If you gatekeep applications on your device then it's a walled garden. Simple, no?
Half Life was not a walled garden before opening up to modders, and was not a walled garden after. It was just a game opened to modders.
If we get over ourselves, and allow that there's new category of thing, devices made of mechanical and digital parts both, that the maker may or may not selectively open for mods as a legitimate part of their business model they're within their rights to choose, then we'd be less religiously militant in ways that harm innovation and consumers.
Then what are you engineering?
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Edit to elaborate:
I'm convinced this is the essence of the debate that has intensified as parts that move at the speed of light are devouring physical parts.
Switch, transistor, if statement -- a maker should be able to convert one type of part to another type of part without losing their rights, or accidentally triggering a "oh, look, general computing, therefore it's no longer up to you to decide!" flag of some sort.
Ease of reconfiguring electrons shouldn't change right to design and distribute a product with whatever blend of physical and digital one wants, facilitating whatever purpose one wants, and not being forced to facilitate other purposes.
That’s so last century. :-)
And don’t squeeze out that “cOnSoLeS aReNt cOmPuTeRs” bullshit. They’re closer to computers than a goddamn wristwatch.
I think the reason this worked, and the reason it’s still sort of confusing to people, is that the iPhone is a phone, and showed up at phone stores. People viewed as a super-powered iPod, not a computer.
I think the difference is that Apple wants people to buy these devices as your primary computing device. Are you OK when Apple locks down the Mac line? What if you couldn't use Brew to install open source software? For a not insignificant portion of their buyers that may be OK.
I agree that consoles have their own anti-competitive issues, but they're not the same. Copy-cat games have always existed. The difference is that Sony's not going to pull a Rockstar game exclusively built for their platform to directly compete. So while I'm trying to see the parallel, it's not quite the same in my opinion.
I'm struggling to see any argument about watches that doesn't apply at least as much to game consoles.
In fact, the 'general purpose computer' will historically be seen as some kind of very stupid aberration, who ever thought that giving end users that kind of power was a good idea? /s
Even in digital, beige box server, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, FaaS, applications, devices, apps, screens... different waterlines, none of them magic. Which waterline do you have the right to "run whatever you want"? Which waterline is a business ok to say, from here down, it's my product?
Anti-circumvention laws saying DRM means hands off altogether are different from saying a maker must take extra steps to make it easier for you to mod the device they invested R&D in, must allow your mod at potential harm to other mods on the device, or a maker must change their business model to facilitate malware and benevolent app devs alike.
There's a market segment for beige boxes and Raspberry PIs. Not every device with digital parts supporting digital mods, plug-ins, add-ons, cartridges, apps, whatever you call them, has to be forced to be a Raspberry Pi.
You have a right to remove the warning label from your mattress, or root your phone, but Sealy doesn't have to perforate the tag and Samsung doesn't have to give you a toggle.
I'm sorry but this is where I'm going to have to bow out of the conversation.
The problem is that building platforms is expensive and if people can use your thing for whatever they want, that thing that they want is often not giving you money. My conclusion is that there shouldn't even be game consoles. They're just a tax on everyone that wants to play games.
I’ve wondered about this for a while. After about 2015 when the MBP was steadily losing features and gaining problems I was certain that my next machine couldn’t be a Mac. I was certain that the Mac would be rapidly becoming a glorified iPhone.
The trick is, I don’t know where to draw that line. One thought about jumping ship to Linux full time, but I haven’t been able to trust the setup. I’ve heard Windows with WLS is good, but haven’t tried it.
If you don't allow any third-party developers to make apps for your device, you have a closed garden and no anti-competitive conflict. If you allow all third-party developers to make apps for your device, you have an open garden and no anti-competitive conflict. If you allow some third-party developers, but not some others, to make apps for your device, you have a walled garden and a potential anti-competitive conflict.
As long as some developers are allowed to make apps for this device -- be it a watch, a safety needle, or a 60,000 sq ft rack-server center -- barring others is anti-competitive. And barring them just to launch a clone of their product yourself is an anti-competitive super dick move.
What if I want to? I don't particularly care what the manufacturer thinks, I bought the machine. Why does Microsoft gets a pass to dictate what I can do with the hardware I bought?
See for example people that bought PS3s for operating distributed clusters (because at the time the console WAS open) and then Sony locked down other OSes with an update. Why is this fair?
https://www.itwriting.com/blog/2394-sony-locks-down-the-ps3-...
> I think the difference is that Apple wants people to buy these devices as your primary computing device.
How can a wristwatch be a primary computing device?
Oh it's not. But you don't have a choice. Last I checked Apple Watch required being locked into the walled garden [0] via ownership of an iPhone. Apple Watch is a feature, not a standalone product as it stands today.
Same case with XBox and PS. You can’t willy nilly write a game for either platform.
For some reason the unlicensed cartridge that always comes to mind for me is the powder blue Bible stories game.
These days if a company tried that Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft would just laugh and issue a firmware update "improving system stability" three weeks later bricking any unlicensed games in the process.
There was even a handful of unlicensed titles for PS2/GC.
Consoles are very different from Apple’s walled garden.
2. There isn't a horde of pitchforks because instead people's efforts with those consoles are focused towards jailbreaking them to run their arbitrary code instead of begging the company to do it - and Microsoft's Developer Mode on Xbox allows running of arbitrary code anyways, so the problems is basically solved there.
Nintendo, Sony, etc also allow other developers to sell apps on markets they created, and they also compete with those developers. If Nintendo ever removes a platforming game for competing with the Mario series, we should also raise our pitchforks and protest against unfair abuse of power.