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What bothers me about this -- and it bothered me enough to leave the platform -- is not fees, or "hobby computing," or "it's just for my own use," or trying to

What bothers me about this -- and it bothered me enough to leave the platform -- is not fees, or "hobby computing," or "it's just for my own use," or trying to figure out why this or that would be in Apple's interest. What bothers me is that it feels like an offense against the entire notion of what a computer is. I am, of course, aware that many (perhaps most) computers in the world are effectively appliances, but at some level, the great glory of this glorious, epochal machine -- the "personal computer" -- is one's ability to program it and make it do something new. It is not just a machine; it's a machine for creating machines. Take that away, and . . . to what shall I compare it? It's like giving someone a deck of cards and telling them that these cards can only be used to play blackjack. You can't invent a card game, or change the rules, or build a house of cards, or do card magic. Putting such stipulations in place isn't just annoying or inconvenient. It's a kind of basic betrayal of the concepts and affordances that underlie the thing itself. [edit: grammar]

sneak 4y ago
It's a bicycle for the share price.
- cma 4y ago
  A bicycle for sharecroppers.
massysett 4y ago
I don't view the iPhone and iPad as "computers" or "personal computers" any more than I view my cable TV set-top box or Sonos speaker that way. Both are very powerful devices with Linux operating systems. But I don't expect to be able to program them. The iPhone is an appliance that can download "apps" that Apple permits. When I want a "computer" I open up my MacBook.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  How does letting people freely sideload apps conflict with this philosophy? You can still use your iPad as the world's most expensive e-reader if you want, letting other people run Linux on it doesn't somehow ruin your experience.
  - gretch 4y ago
    My philosophy is that Apple can do whatever they want (as long as legal and ethical). They made a thing, and you bought it. Why would anyone with a bent on free computing walk into what they know to be a closed ecosystem. Just buy an Android phone. It’s like flying to a foreign country and expecting everyone to English to you imo…
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Apple can absolutely do whatever they want, until regulators block them off from the market for anticompetitive or anticonsumer practices. Then their profit motivation kicks in again, and they have to lick boots until they're on the government's good side again. If you want an adversarial narrative between Apple and the people, you'll find no greater supporter than me. Europe seems to disagree with Apple's philosophy though, so maybe it's time they reassess their opinions.
    - rektide 4y ago
      The excuse that freedom exists because one other market player is not a tyrant skates extremely thin ice. If Android went dark side too, where would we be? This excuse is exhausting, lacks any principles whatsoever; these are general purpose devices, browsing the web & allowing arbitrary apps to be developed & squeezed into the world, if they pass through the tyrant's gauntlet. That one company offers some modicum of un-tyranny is a poor defense for locking down & excluding general purpose computing, for withdrawing the systems we have in our pockets from our own ownership & ability to control. Citizens should have some options. The implications that the market is free to do whatever & citizens are free to pick from what's available seems presently somewhat tennable, but if we step back just a little bit here & look at the picture, it's horrifying. The inability to root most Android phones shows that actual freedom, real general purpose computing, is an extremely fine & narrowing little sliver, of the most important & most used general computing world.
      - brewdad 4y ago
        The market has no interest in your individual freedom. If the citizens don't demand it,there is zero incentive to provide it. Don't try to convince Apple or Google or Microsoft or whomever to not be evil. Convince your fellow persons of the need to demand open devices. Good luck.
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  > When I want a "computer" I open up my MacBook. That Macs are still somewhat open is just a happy historical accident. Enjoy it while it lasts :/
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    This is slippery-slope fearmongering. In reality, Apple has gone out of its way to ensure that Apple Silicon Macs can boot other operating systems if the user so desires, and can do so without sacrificing security.
    - behnamoh 4y ago
      It is NOT. Apple literally doesn't allow you to modify the root directory anymore. If you want to, you have to jump through some loops and lose access to FileVault!
    - TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
      They also go out of their way to make it annoying to use applications that aren't signed by Apple under the $99/year developer plan.
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        Right-click open, click open one time ever is well below my personal threshold for annoying.
        fragmede 4y ago
        That's for signed apps. Totally unsigned apps can't be run without additional work.
        sbuk 4y ago
        The OP literally described the process for opening unsigned apps.
- tarotuser 4y ago
  > I don't view the iPhone and iPad as "computers" or "personal computers" any more than I view my cable TV set-top box or Sonos speaker that way. Why should your personal view obviate the devices' nature? These are all computers. *Whose* computers is the more important question. And from a look at a lot of these 'narrow focused computer devices' have the company you bought it from still exert control years after your purchase... It's almost like you unwittingly agreed to a rental that was misclassified as a sale. How many times were features removed at a later 'update'? How many features did the device support but didn't make available? How many features were kept because it would keep you from prematurely throwing it away to get the new thing? Or better yet, with devices that have user-reprogrammable hardware means that the ecological aspect of "obsolete" hardware is that the new feature makes it nearly good as new, all the while keeping it out of the landfills. Sure, stuff going obsolete will still happen... But with repair and upgrades as options means the "Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle" will lead to better outcomes for all. But that's not good for capitalism and profit. > The iPhone is an appliance that can download "apps" that Apple permits. When I want a "computer" I open up my MacBook. And, why is your opinion on what a "computer" is important? What criteria are you using? I ask this because we even have "Doom played on a pregnancy test" https://www.pcmag.com/news/yes-doom-is-playable-on-a-pregnancy-test https://www.pcmag.com/news/yes-doom-is-playable-on-a-pregnan... . Basically any justification or rubric on what a computer is sure looks to me as artificial and gatekeepy.
