alt Hacker NewsI know I'm going to get downvoted to hell for this, but I genuinely think it's OK for a device manufacturer to say: "we are building this device to run this software. If you don't want to run this software, then don't buy this device. There are plenty of other devices out there that will run other software, you can buy one of those if you want to run other software - our devices are designed to only run our software, and we're only going to support that".
I think that's a huge difference from the sideloading issue, though. Which is effectively saying "you must purchase all your software for this device from us, even if it's not our software, and even if it's available elsewhere for less".
I get how one statement creates the monopoly that allows the other statement, but I think they are still two separate statements.
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>There are plenty of other devices out there that will run other software, you can buy one of those if you want to run other software - our devices are designed to only run our software, and we're only going to support tha
except in about a hundred million examples where the niche software that is running on the niche hardware has no viable alternative.
In The Real World when you have a component that breaks somewhere, and the manufacturer of the thing either fails to help or no longer exists you contract a third party to retrofit a repair module of some sort, or you do the work yourself to get the thing working.
How does this principle apply when the producer of the thing booby traps it with encryption and circuit breakers?
Software is special, comparing it to other industries never works well.
> There are plenty of other devices out there...
No there isn't, and one of the main problems.
+1. Smartphones aren't a monopoly. GrapheneOS is a thing. More companies can build hardware for it if there's demand. Not every piece of hardware needs to be general purpose computer.
I've been delighted to get my parents on iPhone+iPad for simplicity (and they have too). It feels this crowd sometimes assumes every barrier put in place is anti-consumer, but it's not. Blocking access to sensors, limiting background runtime, blocking access to other app's data, limiting it to reviewed apps... are all great things for most people. Most people don't have the technical literacy to have "informed consent" prompts popping up every 5 minutes, and most of them know it too. Most folks don't mind trusting Apple to make the tougher technical calls for them, and actually appreciate it.
Make cool hacker centric hardware. Make cool easy to use, locked down, and foolproof hardware. Both can and should exist.