations new attitude of "We'll decide what's best and remove other options" is a bloody pain in the arse now.

A particularly bad one is this insistence on not allowing me to permanently say "no" to something. It's always "maybe later" or "remind me in 24 hrs" or similar... even Firefox does it now when you set it up - I think it was to do with sending FF to my mobile or something - but the message was "do it now" or "do it later"... I don't want it EVER!

So, no! I don't want anyone else's opinion for stuff like this - let me decide what's best for me and allow me to tinker if I want!

If anyone knows where the "I'm happy to control things myself" setting is in Teams, please share.

I'm really tired of it deciding when I should be on mute, or when it should warn me that I am muted. Just let me do it.

> If anyone knows where the "I'm happy to control things myself" setting is in Teams, please share.

It's the X button in the top right corner.

In the olden days we had individual developers who would work out the internal API these applications used to work. I wonder if that's still theoretically possible. Surely it must be? Even if the client app needs a signed certificate, since it runs in an unsigned environment (i.e. Linux) it should be possible to grab the certificate and present that when you need it.

> Microsoft used to be quite good at making stuff usable but the underlying geekery was still there and could allow control to the max if you wanted it.

Windows 10 is the best Windows ever for the vast majority of people who use Windows. Same with Office. But you can still install whatever software you want on your Windows machine. Explain to me again how this is worse than what we used to have; where Microsoft have gone wrong in how they build software? Is it perfect? Of course not - no-one could even agree on what that means. But let’s be realistic about how much progress has actually happened: it’s a lot.

Try disabling Windows update...

Also, almost every patch has issues these days: that hardly ever used to happen. Their quality has taken a dive.

I am not saying that is isn't the perfect tool for many people: it has been for many years. The issue is that when I wanted to change things and leave them changed, I used to be able to do that. Now, they are doing their best to remove that ability! That makes no sense! Let me break it if I want! I have no warranty anyway!

Disable Windows update and it comes back on due to the Windows Update Medic Service. Ok, disable that then! Oops, you're not allowed. Ok, I can circumvent this by changing permissions on the dll and then deleting it. I'll then run updates later at a time of my choosing. Now I run updates. Oops, it's back again! Microsoft knows best.

By all means make it easy for the "typical" user. But I wish they'd stop taking away the underlying power-user stuff because they think they know best!

Update disabling is still there - gated behind more expensive editions and enterprise policy settings, because Microsoft likely had gotten a bad reputation in the past for systems with updates disabled becoming botnet nodes due to vulnerabilities.

In a way, the restrictions which used to be exclusive to Home are now part of Pro, the more expensive Pro for Workstations is what Pro used to be and Enterprise (also available through a per-user subscription model instead of a per-machine model, cheaper in a way for individuals with 5 PCs nobody else uses) also has some extra toggles not removed.

I think the subscription versions also include an Intune license which is the only supported way (other than installing third-party AV) to disable Windows Defender permanently, as well.

Now, MDM-managed Apple phones still come with a number of core restrictions, though I believe there's more loose side loading on there - however you have to register Apple hardware into MDM at purchase time as only authorized resellers can grant this access to a serial number.

Question, how does an individual go about acquiring an Enterprise license? For the exact reasons you mentioned (features, per-user licensing) I’ve tried in the past to get setup with a license and not had any luck.

These days there's a self-service panel on the Microsoft 365 sign-up/admin page once you've set up a tenant. I've not been asked for any formal business registration numbers via that process, but the old days of needing to acquire these licenses via a partner seem to be somewhat gone.

Yes, because it's based on a PC. A quite standard and open specification where you can buy motherboards, CPU, RAM, disk, IO peripherals etc from many different manufacturers and build and install what software you want. However, on a Mac, you cannot install or change the hardware as you like, you cannot install what software you want.

If Linus Torvalds was a teen today and there was no open PC standard, only a Mac, then it would not have been possible to create Linux the way it is today.

Imagine if also Microsoft starts to make their own processors and then sell their own computers with Windows and all locked down, and don't allow anyone else to make computers with Windows or their processors.

Sure Dell, HP and others could still make PC's, based on Intel or AMD CPU's or some ARM processor and then run Linux (or develop their own OS), but it's a hard sell.

The PC's sold to the mainstream thanks to Windows/Word/Excel maybe, but then people who wanted could tinker as much as they wanted and where free so make and sell their software (windows based or whatever) or their HW peripherals.

Now you are at best stuck within an app store if you create something.

> If Linus Torvalds was a teen today and there was no open PC standard, only a Mac, then it would not have been possible to create Linux the way it is today.

Torvalds didn't create Linux as a teen in his bedroom hacking on what he had. He created it at university studying operating systems. He would have created it on Raspberry Pi or some other platform.

Linux is widely deployed on x86 because x86 is available and open enough. It replaced Unix operating systems on dedicated architectures, like Solaris on SPARC.

> Sure Dell, HP and others could still make PC's, based on Intel or AMD CPU's or some ARM processor and then run Linux (or develop their own OS), but it's a hard sell

GNU/Linux was a hard sell in the beginning too. In the olden days, if you put Linux on a laptop you lost special features and you had very limited software support. Web pages were designed to work with IE only and you could only run Mozilla. Your major option for producing printable documents was special purpose programming languages like TeX or using Mozilla Composer. And good luck getting your winmodem/winprinter to do anything!

