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> I for one believe in the principle that I paid to own the device […] I paid for an iPhone for my mom so that she could not load whatever she damn well please

> I for one believe in the principle that I paid to own the device […] I paid for an iPhone for my mom so that she could not load whatever she damn well pleases, because if she does I have to deal with the mess afterwards. Some folks are okay with walled gardens for specific purposes. If that's not you, that's fine. Perhaps Apple iDevices are then not for you.

waboremo 4y ago
So keep her within the walled garden? Hell maybe even enable parental control if you really want to roleplay as her technological parent.
- eternalban 4y ago
  At some point in the near future we are all going to be in the same shoe as GP's mother: confronted by tech we simply no longer understand. Even the latest generation is merely fluent in using these devices. The subset that will keep up will be even smaller than today, imo. Almost all others will choose the safe options, specially when our lives are even more critically intertwined with our devices. Even today it is not ok to be careless with what you put on your machine, but in a couple of decades, it could be a true disaster, specially if public services are fully tied to your digital identity. You would not want your digital self to be entertaining any random* program as guest. * effectively random - see first point
  - binarymax 4y ago
    This is a strange prediction to make on hacker news. Most of the people here are constantly learning and adapting to new technology.
    - KerrAvon 4y ago
      You must not have experience with elderly relatives on the edge of Alzheimers or other forms of dementia. It happens; it happens to the best of us.
      - binarymax 4y ago
        I do. But having a debilitating disease is a different story and beyond the persons control. Given a choice, I and many others here will continue to learn and adapt.
        _carbyau_ 4y ago
        Eh. GP:> The subset that will keep up will be even smaller than today The subset might include you, or a majority of HN people even. Just a smaller % of population than currently. Regards your > Given a choice If you have family with such issues, you know it wasn't a choice. Getting older means facing mental plasticity slowdown. You can work to be fit on that front sure, but it is an issue that we will all face and not everyone will choose as you do. I am not sure I agree with GP's assertion that technology will be inherently harder to deal with though.
        eternalban 4y ago
        The subject at hand affects the entirety of society, not just hn members. Even today surely you must have very intelligent and capable friends or people you know that are preoccupied with their own domain and it is an unreasonable position to expect them to keep up with software and hardware and cellular/networking and be able to ascertain with high confidence that X is a safe and secure choice. This issue can not be decided based on what is appropriate for a niche segment of society. We have a variety of options to serve the general society -- state/control, state/licensing, state/regulation, private/corporate, public/ngo, public/community, personal/ai, personal/expertise. These are not mutually exclusive options and we should discuss the possible configurations, optimal for general societal welfare, rather than denying that the problem exists.
      - eternalban 4y ago
        There is certainly that, but in fairness GP is correct that I am saying that at some point tech is going to outstrip even the best of us (maybe it's just the dumb me projecting). One possibility that comes to mind is that we could possibly rely on trustworthy AI to help us understand the implications of using X in full. So if not walled gardens maybe private landscape architects or AI gardeners. But one of the two will be required for digital life.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  You’re being sarcastic, but as lifespans continue to increase and with no known cures for mental degenerative diseases like dementia; this is more common than you realize.
nixass 4y ago
And that's fine, but let people to do whatever they want with their devices.
- jensgk 4y ago
  But the device consists of the hardware, the os and the app store. The is no "hardware" in the Apple universe. And that is good. If you don't like it that way, buy a Nokia.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    That makes no sense. Device refers to the physical machine. The software running on it is a completely separate matter. Just look at Apple's M1 laptops and Asahi Linux. I don't want to buy a Nokia. Apple's hardware is really good and I want to buy their devices. I just don't want to become a serf in their digital fiefdom.
  - devmor 4y ago
    No, the device consists of the hardware and firmware required to make the hardware operate. There is no reason to consider the OS and the App Store part of the device, other than marketing.
throw10920 4y ago
This is a very bad argument. There are several, very easy to imagine mechanisms that both provide user freedom and security/idiot-resistance at the same time. For instance, extending the "parental control" feature to have a toggle for sideloading - then, you just turn on parental control, toggle that off, and keep the PIN. Done. The idea that the features of the product should completely unnecessarily be restricted for all users for the dubious benefit of a tiny subset of them is laughable. The only logically consistent motive to advocate for this is profit.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  Uniformity and convention over configuration and customization is why people feel why iOS is more stable and secure than the Android ecosystem as a whole. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    You make your trade offs or you get another vendor to copy the features you like and not the ones you don’t. Forcing everything to be homogenous is something you’re meant to grow out of when you’re eight, once you see that ruining things for other people because you’re jealous is a bad personality trait.
