It is just a cash register or checkout line for the store owner.
I will say two things give me hope.
People on this site - technical people with the ability to make a difference - seem to be getting to the point where they care.
Also, while reading the .pdf of the lawsuit against google, one of the key points is that you can't fork android or uninstall google software. I wonder if that might apply to google, and possibly transfer to apple.
I would like to be able to install alternative "gatekeeper" software not created by apple.
> People on this site - technical people with the ability to make a difference - seem to be getting to the point where they care.
Apple's moves to interfere with what users can do on their own computers, plus the keyboard issues and that stupid touch bar, are why I went straight Linux for my latest dev machine, instead of buying another MacBook. There have been a handful of issues to iron out, but it is really nice having control over my own machine and not having to spend tons of time fighting with Apple.
I don't know how representative I am, but I'm hopeful more and more devs get motivated enough to stop putting up with these kinds of changes from Apple. Given the direction things have been heading with them, I'd guess that the dev experience on MacBooks is going to get increasingly worse.
Linux land has its own issues as people here are trying to copy things from apple but some of us are still here, fighting the good fight.
I just wish technical people can make the difference. It seems more like people with actual power don't make the difference because it clashes with their bottom line.
> People on this site - technical people with the ability to make a difference - seem to be getting to the point where they care.
Really? I feel like there's more support for locked-down hardware, proprietary software, devices where the owner doesn't get as much access or control as the manufacturer, etc., on HN now than there was in the past. I feel like a decade ago it was fairly common conventional wisdom among HN readers that you ought to have root on your devices, that jailbreaking or reverse engineering restricted devices is actively good, that the trends toward less owner control are alarming, etc.
> Really? I feel like there's more support for locked-down hardware, proprietary software, devices where the owner doesn't get as much access or control as the manufacturer, etc., on HN now than there was in the past.
One of my friend works for an advertising company who specialises in social media marketing. Their clients have a budget of 100,000 to 250,000 per month for only hiring people to post on social networks! The job includes identifying all negative posts about the company or its product or business model, and to politely rebut it and offer the company's point of view. Or to just plainly promote the product / services / company on the social media platform to create a buzz. Unethical social media marketers go beyond this - their job includes creating and supporting a negative campaign against their client's competitors.
As the former Google CEO said, social media works like an "amplifier for idiots". I'd rather not comment on whether we are all idiots here, but I am sure none of us can deny the "amplifying" effect of a message here on HN or other social media platforms.
My interpretation of the guidelines is that you shouldn't use accusations of astroturfing against a specific comment you disagree with, because you cannot know in any particular instance whether or not it is indeed astroturfing.
I don't think the guidelines are meant to ban all discussion of astroturfing in general as a marketing tool.
There are users who can see the security benefits of such a system. And if you use your computre like an appliance to exchange data and authorize purchases, it's not too bad of an idea to use an appliance.
But my opinion is the exact opposite, Apple is not getting a penny of mine until they give their users the freedom that they deserve. General purpose computing devices should allow people to compute generally, without the blessing of some corporate deity.
Honestly I get the opposite of hope from people on this site.
There is a large vocal population there that seems to _want_ Apple to continue to lock down and take control of their devices, all in the name of "security." Read any comment thread on the Apple vs Epic lawsuit, lots of people defending Apple's "right" to dictate what you can and can't do with your own device.
While there are others on here who don't think this way, I find is a disappointingly small minority on a site which calls itself "Hacker" News.
When my MBP 2015 croaks I don't think I will use any Apple machines regularly again. They've been my main laptops since the iBook G3/900 (prior to that I've used Apple as well, alongside other systems). So it's going to be a solid 2 decades or so.
For most of that time I had Linux/BSD/Win/Mac machines that I'd use for different things, the Mac being the "personal" computer first option. At some point Windows became unbearable and I simply stopped using down to the point I couldn't justify maintaining a machine for it neither in the physical nor logical sense (even maintaining familiarity with what's on them). This was roughly 2~3 years ago and being forced to switch to Win10 eased the decision to just EOL it.
Recently I'm doing most of my daily stuff on a Linux desktop machine (I've been a Linux user since the mid 90s) partly because of the lockdown. In the desktop, Linux has been the best experience for me for many years. Just not on the laptop for a variety of reasons. With Apple's increasing anti-user hostility I think it's time to deal with the mild problems and annoyances your typical Linux laptop is expected to cause.
Speaking for myself only, I have an iPhone with iOS and a MacBook Air with macOS and a desktop computer that runs FreeBSD. Haven’t used Windows for years. Was purely Linux and FreeBSD for several years too.
Back when I left Windows, Windows 7 had just come out, and I switched over to Linux and FreeBSD because I learned about those at the university and I came to appreciate open source software.
Then came smart phones and I heard that Android ran Linux. So I was like wow finally a computer in my pocket where I can do everything I can on my laptop!
But I soon learned that this was not the case.
Mobile platforms are fundamentally different, and the terminal is not relevant for most things I want to do with a phone.