Today enough exists that you can buy hardware from companies that expect you to put Linux on them and then run them with full features and great intercompatibility. Your phone will be crap but it'll be good enough, and in ten years time it'll have a lot better features. Till then, if you want a great lowlight camera, buy a great lowlight camera.

The inversion of trust is a frustrating aspect of modern business, and it creates many social problems. But it isn't a technical barrier to oldschool hacking about.

Linux War Story:

Back in ~1997/8 I was working at a software manufacturing company - we burned and printed and shipped all the Solaris Software for SUN....

We would receive EDI data from sun to burn to CDs then do the fullfillment shipping - so If you went to SUN.com and ordered Solaris, it was made and shipped by us...

We needed a better way to receive the files from SUN, and so we had a few FTP servers... We hired a group of dudes who knew linux and had them setup our FTP machines, chrooting users and various security measures...

So I, the IT manager, sat down with one of the consultants that we had hired and I told him "You know, If I were you - I would setup a Linux Support company and offer Linux support as a service"

A few weeks later Dave Sifry came back to me and said "Guess what we started, LinuxCare... to offer Linux support as a service"

He was later valued at ~$100 million and LinuxCare was a ~$1 Billion company...

Chris DiBona of google fame was on the team, and I can't recall the two other guys' names...

But yeah - that was when support for Linux was basically non-existent...

Oh yeah - I forgot; SUN wanted us to learn this new thing that they were using to create the EDI files... XML. So we had to accomodate XML when the only people that knew XML at the time were SUN employees...

And finally, I think that SUN had the best logo ever made. And the shittiest firewall, Checkpoint sucked. (sorry Checkpoint team - your lead developers on Checkpoint were friends of mine... but I hated that firewall)

> He would have created it on Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi would be unable without Linux.

> you cannot install what software you want

What? Of course I can. Gatekeeper exists but can be disabled

> Windows 10 is the best Windows ever for the vast majority of people who use Windows

Meanwhile I'm setting here just now, wasting hours hand-holding Windows10 because it's unable to install one of its own big feature updates, without any idea what was going wrong or where to start fixing the problem (because everything is so "user friendly").

I don’t know. Why can’t we have both? Why can’t we have devices that permit “mucking about” but also when configured appropriately allow us to ignore the low level details and muck about with higher level stuff? They don’t have to be mutually exclusive despite “bt whole home wifi app has detected this is a jailbroken device and for your safety will not run”. It’s my wifi, it’s my phone!

You literally have both, and more.

Right now, I have a nearly uncrackable walled-garden iphone on my desk. And a mac laptop running XCode (learning about Metal programming), and at the same time running an Amiga emulator (tinkering with 68k assembly), and a windows gaming laptop next to it, and a breadboard on the floor with a pile of resistors and capacitors and transistors.

So what's the problem again?

The problem is the kid will be given the iPhone and not the breadboard.

For a communications device they will take into school, that they rely on for school work, communicating with parents and teachers, and with each other on social media and contains a lot of private information, that is probably the right choice. An open system with zero security and no guard rails is simply not appropriate for that use.

How about an open system WITH security and guard rails that can be enabled/disabled by, I dunno, the user who paid for it?

It's not either/or. Parents can be the guardians of their children's phone, enabling all the security Apple pretends to enable with a password.

The power of Apples marketing is astonishing.

And most kids given an Amiga or a 286 wouldn’t hack or code it - they’d just load up games.

Exactly this. My brother only played games on our C64 and Amiga, while I did nothing but program on it.

Games were in some way 99% of my use of the Apple IIc we had, which was my first computer. Original Bard's Tale in glorious green screen. Good times.

However, I also spent a lot of time painstakingly copying BASIC games, line by line from magazines, then figuring out how to expand upon them for additional features. Gaming was just the gateway drug.

Sure, but the possibility was there. I was given a ZX Spectrum clone and started coding, my brother only played games. I am not sure I would work in IT if that didn't happen. We were pretty much poor by today's standards and probably could not afford another such device, never mind that we would not know what to buy (as nobody in my family had any IT experience and there was no IT shop in our small town).

Where are the parents? Who is giving kids phone instead of something else? Also, why should kids tinker with computers if they can explore art by painting or music by learning an instrument or literature by reading?

What makes it important for them to use Unix rather than something that works fine the way it is while maintaining some standard of UX?

If kids show an interest in computers, they can just install unix on some computer like a raspberry pi and tinker on that.

Kids might not even know they have an interest in engineering (which is not the same as "interest in computers"). Back in 90s, a lot of kids, myself included, found out that we like that stuff because we were inadvertently exposed to it while playing our video games, and, later on, surfing the early Web. My first programming language was MS-DOS batch files, simply because it was readily available.

> Where are the parents? Who is giving kids phone instead of something else?

The parents might not know better.

> Also, why should kids tinker with computers if they can explore art by painting or music by learning an instrument or literature by reading?

They should be given the chance to do so, as they should be given the chance to explore art or craft or a lot of other things.

> What makes it important for them to use Unix

I don't see how mentioning Unix is relevant here. They should be given the opportunity to play and tinker with the devices, not only the preplanned path with games on the devices, that is all.