    - chaostheory 4y ago
      > Forcing everything to be homogenous is something you’re meant to grow out of when you’re eight, once you see that ruining things for other people because you’re jealous is a bad personality trait. No one is forcing “everything to be homogenous”. If you don’t like homogeneity, then avoid it. It’s not hard to understand. My choices are none of your business just like I’m not going to criticize you for wanting more freedom to customize your device at the expense of security and stability.
  - throw10920 4y ago
    > If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. Very, very bad and consumer-hostile sentiment that is inconsistent both with good ethics and with the way that the regulatory system works currently. Regulations on goods sold exist for a purpose - to allow the user to generally buy things while having some guarantees about their lifetime/security/safety/consistency with marketing/etc. "If you don't like it, don't buy it" implies that companies should be able to sell goods made with toxic substances, not honor their warranties, lie on their marketing, and steal and sell your personal medical information. This is bad. If I buy a product, I expect to be able to do whatever I want with it, and to not have arbitrary limitations on how I use that product that exist purely for the sake of making the seller more rich, and this is consistent with the way that consumer protection regulations work in general. > Uniformity and convention over configuration and customization is why people feel why iOS is more stable and secure than the Android ecosystem as a whole. False. The vast majority of people have no opinions of whether Android or iOS is more secure. Slightly more, but very few, of them have any opinions on their relative stability, and you can attribute exactly all of that instability to a mix between (1) manufacturers making terrible drivers and support packages for their hardware and (2) Google being generally bad at designing software. It has nothing to do with "uniformity" or "convention over configuration" at all.
seqizz 4y ago
So, for this _specific_ purposes, keep the walled garden by default on, on one of the biggest ecosystems? How about opt-in for walled garden for those who need it.
DavideNL 4y ago
macOS has SIP (System Integrity Protection) which can be disabled. Your mom would not disable it. No non-technical person i've ever met, even knows what SIP is, let alone has disabled it. Security researchers, for example, can disable it. And use this to find security vulnerabilities. The point is, as users we should have the ability... Apple (or any company) should not be allowed to dictate what people are & are not allowed to do on the devices they own.
fstanis 4y ago
Do you believe Chrome should remove the developer tools to protect users from harming themselves? I mean, it's literally one key press away.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Yes, actually. Then every website wouldn't have to litter the console with warnings to users about pasting in code. I would much rather just have Chrome Developer Edition.
  - IIsi50MHz 4y ago
    But… I "need" those tools to undo the harm that some websites try to inflict on me. I use them almost daily to delete things like taking 25% of my window for a scrolling and animated banner trying to sell me their irrelevant-to-me Excel add-in (annoyingly, this example bypasses all adblockers, comes with a widget that resizes it to a 'mere' 5% of my window, and forgets my choice every time I load or reload any of their pages). I also sometimes use them to repair malfunctioning pages so I can actually use them as intended. Sure, you could say that I should just use this "Developer Edition", but that requires me to have access to install it on every puter I walk up to (just to be prepared for somewhat common web attrocities like full-page elements that prevent me from interacting with the page in ways that I feel should never be forbidden). I don't tend to see 'warning' messages in the dev console that seem to be attempts to dissuade me from using the dev tools. Maybe…twice in >20 years?
    - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
      If there were two separate versions of Chrome you can be sure there'd be people trying to block the dev version because they'd think using it is hacking or someone being tricked and everyone would be adding 'no-dev' scripts to their pages and we'd lose out by moving the web closer to PDFs.
trap_goes_hot 4y ago
Technology to have managed iOS devices is called MDM. Its mature technology that is already used for things like work-issued devices. What you want already exists. You're setting up a false choice. https://www.kandji.io/mdm/start/product/?nis=8 https://www.kandji.io/mdm/start/product/?nis=8 https://www.jamf.com/lp/apple-mobile-device-management-mdm-jamf/?nis=8 https://www.jamf.com/lp/apple-mobile-device-management-mdm-j... https://www.hexnode.com/mobile-device-management/macos-device-management/?nis=8 https://www.hexnode.com/mobile-device-management/macos-devic...

