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I don't think people understand the magnitude of this betrayal. When you buy a tool, it should obey you, and any deviations from that expectation should be disc
by superuser2 11y ago
I don't think people understand the magnitude of this betrayal. When you buy a tool, it should obey you, and any deviations from that expectation should be disclosed upfront.
Imagine if you bought a car that detected when you were driving to a particular business, locked out steering, and instead drove you to a competitor that had "partnered" with the manufacturer. You totally own the car, and no one ever told you it had this "feature."
Imagine if you bought a gun that would refuse to fire when pointed at people who had purchased protection from the manufacturer. You don't find out about this feature until the guy invading your home has it.
Lenovo lied to your face. It sold laptops that claimed to navigate to the websites you entered in the URL bar, but instead displayed a version edited by Lenovo on behalf of its partners.
Normalizing this sort of thing is not okay and anyone buying Lenovo post-Superfish shares the moral responsibility when this is our future.
- hkmurakami 11y agoConsidering we apparently don't "own" our Kindle ebook purchases, I can see a future where our hardware purchases are on indefinite loans to us rather than outright purchases.
- superuser2 11y agoFrom the beginning, though, this was a known tradeoff that one could rationally evaluate when deciding whether or not to buy into that ecosystem. A more apt analogy might be Amazon silently editing books to include product placement for corporate sponsors.
- aceperry 11y agoThat's a disturbing trend that I hope doesn't continue.
- caskance 11y agoNo, I don't think YOU understand how unusable some people find a touchpad compared to a pointing stick. Your examples are still better than a car that does not run or a gun that explodes in my hand as soon as I touch it. You even tried to fabricate examples where the surprise factor of the product not working as expected at a key moment was the bulk of the problem. As if that's somehow not the biggest flaw of a touchpad.