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    Apple could allow personal hobby apps at basically no cost. The obvious upside is that people who start off building hobby apps may well move into developing apps - and perhaps even associated hardware - professionally. This is very likely to lead to increased goodwill and significant further purchases of products and other services. Development of Xcode (not the best environment ever...) and Swift/UIKit will continue anyway. There is no sense in which a few thousand/tens of thousands of hobby developers are paying for that to any significant extent. This does not require sideloading or loosening the security. It requires a slight relaxation of the provisioning system for single devices - something which exists already. I don't care what the fanboi justifications are. Not doing this makes absolutely no commercial sense. Apple is gaining a somewhat imaginary $99 a year, which hobby developers won't pay anyway, and losing extra sales of hardware and apps which are potentially worth far more. It's also driving hobby coders towards competing ecosystems. Instead of expanding the ecosystem this contracts it.
a4isms 4y ago
First, you are right. Jobs himself said that he wanted to go beyond selling computers, and sell information appliances. In that respect, he and Woz were diametrically opposed. When he was squeezed out of management in his own company, it is not a coïncidence that he elbowed his way into Jef Raskin's Macintosh project: Raskin was also interested in building information appliances, the difference between the two men was that Raskin was coming to the notion of an information appliance from the HCI perspective, and wanted to focus on simplicity and low cost. The UX he designed was text-centric and used high-speed incremental search as its navigation paradigm. Jobs was infatuated with what he'd seen at Xerox Parc, and also wanted to build an information appliance, but he wanted it to be powerful and flexible and centered on the WIMP paradigm.[1] Jobs was the boss, so Raskin left the project and the company. But Jobs never lost his vision that Apple should sell appliances, and people who wanted to "wrench their own devices" should buy PCs. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIMP_(computing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIMP_(computing)
- Terretta 4y ago
  Jobs called it "bicycles for the mind".* Back in the beginning there was lots of talk of "toasters" as an appliance every household has and even a child can use (to the point there was a famous screensaver of flying toasters). The Mac 512, Plus, and SE were embodiments of this. (The Apple //c with LCD attachment and carry handle was an earlier attempt.) Note that all of those included portability as a feature, while the all-in-one Macs (not the Apple //c) emphasized usability by non-tech and non-tech job people. Their spiritual successor is the last 3 years of iPad Pro w/ magnetic magic keyboard/stand. It's pretty clear there's only a relatively short period of time the hobby shop and hackers are "changing the world", while the real shift comes when "everyone" can access and leverage the new tech (like a toaster, or fluoride in water). --- * There's another subtle difference between "bicycles for the mind" and "a computer on every desk and in every home." One of those is vendor centric, the other is user outcome space.
  - a4isms 4y ago
    I remember "Bicycles for the mind" well: http://raganwald.com/assets/images/bicycle-jobs.jpeg http://raganwald.com/assets/images/bicycle-jobs.jpeg But as a metaphor, I don't think of a bicycle as an appliance. Mainstream bicycles are brutalist: The chain and gears are usually on display and user-serviceable. Parts like wheels, saddles, and handlebars are standardized in a way that allows users to mix and match components freely. In the days of steel frames you could make art bikes and trikes and all kinds of things from a bicycle. The metaphor works well to describe a lever for the mind's own motive ability.
Spooky23 4y ago
The problem is the computer has changed, it’s not a computer, it’s a node in a ubiquitous global network. 2003 and 2023 are very different and we’re feeling the negative impacts of global connectivity. Look at the trackers like AirTag. A gadget to find your keys is incredibly useful, but can also turn into a device to aid criminal activity pretty readily.
- gnarbarian 4y ago
  any tool can be used for good or evil. To stop people from doing bad things we need to focus on correcting people's behaviors not on crippling our tools.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    This is generally correct. But at the same time, it's facile to ignore the existence of network effects that arise from increased connectivity, and the way they shift incentives. They are not just 'our' tools (qua individual owners), because they leverage a massive shared infrastructure of standards, data sharing, and re-transmission. What you're offering here is not an argument but a mental block to actually thinking about the issue described. You don't offer any ideas for 'correcting people's behaviors': how do you propose to address the phenomena of greed, dishonesty and so on, given that people with those qualities are just as well able to make use of technology for their selfish ends?
    - gnarbarian 4y ago
      specific remedies cannot be prescribed for abstract problems. We deal with those problems as we always have, through cultural and legal reinforcement. Our culture informs us of what is socially acceptable (theft, greed, dishonesty etc) and meters out justice through our real social networks of family and friends. For issues that raise to a level of criminality we use the legal system. I also think it's perfectly fine to make use of technology for selfish ends. That's the real reason competitive market economies function more effectively than command economies. When we all act out of our own self interest we buy the best value good and reward the most efficient producer. (Thiel argues with this and I admit this pattern does not hold in markets with monopolies, cartels, or regulatory capture)
lostgame 4y ago
>> It's like giving someone a deck of cards and telling them that these cards can only be used to play blackjack. You can't invent a card game, or change the rules, or build a house of cards, or do card magic. Millions of people buy cards that can only be used to specifically only play, say; 'Magic: the Gathering' (MtG). You could probably invent some sort of new game with MtG cards, or do some sort of card magic with them (no pun intended); but MtG cards are very intentionally not designed to be 'general purpose' cards or tools to design new card games with. They have a very specific audience in mind. Magic the Gathering cards are also much more expensive than a regular deck of playing cards I can grab from my local dollar store. They have a lot less utility than said cards I can acquire for a $1.15CDN, taxes in; and they also have a bit of a stigma from people who seem to not like MtG for various reasons. Somehow, still; it's one of the largest and most widely played card or tabletop games in the world; easily - and it's got an enthusiastic community of passionate and fascinating people. Is Magic: the Gathering ruining card games? It is 'an offence against the entire notion of' what card games are? Fuck no. Apple isn't some offence to the notion of computers, either. Maybe it's not to your taste, but just because a product is designed for a specific set of purposes or utilities that don't suit your preference doesn't mean you have to jump to the dramatic conclusion that these products are 'ruining' the entire notion of what a product is. It's just a different product. Get over it, and use a different one. Take a valium and realize people like and use different things, and that's okay. On a side note, I develop hobbyist apps for WatchOS, iOS, MacOS, the web; and SEGA Saturn, all on my Mac; and I've never had any issues actually achieving the results I wanted.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  > It is 'an offence against the entire notion of' what card games are? It would be if a WOTC employee came to my table every time I tried playing, personally overseeing every turn of the game to ensure that I didn't break the rules, engage in unsportsmanlike conduct, use my imagination, taunt my opponent or profit unfairly with their platform.
