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Comment by vladvasiliu | Hacker News Reader

I don't think those alternatives are the right ones.

You can sell your iphone without any issue, there are plenty of stores around me offering to buy used models to resell. I'm actually contemplating buying a used model. Can't do that with steam games.

I'm also pretty confident that if apple and their services disappeared tomorrow, my iphone would keep on working just like it does today. Sure, no more updates, no more new apps, it would be frozen in the state it's in.

Therefore, I think the question is whether an iphone is a "general computing device", or "an appliance". I can see the arguments for both, even though I tend to treat mine as the latter.

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> I'm also pretty confident that if apple and their services disappeared tomorrow, my iphone would keep on working just like it does today. Sure, no more updates, no more new apps, it would be frozen in the state it's in.

You can hardly call that "working like it does today". It doesn't. When features on it inevitably cease to work or be interoperable, you're screwed. And every day, you're probably more vulnerable to crime.

If I buy a house, I can learn to maintain it and keep it secured. I can't do that with my iPhone.

>If I buy a house, I can learn to maintain it and keep it secured. I can't do that with my iPhone.

For the argument's sake, your ability to do things to your own house is restricted by zoning, by HOA and god forbid you from buying something of historical significance in Europe -- then you can't change anything inside or outside and you are responsible for it.

True, and those issues are subjected to the same philosophical debates. Historical buildings are often categorically different, but HOAs (for a product manufactured and sold to you, as well as the land itself) are lambasted for the same reasons.

I think it's important to make a distinction between the restrictions imposed by law and restrictions imposed by the seller.

For pretty much every thing there are restrictions on what you can do with it - if I buy a phone, I'm prohibited from smashing it into my neighbour's face, and grinding it up and baking into the cookies I sell would be a violation of health&safety rules, but that's still full ownership.

Now, if the seller wants to impose extra restrictions above and beyond what the general society does, that's a different issue.

> god forbid you from buying something of historical significance in Europe -- then you can't change anything inside or outside and you are responsible for it.

What an exaggeration. Do you think such hyperbole strengthens your point? At best it makes you sound ignorant.

> Therefore, I think the question is whether an iphone is a "general computing device", or "an appliance".

This is a red herring. What matters is your freedom to use, repair, modify, resell, loan etc the hardware you bought and own.

I think you're underestimating how much of the iPhone's functionality depends on Apple's servers being available beyond just installing & updating apps: Think push notifications, backups, iCloud, iMessage, no more Safari updates (shiver), …

If Apple disappears all push notifications will stop working, even the ones from apps you already installed. This is another restriction of the walled garden.

I added a wifi relay to my washing machine to add it to home assistant.

How do I add my own apps to my iPhone, permanently?

I am semi-confident that with how anti-stealing feature works in iPhone, if apple servers are permanently down, few thousand phone owners a day will lose access to their phone forever. Not only to data, that is the part of encryption deal. To the device itself.

Otherwise, stealing would be very easy - just connect to wifi without access to apple servers and voila: phone is yours.

How would one install or update an app if apple and services disappear?

Ha! Sideloading!

Like the sibling comment says, sideloading. Same as how you do it on Android, where other stores exist (e.g. F-droid). It's not as convenient as the Play Store, because Google hasn't made it such, but it's not too inconvenient either.

The fact that you can't even imagine how that might work points to the real problem.

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