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Comment by ulrikrasmussen | Hacker News Reader

Someone here on HN used the term "cloud terminal" for modern electronic devices, and I think that is a very fitting name for phones and tablets. They are definitely not computers because they do not actually give the user access to general purpose computing in the sense that the users can control exactly what computations the device is going to execute. They are just terminals whose production costs we cover but which are actually owned by the cloud providers.

Also: The internet is slowly turning into a handful of clouds, and it is only a matter of time before you cannot meaningfully host anything by yourself outside of these clouds because your cloud terminal will refuse to talk to it.

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IDK, not really a fan of redefining computer to make a rhetorical point.

It seems counter-productive to tell people the computing device they think as a computer isn’t really a computer. It’s like saying my car isn’t really a car because I can’t adjust spark timing. Someone could make that semantic argument but it’s hard to imagine anyone would care.

>It’s like saying my car isn’t really a car because I can’t adjust spark timing.

What if it only drives along select predetermined monetised routes?

Even a car that you are not allowed to drive at all is still a car. It just isn't your car.

Exactly!

Our argument shouldn't be about the device's capabilities, but about its ownership. And increasingly, as this enshittification progresses, the person buying the device is becoming less and less its owner.

Sure. But a taxi is a car yet it doesn't quite take up the same mental spots. People will say they came by taxi instead of by car. People won't say they don't see the value in selfdriving capabilities or repairability because they can just get a taxi. Etc

I think we call those buses, usually!

No, a Bus is a big car with more space for passengers. The Route has no relation to the naming.

What if my aunt had three wheels?

I don’t see the value in hypotheticals like that. If the claim is that a computer is not really a computer unless every user can do any low level operations they want, is it also true that a car is not really a car unless every user can do any low level operations they want?

Manufacturers are taking away right to repair too! I think you picked a bad example. Back in the 60s you absolutely could change every low level component on a car.

That’s still a car.

You could own a race car that cannot legally be driven on any public roads and it’s still a car.

I agree with brookst that this sort of redefinition is a poor rhetorical tool.

Well it's still a vehicle but once something sufficiently deviates in form or function or the like it will no longer primarily be called that. People usually say they took a taxi for example rather saying they came by car even when every taxi is a car. Once that happens they start taking up different mental spots and comparisons between them start to make less and less sense. (saying you don't see the value of self driving capabilities because you can just get a taxi for example.)

> it will no longer primarily be called that

This isn’t relevant. Taxis are still cars and that’s something the vast majority of people would agree with. The fact that they have a more specific name doesn’t change anything.

A Bungalow is still a house. A skyscraper is still a building. A panini is still a sandwich. A taxi is still a car.

Then it's a streetcar

Point taken. But I think we can say that smartphones and tablets are definitely not "general-purpose computers" because they are not programmable, at least not freely so.

But they are programmable, very freely even. Whether you can start any desired program on the device is the crucial point. Having gates, doesn't influence what's inside the gates.

I'm reminded of Zed Shaw's argument about how python3 should not be considered Turing-complete if it can't run python2 code. It was a fun rhetorical exaggeration that I felt helped clarify that it isn't unable to run python2 code, but rather that the people in charge decided that it shouldn't.

Is it still a "car" if it only takes you to the train station and forces you to use public transport? "shuttle" might be more appropriate? Is it still your car if it leaves during the day and carries other people?

The meaning of words drifts when the situation changes.

Adjusting the spark timing is more a right to repair issue. If you replace the screen of your phone with one of a working phone do you expect it to work or do you need the approval from a licensed apple technician?

A taxi is still a car but we use a different word to differentiate the mode of operation. The difference in language infers different usage of the same machine.

Therefore going by car is understood as something different then going by taxi. In relation to this issue, it's like you rented a car but you get a taxi instead (selected operator controls the vehicle instead of you). Most people would not be pleased.

The problem being that phone or tablet is understood to be similar to computer while really they are not. So perhaps a different term to highlight this difference is not strange or counter-productive. Do you call your "smart tv" a computer in daily conversation?

How about instead: is an e-bike a bicycle? Is it a motorcycle?

The apparent user experience between a computer and a mobile are markedly different - especially if you were a Windows user circa 10 years ago. If you were a Windows user in the 90's to 00's, it's nearly unrecognizable in how much ownership you feel over your own device.

> IDK, not really a fan of redefining computer to make a rhetorical point.