But they DO have the chance. They can boot some VM with Ubuntu or get a raspberry pi or a nodemcu and tinker away. They don't have to be able to tinker on EVERY device.

When my kids reach the age that they need a phone, probably sooner than I want to admit right now, I'd rather have them use some restricted device with some level of security checks in place for apps, so an iPhone, than something that is totally open which would make them vulnerable to being phished or persuaded to install viruses, etc. "Best way to play fortnite 10, download here".

> What makes it important for them to use Unix rather than something that works fine the way it is while maintaining some standard of UX?

The concern is whether the device is a piece of paper or a television. A television can show much more complex images under the control of the average child, but it is purely for consumption. A piece of paper lets you display anything you can draw or you can turn it into a paper plane or do origami, but the realism of the resulting products is going to be much less, and they will be relatively static.

An iPhone is, by design, a television. Unix systems are pieces of paper.

Last time I used MacOS, it was a functional piece of paper and it worked as a television too, so there isn't really any dichotomy here. Any television could be built on top of a piece of paper and give you access to the base level too.

The concern is that the television is winning out: even though Android and iOS are built from pieces of paper, their maintainers only bless television-like interfaces. Frankly, I believe a major part of this is because they're built on top of Unix like interfaces, which is based certain assumptions that they don't want to maintain. So I certainly wouldn't say Unix-like is the solution.

The problem is that there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be able to disable your iPhone's security and mess around with it if that's what you want. Apple owns the device, not you.

If you open Chrome devtools on Facebook there’s a huge red warning saying “if someone told you to do this they are trying to scam you and steal your account!”

So there may be a good reason why Apple don’t want this to happen, given that essentially everything is on your phone these days.

There’s still Android

> So there may be a good reason why Apple don’t want this to happen

Yes, this is why the phones are locked by default. This is not at all why the phones aren't unlockable, though. They can be unlockable and still be secure. Apple just doesn't want to give you the choice.

Yes there is. I don't want Facebook or Google to move all their apps to side loading or an alternate store with lax controls and opaque privacy disclosure. I need to use their apps, but I want them to have to satisfy Apple's app store policies. Side landing and alternate stores would cripple the effectiveness of those policies.

So the reasoning is "if you allow my phone to be unlocked, so many people will want alternate stores that Facebook and Google will unlist their apps from the App Store and use the alternative stores only, and then they won't be as rigorously reviewed"?

Like how you can't get Facebook on the Play Store because it's only available on F-droid on Android, for example?

That's certainly... interesting.

Epic, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Spotify and a host of other companies are itching to get on to a rival 'Freedom' app store on iOS, with lax controls and weak privacy disclosure. Where they go, users would have to follow. It's not as though users are crying out for weaker privacy disclosure, but they'd go anyway.

Facebook is quite happy on the Play Store because it has weak privacy and disclosure policies, because Google has no interest in enforcing such things.

Nope, you're surreptitiously adding a righteous "the people will freely choose what suits them best" twist to the parent's post. That's a rich assumption, history proves that "the people" just want their shiny toy and will sheepishly accept whatever condition imposed by the manufacturer. Remember IE6?

Then people arguing this should stop being disingenuous that this is somehow about enabling user freedoms, and outright say "your phone should take away your choice because you can't be trusted with it" .

Hundreds of millions of people freely choose to delegate those details to Apple, and we don’t want people like you forcing loopholes in the system so other companies can do an end run around those controls. Arguing that this is all in our interests is what’s disingenuous.

Couldn’t have said it better. Thanks

Yes, I can't pwn this device which makes it incredibly hard for anyone else to pwn this device. Very convenient actually, in that my most critical and private communications flow through it and it goes everywhere I do.

Really secure data goes through a seperate device of which I have total control, but which I treat carefully (and less conveniently). It's a very comfortable trade-off.

It's not untrackable unless you opt out of "FindMy" services and disable bluetooth (disable, rather than disconnect).

Why can't I run Xcode on iOS or iPadOS devices? What's the technical limitation? These devices have the capability to render stuff on larger screens wirelessly, and one can connect keyboards to them. The limitation is purely artificial.

>You literally have both, and more

I guess it depends on who "you" are. A lot of kids get exactly one device. Some have to share it with their siblings as well. So I do think it matters whether our most widely used devices are completely locked down or not.

It doesn't just matter for kids either. It also matters for democracy how many people only own devices that governments have complete control over.

That said, I do think the problem can be exaggerated. People tend to find ways around restrictions. It can even be a motivation for looking more deeply into how things work.

And not all of those workarounds are terribly expensive. Ironically, the most expensive devices are also the most locked down.

> I guess it depends on who "you" are. A lot of kids get exactly one device. Some have to share it with their siblings as well. So I do think it matters whether our most widely used devices are completely locked down or not.

This is true, but RPi Zeros are so cheap and powerful that I think it's much easier for community organisations (schools, scouts, dedicated groups) to start hacking events. The kid who can't get a 10 USD computer and a phone and access to a shared laptop is the kid who couldn't access to shared desktop in the olden days. In those days entry level could be a month's salary for a professional.

For the households where every kid has their own laptop, a Pi is accessible.

And for those who only have access to single shared machine, the kid today has access to a VM. That means they have options the rest of us didn't have - I couldn't run Linux until I had a paper round, because installing Linux on the family computer was not going to happen.