  - livrem 4y ago
    No, that kind of thing only happens with Games Workshop games, from what I hear.
api 4y ago
iOS devices are not "real" computers. They're more comparable to game consoles or TV set top boxes. They're special purpose computing devices that can only run approved software. Apple does sell real computers under the Mac line.
- fsflover 4y ago
  Apple can actually do anything on iOS, so iOS devices are computers obeying them, not you.
- nequo 4y ago
  iOS devices are running a derivative of straight up macOS that your MacBook is running too. As computers, they are as real as any. The "only run approved software" part is a restriction imposed by Apple. It is not because of a physical limitation that makes them not real computers.
  - criddell 4y ago
    So they are like set top boxes and game consoles then? Just like the person you replied to said.
    - nequo 4y ago
      Yes. Parent also said that they are not real computers. What I am saying is that they are.
      - criddell 4y ago
        With the set top box, the fact that there’s a computer in there is just an implementation detail. Technically there’s a real computer in my refrigerator, my printer, and my headphones but I don’t have any expectation that these are general purpose computers that are available for me to compute on. I think it’s those expectations that matter and it isn’t always black and white. I look at my phone as being similar to a PS5. I understood that both devices were somewhat locked down when I bought and in fact that’s part of the reason I bought them. If the PS5 had an authorized mode that could run any software it would be a worse device. If I wanted something more open, those devices are available and that’s what I would have bought (and have bought in the past).
JKCalhoun 4y ago
> What bothers me is that it feels like an offense against the entire notion of a computer is. Yeah, as others are also saying, welcome to the 21st Century where they're not really computers anymore that they're selling. Your mistake is to still believe that they are. I view the phone the way perhaps a ham (ham radio operator) viewed the transistor radio. For those of us where a computer is a tool to build with, a thing to tinker with, these new pocket devices are not for us. Too bad. I've moved completely away from developing for "mobile". It's more of an afterthought for me at this point — "Hmmm, would this also make sense to port to mobile?" My thinking these days defaults to developing for the desktop and the web.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly. It's why developing for phones isn't of interest to me, and why I stopped being a registered Apple dev.
- bitL 4y ago
  That's why developments like PinePhone are important - just yesterday I played with booting 11 different Linux distros on it. The only limitation is battery life but I guess some backporting from Android should resolve that one as well.
  - officeplant 4y ago
    I want convergence so bad. To be able to just plop my phone into a dock after work and have my home linux user setup display on the monitors. The pinephone still feels so far away from the phone side of things, but succeeding in the computer side of things. I haven't tried the Pinephone Pro yet, but my Pinephone left so much to be desired. I hope linux phone enthusiasts can keep their spirits up for the next 5+ years it feels like it will take to make a daily driver open hardware phone happen.
- pmontra 4y ago
  Porting to mobile for my own projects means to build a web site that I can also use on my phone in Firefox.
closeparen 4y ago
I grew up at a time when a computer was a thing that any website you accidentally clicked on could totally and permanently hijack. I don't miss it. One-click zero-friction execution of arbitrary code with the full privileges of your user account was a bad and wrong design. Malware scanning, signatures, and heuristics were a hilariously inadequate answer to the risks. One of the best things that's ever happened in computing is moving beyond all this.
- angryasian 4y ago
  let not be naive in saying that its still not possible. It is but a lot less. Companies have been getting better at bug bounties, education, and in general people working more with the technology
  - closeparen 4y ago
    A huge part of the improvement has been sandboxing, code signing, and trusted distribution channels. In the Windows XP era, a freeware game or utility you downloaded turning out to be a virus was 100% your fault. It wasn’t a defect in Windows that your whole computer got owned, that was just how computers worked. Crazy to me that people want to go back there.
    - red-iron-pine 4y ago
      No, that was absolutely how Windows worked. XP security was atrocious, and there were already better, functional models of how to structure things out there.
      - iggldiggl 4y ago
        > and there were already better, functional models of how to structure things out there. Even today, no file sandboxing solution I'm aware of really properly handles more complex file formats that don't consist of a single atomic file. Only macOS goes beyond the simple "allow the user to pick a single file or directory and that's that" model, and even then according to the documentation I found it only handles simple sidecar files that only differ in the file extension from the main file, but still breaks down for anything more complicated than that.
adql 4y ago
Yup, they are not "appliances", they are worse than that. My toaster doesn't care or complain at what I toast, my oven doesn't want $99 pizza baking license nor it doesn't want me to pay extra just because I cooked something for someone else in it.
- rnk 4y ago
  And your toaster doesn't analyze your food to see if it's bad for you or prohibited or something.
- captn3m0 4y ago
  Cory Doctorow’s Unauthorized Bread warns about such a future; https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/amp/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...
causi 4y ago
What bothers me is that it feels like an offense against the entire notion of what a computer is. Yep. One of the most glaring examples of this is the complete extinction of portable backups. Back when I was carrying around a PDA I could plug it in, hit one button, and have a total backup of everything on my device. Plug a blank device in, hit one button, and everything is restored. Today if you want a bulletproof device backup you have to pay Apple for the privilege, and even then you're completely crippled by your upload and download bandwidth. It takes a long damn time to back up 512GB of data at 10mb/s upstream. Nearly five straight days, in fact.
- neon_electro 4y ago
  Why aren't you backing up locally? You clearly speak like you're used to it "back when you were carrying around a PDA".
  - causi 4y ago
    I am. It's one of the reasons I only run a rooted android device. Most people aren't so lucky.
    - sbierwagen 4y ago
      Sure, but you can also do one-click backups of an iphone using itunes on Windows or MacOS without rooting anything. It's a stock feature.
- jedberg 4y ago
  You don't need the internet to backup an iPhone. But you do need a ~Mac~ Computer. Edit: Mac -> computer
  - giobox 4y ago
    Exactly! You can still backup/restore an iPhone locally offline just like the PDA example, even with a Windows PC: > https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/back-up-iphone-iph3ecf67d29/ios#:~:text=Back%20up%20iPhone%20using%20your%20Windows%20PC&text=In%20the%20iTunes%20app%20on,password%2C%20then%20click%20Set%20Password https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/back-up-iphone-iph3ec.... I don't understand OPs problem with cloud backups being charged for? Many people (myself included) are storing terabytes of images/videos in their cloud backups. While I think the free tier could offer more than 5gb, its not unreasonable to charge for larger cloud backups, Android does the same thing.
