I really hate how no big tech company is just making excellent hardware/software that people buy cus it's excellent. Everything (by big tech) seems to be some sort of sleazy scam nowadays.
There are cheap used HP/Dell thin clients based on the venerable AMD Puma SoC family found in the coreboot-based PC Engines APU2 (an excellent classic device which even has ECC memory).
Hardkernel (small company from Korea) ODROID M1 is a capable Linux SBC /w NVME.
My point is that big tech FAANG-like corps never seem to sell anything nowadays that's just simply good out of the box without any sleazy scam-like caveats. That's a pretty sorry state of affairs.
It feels like we've taken one step forwards, one step backwards. Like in 80's you could buy a C64 which was just pure excellent right out of the box, but you had to be a bit of a tech nerd to buy one in the 1st place. Nowadays if you're a regular person and buy some popular computer you're buying into some sort of scam. You need to be tech-nerd to avoid the scam and get something good.
In 80's tech nerds had C64 and bbc micro and so on, and everyone else had nothing and just missed out competely on the magic of computing. Nowadays tech nerds have their own pc's and everyone else has iOS and Android and almost completely misses out on the magic of computing.
> everyone else has iOS and Android and almost completely misses out on the magic of computing
If some of the iOS/iPadOS/Android people bought a ~$100 used PC, RPi or Linux SBC, they could use it as a relatively libre home "server/cloud" for learning. With Ubuntu and search engines, it's still somewhat possible to take vacations from walled gardens to visit magic computing castles that are open to user mods.
> “History shows a typical progression of information technologies,” he writes, “from somebody’s hobby to somebody’s industry; from jury-rigged contraption to slick production marvel; from a freely accessible channel to one strictly controlled by a single corporation or cartel — from open to closed system.” Eventually, entrepreneurs or regulators smash apart the closed system, and the cycle begins anew. The story covers the history of phones, radio, television, movies and, finally, the Internet. All of these businesses are susceptible to the cycle because all depend on networks..
On a positive note, the current U.S. FTC has been making antitrust noises about tech companies and platforms, after years of relative inaction. There's a nascent global effort to enshrine "right to repair" in consumer hardware regulations, which aligns with circular economy initiatives and hardware shortages.
On a negative note, humans have deployed IoT "slave helmets" for realtime geofencing and control of construction workers with few legal rights, i.e. restricting not just the computing hardware, but the human body of the user, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33675370
On a cage match note, banks and tech companies are at a 2023 global regulatory crossroads on the future of digital currencies, including crypto and CBDCs. The music/film industries led to DRM restrictions on consumer hardware. Now we have bank-vs-tech competition to be legal and physical custodian of private keys for digital currency wallets. How will that change computing hardware and supply chain security regulation?
Proprietary drivers for radio/sensors/audio were incredibly hard to get working and the blackbox security module they have made it nearly impossible to boot and use any peripherals. I was following somewhat closely for a long while and outside of hobby hacking, it was never a useable system from what I saw.
Do you know if it’s looking better in that regard for M1? I’ve been out of the loop.
As for software, that's more a matter of personal opinion that people just disagree over. One person's excellence is another person's hard-to-use, another person's super-secure is yet another person's too-locked-down. There's really no winning.
At least with Bink you get a service for that. With Apple you still need to pay the remaining 70% for the apps themselves.
But no, charging 30% isn't a "scam". I mean, is Microsoft scamming people on Xbox games by taking an equivalent 30%? Is Sony also scamming with their 30% for Playstation games?
30% is industry-standard for app store distribution tied to hardware. And while you can argue maybe the percentage should be different, it's not a scam.
The other scams you listed are also scams.
There's nothing fraudulent about 30% app store commissions. It's out in the open.
If your grocery store makes a 30% profit on a packaged dessert it sells, do you think that's a scam too...??
That grocery store analogy isn't remotely similar to hardware that is being arbitrarily crippled to suit the manufacturer.
I would think it was a scam if the grocery store could somehow stop me from shopping elsewhere.
everyone said it well here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33684776
Just build a product that is excellent, without fuckery and small print.