4 ms·

> The "non-mobile" caveat is doing a lot of work in 2022. >90% of computer time is on mobile devices. Sure. But I don’t feel robbed of the ability to do genera

> The "non-mobile" caveat is doing a lot of work in 2022. >90% of computer time is on mobile devices. Sure. But I don’t feel robbed of the ability to do general purpose computing so long as my device for general purpose computing allows me to do general purpose computing. Even if my locked down phone stays locked down. I want my phone to be a locked down appliance and I bought it because it’s a locked down appliance, not despite that it was. The question is perhaps: is it a problem that we have 2 classes of devices (mostly open like PCs, and mostly closed like everything else from consoles to phones cars), and that we need the first kind less and less? That’s certainly happening. But for me to consider something a war on general purpose computing I’d need to see actual attacks on my ability to use my general purpose computing devices. Not merely that I’m given more options to use other devices.

saurik 4y ago
The vast majority of people do not buy devices because they are locked down. In fact the idea that someone buys a phone because it is locked down and not because it fits in their pockets and has a radio on it is so disingenuous as to defy the intelligence of the reader. You only ever see that take on Hacker News (or similar tech forums) where people who are vested into this world defend their decisions. On the contrary--and I can say this with some air of authority--normal people bristle at restrictions they run into and when given the opportunity to escape those restrictions do so in large numbers. Despite the ridiculous amount of complication and even risk involved with jailbreaking one's phone, we had something like 12% of people with an iPhone jailbreaking them at some point (and, no: it had little to do with piracy, and even the United States Copyright Office agreed with that: people wanted functionality that wasn't being provided). The reality is: people at best buy these devices without understanding that they are locked down or at worst despite them being locked down. The business model of selling a locked down device is just so enticing that it has become hard to find devices that maintain high quality that aren't locked down, particularly at low price points. The only reason there seem to exist any anymore is because there are a handful of people at Google--and specifically Google--who have decided to defend the world from this fate. And even they aren't perfect. Virtually the entire category of ultrabooks seems to have fallen to Chromebooks, and I seriously had to sit around for an hour soldering to create a special magic USB debugging serial bypass cable that I use to essentially jailbreak these things so I can run actual-Linux on them. And that's really what is going to be your fate: the concept of a general purpose laptop is going to slowly die off and you are going to find yourself with fewer and fewer options that cost an arm and a leg vs. the ridiculously cheap alternative devices that will start to have better hardware or different design tradeoffs and you are also going to switch. The mere existence that "sure, I can still spend a small fortune to obtain a general purpose computer" doesn't somehow prevent our fate, particularly given that these arguments tend to come from anti-DRM "nut jobs" like Cory and I who will point out that your general purpose computer is cool and all but if it isn't allowed to connect to the same networks or busses (think HDMCP) as the locked down devices then we are still losing something important: we aren't claiming you won't be able to build a computer, only that it won't be useful anymore :(.
- akkartik 4y ago
  Normal people bristle at restrictions they run into -- but also apps that take advantage of the freedoms granted them. The early value of browsers and AJAX was precisely that the browser was locked down. "Nothing to install" is valuable because of this. So I think both of you can be right. "Buying devices because it's locked down" only seems disingenuous if the locking down is for oneself.
  - rfoo 4y ago
    If the user can choose to unlock their devices, it's the users themselves locking down the device and it makes sense to say "Buying devices because it's locked down / can be locked down". Otherwise, it's not "Buying devices because it's locked down", it's "I have no other choice but buying locked down devices". The browser is something running on top of an open general purpose computing device. In this case, it's the user (who decided to run a browser instead of native apps) decided to lock themselves down and it's totally different.
    - akkartik 4y ago
      Sure. You're not disagreeing. People want control and people want safety without having to think about it all the time. I think we haven't found the best technical solution to this tension, and we're stuck on a local optimum of "ignorance is bliss." Ideal would be something people can learn at their own pace over time -- and still not think about most of the time. You know, what the word "abstraction" is supposed to mean.
- alkonaut 4y ago
  > You only ever see that take on Hacker News (or similar tech forums) where people who are vested into this world defend their decisions. Outside of places like HN and similar you get blank stares if you ask the question of what people think about the closedneas or openness of their device. If you clarify that (say) they would perhaps like to use an app from a different source, it’s again blank stares. I of course wouldn’t actively mind if it was much easier to sideload an app on iOS, but if there was e.g some openness push that required multiple app stores to not just be available but also that all be equally prominent (like the browser or media player thing in Windows) then I’m completely convinced that it would be a disaster for users. More freedom, cheaper, but fractured and insecure. I’m not sure it’s a net positive. And I’m sure my dad would be more confused. > the concept of a general purpose laptop is going to slowly die off and you are going to find yourself with fewer and fewer options that cost an arm and a leg vs. the ridiculously cheap alternative devices that will start to have better hardware or different design tradeoffs and you are also going to switch. I believe this too. And while I don’t much like this future, I don’t really have a good answer. I don’t think the answer is to somehow require any appliance to be more open. It seems misdirected. That PCs will be expensive and niche is probably true. They’ll go back to where they started before the home computing revolution, to be professional tools for content creators, developers, scientists and similar. It’s not the PC that’s threatened, it’s the cheap home PC that’s threatened. Not the workstation or video editing rig. But the thing about the cheap home PC for web browsing, photo organization and light word processing is that it was never really a good tool for the job. It was a malware ridden crash prone slow machine that we (the HN people who now tell our relatives to get iPads or ChromeBooks for browsing) had to fix around the holidays.
haswell 4y ago
This trend towards simpler and simpler abstractions is everywhere. We see it in the development world as well, with languages provide ever higher abstractions, and frameworks providing ever more opinionated approaches to solving things. This happens not because of some war against writing ultra high performance code in assembly, but because developers don't want to deal with assembly on a daily basis. My phone is a device that needs to just work. My desktop/laptop are devices that needs to let me do whatever I want them to. Too often, people in our community conflate the two and conclude nefarious intent, when what we're seeing are market forces at work and the creation of products that the market demands. This isn't to say that we should not be vigilant, but I agree with what you're saying here - these trends are not by themselves evidence of a war on general purpose computing.
- CogitoCogito 4y ago
  > Too often, people in our community conflate the two and conclude nefarious intent, when what we're seeing are market forces at work and the creation of products that the market demands. I find it hard to ascribe it all to "market forces" when it's also aided by legislation like the DMCA. Anyway if the EU Digital Markets act someday opens up App stores, we'll see _more_ market forces at play and can see exactly what consumers truly want.
  - haswell 4y ago
    These aren’t mutually exclusive though. There absolutely are forces that we should be worried about. My point is that despite these concerns, there are completely natural and understandable reasons for many of the trends we’re seeing that are unrelated to those concerns and don’t necessarily imply progression towards an environment hostile to general purpose computing.