phendrenad2 4y ago
> It's a kind of basic betrayal of the concepts and affordances that underlie the thing itself The flaw here is you're assuming that true general-purpose computing is free when it is not. You've heard the saying "constraints free, freedom constrains"? It's true. Artists often set artificial limits on themselves (such as only using one color of paint) in order to try to bring forth pure creativity without the added stress of making choices. Or perhaps you've read the classic essay "worse is better"? If not, you should. It's thought-provoking.
simonh 4y ago
You can program iOS devices to do something new, but there are a few limitations on how that is made available. You can develop full blown iPhone and iPad apps right there on the device on an iPad using Swift Playgrounds. There are numerous third party development environments available that run on the iPhone and iPad, in languages like Python, Lua and Basic, some of which you can even publish to the App Store. I’ve been programming little game in Pythonista for my kids for years. So sure there are some limitations, but also a lot of flexibility. These devices are actually highly programmable.
- Tijdreiziger 4y ago
  I would call that 'somewhat programmable' at best, but certainly not 'highly' so.
  - simonh 4y ago
    You don't get full access down to the hardware level, but equally the contention that these aren't general purpose computing devices and aren't programmable is just tosh. They're far more programmable, in the sense you can learn a huge amount more about programming on them, than the home microcomputers I learned to program on as a kid.
    - Tijdreiziger 4y ago
      I guess I'm a bit younger than you, but on the computers I grew up with (Windows/Ubuntu/OS X), you were (and are) able to create and run any program you wanted. On an iPhone or iPad, however, you are limited to a sandbox; programs you write on it run strictly within the context of the IDE, and if you want to write any first-class programs (apps), you need to pay up. In high school, I had a friend who was very talented at Game Maker, and he could compile his games as executables and distribute them to us via e-mail. That's impossible on an iPhone.
      - ihatepython 4y ago
        I'm probably older than you, but I agree with you and disagree with the other guy. I grew up with a C64 and Amiga, and that's where I learned how to program, I feel like it gave me a deep understanding of how to program and how a computer worked, plus they were also basically real-time machines. But peak iPhone for me was a jailbroken device running iOS 5 or 6. Back then, everything was still Objective-C, which meant that every object could be introspected in the live system and swizzled which allowed for making tweaks to the actual system. You also had Unix underneath and could login to a bash shell and install a compiler. But someone who learns to program Swift on an iPhone or iPad simply won't have a deep understanding of how anything works. Even if you pay the $99, it's still a rather unpleasant experience to program on iOS given all the restrictions.
asdffdsa 4y ago
This is nothing new under the sun; Apple's been doing this for the better part of the last decade.
gofreddygo 4y ago
> offence against the entire notion of what a computer is YES! I feel offended in Apple's ecosystem. Consistently. When I can't upgrade, can’t even fix my own overpriced laptop because of soldered parts. When I can't copy MY photos out of MY device, without uploading it to Apple's cloud. When I can't buy OEM parts for older Apple devices because Apple put a noose around independent suppliers. When (like the OP found) I can’t run MY CODE on MY DEVICE without notarizing and authorizing. There's a much longer tail of issues I can fix and address myself. These are fundamental, They eclipse all other (hard) things Apple deserves credit for like hardware quality and performance and integration with other Apple products. Despite their price gouging. I am myself pulling away from Apple. I do not buy them any more. Don’t recommend Apple to any makers and hackers. The only persona I see happy using Apple laptops are ones who don't care about these. Those that got them handed down from work. They don’t tinker with them. They use them like appliances. They don’t have my problems. I do.
- jakub_g 4y ago
  > When I can't copy MY photos out of MY device, without uploading it to Apple's cloud. Wait, what? (Not an Apple user - genuinely curious)
  - sixstringtheory 4y ago
    They probably mean from an iOS device to a PC/Android. It can be done without using iCloud, but you’ll need a macOS machine or special iOS app to do it.
    - dmonitor 4y ago
      I’m fairly certain photos are the one thing you can get out of an iOS device with relative ease. They just present themselves as a USB storage device with a DCIM folder. Music, Videos, etc require specialized tool but photos are the exception.
    - jurmous 4y ago
      You can download photos on a Windows PC through iTunes https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201302 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201302
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
A "personal computer" is a computer a person owns and controls. IMHO. "Phones" can be beautiful appliances. We can admire them for many reasons. But calling them "personal computers" is a stretch, and honestly AFAICT no one does. FWIW, people refer to "phones" by other terms, such as "device". Mobile phones today contain computers, but that is about as far as we can make the comparison to the personal computer. Arguably every new appliance does or will eventually contain a computer. That hardly means its owner will be able to control it. Good news is it's still possible to build a PC from parts and there are more small form factor development boards than ever before. Apple reminds me of the diamond industry. How does it manage to charge such amounts of money for something that is so readily available. It sells people a story. De Beers is apparently now entering into the synthetic diamond businesss. Apple's next move should be similarly amusing. An analogy to a deck of cards would have to include a means by which the company that makes the boxes for the playing cards collects data on how people use them, where the people travel with the cards, and so on, sending it to the box maker outside of the card owner's awareness because there is no longterm business viability for selling boxes to playing card companies, so the box maker becomes a front for a surveillance and advertising company.
gtvwill 4y ago
Couple this with the apples current and incoming payment/banking/loan apps and you have some seriously malicious we will control what you do and trap you in a debt cycle business tactics. The companies gross and arguably malicious in its business tactics. Don't even start me on the symbolism of their anti workers rights bs.
WillAdams 4y ago
c.f., Vernor Vinge's novella _The Cookie Monster_ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cookie_Monster_(novella) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cookie_Monster_(novella)
jay_kyburz 4y ago
This is what is so great and exciting about the Steam Deck.
analog31 4y ago
I'm there too. My first computer started with a beep and a BASIC prompt. That's still my standard. I can forgive my phone because the screen is too small to type on, but still, I can program my phone in JavaScript if I want.
jjav 4y ago
> What bothers me is that it feels like an offense against the entire notion of what a computer is. You said it better than I could. The irony of this being Apple today. What would be the computer industry even be if the Apple ][ had existed under this twisted restrictive mindset.

