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It would be a potentially smart move by Apple to allow installing other OSs in iOS hardware. The market share grab part of this segment is mostly gone so they p

It would be a potentially smart move by Apple to allow installing other OSs in iOS hardware. The market share grab part of this segment is mostly gone so they probably wouldn't lose much and it would help with their arguments about the App Store and other iOS restrictions. They could say that in iOS those are the rules but if you want to do something else with the device you own you can install something else. It might even win them some customers. They would win my business if I could install an open-source OS under my control on a phone like I do on my laptop. LineageOS is not even close unfortunately because of poor hardware support.

gmemstr 6y ago
That doesn't really match up with the ethos of Apple or why people buy their products though, so it doesn't make any sense for Apple to allow or endorse this.
- MereInterest 6y ago
  Correct, it doesn't make a profit for Apple to sell devices, rather than just renting them. That's why it shouldn't be up to Apple to decide whether a device sold belongs to the buyer, or still belongs to Apple. If I buy it, it is mine, and I have the moral right to put whatever OS I what to on it, regardless of Apple's ethos.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    "Correct, it doesn't make a profit for Apple to sell devices, rather than just renting them." I've seen this argument again, but this is a redefinition of sell vs rent. Apple sells the device with specific capabilities. You might want it to have others, but that's not the same as renting. If you don't like it, buy something else. You do get to do "whatever you want" with the device AS provided. You can stomp on it, melt in in a fire, or whatever, and Apple wont ask you for the device back. That's a sale. "I wanted another version of the device, one that is unlocked, and Apple doesn't sell me one" doesn't mean Apple doesn't sell you what it says on the tin. They're selling iPhones, locks and all, not generic devices to have different OSes loaded.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - 8ytecoder 6y ago
      I think it's more akin to selling a coffeemaker that only works with manufacturer authorized coffee beans. It's a coffeemaker and it may not produce the same quality coffee with other beans but it's perfectly capable of producing coffee from any beans you feed it. That said, Apple has no incentive to work towards enabling this. Both Apple's profit and customer's expectation are in the vertical integration that Apple provides. (I'm not in anyway saying iOS is not restrictive or that they shouldn't do it. It's just that there's no pressing reason for them to work towards achieving it.)
      - spijdar 6y ago
        I'm not sure if the reference was intentional, but there are (or, were?) coffeemakers that only work with manufacturer authorized coffee beans. Keurig infamously added a protection mechanism that required "special" coffee-pods to function. This was, however, seen as outrageous, unlike the current state of smartphones, for better or for worse.
        8ytecoder 6y ago
        It is. At work some of us got a reusable pod to reduce waste. We were closely following it. It was also much easier to explain why that's bad to my non-engineer coworkers than explaining why iOS's complete lockdown is bad or even get them to care.
        Spivak 6y ago
        It is outrageous in a very literal sense. The whole reason people are mad is because they know that Keurig is allowed to do it and have basically zero power to make them stop.
        spijdar 6y ago
        I agree -- I meant it in contrast with smartphones, where it's seen as totally normal to have no escape hatch to run your own software. Most "normal" people see that a coffeemaker putting "DRM" on your coffee is ridiculous, but that outrage never really extended to digital devices for some reason.
  - samatman 6y ago
    It's not correct to say that Apple doesn't make a profit on devices. In fact, Apple makes a robust profit on every mobile device they sell. This is in contrast to, e.g, gaming consoles, which are (at least were) sold below cost, with the profit coming from games. Apple also won't stop you from installing whatever on your gizmo, legally I mean. With mobile, they do several things which make it pointlessly difficult, and I would rather they didn't.
    - zepearl 6y ago
      In general, I kept reading in the past that Apple's sold HW (including MacBooks etc..., not just phones) has at least about 30% profit?