saurik 4y ago

The vast majority of people do not buy devices because they are locked down. In fact the idea that someone buys a phone because it is locked down and not because it fits in their pockets and has a radio on it is so disingenuous as to defy the intelligence of the reader. You only ever see that take on Hacker News (or similar tech forums) where people who are vested into this world defend their decisions. On the contrary--and I can say this with some air of authority--normal people bristle at restrictions they run into and when given the opportunity to escape those restrictions do so in large numbers. Despite the ridiculous amount of complication and even risk involved with jailbreaking one's phone, we had something like 12% of people with an iPhone jailbreaking them at some point (and, no: it had little to do with piracy, and even the United States Copyright Office agreed with that: people wanted functionality that wasn't being provided). The reality is: people at best buy these devices without understanding that they are locked down or at worst despite them being locked down. The business model of selling a locked down device is just so enticing that it has become hard to find devices that maintain high quality that aren't locked down, particularly at low price points. The only reason there seem to exist any anymore is because there are a handful of people at Google--and specifically Google--who have decided to defend the world from this fate. And even they aren't perfect. Virtually the entire category of ultrabooks seems to have fallen to Chromebooks, and I seriously had to sit around for an hour soldering to create a special magic USB debugging serial bypass cable that I use to essentially jailbreak these things so I can run actual-Linux on them. And that's really what is going to be your fate: the concept of a general purpose laptop is going to slowly die off and you are going to find yourself with fewer and fewer options that cost an arm and a leg vs. the ridiculously cheap alternative devices that will start to have better hardware or different design tradeoffs and you are also going to switch. The mere existence that "sure, I can still spend a small fortune to obtain a general purpose computer" doesn't somehow prevent our fate, particularly given that these arguments tend to come from anti-DRM "nut jobs" like Cory and I who will point out that your general purpose computer is cool and all but if it isn't allowed to connect to the same networks or busses (think HDMCP) as the locked down devices then we are still losing something important: we aren't claiming you won't be able to build a computer, only that it won't be useful anymore :(.