sneak 4y ago

It's a bicycle for the share price.

cma 4y ago
A bicycle for sharecroppers.

massysett 4y ago

I don't view the iPhone and iPad as "computers" or "personal computers" any more than I view my cable TV set-top box or Sonos speaker that way. Both are very powerful devices with Linux operating systems. But I don't expect to be able to program them. The iPhone is an appliance that can download "apps" that Apple permits. When I want a "computer" I open up my MacBook.

smoldesu 4y ago
How does letting people freely sideload apps conflict with this philosophy? You can still use your iPad as the world's most expensive e-reader if you want, letting other people run Linux on it doesn't somehow ruin your experience.
- gretch 4y ago
  My philosophy is that Apple can do whatever they want (as long as legal and ethical). They made a thing, and you bought it. Why would anyone with a bent on free computing walk into what they know to be a closed ecosystem. Just buy an Android phone. It’s like flying to a foreign country and expecting everyone to English to you imo…
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Apple can absolutely do whatever they want, until regulators block them off from the market for anticompetitive or anticonsumer practices. Then their profit motivation kicks in again, and they have to lick boots until they're on the government's good side again. If you want an adversarial narrative between Apple and the people, you'll find no greater supporter than me. Europe seems to disagree with Apple's philosophy though, so maybe it's time they reassess their opinions.
  - rektide 4y ago
    The excuse that freedom exists because one other market player is not a tyrant skates extremely thin ice. If Android went dark side too, where would we be? This excuse is exhausting, lacks any principles whatsoever; these are general purpose devices, browsing the web & allowing arbitrary apps to be developed & squeezed into the world, if they pass through the tyrant's gauntlet. That one company offers some modicum of un-tyranny is a poor defense for locking down & excluding general purpose computing, for withdrawing the systems we have in our pockets from our own ownership & ability to control. Citizens should have some options. The implications that the market is free to do whatever & citizens are free to pick from what's available seems presently somewhat tennable, but if we step back just a little bit here & look at the picture, it's horrifying. The inability to root most Android phones shows that actual freedom, real general purpose computing, is an extremely fine & narrowing little sliver, of the most important & most used general computing world.
    - brewdad 4y ago
      The market has no interest in your individual freedom. If the citizens don't demand it,there is zero incentive to provide it. Don't try to convince Apple or Google or Microsoft or whomever to not be evil. Convince your fellow persons of the need to demand open devices. Good luck.
flohofwoe 4y ago
> When I want a "computer" I open up my MacBook. That Macs are still somewhat open is just a happy historical accident. Enjoy it while it lasts :/
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  This is slippery-slope fearmongering. In reality, Apple has gone out of its way to ensure that Apple Silicon Macs can boot other operating systems if the user so desires, and can do so without sacrificing security.
  - behnamoh 4y ago
    It is NOT. Apple literally doesn't allow you to modify the root directory anymore. If you want to, you have to jump through some loops and lose access to FileVault!
  - TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
    They also go out of their way to make it annoying to use applications that aren't signed by Apple under the $99/year developer plan.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      Right-click open, click open one time ever is well below my personal threshold for annoying.
      - fragmede 4y ago
        That's for signed apps. Totally unsigned apps can't be run without additional work.
        sbuk 4y ago
        The OP literally described the process for opening unsigned apps.
tarotuser 4y ago
> I don't view the iPhone and iPad as "computers" or "personal computers" any more than I view my cable TV set-top box or Sonos speaker that way. Why should your personal view obviate the devices' nature? These are all computers. *Whose* computers is the more important question. And from a look at a lot of these 'narrow focused computer devices' have the company you bought it from still exert control years after your purchase... It's almost like you unwittingly agreed to a rental that was misclassified as a sale. How many times were features removed at a later 'update'? How many features did the device support but didn't make available? How many features were kept because it would keep you from prematurely throwing it away to get the new thing? Or better yet, with devices that have user-reprogrammable hardware means that the ecological aspect of "obsolete" hardware is that the new feature makes it nearly good as new, all the while keeping it out of the landfills. Sure, stuff going obsolete will still happen... But with repair and upgrades as options means the "Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle" will lead to better outcomes for all. But that's not good for capitalism and profit. > The iPhone is an appliance that can download "apps" that Apple permits. When I want a "computer" I open up my MacBook. And, why is your opinion on what a "computer" is important? What criteria are you using? I ask this because we even have "Doom played on a pregnancy test" https://www.pcmag.com/news/yes-doom-is-playable-on-a-pregnancy-test https://www.pcmag.com/news/yes-doom-is-playable-on-a-pregnan... . Basically any justification or rubric on what a computer is sure looks to me as artificial and gatekeepy.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  Apple could allow personal hobby apps at basically no cost. The obvious upside is that people who start off building hobby apps may well move into developing apps - and perhaps even associated hardware - professionally. This is very likely to lead to increased goodwill and significant further purchases of products and other services. Development of Xcode (not the best environment ever...) and Swift/UIKit will continue anyway. There is no sense in which a few thousand/tens of thousands of hobby developers are paying for that to any significant extent. This does not require sideloading or loosening the security. It requires a slight relaxation of the provisioning system for single devices - something which exists already. I don't care what the fanboi justifications are. Not doing this makes absolutely no commercial sense. Apple is gaining a somewhat imaginary $99 a year, which hobby developers won't pay anyway, and losing extra sales of hardware and apps which are potentially worth far more. It's also driving hobby coders towards competing ecosystems. Instead of expanding the ecosystem this contracts it.

