4 ms·

Because they're hostile to general purpose computing.

by ok123456 3y ago

Angostura 3y ago
Well, they certainly view phones as appliances, rather than general purpose computers. Personally, I’m fine with that
- MildRant 3y ago
  They absolutely view phones as general purpose computers. It's why iOS is slowly turning into OS X.
  - abenga 3y ago
    Isn't it going the other way?
    - Tagbert 3y ago
      Not really. They are bringing features out on all of their platforms at the same time, now, so where is more feature constancy. Some iOS UI treatments have been brought to MacOS and some MacOS UI elements have been brought to iPadOS. But MacOS is not getting locked down the way that a phone is.
- meragrin_ 3y ago
  They view all of their products as appliances rather than general purpose computers.
lockhouse 3y ago
My UNIX workstation that I bought from them running a bunch of open source software installed with Home brew disagrees.
kube-system 3y ago
General purpose computing is a concept that computer scientists appreciate. The vast majority of consumers buy products based on their cost/benefit of their features and overall experience, not ideology of their technical construction. You won't see too many people who decide to hand wash their dishes because they can't find a dishwasher with an unlocked bootloader. It either satisfactorily washes the dishes or it doesn't. Most people buy phones the same way.
- echelon 3y ago
  General purpose computing was the default from 1990 - 2010. Apple killed it by turning computers into "devices" and "platforms". And now Google is killing the web. Fuck these two companies. They're too big, too unilaterally powerful, and their greed to control knows no bounds.
  - kube-system 3y ago
    The disconnect is that you're thinking about computers for their ability to do computing. Most people don't care about whether their computers are good at computing, but are instead trying to accomplish some other task. In fact, the more that the 'computer' disappears, the better in their mind.
    - Aerroon 3y ago
      They don't care until they need to do something that they can't do because their platform doesn't allow them to do it. There's no reason why compilers couldn't run on phones. Modern phones are more powerful than computers were even 15 years ago. And yet you can't do the things on a modern phone that you could on that computer from 15 years ago. At least you can't do it nearly as easily because of artificial limitations.
      - kube-system 3y ago
        > And yet you can't do the things on a modern phone that you could on that computer from 15 years ago. At least you can't do it nearly as easily because of artificial limitations. This may be a con for enthusiasts, but these artificial 'limitations' are exactly why Apple has been successful with the mass market. 15 years ago, computers were plagued by drive-by downloads, malvertising, and other crap. People in the early 00s spent millions of dollars paying repair technicians to uninstall toolbars, adware, and other junk software they were duped into installing.
nerdbert 3y ago
I don't understand what you mean. They make an awful lot of their money selling what I'd assume to be general purpose computing devices. I run mostly mostly open source software on mine. Almost everything made for the linux ecosystem is also available packaged for MacOS or can be trivially built on MacOS. What more are we talking about here?

Because they're hostile to general purpose computing.

Angostura 3y ago

Well, they certainly view phones as appliances, rather than general purpose computers. Personally, I’m fine with that

MildRant 3y ago
They absolutely view phones as general purpose computers. It's why iOS is slowly turning into OS X.
- abenga 3y ago
  Isn't it going the other way?
  - Tagbert 3y ago
    Not really. They are bringing features out on all of their platforms at the same time, now, so where is more feature constancy. Some iOS UI treatments have been brought to MacOS and some MacOS UI elements have been brought to iPadOS. But MacOS is not getting locked down the way that a phone is.
meragrin_ 3y ago
They view all of their products as appliances rather than general purpose computers.

lockhouse 3y ago

My UNIX workstation that I bought from them running a bunch of open source software installed with Home brew disagrees.

kube-system 3y ago

General purpose computing is a concept that computer scientists appreciate. The vast majority of consumers buy products based on their cost/benefit of their features and overall experience, not ideology of their technical construction. You won't see too many people who decide to hand wash their dishes because they can't find a dishwasher with an unlocked bootloader. It either satisfactorily washes the dishes or it doesn't. Most people buy phones the same way.

echelon 3y ago
General purpose computing was the default from 1990 - 2010. Apple killed it by turning computers into "devices" and "platforms". And now Google is killing the web. Fuck these two companies. They're too big, too unilaterally powerful, and their greed to control knows no bounds.
- kube-system 3y ago
  The disconnect is that you're thinking about computers for their ability to do computing. Most people don't care about whether their computers are good at computing, but are instead trying to accomplish some other task. In fact, the more that the 'computer' disappears, the better in their mind.
  - Aerroon 3y ago
    They don't care until they need to do something that they can't do because their platform doesn't allow them to do it. There's no reason why compilers couldn't run on phones. Modern phones are more powerful than computers were even 15 years ago. And yet you can't do the things on a modern phone that you could on that computer from 15 years ago. At least you can't do it nearly as easily because of artificial limitations.
    - kube-system 3y ago
      > And yet you can't do the things on a modern phone that you could on that computer from 15 years ago. At least you can't do it nearly as easily because of artificial limitations. This may be a con for enthusiasts, but these artificial 'limitations' are exactly why Apple has been successful with the mass market. 15 years ago, computers were plagued by drive-by downloads, malvertising, and other crap. People in the early 00s spent millions of dollars paying repair technicians to uninstall toolbars, adware, and other junk software they were duped into installing.

nerdbert 3y ago

I don't understand what you mean. They make an awful lot of their money selling what I'd assume to be general purpose computing devices. I run mostly mostly open source software on mine. Almost everything made for the linux ecosystem is also available packaged for MacOS or can be trivially built on MacOS. What more are we talking about here?