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The difference is that Microsoft was targeting general purpose computing with policy-based restrictions, and Apple is selling mobile phones that are not general

The difference is that Microsoft was targeting general purpose computing with policy-based restrictions, and Apple is selling mobile phones that are not general purpose computing devices and later on a service ecosystem to go with it. We could re-qualify mobile phones as general purpose devices (which technically they could be but in reality they are not), that would make the parallels much closer, and we could also have the service ecosystem made non-optional (it still is optional) to make it a bundled requirement, that would make the parallels even closer. Other than that, the landscape and context have drastically changed, especially when it comes to presence, attention, personal attachment and the abuse of all of that (addition, mass media consumption, personal information that gets stolen or mined, attacks on devices that have a real world impact). So even if we were to make it just a browser war it wouldn't really be the same. It's a shame Palm, RIM, Microsoft and Nokia are no longer playing the same game, it would have been interesting to see what their take on the market would be. Considering all of their hardware and software had the exact same model (release it as an appliance, all software and in some cases all traffic goes through them), it would have allowed more people to have some perspective.

perryizgr8 3y ago
> Apple is selling mobile phones that are not general purpose computing devices Huh? Apple chips are not Turing-complete? Or are they "not general purpose computing devices" because Apple would like us to believe so?
- xav0989 3y ago
  Many Logitech peripherals have Turing-complete chips (ARM processors), but no one is claiming that my mouse is a general purpose computing devices. Apple is selling a system made of a combination of hardware they make and the software running on top of it.
  - 8note 3y ago
    There's really no reason a laptop or a desktop should be considered as some special device that's required to not be locked down either. It's just a combination of hardware and software running on top of it
    - oneplane 3y ago
      To be honest, a lot of end-user problems would go away if they were restricted to a child-proofed version of computers. In a sense they have been doing that to themselves by not knowing how it works, or how to write code, which already restricts them to things other people made. They then further restricted themselves by migrating most of their work to mobile devices that run software that only the vendor realistically can be in charge of (mostly due to NDAs for the IP Cores like baseband and SoC, but the amount of kernel patches you get with Android hardware is insane... good luck trying to get a recent kernel for those). As a result, there are mostly behaviour based problems that remain, most technical problems have disappeared. That is an effect (and limitation) that we cannot deny.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  It is silly but we arbitrarily classify computers as general purpose or not based on the market segment they go after. Phones, video game consoles, e-readers, TV sticks… and also cars and some refrigerators could run user provided code, but the general expectation is that it is OK to locked them down for whatever reason.
- rchaud 3y ago
  A GPC device should be able to develop and compile programs directly on device without any external dependency. That's what you get with Windows, Mac or Linux. HTML+CSS is considered Turing complete [0], but we wouldn't call that a complete GPC environment. [0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2497146/is-css-turing-complete https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2497146/is-css-turing-co...
rchaud 3y ago
Only Microsoft tried to follow Apple in lockstep with Windows Phone 7: no USB mass storage, homegrown browser engine with no alternative, and no exposed filesystem. Blackberry phones were sort of similar, but as enterprise-first devices they always had a reputation of being mostly a work email device, not personal. They still had filesystem access and microSD expandability though.
- riskable 3y ago
  Blackberry really blew it (hard). They could've been more pervasive and successful than iPhones and Android but they never put in the effort to make their phones easier for developers to use. Everything was so obtuse and difficult and they were far too late to the game in regards to, well, everything. They didn't have a "glass slab" style phone until literally every other phone had been like that for years and years. They were also late to the game with cameras, IMUs, and other hardware features that we've all come to take for granted. My guess: They listened too much to their enterprise customers. Enterprise customers have very, very specific needs that are essentially the opposite of "general purpose" that would translate into useful features for anyone else. They didn't even try to innovate!
  - giantrobot 3y ago
    RIM's problem was hubris. The top brass listened to their "gut" instead of taking a sober analysis of the market. Their approach to devices in 2008 was basically the same as in 2001. They assumed BES was an unassailable moat. They also assumed carriers would never budge on data plans and I can only assume they had never heard of WiFi. What the market was saying in 2008 was it didn't actually give a shit about BES, didn't give a shit about BBM, software keyboards were fine if they didn't suck, and real browsers on phones were important. Instead of really listening to the market RIM just kept making the same devices as before. The iPhone and even early Android phones blew the doors off BlackBerries. By the time RIM decided to join the rest of the world it was too late. They were releasing devices in 2010 that couldn't compete with iPhones and Androids from 2008. The BlackBerries were up against the iPhone 4 by 2010, they were a joke in comparison. I went from a BlackBerry Pearl to the first iPhone. Even in the admittedly early state of iOS 1.0 it was vastly superior to the Pearl. It wasn't even funny how much better of a device it was. Every iPhone after that just increased that gap over whatever RIM was selling.
riskable 3y ago
> Apple is selling mobile phones that are not general purpose computing devices I would argue this is 100% false. They are general-purpose computing devices! The only reason why people think they're not is because they're locked down. Apple got away with it so Google did the same. Yet there's really no reason why these devices should be locked down the way they are. It should be much easier to take control of our phones than it currently is and I'd argue that with the recent EU decisions regarding app stores we're about to get just a tiny little taste of what these general-purpose computers in our pockets could be.
- oneplane 3y ago
  I would argue that it would be nice that everything that has a CPU and RAM is a general purpose computing device, but just because it is nice doesn't mean that it is reality or an effective use of products. If we arbitrarily classify things based on what we desire instead of how they are brought to market, we might as well stop classifying things at all. As for 'general-purpose computers in our pockets', they exist, and they are brought to market as such for about two decades. They did however not turn out to be useful or viable.
r00fus 3y ago
> It's a shame Palm, RIM, Microsoft and Nokia are no longer playing the same game They tried, but completely failed competing with the jaws that were a) Apple taking all the profits at the top and b) Android taking the rest of the market These smartphone providers had to compete on both fronts and it was too much for them (even for Microsoft). The iPhone in 2007 was like alien technology compared to anything released before then (and I was a skeptic).