Perhaps one clear advantage to the old world is that in the 1980s and early 1990s, anyone could write an operating system and eventually get something that could do everything their old computer could do. I mean the idea was tractable. It's not like today where even thinking about creating a web browser filled Microsoft and Opera with such dread they gave up.

To be clear: I don't think it's all rosy today. But I don't think it's all bleak either.

> It also matters for democracy how many people only own devices that governments have complete control over.

You are right that there's social implications here, but I think the social concerns are primary and not a consequence of the technical situation. We arrived at this situation because companies decided they own their customers when we have massive social problems mistrust and distrust. This has come on the back of a generation that learnt abominations like a company's only obligation is to its shareholders. If you want to build trustworthy business, you need to maintain the right culture.

I don't disagree, but I think we're talking about a couple different issues here.

One question is whether a low income but educated and dedicated parent can find a way to acquire some hackable device for a highly motivated kid. I think the answer is probably yes, with some exceptions in extremely poor countries.

But that's not the most likely scenario. A far more likely scenario is a kid that wants to modify the device they're actually using on a daily basis to make it do something slightly different. There are no parents involved, and it would be utterly pointless to hack some completely different device like a Raspberry Pi just because it's more hackable.

So I worry that widespread use of locked down devices and locked down distribution channels makes the path from consumer to power user to hacker to software engineer to entrepreneur far less smooth. Some people who could have been interested in being more than mere consumers are going to be left behind.

You are absolutely right that access to all sorts of devices is hugely easier and cheaper than back in the 70s, 80s and 90s. It's definitely not all bleak. It was a decidedly rich country upper/middle class affair at the time. But we're also having to live with restrictions that would've been unimaginable back then.

Just imagine Microsoft in 1995 attempting to restrict what software people were allowed to install on their PCs. Imagine what regulators would have said if Microsoft had tried to charge 30% on all software and content loaded onto PCs. Or what if Microsoft had been able to issue no-recourse lifetime bans on using any of their software and platforms?

The objection that Microsoft was a monopolist isn't really convicing given that they were replaced by a hugely more powerful and ubiquitous oligopoly that now runs the actual economy, not some tiny niche called "The New Economy".

> You literally have both, and more.

Seriously.

When I was a kid I would have killed to have had easy access to things like Raspberry Pi's, microcontrollers, SGI workstations (which is what the Mac is these days), and a zillion free programming languages.

Instead, while I had full access to the family's PC and could learn C and assembly language programming on it (btw I had to pay for those compilers), and learned all about interrupts and writing to VGA registers, I still couldn't do anything super low-level like muck around with the boot sector because my dad needed it for work, the phone system was so locked down that you'd go to jail for "exploring" it, and I had barely any idea how to get started playing around with logic chips because there was nothing like Sparkfun, Adafruit, Hackaday, etc, and Radio Shack in the mid-90s really wasn't much help.

There is still room for improvement - yes it would be nice if all the tech we used was both hackable and secure - but geeks who want to tinker are living in a land of plenty right now.

You can? There are tons of kits and circuit boards and parts and everything electronic imaginable available for quick delivery right now. Back in the day we had Radio Shack, but it couldn’t hold a candle to all the circuit boards and electronic components available today. It’s an embarrassment of riches.

I count five logical fallacies here:

> Another peak self-absorbed Hacker News comment

Unnecessarily inflamatory - perhaps an ad-hominem attack, or appeal to emotion.

> in which we learn that curiosity only means tinkering with devices

Strawman argument - this is a blatant misrepresentation of GP's point.

> This comment is ignoring that a device that does all that without you having to worry about how it works is a tool way more powerful than one in which you need to at least know how to build everything from scratch with an enormous learning curve

False dichotomy (there's no reason you can't have an opinionated device that works flawlessly OOTB while also being extremely hackable) and another strawman (OP never advocated for you having to do everything yourself, only have the ability to tinker).

> So please, enough with this narrative, it’s really outdated and based on such a limited world view.

Another appeal to emotion.

I encourage you to take a class on logical argument, because this ain't it.

Someone got a lot out of their high school debate club

Why do you make the assumption that a device with freedom would be a device to worry about? This is exactlty what the op is saying. The Apple narrative of "we have full control over your device and your software for your own good" is horrible and worrying. I'm not gonna make a parallel about Apple source of inspiration but it doesn't scream creativity, freedom and certainly not democracy.

Apple’s approach is pragmatic. If they offered anyone the ability to jailbreak, you would see major app makers manipulating naive users into jailbreaking in order to bypass security, payment restrictions or similar. Even the limited options Apple provides are already abused, such as Facebook convincing users to install VPN profiles with their Ovano product and abusing it to spy on users.

Having the option defeats the fundamental advantages their approach offers.

There are a lot of problems with Apple’s approach from an antitrust perspective and fair competition should be regulated through legislation, but there are good reasons for closed ecosystems to exist and plenty of great alternatives for people who want something more open.

At what point do we need to start worrying about Apple holding too much power over their closed ecosystem and can potentially abuse it?

Until we leave in a capitalistic system? Apple should be scrutinized, but I prefer a world in which a company with strong values polices the ethical limits of technology, to one where companies like Facebook (and Google, to a lesser extent) hypocritically push an open agenda just to exploit such technologies to milk our data.

