8 ms·

This is another in a long line of examples where I am coming around to the conclusion that "computer" is not what we should call these application delivery vehi

This is another in a long line of examples where I am coming around to the conclusion that "computer" is not what we should call these application delivery vehicles. In the post mathematician, electronic version, of the world "computer" was used to represent a tool on which the owner (or lease holder) would run "software" that could use some, or all, of the machine. And what was more, the machine ONLY ever executed software that the owner asked it to execute either directly or through the requesting of library services. Systems that had computers in them, but ran applications written by the vendor so that the system could provide some function of value to the "owner" where always thought of as appliances. Perhaps the canonical example for our age is the Television, which has essentially one function "view video content" which is assisted by a control for selecting video content source. And yet, televisions today, have very powerful computer complexes within them that run vendor software. The modes breaks down for me when you combine them, both because the software the vendor provides for their "computer" to provide application like services is written to defend itself from change/influence by the owner who has access to the computer. From Apple's perspective, they are walking toward a world where one of the applications you can run on your device is "computer", which is nothing more than a virtual machine that you have virtually full control over (pun intended). IBM had a really great model of this called VM/370. Everything is a VM.

m463 6y ago
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.
- grishka 6y ago
  > 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.
  - m463 6y ago
    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."
    - grishka 6y ago
      Oh okay, this way it indeed makes sense.
    - Jtsummers 6y ago
      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).
- numbsafari 6y ago
  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?
  - weareallcowards 6y ago
    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.
    - Jtsummers 6y ago
      USAF wasn't the only one, universities also bought PS3s as that was the only feasible way to get a Cell processor cluster going.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    That would be absolutely amazing. I would love to be able to use Switch hardware as a general purpose computer/emulation machine.
- rurp 6y ago
  > 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.
  - noobermin 6y ago
    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.
- admax88q 6y ago
  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.
  - oneplane 6y ago
    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).
    - paulryanrogers 6y ago
      > 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.
- schoen 6y ago
  > 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.
  - zepto 6y ago
    There are also those who think both options are valuable. A lot of the polarization to me seems like it stems from the fear that one threatens the other.
  - webmobdev 6y ago
    > 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. What you are describing is how social media marketing works - for both politics and business (aka Astroturfing - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/08/what-is-astroturfing https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/08/what-i... ). 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.
    - bartvk 6y ago
- zepto 6y ago
  That is talking about Google as a supplier of the OS to OEM phone vendors. Google doesn’t sell their OS to vendors.
- flower-giraffe 6y ago
  > 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.
justinclift 6y ago
> This is another in a long line of examples where I am coming around to the conclusion that "computer" is not what we should call these application delivery vehicles. How about "toaster"? :)
noobermin 6y ago
Funny tidbit, there was a stereotypical cosmopolitan ipad ad of a young kid riding their bike through Brooklyn who uses the ipad throughout the day. At the end of the ad, a neighbor says something like "whatcha doing on your computer" to which the kid replies "what's a computer?" It's funny because Apple's vision of the "computer" isn't really a tool for the kid but a means to control them and use them for value extraction, as we know.
- Angostura 6y ago
  > It's funny because Apple's vision of the "computer" isn't really a tool for the kid but a means to control them and use them for value extraction, as we know. Really? My kid uses their iPad for content creation and whatnot and as far as I can tell they aren't controlled in particular. The only value that is extracted is that from my wallet for additional apps.

m463 6y ago

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.

grishka 6y ago
> 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.
- m463 6y ago
  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."
  - grishka 6y ago
    Oh okay, this way it indeed makes sense.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    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).
numbsafari 6y ago
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?
- weareallcowards 6y ago
  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.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    USAF wasn't the only one, universities also bought PS3s as that was the only feasible way to get a Cell processor cluster going.
- Shared404 6y ago
  That would be absolutely amazing. I would love to be able to use Switch hardware as a general purpose computer/emulation machine.
rurp 6y ago
> 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.
- noobermin 6y ago
  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.
admax88q 6y ago
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.
- oneplane 6y ago
  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).
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    > 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.
schoen 6y ago
> 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.
- zepto 6y ago
  There are also those who think both options are valuable. A lot of the polarization to me seems like it stems from the fear that one threatens the other.
- webmobdev 6y ago
  > 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. What you are describing is how social media marketing works - for both politics and business (aka Astroturfing - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/08/what-is-astroturfing https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/08/what-i... ). 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.
  - bartvk 6y ago
zepto 6y ago
That is talking about Google as a supplier of the OS to OEM phone vendors. Google doesn’t sell their OS to vendors.
flower-giraffe 6y ago
> 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.

justinclift 6y ago

> This is another in a long line of examples where I am coming around to the conclusion that "computer" is not what we should call these application delivery vehicles. How about "toaster"? :)

noobermin 6y ago

Funny tidbit, there was a stereotypical cosmopolitan ipad ad of a young kid riding their bike through Brooklyn who uses the ipad throughout the day. At the end of the ad, a neighbor says something like "whatcha doing on your computer" to which the kid replies "what's a computer?" It's funny because Apple's vision of the "computer" isn't really a tool for the kid but a means to control them and use them for value extraction, as we know.

Angostura 6y ago
> It's funny because Apple's vision of the "computer" isn't really a tool for the kid but a means to control them and use them for value extraction, as we know. Really? My kid uses their iPad for content creation and whatnot and as far as I can tell they aren't controlled in particular. The only value that is extracted is that from my wallet for additional apps.