Consumers buy these devices. Apple doesn't give them away for free. A consumer should be able to run whatever they want on the devices they have purchased. We are a long way from achieving this basic goal.
I want full confidence that I can buy a second hand device without any malicious software installed (even if I’m not smart enough to know how to properly and fully reset it). And I want people that buy my second hand phone to have full confidence in that device so I get a good resale value for it. Maintaining this resale value is also important to avoid e-waste, since if people don’t get a good price for their phone it just gets left in a drawer.
Apple provides this product. So I buy it. If you don’t want these guarantees for a device you’re buying, just don’t buy an iPhone.
I think we’re going about lack of choice completely wrong. Yeah, it may be hard to get certain apps that don’t rely on iOS or Google Play Services. So legislation should target that problem instead: government and key public service apps should be published in an open app format that can be run on any device that implements the open standard.
iPhones are extremely popular and desired, and people voted for it, in its current state.
If people didn’t like what Apple was doing, they can just buy Android. Awfully simple
That has probably never been the case for any product in any category. Your car can't fly, even though you think that the customer is always right.
But what hackers are demanding is that Apple alter their software to work exactly as they want and assist them with this, even though most of them will not ever purchase an Apple device. To the detriment of normal customers who want devices that work well.
Why are these requirements not levied against other product manufacturers? Why don't you try to force Tesla to make their cars run on diesel? Why don't you try to force McDonalds to make you a Whopper?
But really it's about reasonable fit-for-use regulations. That burger needs to be edible. The restaurant has to follow fire codes, even though that takes extra work. Both of those are orders of magnitude harder, as a percentage of cost, than letting the user control their own device. An even closer comparison is a rule that Tesla has to work with other chargers, which would be a good rule if it doesn't already exist.
DRM is a special new thing that didn't traditionally exist, and we shouldn't let it be used as a way to remove the ability to tinker. It's almost as bad as physically hindering.
The analogy is more like comparing the McDonald's kitchen to the iPhone itself? In that case the answer is obvious. I don't own the kitchen, but I do own the iPhone.
But to elaborate on burgers, since you keep making wild extrapolations, all I would demand is that the burgers not have DRM on them (or Food Rights Management?). Thankfully nobody has invented that yet. But imagine if you couldn't combine your own drink with a McDonald's burger, at home. If that kind of anti-consumer practice was possible, I guarantee you'd see it implemented. And we should not treat it as a right of the restaurant as long as they don't "physically" prevent you from doing it. Outlaw it as soon as it seems like it could be possible.
Most restaurants of any kind will not let you enter with your own drink or food, so your example can be made both ways.
You're not demanding customization of your iPhone before purchasing it: worse, you're demanding it after your purchase, even though there's no unclarity as to how an iPhone works.
I doubt that the people here have the same entitlement towards other businesses as they have towards Apple. Or at least I hope so.
I'm not demanding they customize it, though. I'm just demanding they don't artificially block customization.
So, like a normal burger. You keep adding weird demands into your analogies, because the straightforward burger analogy is "burger where if I take it home I can customize it at my leisure, no technology applied to make that effectively impossible", and there's no way to twist that desire into sounding unreasonable. The thing I want from Apple is a thing that almost every company already does.