- s_dev 6y ago
  There is precedent -- e.g. Bootcamp -- Apple share price rose 10% or something when this was initially announced.
- Technically 6y ago
  I don't think anyone except consumers themselves can speak to why they buy their products. The prevailing dogma that users want Apple to think for them is trivially false.
- mindslight 6y ago
  Commoditize your complement. That's what Google is doing with Android itself - flooding the market with a gaggle of surveillance-ready web browsers. But Apple could push back at an even deeper level by supporting user-loaded OS's, taking the Free community's focus away from the Android ecosystem. The limited hardware combinations alone would be a boon to the Free community. Right now, I see Android as the Freer option, even though I've gone significantly out of my way to get there (Samsung Exynos + microG + fdroid). If I could do a similar amount of work on mainstream Apple hardware and end up with an OS that had no Google remnants, I can see my perspective changing quite readily. Perhaps we'll see such a development when there emerges a Free OS that's a viable/cult-popular daily driver.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  I'm not really sure how it would damage them though. Normal customers buy an iphone and it comes with the locked down ios as normal, now you just let people who know what they are doing mess around. We can see from android, letting people install custom ROMs didn't really have any effect on the average user who will never try it. The hurdle of having to factory reset your phone to unlock the bootloader keeps normal people away.
daemoon 6y ago
I can guarantee that this will never happen as the whole point of Apple products is the hardware and software working seamlessly together - for the most part anyway.
- mholm 6y ago
  That's a tough guarantee to make. Apple has already been putting in in some effort on their M1 macs to ensure that other operating systems can be booted, without compromising their bootloader's security. https://mobile.twitter.com/marcan42/status/1333126018068955136 https://mobile.twitter.com/marcan42/status/13331260180689551... While I don't think it's likely, it would be _possible_ for Apple to open this up on the phone side too
tuxone 6y ago
For each iOS device sold Apple can profit from selling services (iCloud sub, App Store, Music, TV+ etc) so allowing something like that would only result in loosing customers. The customers Apple can win are those willing to buy a brand new $1K+ iPhone, switch OS and void (at least part of) the warranty. If they are not supporting a Bootcamp for Android probably is because they did the math and it was not worth it.
- freeopinion 6y ago
  Just to be clear, "did the math" in this context would mean "made some guesses."
nijave 6y ago
I think Apple would have to publish "proprietary" hardware information to make this possible. Currently, people spend significant amounts of time reverse engineering the hardware to get software working with it. On top of that, there's a cost of open sourcing besides revealing proprietary information--you generally need to audit and cleanup your code base (cleanup commit messages, code comments, etc) that could be, at best, embarrassing, or, at worse, reveal product flaws/bugs Edit, looks like I was beaten to the punch https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25728930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25728930
captn3m0 6y ago
I would love to install Linux on my old (unsupported)iPad 2
- astrange 6y ago
  It wouldn't be very useful without swap, and the device isn't meant to be used with swap enabled.
  - SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
    Those ipads could be perfectly useful as dumb streaming targets or dashboard displays.
wmf 6y ago
People would use that to install compromised versions of iOS with all the problems that entails.
jooize 6y ago
Perhaps allow it on devices older than some age.
JoeyBananas 6y ago
I realized recently that Google Pixels are one of the only models of phones that supports flashing a 3rd party bootloader. I immediately bought a used Pixel 2 and I'm never buying a Samsung phone again for this sole reason. This feature is a big deal because you need to do it in order to install Frida, which is a very useful reverse engineering tool. There are alternative ways to get frida running, but they are less convenient
tomaskafka 6y ago
> The market share grab part of this segment is mostly gone That's why they are shifting to services and for that they need to have you locked in their OS.