> If they offered anyone the ability to jailbreak, you would see major app makers manipulating naive users into jailbreaking in order to bypass security

This is FUD. Linux works flawlessly despite giving all the freedoms. Typical users don't install anything outside the repositories. Apple has countless problems with security and privacy in their App Store.

That is because Linux is not used by general public.

Unfortunately you can't even find a Linux computer in shops anywhere, which could be the reason few people use it. It's actually harder to find malware there.

See also: Android is Linux used by the general public.

Funnily, you can find various somewhat-Linux devices in stores mostly, except they're called 'Chromebooks'. This is the same device series that uses Coreboot as a boot loader and usually had an internal screw to remove to disable firmware write protections and fully unlock the device, as well as other visually and auditory (they make a large beep on boot) tamper-evident 'developer unlock' modes. Nowadays instead of the 'unlock screw', there's a mandatory security chip that can be unlocked into a less visibly tamper-evident mode in which it is disabled via a special USB-C cable for sale on the open market with a reference schematic available as well, which is a much more fun solution to assert physical access. [1]

Many older models also would run mainline Linux fine, and the default Chrome OS install usually has a container and a Wayland to Chrome adapter behind a toggle.

[1]: https://unrelenting.technology/articles/FreeBSD-and-custom-f...

I don’t think it’s relevant for the general public.

> This is FUD. Linux works flawlessly despite giving all the freedoms.

eyebrows raise to the ceiling

> Typical users don't install anything outside the repositories.

head tilts nearly horizontal with the floor

"Flawlessly" is here being stretched beyond the breaking point, and anyone who is OK with only installing software from the official repos for any major Linux distro is not a "typical user", very obviously.

I've been using Linux exclusively since the mid 90s. I've run so many different variants. I was a attended the church of Slackware for a long time. There has never been a time in my many years of using Linux that anything has been "flawless" and I _definitely_ have to install things "outside the repositories" pretty regularly. Even if that's a broad statement meaning "any type of repository anywhere, including but not limited to git."

Right, I'm struggling to think of a user profile that would be OK with just software from major distro repos.

"Normal" users? They're going to want several proprietary programs, some of which will surely not be in even the non-free repos, unless they're an only-uses-the-browser type who'd be fine with a Chromebook (or, more realistically for that user profile, just their phone).

Power users? I have to assume my experience of often wanting or needing something outside official repos, or a newer version of something in official repos, is far from unusual. I'm not even that demanding a power user, and that's still a very common situation for me. What's worse is the more one chases system stability, the worse this problem becomes, since Linux distros mix the base system and user-facing applications all together (and the structure of x-window-system/wayland/drivers/GTK/QT makes it hard not to do this)

> Apple’s approach is pragmatic. If they offered anyone the ability to jailbreak, you would see major app makers manipulating naive users into jailbreaking in order to bypass security, payment restrictions or similar.

The problem is a social one and hasn't been properly solved by technical measures as you note. Instead of acting like the digital world is somehow separate from the rest of the world, we should have enough strong and effective laws and regulations that if a person steals from me, they can reasonably expect to spend a few years in prison.

The result of discovering a person has released a fraudulent product to the Google Play Store is currently that they get get their Google account shut down, maybe. The actual result should be that they find out what the inside of a prison cell is.

The result of discovering that a company tracks a user without effective permission through the use of dark patterns that meant a user pressed "I agree" under the misapprehension that this was the only way of using the app should have their shares acquired by the justice system at a penalty rate - or some other effective penalty so that companies don't balance the cost of obeying the law with the cost of the fine.

If Apple believes that their users want protection from digital thieves, Apple has a responsibility to lobby for better laws and regulations. They can't use halfmeasures as a pretense in the hope that some amorphous other will get laws that protect their users passed.

Democracy is about choice, including the right to make choices you disagree with. You can choose to use an iOS device, or you can chose not to. I choose to use one, and I like the way it works. You or others like you want to take that choice away from me.

This is such a tired argument. Nobody is arguing that iPhones should be rooted by default, only that they should be rootable.

I don't want my kids rooting their phones. Also I use facebook, but I dislike it and don't trust them, but I use it and Messenger occasionally to keep in touch with some friends. I also use WhatsApp fair bit.

I like the fact that Facebook can't pull their apps from the store, put them on a rival store with lax standards, or otherwise circumvent the app store controls. These controls clear benefits for me, but side loading and alternate stores would cripple their effectiveness. In fact crippling the effectiveness of these controls is the purpose of side loading and alternate stores.

If you want a phone you can root, buy one. There are options out there. Why do you want to take my choice away from me?

> Why do you want to take my choice away from me?

You keep repeating this disingenuous argument. If you don't want to root your phone, don't root it. If you don't want your kids to be able to root their phones, don't pretend like you aren't taking away their choice.

If you don't want rival stores with lax standards, don't install them. Just don't keep telling people who want to be given a choice that they're somehow "taking your choice away from you".

If you want to be in prison, go ahead, but don't pretend that having the option to leave is somehow "taking your choice away".

This is unrealistic. If it were easy to root an iPhone, then we would reach a situation where app developers would stop releasing necessary apps in the App Store because they want to bypass all the ethical behavior it requires. It would effectively force everyone to the lowest common denominator.