I want to record videos, watch videos, talk to people, read stuff. And I still have an SSH client on my iPhone for when I need to remote into my server to do stuff on it while on the go.
And iPhone is giving me the best experience, with the addition of being really tight on the security. And for my phone this is what I want.
I am staying with Apple until they take it too far. Then I will leave them in a heartbeat. But for all the years I have been using iOS, everything Apple has been doing has been a betterment of the experience.
The only one thing really that bothered me was I had a magazine subscription and reading those magazines is in theory only possible on iOS. Even though actually it’s just an app for reading PDF files. And I didn’t have access to the PDF files directly. But that was a minor thing anyway, and recently I jailbroke an old iOS device that I have had laying in a drawer that was running an old iOS version and I was actually able to extract PDF files from the app.
But that subscription or two that I had, those were an exception anyway. Mostly when I read something on the phone I read on the web. And all of the eBooks that I have ever bought I have bought on the computer and not locked down in an app.
> I want to record videos, watch videos, talk to people, read stuff. And I still have an SSH client on my iPhone for when I need to remote into my server to do stuff on it while on the go.
I do all these things on an OS that is entirely a open source community effort using absolutely nothing proprietary. F-Droid and it's derivatives offer all these things easily. Maybe I'm missing the point here?
Can we see the source code for your iphone ssh client? How sure are you about its security?
> Mobile platforms are fundamentally different, and the terminal is not relevant for most things I want to do with a phone.
Computer freedom and programming is about far more than the terminal.
My biggest issue with the locked down nature of phones/tablets is that they hold the next generation of programmers, and instead groom users to be just dumb consumers.
For many people a phone or tablet is their first and often only computer. Especially in emerging markets. You can't create on these devices, they are designed only to consume.
No more curiosity driven discovery of programming. You're not allowed to extend your device, that is reserved for silicon valley elites who can afford an additional $1500 device. So stop asking and just consume what they produce for you.
> You can't create on these devices, they are designed only to consume.
Not sure I agree entirely. You still have apps for making music and video content, as well as drawing and painting etc. But I absolutely see your point. Hopefully with time they will make it possible to write and compile apps on iOS directly.
> Hopefully with time they will make it possible to write and compile apps on iOS directly.
I'm not holding my breath for this. There's no indication that they're planning on it and every step taken since the inception of the iPhone has been to lock the device down more in the name of "security."
You can make what the walled garden owner has graciously allowed you to create. Now try making a video game on an iphone. That's how we used to learn to program, on Commodore-64s and such.
> Then came smart phones and I heard that Android ran Linux. So I was like wow finally a computer in my pocket where I can do everything I can on my laptop!
There's an explosion of people trying to get their software on your phone and application tricks scraping away information and control from the end user. Someone has got to filter the deluge of garbage, and people cling to Apple to do it.
Phones aren't simple enough that the end user can manage everything it does and the software world isn't well behaved enough that we can exist without gatekeepers.
As relevant as the gatekeeper argument is, there is also a big drawback: you need to trust the gatekeeper's competence and motivations. Not only do you need to trust them in the here and now, but you have to trust it into the future. Keep in mind that a change in management or a change in the viability of a company can lead to radical changes in their direction.
Contrast the locked down model to the open source approach. Yes, there are nefarious operators in the world of open source. On the other hand the privacy concerns are much lessened. Now there are many reasons for that, but two of those reasons are the visibility of how the software works and the ability to modify it when necessary.
Wake me up when Apple filters away Facebook and a host of Google Apps from its store, since their apps trick users into divulging information involuntarily.
While potentially true, I don't see how posting on HN is protecting much. What's more likely are ofc people who work in relevant spaces who are paid to maintain the walled gardens who therefore are incentivized to not accept criticism of said systems.
That is because a lot of people here see the masses of 'normal' or non-technically-inclined people that need to be protected against themselves because their usage of devices they do not understand has a real-world impact on everyone else when things go wrong.
There is no true ideal version of this, there is no perfect world and there is no situation in which you can have full control but also have full protection without also knowing everything about the system you have.
Phones and Computers are 'appliances' that do not need to be changed by the user (and we are talking about the mass-market user here), if anything it needs to prevent being changed by the user due to the larger ecosystem a device is part of.
You can make the choice to not be part of the ecosystem, but most people would very much like to be part of a system, together, and one way of doing that is to have a level of sameness and consistency that so far is not viable without some sort of 'appliance-like' properties of the devices in question.
You can still buy a different device, not take part in an existing system, and do whatever you want. But you will have a hard time getting the benefits of interconnection, scale, and support. Those three elements are pretty much why some brands or devices are sold in masses and some aren't.
To this end I simply have multiples of most things. Some just need to do what it does for everyone else (interconnect, function the same way every day, have some company bear responsibility for practically everything), others are for me (open source hardware, open source software, no protections, but also no end-user support or responsibility).
> You can still buy a different device, not take part in an existing system, and do whatever you want
This may not always be true, in a practical sense, for those with intense cultural pressure to fit in. And fitting in means having a green bubble, i.e. Apple phone.