a4isms 4y ago

First, you are right. Jobs himself said that he wanted to go beyond selling computers, and sell information appliances. In that respect, he and Woz were diametrically opposed. When he was squeezed out of management in his own company, it is not a coïncidence that he elbowed his way into Jef Raskin's Macintosh project: Raskin was also interested in building information appliances, the difference between the two men was that Raskin was coming to the notion of an information appliance from the HCI perspective, and wanted to focus on simplicity and low cost. The UX he designed was text-centric and used high-speed incremental search as its navigation paradigm. Jobs was infatuated with what he'd seen at Xerox Parc, and also wanted to build an information appliance, but he wanted it to be powerful and flexible and centered on the WIMP paradigm.[1] Jobs was the boss, so Raskin left the project and the company. But Jobs never lost his vision that Apple should sell appliances, and people who wanted to "wrench their own devices" should buy PCs. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIMP_(computing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIMP_(computing)

Terretta 4y ago
Jobs called it "bicycles for the mind".* Back in the beginning there was lots of talk of "toasters" as an appliance every household has and even a child can use (to the point there was a famous screensaver of flying toasters). The Mac 512, Plus, and SE were embodiments of this. (The Apple //c with LCD attachment and carry handle was an earlier attempt.) Note that all of those included portability as a feature, while the all-in-one Macs (not the Apple //c) emphasized usability by non-tech and non-tech job people. Their spiritual successor is the last 3 years of iPad Pro w/ magnetic magic keyboard/stand. It's pretty clear there's only a relatively short period of time the hobby shop and hackers are "changing the world", while the real shift comes when "everyone" can access and leverage the new tech (like a toaster, or fluoride in water). --- * There's another subtle difference between "bicycles for the mind" and "a computer on every desk and in every home." One of those is vendor centric, the other is user outcome space.
- a4isms 4y ago
  I remember "Bicycles for the mind" well: http://raganwald.com/assets/images/bicycle-jobs.jpeg http://raganwald.com/assets/images/bicycle-jobs.jpeg But as a metaphor, I don't think of a bicycle as an appliance. Mainstream bicycles are brutalist: The chain and gears are usually on display and user-serviceable. Parts like wheels, saddles, and handlebars are standardized in a way that allows users to mix and match components freely. In the days of steel frames you could make art bikes and trikes and all kinds of things from a bicycle. The metaphor works well to describe a lever for the mind's own motive ability.

Spooky23 4y ago

The problem is the computer has changed, it’s not a computer, it’s a node in a ubiquitous global network. 2003 and 2023 are very different and we’re feeling the negative impacts of global connectivity. Look at the trackers like AirTag. A gadget to find your keys is incredibly useful, but can also turn into a device to aid criminal activity pretty readily.

gnarbarian 4y ago
any tool can be used for good or evil. To stop people from doing bad things we need to focus on correcting people's behaviors not on crippling our tools.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  This is generally correct. But at the same time, it's facile to ignore the existence of network effects that arise from increased connectivity, and the way they shift incentives. They are not just 'our' tools (qua individual owners), because they leverage a massive shared infrastructure of standards, data sharing, and re-transmission. What you're offering here is not an argument but a mental block to actually thinking about the issue described. You don't offer any ideas for 'correcting people's behaviors': how do you propose to address the phenomena of greed, dishonesty and so on, given that people with those qualities are just as well able to make use of technology for their selfish ends?
  - gnarbarian 4y ago
    specific remedies cannot be prescribed for abstract problems. We deal with those problems as we always have, through cultural and legal reinforcement. Our culture informs us of what is socially acceptable (theft, greed, dishonesty etc) and meters out justice through our real social networks of family and friends. For issues that raise to a level of criminality we use the legal system. I also think it's perfectly fine to make use of technology for selfish ends. That's the real reason competitive market economies function more effectively than command economies. When we all act out of our own self interest we buy the best value good and reward the most efficient producer. (Thiel argues with this and I admit this pattern does not hold in markets with monopolies, cartels, or regulatory capture)

lostgame 4y ago

>> It's like giving someone a deck of cards and telling them that these cards can only be used to play blackjack. You can't invent a card game, or change the rules, or build a house of cards, or do card magic. Millions of people buy cards that can only be used to specifically only play, say; 'Magic: the Gathering' (MtG). You could probably invent some sort of new game with MtG cards, or do some sort of card magic with them (no pun intended); but MtG cards are very intentionally not designed to be 'general purpose' cards or tools to design new card games with. They have a very specific audience in mind. Magic the Gathering cards are also much more expensive than a regular deck of playing cards I can grab from my local dollar store. They have a lot less utility than said cards I can acquire for a $1.15CDN, taxes in; and they also have a bit of a stigma from people who seem to not like MtG for various reasons. Somehow, still; it's one of the largest and most widely played card or tabletop games in the world; easily - and it's got an enthusiastic community of passionate and fascinating people. Is Magic: the Gathering ruining card games? It is 'an offence against the entire notion of' what card games are? Fuck no. Apple isn't some offence to the notion of computers, either. Maybe it's not to your taste, but just because a product is designed for a specific set of purposes or utilities that don't suit your preference doesn't mean you have to jump to the dramatic conclusion that these products are 'ruining' the entire notion of what a product is. It's just a different product. Get over it, and use a different one. Take a valium and realize people like and use different things, and that's okay. On a side note, I develop hobbyist apps for WatchOS, iOS, MacOS, the web; and SEGA Saturn, all on my Mac; and I've never had any issues actually achieving the results I wanted.

smoldesu 4y ago
> It is 'an offence against the entire notion of' what card games are? It would be if a WOTC employee came to my table every time I tried playing, personally overseeing every turn of the game to ensure that I didn't break the rules, engage in unsportsmanlike conduct, use my imagination, taunt my opponent or profit unfairly with their platform.
- livrem 4y ago
  No, that kind of thing only happens with Games Workshop games, from what I hear.

api 4y ago

iOS devices are not "real" computers. They're more comparable to game consoles or TV set top boxes. They're special purpose computing devices that can only run approved software. Apple does sell real computers under the Mac line.