If it were possible to root an iPhone, Facebook would have never agreed to give users the option to stop tracking them across apps; they would have instead said “please watch this video and do what it says to continue using Facebook/Instagram!” and guide naive users into rooting their phones.

Closed ecosystems have many advantages (and disadvantages) over open ones. However, a closed ecosystem with a gaping hole in the wall is no longer a closed ecosystem; you can’t have it both ways.

I don't know what to tell you if you believe that, while conversions drop off a cliff if the "signup" button isn't prominent, asking users to unlock their bootloader and install a third party app store just to get Facebook working on their phone is a thing that would get a nonzero amount of users.

Epic literally did this with Fortnite on Android, one of the largest mobile games in existence - they taught users how to download the APK and sideload the app to avoid the Google Play store.

This isn't very relevant to the current discussion, though, as you don't need root or an unlocked bootloader on Android to do that.

It's directly relevant. It's an example of a large company forcing its users to learn how to implement a somewhat complicated bypass to an app store to avoid having to follow its rules, something that no one tries on Apple because of how tightly Apple controls its ecosystem.

It wouldn't just be facebook though, it would be all facebook's apps (Messenger, WhatsApp, etc), plus all Google's apps, Amazon, Fortnite, Spotify, etc, etc. A single 'Freedom' store with all that on it would have huge pull and would completely undermine the effectiveness of the App Store's privacy policies. No thanks.

This doesn't happen on Android because Google has no interest in enforcing strict privacy policies on the Play Store.

So you agree that iPhones should be used in whatever way the user wants, including using a different app store? I mean, it is a choice that you disagree with but for some reason it should be taken away. Why?

It's not about you. It's about the direction that technology has been taking where a big chunk is controlled by very few companies that are more powerful than a lot of countries.

I want to be able to chose a device I control, with software I control because I have strong concerns on privacy, freedom to create and waste management. My choices are quite limited and things are hardly moving in the right direction.

Do your concept of democracy being all about your own choices and seeing anybody with different point of view as your enemy kinda reinforce my point. This is not about your specific choices and personal freedom. This is about everybody choices and freedom.

Yes, authoritarianism as a business freaks me out, seeing people embracing it and embracing the fake sentiment of safety it provides is freaking me out. And yes, I do think it's time the Apple and Google duopoly is broken down and people are actually given choice.

You missed his point. BigTech is trying to make open computer hardware and software illegal, because "security".

That is a loss for everyone, even if tinkering with computers is not your hobby.

I mean, that point was in there, sure. But I get the comment you replied to regarding how the OP comment reads.

> BigTech is trying to make open computer hardware and software illegal, because "security".

I wonder what they stand to gain from this, since they wouldn't bother if there wasn't a benefit.

Android I can possibly understand, what with Google being an ad-company and expecting to track users. But Apple doesn't seem to be doing that all that much anymore.

For the tractor situation, John Deere & friends expect to capture the business of independent repair shops, so there's a gain in their locking down the devices.

If I buy an iPhone to run myOS on it, how's this a loss to Apple? Especially since they don't charge for IOS updates, and they also support their phones for a long time, so if I don't buy a new iPhone every year it's not because I'm running some custom OS. My iPhone 7 still has all the latest updates and I haven't paid Apple one cent ever since I bought it used more than four years ago.

Simple - close the door to any possible competition or disruption in the future.

A future with only one or two computing monopolies is a desired end state for history to BigTech.

Apple is not in biz of selling phone or laptop. They sell complete ecosystem. If you own an iPhone, airpod are magical, AirTag/iCloud makes sense. Why not also buy Macbook to tinker with own apps and an iPad when you need pencil/touch. And not just current, you also capture all future innovation, so you can charge for digital downloads. You can make new rules to charge for all digital transactions across all apps.

What you are suggesting is to allow 3rd party to join in the ecosystem.

If IBM had been smarter and launched PC as a closed platform it would have been a 10/100 trillion dollar enterprise.

> What you are suggesting is to allow 3rd party to join in the ecosystem.

Not necessarily. They could still continue to charge for every download, just as I can, and already do, listen to music on my iPhone without an Apple Music subscription and without purchasing from the iTunes store.

If I want the whole Apple experience, I will continue using macOS / IOS. Hell, that's the reason why I started buying MacBooks when I could afford them: the "apple experience".

But I also run Linux on my work PC, because for that I don't care about the Apple experience. But I hate my HP laptop, for comfort reasons. If I could buy a MacBook and have Linux run on it as well as it does on the hp, I would (because I love the hardware) and that would be a net gain for Apple, wouldn't it?

I get the whole point of the "experience" and "ecosystem", etc. Up until a few years ago I absolutely loved it. Still love my iphone and wouldn't switch to android.

But now I can't stand macOS anymore for my work needs. I'm looking to buy a new laptop to use Linux on it. The offers from Lenovo / HP / Dell don't look all that great to me. I would absolutely buy an MBP if I knew Linux worked perfectly on it, but I know it doesn't, so Apple doesn't get to make a sale.

The point is: If I want to tinker with an iPhone and would not buy one if I couldn't, why is it a loss for Apple to sell an extra phone, even if the buyer won't consume their other digital products? The seller wouldn't have consumed them anyway, especially without buying the iPhone.

Yes, there's the support side of things, but again, they could have some sort of warranty voiding system in place.

