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>I hope that the possibility of an industry-wide switch to ARM doesn't take away the flexibility we now have with the PC I think that ship has long sailed as w

>I hope that the possibility of an industry-wide switch to ARM doesn't take away the flexibility we now have with the PC I think that ship has long sailed as we failed to treat smartphones as handheld computers and subject the smartphone/OS manufacturers to the same scrutiny as computer/OS manufacturers. This is a missed opportunity especially to those countries where smartphones are the first computer to majority of the population, now their computing can be held hostage by couple of companies just like their data. Now computers with only manufacturer approved OS, only manufacturer approved software (even content?), arbitrary security updates/ OS upgrade cycle is already becoming a reality.

bluedays 6y ago
I see this sorta argument frequently but there was a time when only IBM was capable of making PCs. It seems whoever is first to market ends up not having an open platform, which later is superseded by a more open platform.* See the variety of open operating systems for devices. Ie sailfish, postmarketOS, librephone, etc.
- offtop5 6y ago
  If anything I see computers being more open now. You can buy a Raspberry pi for 30$,and run whatever you want on it. For those in lower income nations this is an absolute game changer. Phones need to sorta be closed, who wants a null pointer exception to lock the dialer UI in an emergency ? Of course if you really want to, you can buy one of those open phones and program your own dialer from scratch, not a very good idea for the typical user though
  - karottenreibe 6y ago
    I don't follow the argument that a closed ecosystem leads to less Nullpointer exceptions than an open one. The two seem entirely unrelated to me.
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    >You can buy a Raspberry pi for 30$,and run whatever you want on it. For those in lower income nations this is an absolute game changer. Except that decent RaspberyPI configs that could replace PCs cost around $60-70(In EU) and once you add a display, peripherals and a decent microSD card(which is still smaller, slower and less reliable than even a budget SSD) and you're looking at over $100 and for that kind of cash, a second hand X86 notebook(old beaten up Dell/Lenovo with an i5, 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD) gives you way more power and flexibility with what you can boot, install and do with it, it's not even a competition. Not to mention it comes with a built in battery so you can carry it to school unlike a PI, and before someone sniggers and shows me a link with a Raspberry PI based notebook just to contradict me, ask yourselves if you would actually use that as a productivity daily driver for work and play vs a X86 laptop. Sorry, even in developing nations, second hand notebooks/PCs are a way better deal in every way as a personal computer than a PI which is why PIs have never taken off as PCs and are still stuck in the hacker, tinkerer, learning, embedded, automation niches. >Phones need to sorta be closed, who wants a null pointer exception to lock the dialer UI in an emergency ? Why do they need to be closed? Having closed source software is no guarantee of quality nor security. >Of course if you really want to, you can buy one of those open phones and program your own dialer from scratch, not a very good idea for the typical user though By wanting more openness we don't mean reinventing the wheel and coding open source dialers from scratch, we mean we need Apple and Google to not lock their hardware to their appstores so we(companies, users, banks, developers and even governments) don't become prisoners to their walled gardens which is basically the current situation.
    - cesarb 6y ago
      > and once you add a display, and peripherals you're looking at over $100 I believe the basic idea of the Raspberry Pi is that everyone already has the display (a television), so the only peripherals you need are the power supply, keyboard, mouse, and HDMI cable, which together should be around USD 15 or even less (from a quick search for local prices here then converting to USD).
      - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
        >I believe the basic idea of the Raspberry Pi is that everyone already has the display (a television) Sounds like a pretty poor assumption to me. In EU at least, over half the people I know own no television(TV tax is huge here and excluding boomers, nobody watches it anyway because Netflix) and if we assume all families in developing nations own a TV in the household then it would be difficult to do any productive type of work on it as the TV would probably be used a lot for, you know, watching TV and other entertainment rather than having it reserved just as a tool. Good luck writing your homework on your TV while your dad wants to watch his game and your mom her show. Even in developing nations, second hand PCs are such affordable commodities that they're a no brainer.
- nvrspyx 6y ago
  > there was a time when only IBM was capable of making PCs They may have been the only one's that could use the term "Personal Computer" for a short time, but they were not the only ones making PCs. You had Commodore, Amiga, HP, Wang, Apple, etc. Even still, IBM's PCs were not locked down and were, for the most part, based on an open architecture allowing you to freely upgrade parts. Later down the line (specifically the original IBM PC) when the technology allowed for it, you could even install other operating systems like CP/M-86, UCSD p-System, and MS-DOS.
  - icedchai 6y ago
    In the 80's, "PC" meant IBM or compatible. Nobody ever called their Apple, Amiga, Commodore 64, etc. a "PC." There were even some products, like the "Apple II PC Transporter" that made your Apple II compatible with a PC. That meant an IBM PC.
    - nvrspyx 6y ago
      Right. My point was that "PC" was used exclusively for IBM as a marketing term, but it was not the only "personal computer" available. PC became a generalized term much later, although Apple still held on to PC being a term for any computer that was Windows-based (or simply any computer that wasn't a Mac).
- momokoko 6y ago
  The DMCA did not exist then. Nor did strong encryption and code signing.
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
We had that in the form of Windows CE based smartphones. As open as a PC, no walled garden, no app stores, just load your app and launch it. The market spoke decisively in rejecting it in favor of the iPhone and Android devices.
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  >The market spoke decisively in rejecting it in favor of the iPhone and Android devices. Sure, but did the market reject it because it was a more open platform, or because of other considerations? Given that the general public is largely unaware of DRM and the like, it was likely for lack of other features. There's no inherent reason why a more open phone OS couldn't succeed in the market. After all, Android devices are generally more open than iOS devices and they've got the vast majority of the smartphone market.
  - finnthehuman 6y ago
    >Sure, but did the market reject it because it was a more open platform, or because of other considerations? Obviously other considerations. Where there is only a small handful of options within a class of product, any statement about "what the market wants" should be limited to very broad strokes. The consumer doesn't select from the entire possibility space, they buy from the available options. Any "correlation is causation" statement about minor details when there are dozens of other larger distinguishing feature are the words of a lying huckster. Giving them the benefit of the doubt isn't that they're not-lying, the benefit of the doubt is that they're lying to themselves too. That's how wrong it is to make those inferences.
    - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
      > "a lying huckster" Rather rude, don't you think?
      - finnthehuman 6y ago
        I did make the context quite narrow and add the caveat for people who are simply deluding themselves, but yeah, it's rude. I've spent enough of my professional life listening to people try to tell me what sales numbers "mean" to have any higher of an opinion.