gmemstr 6y ago

That doesn't really match up with the ethos of Apple or why people buy their products though, so it doesn't make any sense for Apple to allow or endorse this.

MereInterest 6y ago
Correct, it doesn't make a profit for Apple to sell devices, rather than just renting them. That's why it shouldn't be up to Apple to decide whether a device sold belongs to the buyer, or still belongs to Apple. If I buy it, it is mine, and I have the moral right to put whatever OS I what to on it, regardless of Apple's ethos.
- coldtea 6y ago
  "Correct, it doesn't make a profit for Apple to sell devices, rather than just renting them." I've seen this argument again, but this is a redefinition of sell vs rent. Apple sells the device with specific capabilities. You might want it to have others, but that's not the same as renting. If you don't like it, buy something else. You do get to do "whatever you want" with the device AS provided. You can stomp on it, melt in in a fire, or whatever, and Apple wont ask you for the device back. That's a sale. "I wanted another version of the device, one that is unlocked, and Apple doesn't sell me one" doesn't mean Apple doesn't sell you what it says on the tin. They're selling iPhones, locks and all, not generic devices to have different OSes loaded.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - 8ytecoder 6y ago
    I think it's more akin to selling a coffeemaker that only works with manufacturer authorized coffee beans. It's a coffeemaker and it may not produce the same quality coffee with other beans but it's perfectly capable of producing coffee from any beans you feed it. That said, Apple has no incentive to work towards enabling this. Both Apple's profit and customer's expectation are in the vertical integration that Apple provides. (I'm not in anyway saying iOS is not restrictive or that they shouldn't do it. It's just that there's no pressing reason for them to work towards achieving it.)
    - spijdar 6y ago
      I'm not sure if the reference was intentional, but there are (or, were?) coffeemakers that only work with manufacturer authorized coffee beans. Keurig infamously added a protection mechanism that required "special" coffee-pods to function. This was, however, seen as outrageous, unlike the current state of smartphones, for better or for worse.
      - 8ytecoder 6y ago
        It is. At work some of us got a reusable pod to reduce waste. We were closely following it. It was also much easier to explain why that's bad to my non-engineer coworkers than explaining why iOS's complete lockdown is bad or even get them to care.
      - Spivak 6y ago
        It is outrageous in a very literal sense. The whole reason people are mad is because they know that Keurig is allowed to do it and have basically zero power to make them stop.
        spijdar 6y ago
        I agree -- I meant it in contrast with smartphones, where it's seen as totally normal to have no escape hatch to run your own software. Most "normal" people see that a coffeemaker putting "DRM" on your coffee is ridiculous, but that outrage never really extended to digital devices for some reason.
- samatman 6y ago
  It's not correct to say that Apple doesn't make a profit on devices. In fact, Apple makes a robust profit on every mobile device they sell. This is in contrast to, e.g, gaming consoles, which are (at least were) sold below cost, with the profit coming from games. Apple also won't stop you from installing whatever on your gizmo, legally I mean. With mobile, they do several things which make it pointlessly difficult, and I would rather they didn't.
  - zepearl 6y ago
    In general, I kept reading in the past that Apple's sold HW (including MacBooks etc..., not just phones) has at least about 30% profit?
s_dev 6y ago
There is precedent -- e.g. Bootcamp -- Apple share price rose 10% or something when this was initially announced.
Technically 6y ago
I don't think anyone except consumers themselves can speak to why they buy their products. The prevailing dogma that users want Apple to think for them is trivially false.
mindslight 6y ago
Commoditize your complement. That's what Google is doing with Android itself - flooding the market with a gaggle of surveillance-ready web browsers. But Apple could push back at an even deeper level by supporting user-loaded OS's, taking the Free community's focus away from the Android ecosystem. The limited hardware combinations alone would be a boon to the Free community. Right now, I see Android as the Freer option, even though I've gone significantly out of my way to get there (Samsung Exynos + microG + fdroid). If I could do a similar amount of work on mainstream Apple hardware and end up with an OS that had no Google remnants, I can see my perspective changing quite readily. Perhaps we'll see such a development when there emerges a Free OS that's a viable/cult-popular daily driver.
SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
I'm not really sure how it would damage them though. Normal customers buy an iphone and it comes with the locked down ios as normal, now you just let people who know what they are doing mess around. We can see from android, letting people install custom ROMs didn't really have any effect on the average user who will never try it. The hurdle of having to factory reset your phone to unlock the bootloader keeps normal people away.

daemoon 6y ago

I can guarantee that this will never happen as the whole point of Apple products is the hardware and software working seamlessly together - for the most part anyway.

mholm 6y ago
That's a tough guarantee to make. Apple has already been putting in in some effort on their M1 macs to ensure that other operating systems can be booted, without compromising their bootloader's security. https://mobile.twitter.com/marcan42/status/1333126018068955136 https://mobile.twitter.com/marcan42/status/13331260180689551... While I don't think it's likely, it would be _possible_ for Apple to open this up on the phone side too

tuxone 6y ago

For each iOS device sold Apple can profit from selling services (iCloud sub, App Store, Music, TV+ etc) so allowing something like that would only result in loosing customers. The customers Apple can win are those willing to buy a brand new $1K+ iPhone, switch OS and void (at least part of) the warranty. If they are not supporting a Bootcamp for Android probably is because they did the math and it was not worth it.

freeopinion 6y ago
Just to be clear, "did the math" in this context would mean "made some guesses."

nijave 6y ago

I think Apple would have to publish "proprietary" hardware information to make this possible. Currently, people spend significant amounts of time reverse engineering the hardware to get software working with it. On top of that, there's a cost of open sourcing besides revealing proprietary information--you generally need to audit and cleanup your code base (cleanup commit messages, code comments, etc) that could be, at best, embarrassing, or, at worse, reveal product flaws/bugs Edit, looks like I was beaten to the punch https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25728930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25728930

captn3m0 6y ago

I would love to install Linux on my old (unsupported)iPad 2

astrange 6y ago
It wouldn't be very useful without swap, and the device isn't meant to be used with swap enabled.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  Those ipads could be perfectly useful as dumb streaming targets or dashboard displays.

wmf 6y ago

People would use that to install compromised versions of iOS with all the problems that entails.

jooize 6y ago

Perhaps allow it on devices older than some age.

JoeyBananas 6y ago

I realized recently that Google Pixels are one of the only models of phones that supports flashing a 3rd party bootloader. I immediately bought a used Pixel 2 and I'm never buying a Samsung phone again for this sole reason. This feature is a big deal because you need to do it in order to install Frida, which is a very useful reverse engineering tool. There are alternative ways to get frida running, but they are less convenient

tomaskafka 6y ago

> The market share grab part of this segment is mostly gone That's why they are shifting to services and for that they need to have you locked in their OS.