No. It's not just that individuals can't tinker with hardware. It's also startups having this problem. Apple is integrating the entire supply chain. What we need is better "modularization" of the market where everybody has access to important components.

> Another peak self-absorbed Hacker News comment, in which we learn that curiosity only means tinkering with devices, learning how they work to the bits, plus some random Linux thrown in.

Totally unnecessary generalization.

This has to be the least charitable reading of Crazyontap's comment. Couldn't you have just inserted the implied:

> I was just talking to a friend the other day on how badly Apple and Google are trying their best to kill curiosity and creativity [with regard to the computer they're using].

Also:

> So please, enough with this narrative, it’s really outdated and based on such a limited world view.

You'll have to explain how it's a "limited world view" to suggest that we can have our cake and eat it too: that we can have open, hackable platforms that are also popular and easy to use.

Creative professionals gained immensely through Apple's approach. If I'm a music producer, a film maker, a writer, a graphic designer, and so on, I gain immensely from a computer that just works 99% of the time. I don't need or want to spend time on thinking what's the best set of drivers I should install, or worrying about all the dependencies of this new open source program with no hint of UX-design I've just installed. And yet, anything that isn't exactly that is often dismissed as lower class by people who have learned that over years and years, and don't seem to understand that there's an entire world of good people who just want to apply their curiosity at a different level. That is, in my opinion, a limited world view. In my experience, it also does not happen both ways. People that can't do that (but maybe can master film coloring post-processing -- I invite you to give a stab at that, if you dare) have enormous respect of the low level tinkerers. The opposite is very often not through.

> I gain immensely from a computer that just works 99% of the time

Are you implying that Linux doesn't work 99% of the time? If so, you are mistaken. I'm running Linux for me and my relatives without issues for years. I'm not a programmer/hacker.

Just choose the hardware designed for it (exactly like in the case of Apple).

Ohh come on. I am not against linux but to say it works flawlessly is ridiculous. My last try with it a few years was the most ridiculous. If i plugged my bamboo stylus, the screen would just go all crazy, as soon as i unplugged it, back to normal. Stylus worked on windows and mac, but on linux (ubuntu lts) i couldn’t even plug it in (and took me a while to find out that was the problem as it installed everything fine, then after the reboot this happened, only when i decided to disconnect everything but the monitor and try plugging one by one did i find this out

And lets not even go over the ux disaster that is the mix and match of uis from various apps.

> Stylus worked on windows and mac, but on linux

Here comes your problem (which I actually mentioned in my above post). Choose hardware designed for Linux if you want it to really work. Why don't you complain that your Windows installation does not work well on a Macbook?

If I plug a non supported device on my macbook, the screen doesn't go all scrambly.

And even so, how can you say it works 99% of the time if you have to go and research each piece of peripheral that you want to use? Normal users go to bestbuy or amazon or whatnot and buy a microphone, they don't want to go and see if it works on ubuntu or whatnot or have weird behaviours at home. you can blame manufacturs for not supporting linux while they support win/mac, but again, normal users experience just isn't that great.

You said you are running linux for you and your relatives. Who installed it on your relatives machines? Who checked the compatibility of each hardware and maybe even bought some replacement things to work on linux? I know most users/relative I know wouldn't go to websites to try to find out if this or that works well with this and that. They just want to go to a shop, buy a laptop+accessories and plug them in when they get home

Yes, the actual problem is the lack of preinstalled Linux on retail products. You can find that in online shops though. My laptop came with Linux preinstalled and I can’t recommend it enough.

How does being able to get root access to an iPhone (the way you can on a Mac) limit creativity?

They are claiming the exact opposite of that: not having root access isn't a limit on creativity.

They're replying to a comment arguing for open devices. Saying "I'm fine with a closed device" is at best irrelevant. "I'm fine with a locked-down computer" is no argument against "I want my computer to be more open", as, in the end, if you're fine with your locked-down computer, just keep it locked down.

> it also does not happen both ways. People that can't do that (but maybe can master film coloring post-processing -- I invite you to give a stab at that, if you dare) have enormous respect of the low level tinkerers. The opposite is very often not through.

This feels related to the saying that it’s easier to innovate down the stack than it is to innovate up the stack. It’s far easier for Apple to design and fabricate its own chips than it would be for Intel to make its own consumer OS.

I program DSP software, but I find DaVinci Resolve SUPER daunting. I completely agree (and am also a Mac user, for what that's worth)

There are so many domains where you can dive incredibly deeply into 'em. Some of them are computer augmented, and benefit from a stable, predictable computer host. There's been a lot of instances over the years where Macs served that role of 'creativity toaster' and did it well… now we've got the same thing, except for phones.

Anybody who's used to that situation doesn't find the status of iPhone ecology shocking. A bargain is being made. Or a service is being hired, from effectively a computer administrator.

Because we also need sophisticated, powerful internet communications devices that contain our personal data, private photos and video, social media information, etc, etc and that we also rely on for a huge range of creative tasks.

These are not the right tools to also have completely exposed with no security or guard rails, where we can easily open up or broadcast everything to the world.

You can have your cake and eat it too, there are devices available that work just how you want, but that doesn't mean every device has to work that way. It certainly doesn't mean that my device has to work that way, just because you want it to.

There is no reason the machine can't do everything you said and everything the parent said.

