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Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

Chrome OS devices are not locked down in the slightest. You can run any browser you want in Chrome OS via the Play Store or as a Linux app. Furthermore, every Chrome OS device can be unlocked to run any OS you want. You can install Chromium OS, Linux, or even Windows if you like. They are not at all like iPads.

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Can your grandma do that?

If not, then it is a de-facto locked-down device. It shouldn't take technical expertise to keep consumer electronics usable.

Mine could. (I know the point you're trying to make, but “grandma” and “person who wants to see computers as tools, rather than puzzles” are not synonymous.)

Being able to use a tool isn't the same as being able to transform a tool into a totally different type of tool. Someone shouldn't have to learn how to install and use linux just to use their 2014 laptop to browse the internet.

I understand that; I know many other people who wouldn't be able to deal with this. Just… my grandmother isn't one of them. (Sure, she isn't a “computer person” and doesn't really like the things, so she'd have trouble working it out on her own, but she's able to follow instructions and deal with the computer deviating slightly from how the instructions say it will react.)

I'm not criticising your point; just nitpicking your use of “grandma” as a signifier for the kind of person who can't deal with how garbage modern computers are. It's stereotypical, and only makes sense if you know those stereotypes; that's perpetuating stereotypes, and it also makes your writing inaccessible for people not familiar with the way your culture sees old women.

Thank you.

Sure she could, given appropriate instructions and a reason to care about it. Why not? She's a capable person. Also, she could buy a secondhand one that's already been unlocked, or sell hers to someone who can still make use of it by unlocking it, or whatever. The point is, the end of support does not render the hardware useless and/or a security disaster waiting to happen.

Capable, sure, but would she actually give a shit? I know none of my family does. I'd lose them after I uttered the first sentence of the technical explanation.

"Easy to use" and "not locked down" are two different and potentially competing goals. "Locked down" makes it impossible for even the most technical person to do something without knowledge of some sort of secret key. Chromebooks are not that; someone with the technical knowledge can do almost anything with them. They even go out of their way to choose peripherals that are well-supported by mainline Linux. "Easy to use", on the other hand, is usually implemented by removing the surface of possibilities. Having a command prompt pointed at an apt repository that lets you install the browser of your choosing is quite hard to use compared to just popping up a preselected browser when you press the power switch.

Pretty much every technology invented by humanity gets better with knowledge and training. That doesn't make those technologies "locked down".

That's a definition of "locked down" I can't get behind. _Impossible_ for even the most technical person? That would mean basically no device in all of history could be considered locked down.

A more useful definition would be that a device is locked down when the manufacturer has taken measure to halt users from loading their own software, including their own OS.

There might be reason to claim Chromebooks aren't locked down, go flip developer mode on and off you go. As for the iPad case, Apple most definitely does not want you to run your own OS. Older iOS devices often have cracks and ports of Android to them, but that takes considerable effort to defeat Apple's locking down of the device.

I think we're talking past each other. You have quoted half of a sentence I wrote without reading the other half, for example.

The comment I replied to suggests "my grandma can't figure out how to install Firefox on a Chromebook, so that means the device is locked down". I disagree with that.

Linux browsers or aftermarket OS? Maybe not. But installing an Android browser from the Play Store is easy.

Of course it should take technical expertise to keep devices usable. I don't know why people expect manufacturers to support devices for any and all use cases. No manufacturer is going to do that because that's expensive and unprofitable. Sure the community can continue to support devices but that just pushes the expertise onto you.

There is no magic world in which complicated technology remains forever usable by the unskilled.

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