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What good are performance and battery life if you don't get to decide which apps you are permitted to run on this device? Does the recent removal of apps [1] f

What good are performance and battery life if you don't get to decide which apps you are permitted to run on this device? Does the recent removal of apps [1] from russian appstore ring some bells? [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/world/europe/russia-navalny-app-election.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/world/europe/russia-naval...

jb1991 5y ago
Assuming we are talking about the desktop, you can run whatever you’d like. The App Store is just one avenue for software distribution on the Mac. The situation is of course different on iOS.
- sneak 5y ago
  > Assuming we are talking about the desktop, you can run whatever you’d like. Only sometimes. Have you ever tried unlocking a Pixelbook to run a different OS? It needs a custom cable and significant RE efforts by the community.
  - jb1991 5y ago
    Sorry, I thought the question was a critique of macOS, not the Pixelbook, and I offered a clarification that macOS is actually pretty open and you can run whatever app you like, in most cases.
    - sneak 5y ago
      For the moment. You also can't run any of the iOS apps (an advertised feature of macOS on M1) if you disable SIP, so this isn't really a true statement logically speaking.
  - linux_is_nice 5y ago
    For what it's worth, another option for disabling the write-protect is to temporarily remove the battery.
ajconway 5y ago
> What good are performance and battery life For the average consumer — everything. I'm kind of torn between the two opinions. I wish my iPhone would be able to run anything I want to run. I also recognize that nobody forced me to buy this iPhone. Mobile phones are mandated to have emergency calling functionality. Maybe in the future we'll have some "general purpose computing as a human right" law.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  > For the average consumer — everything. > I'm kind of torn between the two opinions. I am not torn. Because of us two, apparently only one lives in an authoritarian country. When your computing device blocks you from accessing anything not praising the current regime, it kinda devalues the user-friendly interface and manufacturing quality. Shiny chains are still chains.
  - ajconway 5y ago
    Well, that’s a different kind of issue. Should politics have anything to do with mandating which technologies have the right to exist? The Internet itself enables global surveillance by sufficiently funded actors, but it also makes this conversation possible. I like my internet, I don’t want it to go. I also welcome tech companies trying to extract every tiny bit of performance from the silicon that powers computing today. It may lead to developing something incompatible with existing solutions, but surely no regime on this planet is to blame here.

jb1991 5y ago

Assuming we are talking about the desktop, you can run whatever you’d like. The App Store is just one avenue for software distribution on the Mac. The situation is of course different on iOS.

sneak 5y ago
> Assuming we are talking about the desktop, you can run whatever you’d like. Only sometimes. Have you ever tried unlocking a Pixelbook to run a different OS? It needs a custom cable and significant RE efforts by the community.
- jb1991 5y ago
  Sorry, I thought the question was a critique of macOS, not the Pixelbook, and I offered a clarification that macOS is actually pretty open and you can run whatever app you like, in most cases.
  - sneak 5y ago
    For the moment. You also can't run any of the iOS apps (an advertised feature of macOS on M1) if you disable SIP, so this isn't really a true statement logically speaking.
- linux_is_nice 5y ago
  For what it's worth, another option for disabling the write-protect is to temporarily remove the battery.

ajconway 5y ago

> What good are performance and battery life For the average consumer — everything. I'm kind of torn between the two opinions. I wish my iPhone would be able to run anything I want to run. I also recognize that nobody forced me to buy this iPhone. Mobile phones are mandated to have emergency calling functionality. Maybe in the future we'll have some "general purpose computing as a human right" law.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
> For the average consumer — everything. > I'm kind of torn between the two opinions. I am not torn. Because of us two, apparently only one lives in an authoritarian country. When your computing device blocks you from accessing anything not praising the current regime, it kinda devalues the user-friendly interface and manufacturing quality. Shiny chains are still chains.
- ajconway 5y ago
  Well, that’s a different kind of issue. Should politics have anything to do with mandating which technologies have the right to exist? The Internet itself enables global surveillance by sufficiently funded actors, but it also makes this conversation possible. I like my internet, I don’t want it to go. I also welcome tech companies trying to extract every tiny bit of performance from the silicon that powers computing today. It may lead to developing something incompatible with existing solutions, but surely no regime on this planet is to blame here.