alt Hacker News>“Hardware I own” sounds like you bought a pan and demand the right to cook any food you want.
Because I did. How come I can do what I want with my computer, but not my phone? Why are phones so inferior in this area?
My phone is more powerful than many of the computers I've had in the past, yet I need to jump through a million hoops to use it as a software development platform. Why?
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> Because I did. How come I can do what I want with my computer, but not my phone? Why are phones so inferior in this area?
Apple and Microsoft are constantly working on fixing the issue with their appstores and requiring app signing in more places. The way industry going is to lock down more of laptops, than allowing phones to be like computers.
>How come I can do what I want with my computer, but not my phone?
It kind of started because phones interact with phone networks and the network companies didn't want hacked software mucking up their networks. I realise the baseband part is separate from the rest of the phone but it's always been that way with every cell phone I've had over 30 years, that they are part locked down.
Whereas none of the regular computers and laptops have been especially locked down.
It would be cool if you could just connect your laptop to a radio and connect to cell networks but I don't think any of them allow that?
A very profitable instance of market segmentation
Your smartwatch is probably more powerful than some of your past computers too. Same with your DSLR camera. Even your smart fridge. These are specialized hardware+software gadgets designed to a particular purpose, which is very different from being a development platform. Same with a phone.