Yes! This reminds me of Stallman who is in my opinion a visionary decades ahead of his time, but in terms of marketing he did that a lot and it ended up just distracting from the conversation. All of a sudden instead of discussing the actual issue, we're disussing rhetoric.

Speaking as someone who has built local-only apps (partially because I don’t want the hassle of maintaining a server):

There are plenty of useful apps that run locally on a phone. You can even run a whole LLM on your phone.

The shiniest and most popular apps are cloud terminals but the iPhone is actually a pretty darn powerful device.

Plenty of useful apps != general purpose computing capabilities.

You are not allowed to run computations that have not been approved by Apple if you are using an iPhone. Yes, the hardware is powerful, but it is cryptographically locked down. It is physically local, but the control of the hardware is entirely non-local and 100% owned by Apple.

unless you're using an API that requires an entitlement, you can still get an apple developer account and sign whatever code you want and run it on your devices.

So if they don't give you an apple dev account, or close yours, you can't.

Case in point.

Did you just move the goalposts from “you can’t run arbitrary code today” to “hypothetically, in the future, Apple could prevent running arbitrary code”?

As with Google accounts, it's not hypothetical, it's a risk. People do occasionally get locked out of being an Apple developer for reasons they cannot foresee.

> Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114

> Apple bans entire dev account, no reason given https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44601548

It’s still rhetorical sleight of hand.

I could have a stroke that leaves me unable to program. Does that mean I am not truly free to program today?

Those are risks, but they do not change the on-the-ground reality today, and the claim was that users, today, cannot use these device as general purpose computers.

No it's not. I need permission by a third-party to be able to program a device I supposedly own. I need to give them money, I need to give them my identity, and I need to tie my identity to any distribution of the software I make if other people are to be able to install it.

This is not a rhetorical sleight of hand, this is just saying that I am not truly in control of the device that I have bought.

We can use them today as general purpose computers, if we make a large effort to do so.

In my Linux and Mac, I dont think twice to quickly write a script to automate some pain-in-the-butt issues. But with my phone, it is pain-in-the-butt to write anything. It becomes not worth the effort.

Moreover, we can argue if technically it is a general purpose computer for whole day long. But that's not the point.

The point is that we are allowing gradually the big organizations to restrict general purpose computing, the internet and other previously free systems. It is happening slowly, where we can still give them the benefit of doubt. We are the frogs in the kettle where we are arguing that the temperature is just one degree more than earlier, so it is not actually boiling. We can keep on arguing about the temperature or step back and see the big picture where it is going.

The rhetorical sleight of hand is yours, by claiming that a device requiring pre-authorization (by virtue of needing a developer account) is an open computing platform.

Anything that needs Apple to say "yes" before it runs is not "arbitrary."

No, hypothetically apple lets you run arbitrary code. In practice, they lock people out of their developer accounts all the time.

Technically you don’t even need a dev account to run your own app. You need a dev account to distribute it in TestFlight and on the App Store.

You can install your own “Flip Off Steve Jobs” app directly from Xcode if you so desire.

You can run arbitrary computations on iOS devices if they're written in JavaScript, WebAssembly, or Swift (via Playgrounds). All of these are Turing complete, and all three compile into machine code. What you don't have without an Apple developer account is direct machine code access.

Also note that apps like Pythonista allow you to write programs that call arbitrary Objective-C APIs without permission from Apple. This means that you have a Turing-complete language running unsigned code that can do anything a signed app can do. Your programs do, however, execute slowly.

> The shiniest and most popular apps are cloud terminals but the iPhone is actually a pretty darn powerful device.

They are powerful from a computational perspective, but the point was that it's a hassle to run a custom binary on them as compared to regular computers. You get a powerful device that is not flexible in this specific sense, so much of that power is not utilized

> Someone here on HN used the term "cloud terminal" for modern electronic devices, and I think that is a very fitting name for phones and tablets.

Not really, at least not in the case of Android.

We have been able to install (and develop) software for these devices since day one. To me, that is pretty much a general purpose computer. The only real difference are peripherals, which is better suited for content consumption than creation. Even then, it is trivial to add a keyboard, mouse, or printer. Other forms of I/O are "walled off" behind permissions, but most of those have to do with privacy (very few computers have things like GPS, accelerometers, etc.). The big difference after that is the cellular modem, where security is a big concern. Yet that mostly affects phones.

