Why is this acceptable for phones but would not for the case above?
I know a lot of people don't care, and that's ok, but we should root for an open choice for the users.
PCs happened by accident.
Before the PC, people had TVs - devices not for creating, but for passively consuming content made by big corporations and the state. And we had games consoles - devices not for creating, but for playing games made by a medium-sized company, with strict approval by a huge company (who want a cut). Strictly censored to be age-appropriate, naturally. Pirate radio? Straight to jail.
Before that people had newspapers - media for passively consuming, intended for mass readership, written at the behest of rich newspaper barons with certain political opinions they're keen to push.
And after the PC, we have smartphones - devices not for creating, but for consuming content feeds, curated by big corporations, with rich owners with certain political opinions they're keen to push. A huge company eager to take a cut. A tiny screen, and a keyboard that puts curly braces three keypresses deep. Can't even debug a web page without connecting to a PC. And soon to be strictly censored to be age-appropriate.
The PC is really the outlier here.
They also blur the line between "computer" and "console", since the NES is practically the same architecture as many contemporary "computers". Homebrew games existed, and weren't that far out of reach. Homebrew has existed on pretty much every console ever.
PCs weren't an accident in any way. They are a direct descendant of "home computers". That's why they were called "personal computers" in the first place.
Alongside newspapers we had 'zine culture and mail-order pamphlets.
There has always been the option to contribute - the Apple iPhone is quite possibly the first exception.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-access_television https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_television_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swindon_Viewpoint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_television_in_Austra...
Saying that I think the situation in the smartphones today is less about the business model and more about control and surveillance.
Extremely common at major universities and research centres. CTSS, ITS, TENEX, Multics, Unix and even VM/370 were all alternate operating at some point.
> Other than OS2, alternate OSs for other systems were rather rare,
You weren't there, were you? A lot of people replaced MS-DOS with DR-DOS before Microsoft deliberately broke it with Windows. A little later, a number of people were running Unix System V on their PCs, to the extent that there was a regular column about Unix in Byte.
They added some obfuscated code to Windows 3.1 that made it refuse to run on DR-DOS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code
So not common outside of ivory towers, no?
All modern devices are appliances, not computers.
They perform the specific functions that they were programmed to perform, and do not allow arbitrary execution of calculations on the underlying hardware.
Many people, mostly folks who adopt the Apple ecosystem, see this as a positive thing that allows them to delegate undifferentiated decisions on security and ways of working to the vendor.
I am one of those people and hope that Android remains open so that people don't expect Apple open up their hardware, which will result in fragmentation.
That's the thing. You may have bought a device that was meant to perform a task but after some time the company decides that now it should do a different task. I think that's what stops making you the owner. You can't really choose what to do with it.
Why? And how does that bother you?
Separate from computers and phones locking down devices is a much wider issue, usually it is only implemented to reduce liability of the manufacturer or to allow for planned obsolescence.
I am not arguing you need to like where this has led, but you have people in sibling comment threads here arguing we need to push back on things assuming you will use a phone when the whole revolution has been getting most of the world online by making phones widely available.
Due to this the equipment manufacturers where never incentivized to have a "open" ecosystem for the CPU+modem combo. That's why there is no OS war on a per device basis, most phones supports 1 OS officially.
The yet-to-be-released Steam Machine is not subsidized and is unlocked. Steam is a OS agnostic digital marketplace, so it doesn't matter what OS you install on the machine.
Microsoft doesn't see a threat in allowing other OSes on their Surface hardware because the majority of their revenue comes from M365.
It's just market forces really. In the end, phones provide enough utility for the majority of users while being locked down. There's nothing stopping you from buying a fully-open phone, but there's just very little utility in it for the majority of users.
Few interested hardware vendors, discontinued after 4 years. "mixed reviews at launch, while critics and analysts deemed it to be commercially unsuccessful"
Windows 10 S was another attempt that "Similarly [restricts] software installation to applications obtained via Windows Store." Cancelled after one year.
Exactly the fate I wish upon closed ecosystems. The only question is why iOS is different. I am inclined to say it's the brand status that overpriced luxury goods have that draws rich people initially, making it lucrative and perhaps even a tad prestigious to be there, but surely it's more than that?
iOS was a new SDK from the start.
iOS existed before the Microsoft Store. The apps developed were brand new. No backlash from a new SDK and platform.
Windows RT is closer to iPadOS though. For iPadOS, apps just worked since it’s based off of iOS.
The Microsoft Store only supported a new half-baked SDK that limited what applications were capable of. Developers already had Win32 apps and rewriting them with the new SDK seemed pointless just to support what seemed like a needless limitation.
I see what you did there... and agree completely. If you don't have root, it's not yours. All my Androids (none from this decade) are rooted and I plan to keep them that way.
Now, the tech to make that tie near-unbreakable exists.
I was only aware of that possibility for pc clones
Here's an alternative OS for the C64, though I no longer have such a machine to try it on: https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Contiki
The problem today is that modern computers are designed to prevent this, by means that can provide mathematical proofs you won't be able to defeat the protection in any useful sense before the Sun burns out. You have tamper-proof fuses embedded in microchips, and some systems have cryptographic hashes in every major component to prevent you from replacing something too hard to reprogram, etc.
We're yet to see a fully locked down computer (smartphones are close), but the tech for it is there.
On the topic of Windows, it took lawsuits to allow OEM's and users to remove IE.
Open choice will always be an uphill battle.
You've got a supercomputer and a library and a set of video production equipment in your pocket, among other things. The capabilities of such a device are fundamentally different from something that's tethered to a desk or that's conspicuous when out-and-about. The idea of it being open and untrackable is exciting for some and terrifying for others.
So yeah, the society has largely accepted this. PC is the exception.