Well, that's what 'not take part in an existing system' stands for. If you want to be outside a social system, that can be your choice. If not, then you'll have to deal with all of the constraints. That could be ICQ vs. MSN vs. AIM vs. YIM or BBM vs SMS or now iMessage vs. WhatEver.
The mass consumer market won't all join IRC to chat, they could have (and still can) for decades and it just isn't happening. And that's fine, but that also means that other systems (like iMessage but also Facebook) gain users with all the lock-in that comes with that.
Apart from the "green bubble" cultural pressure, the fact is that I cannot get a fully unlocked device at all if I want anything relatively modern. Tell me what is the "free" alternative for a top notch galaxy Note20 ultra or iphone 12 pro max.
You can't get it because nobody can afford to make one. It's technically feasible but from a business perspective it's not something achievable; the closest would be something like the Pinephone, but that is suboptimal to say the least.
But no - I mean because they use multiple apps. E.g. WhatsApp, or Facebook messenger, or Signal etc. Even the people I know who have iPhones tend to use these things. If I want to know what kind of phone someone uses, I generally have to ask.
The thesis seems to be that people are so unable to think for themselves that they are compelled to choose their device by means of colored bubbles.
If this is really true, then surely it’s the best argument one can possibly make for why the ecosystem needs to be locked down.
> You can still buy a different device, not take part in an existing system, and do whatever you want.
The point is you can't. Intense social pressure to interact with people who _do_ take part in the existing system means you have to partake in the existing system to interact.
My friends use Messenger so I need a facebook account, or my family uses WhatsApp so I need a non-rooted android phone.
No mainstream messaging apps support federation and many are hostile towards reverse engineering. WhatsApp for example will permaban accounts who do not use official clients in the name of "security."
You don't notice because you have already excluded anyone who chooses not to use a mainstream Android or iOS device. Or anyone you know who _would_ like to make that choice doesn't, cause they don't want to be that one friend who can't be reached as easily as the rest of the group.
Ok - so this is much more interesting than the more trivial green bubbles comment I originally replied to, which decidedly was not making this point.
It’s true that if you need to interact with people on most of these systems, you need an account. I have a Facebook account I use only for messenger, and I would prefer not to.
However, your argument has a few flaws.
1. I obviously haven’t excluded the people would would like to choose a non-mainstream device but who hasn’t.
2. You seem to assume that I won’t install apps so that I can communicate with people who don’t use the networks I’m already part of. That’s not a reasonable assumption. I have quite a few messaging apps installed, some of which I use with just one person.
The question this raises for me is - are there any federated messaging networks that do not have any clients available for mainstream platforms, but are in significant use?
> People on this site - technical people with the ability to make a difference - seem to be getting to the point where they care.
I agree, hopefully we can inform and influence our less aware friends and peers elsewhere.
One of my biggest concerns is that this unreasonable control of our hardware by the manufacturer is extending to vehicles - electric cars and motorcycles- even bicycles seem to want to track our movements and phone home.
If it becomes true of Apple, it will necessarily become true in many other domains. Xbox, Switch, PS, etc. What about car computers? Not just the infotainment system, but the actual engine computer modules?
For what it's worth, the US Air Force has been burned in the past by having game consoles locked down.
They bought a bunch of PS3s to make a cluster back when the machines could run Linux, but Sony removed the ability to run a custom OS when people started to actually use it.
I think the military got a special contract for continued support, but why shouldn't that be a feature that is expected of any complex computing device?
People do also modify their car and motorcycle ECUs, it's called "chipping". Again, this is expected of a product that you purchased and own, and it's still illegal to operate vehicles that don't pass local environmental and safety inspections.
> Also, while reading the .pdf of the lawsuit against google, one of the key points is that you can't fork android or uninstall google software.
Except you can and you don't need Google's permission to do it either. Many devices come with unlockable bootloaders, and all custom ROMs come without anything Google so you actually have to install Google apps manually should you want them.
I do not mean "can you do it", I mean can a commerical entity do it or allow you to do it.
The .pdf says specifically:
"Google’s anti-forking agreements, however, have inhibited operating system innovation through forking, ensuring that manufacturers and distributors are beholden to Google’s version of Android. Distributors know that any violation of an anti-forking agreement could mean excommunication from Google’s Android ecosystem, loss of access to Google’s must-have GPS and Google Play, and millions or even billions of dollars in lost revenue sharing. Thus, distributors avoid anything that Google might deem "fragmentation” — a term that Google “purposely leave[s]... very vague” and interprets broadly."
Their anti-forking provisions put them, in some ways, close to what MS got in trouble for in their anti-trust case (removing or threatening to remove OEM pricing from OEMs who sold non-Windows OSes).
I will say two things give me hope.
People on this site - technical people with the ability to make a difference - seem to be getting to the point where they care.
Also, while reading the .pdf of the lawsuit against google, one of the key points is that you can't fork android or uninstall google software. I wonder if that might apply to google, and possibly transfer to apple.
I would like to be able to install alternative "gatekeeper" software not created by apple.