I'm not sure I would even agree with it in the case of iOS. The distinguishing difference between iOS and Android is that the development and distribution of third-party software is restricted by the vendor. I don't think that makes it any less of a computer.

Contrast that to the typical ereader. Technically it is a general purpose computer, but most ereaders are developed to support a singular purpose. You aren't going to be installing third-party apps in the course of normal usage.

Well, they can do computing, but it's awkward and most people don't use them for that, it's true.

The question of ownership is interesting. If I buy a chair, it doesn't make a very good table, does that mean I don't own it? Most people don't know what general purpose computing is. To them a cloud terminal is a computer. So, to them, they do own their devices because that's all they are.

I feel like some of us think we got close, or anywhere near, what Stallman has been advocating for most of his life. But I'm afraid we didn't. We all chose convenience. We chose to believe that one man was enough to hold back the tide against enormously powerful corporations and governments. Some even turned their back on Stallman. And some even work for the enemy.

We haven't really lost anything here. It's just becoming more clear what we actually have.

A phone is a computer whose creator is incentivized to make it pretend it isn't a computer, because it harms profits if they don't.

Increasingly, so is the government, because freedom of computing is incompatible with surveillance, age verification etc.

We did not all choose convenience over freedom, but the majority did. Those of us who chose freedom were still able to participate in digital society, albeit with a bit of added inconvenience, but this is becoming increasingly difficult as cloud terminal use is becoming a prerequisite for doing banking, using public transport or even verifying your age on the internet.

The chair analogy is a bit weird, because I am actually free to buy a chair, disassemble it and somehow use it as a table if my needs for a table for some weird reason happens to coincide with the form factor of the chair. I don't think the analogy really works, but if a chair worked as a modern phone then it would be built with one-way screws and in general be built to lose structural integrity if you try to disassemble it.

A better analogy is roads. Anyone can put any car on the public roads (they may be breaking the law if the car is not legal). But we are moving towards a world where the roads will slash the tires of any car which isn't approved by Ford or Tesla. Ford and Tesla didn't build the roads, but they somehow took over the control of them.

>The question of ownership is interesting. If I buy a chair, it doesn't make a very good table, does that mean I don't own it?

A better comparison is buying a chair where the seller gets to aprove who sits and when.

Indeed, and think how much more secure this is for Grandma! What if a scammer comes over and wants to sit? Won't somebody please think of Grandma

Not really. My point is people don't even think they're buying a general purpose computer because they don't know what that is. They are buying a cloud terminal and it works as a cloud terminal. You might think of your smartphone as a computer, but you're wrong. So it's a chair and anyone can sit on it, it's just not a table. It never was.

Super predictable for HN to trot out the "tablets and phones aren't computers" line.

It's still wrong. Countless people use them for all their computing needs. Overwhelmingly, though, these people are not the sort to comment on HN. They are Regular People, not Professional Computer Touchers, and their needs are absolutely met.

> they do not actually give the user access to general purpose computing in the sense that the users can control exactly what computations the device is going to execute

What prevents the creation of an App that allows one to do exactly that?

The official store won't accept it and you can't sideload it.

You can in fact side load it. There are no restrictions on apps loaded via adb. The 24H restriction period on side loading only applies to apps retrieved by other means.

Oh wow, you can sideload it? Amazing. All grandma has to do is install Android Studio, enable developer mode, tap the build number seven times, flip on USB debugging, plug into a laptop, accept an RSA key fingerprint, and pop open a terminal. You know, the way normal people install apps.

>> they do not actually give the user access to general purpose computing in the sense that the users can control exactly what computations the device is going to execute

i don't think we were talking about grandma use case

Its hyperbolic but hits the point.

I've helped multiple coworkers (in a non-computer related field) sideload F-Droid for a few spyware/ad free apps they liked the look of.

Id sideload my own phone using adb but I'd tell them theyre out of luck.

Google approval policy may prevent that now or retroactively.

> it is only a matter of time before you cannot meaningfully host anything by yourself outside of these clouds because your cloud terminal will refuse to talk to it.

That's well on its way. Try to log into your bank (or countless other sites) using a VPN. They flat out turn you away. If you don't use VPN but use a different computer or connection you get grilled with "prove you're a human". I get that they are doing anti spam and fraud steps, but the logical conclusion of where this ends up is "if we don't recognize you from our mountains of tracking info we've been compiling, we don't want to do business with you".

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