bluedays 6y ago

I see this sorta argument frequently but there was a time when only IBM was capable of making PCs. It seems whoever is first to market ends up not having an open platform, which later is superseded by a more open platform.* See the variety of open operating systems for devices. Ie sailfish, postmarketOS, librephone, etc.

offtop5 6y ago
If anything I see computers being more open now. You can buy a Raspberry pi for 30$,and run whatever you want on it. For those in lower income nations this is an absolute game changer. Phones need to sorta be closed, who wants a null pointer exception to lock the dialer UI in an emergency ? Of course if you really want to, you can buy one of those open phones and program your own dialer from scratch, not a very good idea for the typical user though
- karottenreibe 6y ago
  I don't follow the argument that a closed ecosystem leads to less Nullpointer exceptions than an open one. The two seem entirely unrelated to me.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  >You can buy a Raspberry pi for 30$,and run whatever you want on it. For those in lower income nations this is an absolute game changer. Except that decent RaspberyPI configs that could replace PCs cost around $60-70(In EU) and once you add a display, peripherals and a decent microSD card(which is still smaller, slower and less reliable than even a budget SSD) and you're looking at over $100 and for that kind of cash, a second hand X86 notebook(old beaten up Dell/Lenovo with an i5, 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD) gives you way more power and flexibility with what you can boot, install and do with it, it's not even a competition. Not to mention it comes with a built in battery so you can carry it to school unlike a PI, and before someone sniggers and shows me a link with a Raspberry PI based notebook just to contradict me, ask yourselves if you would actually use that as a productivity daily driver for work and play vs a X86 laptop. Sorry, even in developing nations, second hand notebooks/PCs are a way better deal in every way as a personal computer than a PI which is why PIs have never taken off as PCs and are still stuck in the hacker, tinkerer, learning, embedded, automation niches. >Phones need to sorta be closed, who wants a null pointer exception to lock the dialer UI in an emergency ? Why do they need to be closed? Having closed source software is no guarantee of quality nor security. >Of course if you really want to, you can buy one of those open phones and program your own dialer from scratch, not a very good idea for the typical user though By wanting more openness we don't mean reinventing the wheel and coding open source dialers from scratch, we mean we need Apple and Google to not lock their hardware to their appstores so we(companies, users, banks, developers and even governments) don't become prisoners to their walled gardens which is basically the current situation.
  - cesarb 6y ago
    > and once you add a display, and peripherals you're looking at over $100 I believe the basic idea of the Raspberry Pi is that everyone already has the display (a television), so the only peripherals you need are the power supply, keyboard, mouse, and HDMI cable, which together should be around USD 15 or even less (from a quick search for local prices here then converting to USD).
    - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
      >I believe the basic idea of the Raspberry Pi is that everyone already has the display (a television) Sounds like a pretty poor assumption to me. In EU at least, over half the people I know own no television(TV tax is huge here and excluding boomers, nobody watches it anyway because Netflix) and if we assume all families in developing nations own a TV in the household then it would be difficult to do any productive type of work on it as the TV would probably be used a lot for, you know, watching TV and other entertainment rather than having it reserved just as a tool. Good luck writing your homework on your TV while your dad wants to watch his game and your mom her show. Even in developing nations, second hand PCs are such affordable commodities that they're a no brainer.
nvrspyx 6y ago
> there was a time when only IBM was capable of making PCs They may have been the only one's that could use the term "Personal Computer" for a short time, but they were not the only ones making PCs. You had Commodore, Amiga, HP, Wang, Apple, etc. Even still, IBM's PCs were not locked down and were, for the most part, based on an open architecture allowing you to freely upgrade parts. Later down the line (specifically the original IBM PC) when the technology allowed for it, you could even install other operating systems like CP/M-86, UCSD p-System, and MS-DOS.
- icedchai 6y ago
  In the 80's, "PC" meant IBM or compatible. Nobody ever called their Apple, Amiga, Commodore 64, etc. a "PC." There were even some products, like the "Apple II PC Transporter" that made your Apple II compatible with a PC. That meant an IBM PC.
  - nvrspyx 6y ago
    Right. My point was that "PC" was used exclusively for IBM as a marketing term, but it was not the only "personal computer" available. PC became a generalized term much later, although Apple still held on to PC being a term for any computer that was Windows-based (or simply any computer that wasn't a Mac).
momokoko 6y ago
The DMCA did not exist then. Nor did strong encryption and code signing.

ThrowawayR2 6y ago

We had that in the form of Windows CE based smartphones. As open as a PC, no walled garden, no app stores, just load your app and launch it. The market spoke decisively in rejecting it in favor of the iPhone and Android devices.

HideousKojima 6y ago
>The market spoke decisively in rejecting it in favor of the iPhone and Android devices. Sure, but did the market reject it because it was a more open platform, or because of other considerations? Given that the general public is largely unaware of DRM and the like, it was likely for lack of other features. There's no inherent reason why a more open phone OS couldn't succeed in the market. After all, Android devices are generally more open than iOS devices and they've got the vast majority of the smartphone market.
- finnthehuman 6y ago
  >Sure, but did the market reject it because it was a more open platform, or because of other considerations? Obviously other considerations. Where there is only a small handful of options within a class of product, any statement about "what the market wants" should be limited to very broad strokes. The consumer doesn't select from the entire possibility space, they buy from the available options. Any "correlation is causation" statement about minor details when there are dozens of other larger distinguishing feature are the words of a lying huckster. Giving them the benefit of the doubt isn't that they're not-lying, the benefit of the doubt is that they're lying to themselves too. That's how wrong it is to make those inferences.
  - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    > "a lying huckster" Rather rude, don't you think?
    - finnthehuman 6y ago
      I did make the context quite narrow and add the caveat for people who are simply deluding themselves, but yeah, it's rude. I've spent enough of my professional life listening to people try to tell me what sales numbers "mean" to have any higher of an opinion.