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Not sure what that has to do with hardware but I'll bite: users don't care. They don't know what a browser is, what a client is, or an URL or URI or address bar

Not sure what that has to do with hardware but I'll bite: users don't care. They don't know what a browser is, what a client is, or an URL or URI or address bar. They want a device that when they turn it on and type in 'tictoc dance dog' it shows them something that resembles what they had in mind. Doesn't matter if it runs WebKit or Gecko or if someone thought it'd be cool to emulate a trident-based engine on iOS on ARM in a custom browser. Freedom 'to do what you want' has not had much to do with what works in the world of selling to the masses when it comes to user experience (and yes that is ironic). Regarding 'using' and 'their' and 'machine': I meant an activity based scenario which is what most people see themselves doing. They mostly have no concept of ownership, actions or device semantics. The reason is simple: it's not needed to be a user and it's not needed to get the same results as other people in your group have. And for a lot of people all that matters is doing the same as the rest of the local group. Edit number 3: you can apparently select your default protocol handler in iOS 14. I bet there are some double digit Google users that want that for Chrome, and a few sub-1% users that want FireFox. But that's still not freedom because they all use the same renderer and JS engine. On the other hand: it's unlikely that people care about that, and the people that do are not likely to run iOS at all. Luckily, you don't have to use iOS. Or a phone. So some aspects of freedom are unchanged.

fsflover 6y ago
> users don't care. They don't know what a browser is, what a client is, or an URL or URI or address bar. All true but irrelevant. The problem is that artificial lack of choice prevents competition and innovation. Microsoft from the 90s is here again. And users don’t care, again. I do not count another UI as a new browser. It should be different under the hood.
- oneplane 6y ago
  > I do not count another UI as a new browser. It should be different under the hood. Can you imagine any general user ever repeating that? I can't. As those users woud say: nobody cares. I personally would care, but I'm not the main marketed target for Apple. I also care more about getting stuff done than what engine my browser uses.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    It doesn't matter if a general user would know about this stuff. The point is that they are being hurt by lack of competition and don't even know it. Even if they wanted to stick with Safari on iOS, that version of Safari would likely be better and have more features if it were forced to experience some competition. This is why healthy competition and anti-trust actually matters. It's not because your average user cares about the details, it's because they're being impacted even when they don't know it. This subthread has a fairly trivial example of this, but when you get into right-to-repair it becomes even more important. Your average consumer could be spending a lot less money to have a much better experience. The fact that they don't know about that is part of the problem; lack of knowledge doesn't make the issue irrelevant. And we don't even need to get into the environmental arguments around reducing waste to consider this aspect of the issue.
alacombe 6y ago
> Not sure what that has to do with hardware but I'll bite: users don't care Sure, if you keep a population ignorant, they won't care about the pettiness of their lives, as they don't know about freedom.

fsflover 6y ago

> users don't care. They don't know what a browser is, what a client is, or an URL or URI or address bar. All true but irrelevant. The problem is that artificial lack of choice prevents competition and innovation. Microsoft from the 90s is here again. And users don’t care, again. I do not count another UI as a new browser. It should be different under the hood.

oneplane 6y ago
> I do not count another UI as a new browser. It should be different under the hood. Can you imagine any general user ever repeating that? I can't. As those users woud say: nobody cares. I personally would care, but I'm not the main marketed target for Apple. I also care more about getting stuff done than what engine my browser uses.
- kelnos 6y ago
  It doesn't matter if a general user would know about this stuff. The point is that they are being hurt by lack of competition and don't even know it. Even if they wanted to stick with Safari on iOS, that version of Safari would likely be better and have more features if it were forced to experience some competition. This is why healthy competition and anti-trust actually matters. It's not because your average user cares about the details, it's because they're being impacted even when they don't know it. This subthread has a fairly trivial example of this, but when you get into right-to-repair it becomes even more important. Your average consumer could be spending a lot less money to have a much better experience. The fact that they don't know about that is part of the problem; lack of knowledge doesn't make the issue irrelevant. And we don't even need to get into the environmental arguments around reducing waste to consider this aspect of the issue.

alacombe 6y ago

> Not sure what that has to do with hardware but I'll bite: users don't care Sure, if you keep a population ignorant, they won't care about the pettiness of their lives, as they don't know about freedom.