fsflover 4y ago
Apple can actually do anything on iOS, so iOS devices are computers obeying them, not you.
nequo 4y ago
iOS devices are running a derivative of straight up macOS that your MacBook is running too. As computers, they are as real as any. The "only run approved software" part is a restriction imposed by Apple. It is not because of a physical limitation that makes them not real computers.
- criddell 4y ago
  So they are like set top boxes and game consoles then? Just like the person you replied to said.
  - nequo 4y ago
    Yes. Parent also said that they are not real computers. What I am saying is that they are.
    - criddell 4y ago
      With the set top box, the fact that there’s a computer in there is just an implementation detail. Technically there’s a real computer in my refrigerator, my printer, and my headphones but I don’t have any expectation that these are general purpose computers that are available for me to compute on. I think it’s those expectations that matter and it isn’t always black and white. I look at my phone as being similar to a PS5. I understood that both devices were somewhat locked down when I bought and in fact that’s part of the reason I bought them. If the PS5 had an authorized mode that could run any software it would be a worse device. If I wanted something more open, those devices are available and that’s what I would have bought (and have bought in the past).

JKCalhoun 4y ago

> What bothers me is that it feels like an offense against the entire notion of a computer is. Yeah, as others are also saying, welcome to the 21st Century where they're not really computers anymore that they're selling. Your mistake is to still believe that they are. I view the phone the way perhaps a ham (ham radio operator) viewed the transistor radio. For those of us where a computer is a tool to build with, a thing to tinker with, these new pocket devices are not for us. Too bad. I've moved completely away from developing for "mobile". It's more of an afterthought for me at this point — "Hmmm, would this also make sense to port to mobile?" My thinking these days defaults to developing for the desktop and the web.

JohnFen 4y ago
I agree wholeheartedly. It's why developing for phones isn't of interest to me, and why I stopped being a registered Apple dev.
bitL 4y ago
That's why developments like PinePhone are important - just yesterday I played with booting 11 different Linux distros on it. The only limitation is battery life but I guess some backporting from Android should resolve that one as well.
- officeplant 4y ago
  I want convergence so bad. To be able to just plop my phone into a dock after work and have my home linux user setup display on the monitors. The pinephone still feels so far away from the phone side of things, but succeeding in the computer side of things. I haven't tried the Pinephone Pro yet, but my Pinephone left so much to be desired. I hope linux phone enthusiasts can keep their spirits up for the next 5+ years it feels like it will take to make a daily driver open hardware phone happen.
pmontra 4y ago
Porting to mobile for my own projects means to build a web site that I can also use on my phone in Firefox.

closeparen 4y ago

I grew up at a time when a computer was a thing that any website you accidentally clicked on could totally and permanently hijack. I don't miss it. One-click zero-friction execution of arbitrary code with the full privileges of your user account was a bad and wrong design. Malware scanning, signatures, and heuristics were a hilariously inadequate answer to the risks. One of the best things that's ever happened in computing is moving beyond all this.

angryasian 4y ago
let not be naive in saying that its still not possible. It is but a lot less. Companies have been getting better at bug bounties, education, and in general people working more with the technology
- closeparen 4y ago
  A huge part of the improvement has been sandboxing, code signing, and trusted distribution channels. In the Windows XP era, a freeware game or utility you downloaded turning out to be a virus was 100% your fault. It wasn’t a defect in Windows that your whole computer got owned, that was just how computers worked. Crazy to me that people want to go back there.
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    No, that was absolutely how Windows worked. XP security was atrocious, and there were already better, functional models of how to structure things out there.
    - iggldiggl 4y ago
      > and there were already better, functional models of how to structure things out there. Even today, no file sandboxing solution I'm aware of really properly handles more complex file formats that don't consist of a single atomic file. Only macOS goes beyond the simple "allow the user to pick a single file or directory and that's that" model, and even then according to the documentation I found it only handles simple sidecar files that only differ in the file extension from the main file, but still breaks down for anything more complicated than that.

adql 4y ago

Yup, they are not "appliances", they are worse than that. My toaster doesn't care or complain at what I toast, my oven doesn't want $99 pizza baking license nor it doesn't want me to pay extra just because I cooked something for someone else in it.

rnk 4y ago
And your toaster doesn't analyze your food to see if it's bad for you or prohibited or something.
captn3m0 4y ago
Cory Doctorow’s Unauthorized Bread warns about such a future; https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/amp/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...

causi 4y ago

What bothers me is that it feels like an offense against the entire notion of what a computer is. Yep. One of the most glaring examples of this is the complete extinction of portable backups. Back when I was carrying around a PDA I could plug it in, hit one button, and have a total backup of everything on my device. Plug a blank device in, hit one button, and everything is restored. Today if you want a bulletproof device backup you have to pay Apple for the privilege, and even then you're completely crippled by your upload and download bandwidth. It takes a long damn time to back up 512GB of data at 10mb/s upstream. Nearly five straight days, in fact.

neon_electro 4y ago
Why aren't you backing up locally? You clearly speak like you're used to it "back when you were carrying around a PDA".
- causi 4y ago
  I am. It's one of the reasons I only run a rooted android device. Most people aren't so lucky.
  - sbierwagen 4y ago
    Sure, but you can also do one-click backups of an iphone using itunes on Windows or MacOS without rooting anything. It's a stock feature.
jedberg 4y ago
You don't need the internet to backup an iPhone. But you do need a ~Mac~ Computer. Edit: Mac -> computer
- giobox 4y ago
  Exactly! You can still backup/restore an iPhone locally offline just like the PDA example, even with a Windows PC: > https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/back-up-iphone-iph3ecf67d29/ios#:~:text=Back%20up%20iPhone%20using%20your%20Windows%20PC&text=In%20the%20iTunes%20app%20on,password%2C%20then%20click%20Set%20Password https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/back-up-iphone-iph3ec.... I don't understand OPs problem with cloud backups being charged for? Many people (myself included) are storing terabytes of images/videos in their cloud backups. While I think the free tier could offer more than 5gb, its not unreasonable to charge for larger cloud backups, Android does the same thing.

phendrenad2 4y ago

> It's a kind of basic betrayal of the concepts and affordances that underlie the thing itself The flaw here is you're assuming that true general-purpose computing is free when it is not. You've heard the saying "constraints free, freedom constrains"? It's true. Artists often set artificial limits on themselves (such as only using one color of paint) in order to try to bring forth pure creativity without the added stress of making choices. Or perhaps you've read the classic essay "worse is better"? If not, you should. It's thought-provoking.

simonh 4y ago

You can program iOS devices to do something new, but there are a few limitations on how that is made available. You can develop full blown iPhone and iPad apps right there on the device on an iPad using Swift Playgrounds. There are numerous third party development environments available that run on the iPhone and iPad, in languages like Python, Lua and Basic, some of which you can even publish to the App Store. I’ve been programming little game in Pythonista for my kids for years. So sure there are some limitations, but also a lot of flexibility. These devices are actually highly programmable.