There are fundamental engineering trade-offs here. The amount of effort required to secure a device AND make it accessible to "tinkerers" would be an effort worthy of an MIT research lab. It's not trivial, and a huge security risk to satisfy 0.01% of the user base. Especially when such users will likely just buy an open source device anyways. Seems like a huge waste of effort to me.

Do you think Apple engineers don't have access under the hood? Simply provide that access to those who request it, everyone else can keep it locked. Problem solved.

In which reality where Facebook doesn't exist do you write from? :D

This program exists to get that level of access: https://developer.apple.com/programs/security-research-devic...

"The initial application period ended August 24. Applicants will receive an update this fall."

This is not at all what we are looking for.

I'm not overly familiar with the low-level details of iPhones and Android phones, but it's not clear to me why it would be such a big effort to allow one to install whatever OS they like on an iPhone.

Maybe display a big, scary "unofficial OS, you're on your own, don't bother us if your iPhone becomes unusable". Maybe have one jump through some hoops, like getting an "approval" code by signing some mile-long EULA on the iCloud account stating you forego any software-related warranty / support.

This should be enough to deter "regular users" from messing with their phones, and Apple wouldn't have to go to any length to guarantee that a "restored" device isn't compromised. Kind of like the KNOX thing on Samsung phones used to work.

And this actually seems to be possible, since people are having success with running Linux, a non-apple sanctioned OS, on the M1 Macs, which have the secure enclave, etc. My understanding is that whatever issues they are experiencing are related to hardware support.

I think the point there isn’t a technical challenge, but rather a business challenge. Namely, Apple probably actually cares about how satisfied their customers are. They probably could easily make their iPhones support following instructions from some forum about how to install Fortnite hacks, but some of those hacks are going to cause problems for their customers, either accidentally (bugs) or maliciously (spyware, random ware, etc.). The typical response from a HN thread might be “well if the user installs something that’s their problem,” but Apple probably actually cares about their customers’ satisfaction more than they care about assigning moral culpability.

Apple probably actually cares about their customers’ satisfaction more than they care about assigning moral culpability.

This is it right here. Power-users will blame the user for having their device compromised. Users, on the other hand, will blame Apple. Apple will do anything they can to avoid negative PR like that.

And the media will amplify that into oblivion.

> They probably could easily make their iPhones support following instructions from some forum about how to install Fortnite hacks, but some of those hacks are going to cause problems for their customers, either accidentally (bugs) or maliciously (spyware, random ware, etc.).

I don't know what the state of the world is today, but I've installed custom OSes (mostly Linux) on every Mac I've owned (my most recent was a 2012 Retina which I really liked).

Installing a custom OS isn't easy and it's pretty obvious to everyone it means thinking "Yes, it's a good idea to lose support for almost every program I run". By "everyone", I really do mean that: I've never heard of an anecdote of someone who's mother wiped MacOS and threw Ubuntu on their box and encountered some bugs. Technical knowledge about security isn't out there, but we do get "Apple makes the system that is an iPhone, going away from Apple's product means abandoning my iPhone" seems to be there, even if they don't understand what it means for something to be an operating system.

The engineering effort is entirely surmountable; we already have a pretty decent solution in Chrome OS's Developer Mode.

"Security" has become the excuse big companies use for everything they foist on users. Better update to that new OS version that ruins the user interface -- it comes with security patches! Better make sure you can't play any games that aren't approved by Apple -- it's the only way to make iPhones secure! Better centralize the entire Internet so it all depends on four or five giant corporations to run -- they're the only ones who can be trusted to implement security!

I think you are mixing up "not having to worry about how it works" with "having the freedom to tinker". We should demand both. One reason is for our curiosity. The other is to have checks and balances on the big companies.

We should. What I'm saying is that we still have that, and more. The suggestion is mostly the opposite, from comments like yours. That we should have less things like the Apple ecosystem, which has been fundamental in creating an entire generation of creative tinkerers, exactly because of its opinionated and broadly simplified nature.

We have an either-or choice, and there's no reason for it to be like that.

The big companies have all the technical resources, and profoundly strong motivation, to apply their own malware and harm the user.

You do NOT check and/or balance big companies by allowing them the freedom to tinker alongside the little guy. They will wrest the machines to their purposes every time, and they are Not Happy about obstacles in their path.

Having checks and balances on big companies is a very good argument but it points the opposite direction from how you're seeing it…

You can learn about design, arts, literature, drawing et al without having to sacrifice the freedom to own your device. Apple devices deliver great UX despite their walled garden. They can have their ecosystem without locking people out of running their own software or making it difficult to repair it. Don't create a false dichotomy.

Ah well, you are basically replying to a limited world view by another limited one.

Notice how you say "Curiosity *can be* about design, ..." but then the tone of your comment reads like you mean "Curiosity *should only be* about design, ...". Please don't do that.

Curiosity can be about anything, lets just leave it at that.

These are sad times when someone who wants to "hack" and learn and disassemble and reassemble and just "understand" gets shit on "hacker news". "Limited world view"? Really? They are the one with the "Limited world view"?

The notion that computing devices that aren't wide-open are "kill[ing] curiosity and creativity" in anything other than a very restricted sense is a limited world view, yes. That such devices being available as an option at all rankles people so and drives them to insult anyone who likes them as mindless consumers (very common in discussions like this, on this site) is downright parochial.

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