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They’re not a special case, they’re just like game consoles which are similarly locked down. The PC is the special case and I think that’s an accident of history. If the PC were brand new today it would be a locked down, walled garden like all the rest.

The PC is “the one that got away” in fishing parlance.

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I think the distinction in my head is that game consoles are explicitly single-purpose (or very limited-purpose), whereas smartphones are playing at being general purpose, but only insofar as their manufacturer approves of that purpose.

Personally I see the broader trend towards highly-restricted corporate-controlled hardware (of all types) as something explicitly detrimental that we should push back on wherever possible.

You should read this from 2012:

Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing

https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

or watch the speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFY0a_VOGbE

Yeah I read that back in 2012. It’s gradually playing out!

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