waboremo 4y ago

So keep her within the walled garden? Hell maybe even enable parental control if you really want to roleplay as her technological parent.

eternalban 4y ago
At some point in the near future we are all going to be in the same shoe as GP's mother: confronted by tech we simply no longer understand. Even the latest generation is merely fluent in using these devices. The subset that will keep up will be even smaller than today, imo. Almost all others will choose the safe options, specially when our lives are even more critically intertwined with our devices. Even today it is not ok to be careless with what you put on your machine, but in a couple of decades, it could be a true disaster, specially if public services are fully tied to your digital identity. You would not want your digital self to be entertaining any random* program as guest. * effectively random - see first point
- binarymax 4y ago
  This is a strange prediction to make on hacker news. Most of the people here are constantly learning and adapting to new technology.
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    You must not have experience with elderly relatives on the edge of Alzheimers or other forms of dementia. It happens; it happens to the best of us.
    - binarymax 4y ago
      I do. But having a debilitating disease is a different story and beyond the persons control. Given a choice, I and many others here will continue to learn and adapt.
      - _carbyau_ 4y ago
        Eh. GP:> The subset that will keep up will be even smaller than today The subset might include you, or a majority of HN people even. Just a smaller % of population than currently. Regards your > Given a choice If you have family with such issues, you know it wasn't a choice. Getting older means facing mental plasticity slowdown. You can work to be fit on that front sure, but it is an issue that we will all face and not everyone will choose as you do. I am not sure I agree with GP's assertion that technology will be inherently harder to deal with though.
        eternalban 4y ago
        The subject at hand affects the entirety of society, not just hn members. Even today surely you must have very intelligent and capable friends or people you know that are preoccupied with their own domain and it is an unreasonable position to expect them to keep up with software and hardware and cellular/networking and be able to ascertain with high confidence that X is a safe and secure choice. This issue can not be decided based on what is appropriate for a niche segment of society. We have a variety of options to serve the general society -- state/control, state/licensing, state/regulation, private/corporate, public/ngo, public/community, personal/ai, personal/expertise. These are not mutually exclusive options and we should discuss the possible configurations, optimal for general societal welfare, rather than denying that the problem exists.
    - eternalban 4y ago
      There is certainly that, but in fairness GP is correct that I am saying that at some point tech is going to outstrip even the best of us (maybe it's just the dumb me projecting). One possibility that comes to mind is that we could possibly rely on trustworthy AI to help us understand the implications of using X in full. So if not walled gardens maybe private landscape architects or AI gardeners. But one of the two will be required for digital life.
chaostheory 4y ago
You’re being sarcastic, but as lifespans continue to increase and with no known cures for mental degenerative diseases like dementia; this is more common than you realize.

nixass 4y ago

And that's fine, but let people to do whatever they want with their devices.

jensgk 4y ago
But the device consists of the hardware, the os and the app store. The is no "hardware" in the Apple universe. And that is good. If you don't like it that way, buy a Nokia.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  That makes no sense. Device refers to the physical machine. The software running on it is a completely separate matter. Just look at Apple's M1 laptops and Asahi Linux. I don't want to buy a Nokia. Apple's hardware is really good and I want to buy their devices. I just don't want to become a serf in their digital fiefdom.
- devmor 4y ago
  No, the device consists of the hardware and firmware required to make the hardware operate. There is no reason to consider the OS and the App Store part of the device, other than marketing.

throw10920 4y ago

This is a very bad argument. There are several, very easy to imagine mechanisms that both provide user freedom and security/idiot-resistance at the same time. For instance, extending the "parental control" feature to have a toggle for sideloading - then, you just turn on parental control, toggle that off, and keep the PIN. Done. The idea that the features of the product should completely unnecessarily be restricted for all users for the dubious benefit of a tiny subset of them is laughable. The only logically consistent motive to advocate for this is profit.

