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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 qu

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.
    - dTal 6y ago
      >for some reason Ignorance. If people had no real idea how coffee was made either, you wouldn't see much outcry over locked-down coffee pods either. "You want to grind your own beans? What an eccentric nerd! My coffee maker works perfectly with the manufacturer pods, why would I ever switch?"
    - vladvasiliu 6y ago
      I think that most common apps nowadays being "free" contributes to this. "How can there be an Apple tax if the app is free?" Whereas the coffee is something they can buy at other shops, and it's pretty easy to compare.
  - coding123 6y ago
    Well they do. Buy a different coffee maker.
buran77 6y ago
What's more, they have a pressing reason to not do it. The entire iOS devices ecosystem brings clients exclusively to the AppStore and its apps. They also have a network effect for purchasing more simply for device/OS interoperability (think iPhone + Watch). By allowing the installation of a general purpose OS they are giving up a chunk of the profit from those apps and they cut down their own user base, thus making the ecosystem slightly less valuable as a whole. One option would be to allow the installation of an alternative OS only after the device is out of support at least for an image win but this might not justify the effort. I hope this gets regulated in the future so manufacturers are forced to remove any locks preventing the installation of 3rd party software (even make resources available for developers) the moment they stop providing "adequate" support.
- realusername 6y ago
  > I hope this gets regulated in the future so manufacturers are forced to remove any locks preventing the installation of 3rd party software (even make resources available for developers) the moment they stop providing "adequate" support. I would personally prefer one step further and force to remove all locks if the customer asks it, it's their device, they are free to do whatever they want with it, it's both the right approach morally but also for environmental issues.
  - buran77 6y ago
    > I would personally prefer one step further and force to remove all locks if the customer asks it They could but it would cost more than most users bargained for. Most likely a manufacturer would offer you the open device for the price of the device plus the expected loss of value from connected services (maybe something on top just for good measure), or a locked "subsidized" version that can or has to run only as we see today, and that will cost as much as one does now. And they could easily make a case for this even in court. But once the support ends it's more or less implicit that the manufacturer abandoned the device and no longer expects profit (or expenses) related to it and keeping it locked is a harder case to make. And I get a manufacturer's desire to profit from their own devices. But once they abandon them I see no other reasonable legal or moral claim a manufacturer can make. They should issue a final update that removes any protections, and make all relevant drivers and documentation freely available (or even for a modest one time fee) even if this means some binary blobs and a bunch of docs for how to interface with them.
grawprog 6y ago
>I think it's more akin to selling a coffeemaker that only works with manufacturer authorized coffee beans Isn't that kind of the concept behind those k-cup type machines?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

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.
  - dTal 6y ago
    >for some reason Ignorance. If people had no real idea how coffee was made either, you wouldn't see much outcry over locked-down coffee pods either. "You want to grind your own beans? What an eccentric nerd! My coffee maker works perfectly with the manufacturer pods, why would I ever switch?"
  - vladvasiliu 6y ago
    I think that most common apps nowadays being "free" contributes to this. "How can there be an Apple tax if the app is free?" Whereas the coffee is something they can buy at other shops, and it's pretty easy to compare.
- coding123 6y ago
  Well they do. Buy a different coffee maker.

buran77 6y ago

What's more, they have a pressing reason to not do it. The entire iOS devices ecosystem brings clients exclusively to the AppStore and its apps. They also have a network effect for purchasing more simply for device/OS interoperability (think iPhone + Watch). By allowing the installation of a general purpose OS they are giving up a chunk of the profit from those apps and they cut down their own user base, thus making the ecosystem slightly less valuable as a whole. One option would be to allow the installation of an alternative OS only after the device is out of support at least for an image win but this might not justify the effort. I hope this gets regulated in the future so manufacturers are forced to remove any locks preventing the installation of 3rd party software (even make resources available for developers) the moment they stop providing "adequate" support.

realusername 6y ago
> I hope this gets regulated in the future so manufacturers are forced to remove any locks preventing the installation of 3rd party software (even make resources available for developers) the moment they stop providing "adequate" support. I would personally prefer one step further and force to remove all locks if the customer asks it, it's their device, they are free to do whatever they want with it, it's both the right approach morally but also for environmental issues.
- buran77 6y ago
  > I would personally prefer one step further and force to remove all locks if the customer asks it They could but it would cost more than most users bargained for. Most likely a manufacturer would offer you the open device for the price of the device plus the expected loss of value from connected services (maybe something on top just for good measure), or a locked "subsidized" version that can or has to run only as we see today, and that will cost as much as one does now. And they could easily make a case for this even in court. But once the support ends it's more or less implicit that the manufacturer abandoned the device and no longer expects profit (or expenses) related to it and keeping it locked is a harder case to make. And I get a manufacturer's desire to profit from their own devices. But once they abandon them I see no other reasonable legal or moral claim a manufacturer can make. They should issue a final update that removes any protections, and make all relevant drivers and documentation freely available (or even for a modest one time fee) even if this means some binary blobs and a bunch of docs for how to interface with them.

grawprog 6y ago

>I think it's more akin to selling a coffeemaker that only works with manufacturer authorized coffee beans Isn't that kind of the concept behind those k-cup type machines?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]