akkartik 4y ago
Normal people bristle at restrictions they run into -- but also apps that take advantage of the freedoms granted them. The early value of browsers and AJAX was precisely that the browser was locked down. "Nothing to install" is valuable because of this. So I think both of you can be right. "Buying devices because it's locked down" only seems disingenuous if the locking down is for oneself.
- rfoo 4y ago
  If the user can choose to unlock their devices, it's the users themselves locking down the device and it makes sense to say "Buying devices because it's locked down / can be locked down". Otherwise, it's not "Buying devices because it's locked down", it's "I have no other choice but buying locked down devices". The browser is something running on top of an open general purpose computing device. In this case, it's the user (who decided to run a browser instead of native apps) decided to lock themselves down and it's totally different.
  - akkartik 4y ago
    Sure. You're not disagreeing. People want control and people want safety without having to think about it all the time. I think we haven't found the best technical solution to this tension, and we're stuck on a local optimum of "ignorance is bliss." Ideal would be something people can learn at their own pace over time -- and still not think about most of the time. You know, what the word "abstraction" is supposed to mean.
alkonaut 4y ago
> You only ever see that take on Hacker News (or similar tech forums) where people who are vested into this world defend their decisions. Outside of places like HN and similar you get blank stares if you ask the question of what people think about the closedneas or openness of their device. If you clarify that (say) they would perhaps like to use an app from a different source, it’s again blank stares. I of course wouldn’t actively mind if it was much easier to sideload an app on iOS, but if there was e.g some openness push that required multiple app stores to not just be available but also that all be equally prominent (like the browser or media player thing in Windows) then I’m completely convinced that it would be a disaster for users. More freedom, cheaper, but fractured and insecure. I’m not sure it’s a net positive. And I’m sure my dad would be more confused. > the concept of a general purpose laptop is going to slowly die off and you are going to find yourself with fewer and fewer options that cost an arm and a leg vs. the ridiculously cheap alternative devices that will start to have better hardware or different design tradeoffs and you are also going to switch. I believe this too. And while I don’t much like this future, I don’t really have a good answer. I don’t think the answer is to somehow require any appliance to be more open. It seems misdirected. That PCs will be expensive and niche is probably true. They’ll go back to where they started before the home computing revolution, to be professional tools for content creators, developers, scientists and similar. It’s not the PC that’s threatened, it’s the cheap home PC that’s threatened. Not the workstation or video editing rig. But the thing about the cheap home PC for web browsing, photo organization and light word processing is that it was never really a good tool for the job. It was a malware ridden crash prone slow machine that we (the HN people who now tell our relatives to get iPads or ChromeBooks for browsing) had to fix around the holidays.

haswell 4y ago

This trend towards simpler and simpler abstractions is everywhere. We see it in the development world as well, with languages provide ever higher abstractions, and frameworks providing ever more opinionated approaches to solving things. This happens not because of some war against writing ultra high performance code in assembly, but because developers don't want to deal with assembly on a daily basis. My phone is a device that needs to just work. My desktop/laptop are devices that needs to let me do whatever I want them to. Too often, people in our community conflate the two and conclude nefarious intent, when what we're seeing are market forces at work and the creation of products that the market demands. This isn't to say that we should not be vigilant, but I agree with what you're saying here - these trends are not by themselves evidence of a war on general purpose computing.

CogitoCogito 4y ago
> Too often, people in our community conflate the two and conclude nefarious intent, when what we're seeing are market forces at work and the creation of products that the market demands. I find it hard to ascribe it all to "market forces" when it's also aided by legislation like the DMCA. Anyway if the EU Digital Markets act someday opens up App stores, we'll see _more_ market forces at play and can see exactly what consumers truly want.
- haswell 4y ago
  These aren’t mutually exclusive though. There absolutely are forces that we should be worried about. My point is that despite these concerns, there are completely natural and understandable reasons for many of the trends we’re seeing that are unrelated to those concerns and don’t necessarily imply progression towards an environment hostile to general purpose computing.