chaostheory 4y ago
Uniformity and convention over configuration and customization is why people feel why iOS is more stable and secure than the Android ecosystem as a whole. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.
- hinkley 4y ago
  You make your trade offs or you get another vendor to copy the features you like and not the ones you don’t. Forcing everything to be homogenous is something you’re meant to grow out of when you’re eight, once you see that ruining things for other people because you’re jealous is a bad personality trait.
  - chaostheory 4y ago
    > Forcing everything to be homogenous is something you’re meant to grow out of when you’re eight, once you see that ruining things for other people because you’re jealous is a bad personality trait. No one is forcing “everything to be homogenous”. If you don’t like homogeneity, then avoid it. It’s not hard to understand. My choices are none of your business just like I’m not going to criticize you for wanting more freedom to customize your device at the expense of security and stability.
- throw10920 4y ago
  > If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. Very, very bad and consumer-hostile sentiment that is inconsistent both with good ethics and with the way that the regulatory system works currently. Regulations on goods sold exist for a purpose - to allow the user to generally buy things while having some guarantees about their lifetime/security/safety/consistency with marketing/etc. "If you don't like it, don't buy it" implies that companies should be able to sell goods made with toxic substances, not honor their warranties, lie on their marketing, and steal and sell your personal medical information. This is bad. If I buy a product, I expect to be able to do whatever I want with it, and to not have arbitrary limitations on how I use that product that exist purely for the sake of making the seller more rich, and this is consistent with the way that consumer protection regulations work in general. > Uniformity and convention over configuration and customization is why people feel why iOS is more stable and secure than the Android ecosystem as a whole. False. The vast majority of people have no opinions of whether Android or iOS is more secure. Slightly more, but very few, of them have any opinions on their relative stability, and you can attribute exactly all of that instability to a mix between (1) manufacturers making terrible drivers and support packages for their hardware and (2) Google being generally bad at designing software. It has nothing to do with "uniformity" or "convention over configuration" at all.

seqizz 4y ago

So, for this _specific_ purposes, keep the walled garden by default on, on one of the biggest ecosystems? How about opt-in for walled garden for those who need it.

DavideNL 4y ago

macOS has SIP (System Integrity Protection) which can be disabled. Your mom would not disable it. No non-technical person i've ever met, even knows what SIP is, let alone has disabled it. Security researchers, for example, can disable it. And use this to find security vulnerabilities. The point is, as users we should have the ability... Apple (or any company) should not be allowed to dictate what people are & are not allowed to do on the devices they own.

fstanis 4y ago

Do you believe Chrome should remove the developer tools to protect users from harming themselves? I mean, it's literally one key press away.

Spivak 4y ago
Yes, actually. Then every website wouldn't have to litter the console with warnings to users about pasting in code. I would much rather just have Chrome Developer Edition.
- IIsi50MHz 4y ago
  But… I "need" those tools to undo the harm that some websites try to inflict on me. I use them almost daily to delete things like taking 25% of my window for a scrolling and animated banner trying to sell me their irrelevant-to-me Excel add-in (annoyingly, this example bypasses all adblockers, comes with a widget that resizes it to a 'mere' 5% of my window, and forgets my choice every time I load or reload any of their pages). I also sometimes use them to repair malfunctioning pages so I can actually use them as intended. Sure, you could say that I should just use this "Developer Edition", but that requires me to have access to install it on every puter I walk up to (just to be prepared for somewhat common web attrocities like full-page elements that prevent me from interacting with the page in ways that I feel should never be forbidden). I don't tend to see 'warning' messages in the dev console that seem to be attempts to dissuade me from using the dev tools. Maybe…twice in >20 years?
  - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
    If there were two separate versions of Chrome you can be sure there'd be people trying to block the dev version because they'd think using it is hacking or someone being tricked and everyone would be adding 'no-dev' scripts to their pages and we'd lose out by moving the web closer to PDFs.

trap_goes_hot 4y ago

Technology to have managed iOS devices is called MDM. Its mature technology that is already used for things like work-issued devices. What you want already exists. You're setting up a false choice. https://www.kandji.io/mdm/start/product/?nis=8 https://www.kandji.io/mdm/start/product/?nis=8 https://www.jamf.com/lp/apple-mobile-device-management-mdm-jamf/?nis=8 https://www.jamf.com/lp/apple-mobile-device-management-mdm-j... https://www.hexnode.com/mobile-device-management/macos-device-management/?nis=8 https://www.hexnode.com/mobile-device-management/macos-devic...