perryizgr8 3y ago

> Apple is selling mobile phones that are not general purpose computing devices Huh? Apple chips are not Turing-complete? Or are they "not general purpose computing devices" because Apple would like us to believe so?

xav0989 3y ago
Many Logitech peripherals have Turing-complete chips (ARM processors), but no one is claiming that my mouse is a general purpose computing devices. Apple is selling a system made of a combination of hardware they make and the software running on top of it.
- 8note 3y ago
  There's really no reason a laptop or a desktop should be considered as some special device that's required to not be locked down either. It's just a combination of hardware and software running on top of it
  - oneplane 3y ago
    To be honest, a lot of end-user problems would go away if they were restricted to a child-proofed version of computers. In a sense they have been doing that to themselves by not knowing how it works, or how to write code, which already restricts them to things other people made. They then further restricted themselves by migrating most of their work to mobile devices that run software that only the vendor realistically can be in charge of (mostly due to NDAs for the IP Cores like baseband and SoC, but the amount of kernel patches you get with Android hardware is insane... good luck trying to get a recent kernel for those). As a result, there are mostly behaviour based problems that remain, most technical problems have disappeared. That is an effect (and limitation) that we cannot deny.
bee_rider 3y ago
It is silly but we arbitrarily classify computers as general purpose or not based on the market segment they go after. Phones, video game consoles, e-readers, TV sticks… and also cars and some refrigerators could run user provided code, but the general expectation is that it is OK to locked them down for whatever reason.
rchaud 3y ago
A GPC device should be able to develop and compile programs directly on device without any external dependency. That's what you get with Windows, Mac or Linux. HTML+CSS is considered Turing complete [0], but we wouldn't call that a complete GPC environment. [0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2497146/is-css-turing-complete https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2497146/is-css-turing-co...

rchaud 3y ago

Only Microsoft tried to follow Apple in lockstep with Windows Phone 7: no USB mass storage, homegrown browser engine with no alternative, and no exposed filesystem. Blackberry phones were sort of similar, but as enterprise-first devices they always had a reputation of being mostly a work email device, not personal. They still had filesystem access and microSD expandability though.

riskable 3y ago
Blackberry really blew it (hard). They could've been more pervasive and successful than iPhones and Android but they never put in the effort to make their phones easier for developers to use. Everything was so obtuse and difficult and they were far too late to the game in regards to, well, everything. They didn't have a "glass slab" style phone until literally every other phone had been like that for years and years. They were also late to the game with cameras, IMUs, and other hardware features that we've all come to take for granted. My guess: They listened too much to their enterprise customers. Enterprise customers have very, very specific needs that are essentially the opposite of "general purpose" that would translate into useful features for anyone else. They didn't even try to innovate!
- giantrobot 3y ago
  RIM's problem was hubris. The top brass listened to their "gut" instead of taking a sober analysis of the market. Their approach to devices in 2008 was basically the same as in 2001. They assumed BES was an unassailable moat. They also assumed carriers would never budge on data plans and I can only assume they had never heard of WiFi. What the market was saying in 2008 was it didn't actually give a shit about BES, didn't give a shit about BBM, software keyboards were fine if they didn't suck, and real browsers on phones were important. Instead of really listening to the market RIM just kept making the same devices as before. The iPhone and even early Android phones blew the doors off BlackBerries. By the time RIM decided to join the rest of the world it was too late. They were releasing devices in 2010 that couldn't compete with iPhones and Androids from 2008. The BlackBerries were up against the iPhone 4 by 2010, they were a joke in comparison. I went from a BlackBerry Pearl to the first iPhone. Even in the admittedly early state of iOS 1.0 it was vastly superior to the Pearl. It wasn't even funny how much better of a device it was. Every iPhone after that just increased that gap over whatever RIM was selling.

riskable 3y ago

> Apple is selling mobile phones that are not general purpose computing devices I would argue this is 100% false. They are general-purpose computing devices! The only reason why people think they're not is because they're locked down. Apple got away with it so Google did the same. Yet there's really no reason why these devices should be locked down the way they are. It should be much easier to take control of our phones than it currently is and I'd argue that with the recent EU decisions regarding app stores we're about to get just a tiny little taste of what these general-purpose computers in our pockets could be.

oneplane 3y ago
I would argue that it would be nice that everything that has a CPU and RAM is a general purpose computing device, but just because it is nice doesn't mean that it is reality or an effective use of products. If we arbitrarily classify things based on what we desire instead of how they are brought to market, we might as well stop classifying things at all. As for 'general-purpose computers in our pockets', they exist, and they are brought to market as such for about two decades. They did however not turn out to be useful or viable.

r00fus 3y ago

> It's a shame Palm, RIM, Microsoft and Nokia are no longer playing the same game They tried, but completely failed competing with the jaws that were a) Apple taking all the profits at the top and b) Android taking the rest of the market These smartphone providers had to compete on both fronts and it was too much for them (even for Microsoft). The iPhone in 2007 was like alien technology compared to anything released before then (and I was a skeptic).