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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

We really need a no-tether law. If you buy a device, then it should be possible to use it even after cutting all ties with the original vendor, otherwise it is a service, not a product.

If I buy a device from company A, then want to do business with company B, why does company A have anything to say about it? Am I not the owner of my device?

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Yes and let's extend that - if you can't cut the tether then you're renting it and they have to keep it up to spec and comply with some rental regulations. If you decide it's not for you within an agreed lifetime of the device they have to refund the proportional difference.

   they have to refund the proportional difference.

They do. If you swap in your 1 y.o. iPhone Max you get $50 discount on the new one

/s?

Agree. But I assume this is so much harder than right to repair — which Apple equally will never respect.

I would love to know how this plays out with the filesystem wars we seem to be continually stuck in.

Last I checked, iPhones and iPads can be flashed...you can put whatever operating system you want.

Apple's operating system (iOS) gets installable packages from the Apple Store.

> iPhones and iPads can be flashed...you can put whatever operating system you want.

Please do provide a link.

Maybe this? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/06/developers-get-linux...

The caveat is that it only seems to be available on older hardware. This is absolutely a hack that Apple actively tries to stop in hardware implementations.

Not to mention that it required an exploit to do so.

That is so hyperbole, it’s hard to bear. What is a ”device“, exactly? What does it mean if it ”possible“ to use the device?

Not every appliance has to be a general purpose computing device.

Bad faith arguments never end here. This general purpose computing device that you are trying to redefine as an "appliance" for the sake of the argument is how majority of the population consume media and information, manage their bank accounts, track their habits, communicate with each other, set up doctor's appointments, edit text documents, take and edit photographs, sign documents, and the other 99.9% of use cases that you must be disregarding in order to call it an "appliance".

>Not every appliance has to be a general purpose computing device.

it doesn't (I'm fine with game console OS as is), but Apple/IOS is definitely in an arguable position to be a general purpose computing device. I think subjecting anti-tether laws to companies in such a position seems reasonable fro the consumer end.

>What is a ”device“, exactly? What does it mean if it ”possible“ to use the device?

I feel it's less about what Apple can do and more about what they can't. They can't make it any more difficult to tinker with the hardware a user bought than any other general purpose computing device (in this case, desktop/laptop devices).

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