Tijdreiziger 4y ago
I would call that 'somewhat programmable' at best, but certainly not 'highly' so.
- simonh 4y ago
  You don't get full access down to the hardware level, but equally the contention that these aren't general purpose computing devices and aren't programmable is just tosh. They're far more programmable, in the sense you can learn a huge amount more about programming on them, than the home microcomputers I learned to program on as a kid.
  - Tijdreiziger 4y ago
    I guess I'm a bit younger than you, but on the computers I grew up with (Windows/Ubuntu/OS X), you were (and are) able to create and run any program you wanted. On an iPhone or iPad, however, you are limited to a sandbox; programs you write on it run strictly within the context of the IDE, and if you want to write any first-class programs (apps), you need to pay up. In high school, I had a friend who was very talented at Game Maker, and he could compile his games as executables and distribute them to us via e-mail. That's impossible on an iPhone.
    - ihatepython 4y ago
      I'm probably older than you, but I agree with you and disagree with the other guy. I grew up with a C64 and Amiga, and that's where I learned how to program, I feel like it gave me a deep understanding of how to program and how a computer worked, plus they were also basically real-time machines. But peak iPhone for me was a jailbroken device running iOS 5 or 6. Back then, everything was still Objective-C, which meant that every object could be introspected in the live system and swizzled which allowed for making tweaks to the actual system. You also had Unix underneath and could login to a bash shell and install a compiler. But someone who learns to program Swift on an iPhone or iPad simply won't have a deep understanding of how anything works. Even if you pay the $99, it's still a rather unpleasant experience to program on iOS given all the restrictions.

asdffdsa 4y ago

This is nothing new under the sun; Apple's been doing this for the better part of the last decade.

gofreddygo 4y ago

> offence against the entire notion of what a computer is YES! I feel offended in Apple's ecosystem. Consistently. When I can't upgrade, can’t even fix my own overpriced laptop because of soldered parts. When I can't copy MY photos out of MY device, without uploading it to Apple's cloud. When I can't buy OEM parts for older Apple devices because Apple put a noose around independent suppliers. When (like the OP found) I can’t run MY CODE on MY DEVICE without notarizing and authorizing. There's a much longer tail of issues I can fix and address myself. These are fundamental, They eclipse all other (hard) things Apple deserves credit for like hardware quality and performance and integration with other Apple products. Despite their price gouging. I am myself pulling away from Apple. I do not buy them any more. Don’t recommend Apple to any makers and hackers. The only persona I see happy using Apple laptops are ones who don't care about these. Those that got them handed down from work. They don’t tinker with them. They use them like appliances. They don’t have my problems. I do.

jakub_g 4y ago
> When I can't copy MY photos out of MY device, without uploading it to Apple's cloud. Wait, what? (Not an Apple user - genuinely curious)
- sixstringtheory 4y ago
  They probably mean from an iOS device to a PC/Android. It can be done without using iCloud, but you’ll need a macOS machine or special iOS app to do it.
  - dmonitor 4y ago
    I’m fairly certain photos are the one thing you can get out of an iOS device with relative ease. They just present themselves as a USB storage device with a DCIM folder. Music, Videos, etc require specialized tool but photos are the exception.
  - jurmous 4y ago
    You can download photos on a Windows PC through iTunes https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201302 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201302

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

A "personal computer" is a computer a person owns and controls. IMHO. "Phones" can be beautiful appliances. We can admire them for many reasons. But calling them "personal computers" is a stretch, and honestly AFAICT no one does. FWIW, people refer to "phones" by other terms, such as "device". Mobile phones today contain computers, but that is about as far as we can make the comparison to the personal computer. Arguably every new appliance does or will eventually contain a computer. That hardly means its owner will be able to control it. Good news is it's still possible to build a PC from parts and there are more small form factor development boards than ever before. Apple reminds me of the diamond industry. How does it manage to charge such amounts of money for something that is so readily available. It sells people a story. De Beers is apparently now entering into the synthetic diamond businesss. Apple's next move should be similarly amusing. An analogy to a deck of cards would have to include a means by which the company that makes the boxes for the playing cards collects data on how people use them, where the people travel with the cards, and so on, sending it to the box maker outside of the card owner's awareness because there is no longterm business viability for selling boxes to playing card companies, so the box maker becomes a front for a surveillance and advertising company.

gtvwill 4y ago

Couple this with the apples current and incoming payment/banking/loan apps and you have some seriously malicious we will control what you do and trap you in a debt cycle business tactics. The companies gross and arguably malicious in its business tactics. Don't even start me on the symbolism of their anti workers rights bs.

WillAdams 4y ago

c.f., Vernor Vinge's novella _The Cookie Monster_ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cookie_Monster_(novella) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cookie_Monster_(novella)

jay_kyburz 4y ago

This is what is so great and exciting about the Steam Deck.

analog31 4y ago

I'm there too. My first computer started with a beep and a BASIC prompt. That's still my standard. I can forgive my phone because the screen is too small to type on, but still, I can program my phone in JavaScript if I want.

jjav 4y ago

> What bothers me is that it feels like an offense against the entire notion of what a computer is. You said it better than I could. The irony of this being Apple today. What would be the computer industry even be if the Apple ][ had existed under this twisted restrictive mindset.