3 ms·

It seems a little unfair to judge a company against their hypothetical future actions. I agree that if they do remove the option to disable it in future then th

by Osmium 11y ago

It seems a little unfair to judge a company against their hypothetical future actions. I agree that if they do remove the option to disable it in future then that's a problem, of course. > they sell two very popular lines of computers (iPhones and iPads) that are completely locked down. Note that iOS is less locked down now than it has been in the past. Previously, you had to enroll in the $99/year developer programme to run your own code on your device, but now you just need to register for a free developer account. So they're moving in the right direction, even if this is still too restrictive for some.

umanwizard 11y ago
I'm not judging them based on hypothetical future actions. I'm not really judging them at all; I'm just uneasy and worried. I'm predicting that the probability of hypothetical future actions for which I'd judge them is too high for my comfort. I'm also judging the hell out of them for their past and current action of keeping iOS locked down. The developer program thing, IMO, is a bit of a red herring; everyone who can buy an iPhone can also pay $99, so pragmatically there is nothing you can do now that you couldn't before, unless you're a student and your parents bought you your phone. Sure, it's a step in the right direction or at least not negative, but I don't think it's particularly meaningful.
- Osmium 11y ago
  > unless you're a student and your parents bought you your phone It's a bit tangential, but speaking for myself this actually matters. I was a student until recently, I bought my own phone, but I couldn't afford the developer programme (especially when it was two separate programmes, one for OS X and one for iOS). Now, I can build apps and only need to buy the developer programme when I want to deploy them, and then I only have to subscribe to the one programme for both OS X and iOS too. So honestly it does matter to some people. I hear you about your concerns though. I'm hopeful, with the iPad Pro, that they're actually going to open up iOS more in future, not less. It'd be nice to do proper development on an iOS device. A BSD-like jail environment (e.g. a full sandboxed unix environment with shell access, with maybe iCloud Drive mounted in the filesystem) would be lovely. If they want to sell 'pro' iOS devices, they must be thinking about these sorts of problems.

by Osmium 11y ago

umanwizard 11y ago

I'm not judging them based on hypothetical future actions. I'm not really judging them at all; I'm just uneasy and worried. I'm predicting that the probability of hypothetical future actions for which I'd judge them is too high for my comfort. I'm also judging the hell out of them for their past and current action of keeping iOS locked down. The developer program thing, IMO, is a bit of a red herring; everyone who can buy an iPhone can also pay $99, so pragmatically there is nothing you can do now that you couldn't before, unless you're a student and your parents bought you your phone. Sure, it's a step in the right direction or at least not negative, but I don't think it's particularly meaningful.

Osmium 11y ago
> unless you're a student and your parents bought you your phone It's a bit tangential, but speaking for myself this actually matters. I was a student until recently, I bought my own phone, but I couldn't afford the developer programme (especially when it was two separate programmes, one for OS X and one for iOS). Now, I can build apps and only need to buy the developer programme when I want to deploy them, and then I only have to subscribe to the one programme for both OS X and iOS too. So honestly it does matter to some people. I hear you about your concerns though. I'm hopeful, with the iPad Pro, that they're actually going to open up iOS more in future, not less. It'd be nice to do proper development on an iOS device. A BSD-like jail environment (e.g. a full sandboxed unix environment with shell access, with maybe iCloud Drive mounted in the filesystem) would be lovely. If they want to sell 'pro' iOS devices, they must be thinking about these sorts of problems.