5 ms·

Accessibility goes in, shiny new toy comes out Humans go ooo, accessibility never comes back again..

cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
I implore you to not trivialise and belittle “humans” for not always prioritising what you personally would like them to. Different people have different preferences, and that can and does can happen intelligently, not just the result being “wooed” by marketing or whatever.
- freehorse 2y ago
  However you call it, it is essentially trading one's freedom for convenience. Yes it is a result of more general social dynamics rather than mere advertising, it even follows the political trends of our times. But it is time to realise the price we pay for this sort of convenience, and that it does not come for free. Advertising does not tell that.
  - walterbell 2y ago
    In our quantified society, we might need some numbers to characterize relative freedom and convenience.
- klabb3 2y ago
  I mean that could be true only if you don’t account for the obvious reality that the lockdown of hackability, serviceability, access to parts is deliberate. Personal preferences matter little in a duopoly industry. Sure, you could argue that other aspects are more important than serviceability, but it’d be insane to argue that people want less serviceability. So in short, we were better off in this aspect before. 100%.
  - macintux 2y ago
    Serviceability is not an unalloyed good. There are always tradeoffs.
    - cgriswald 2y ago
      From the point of view of the consumer, serviceability is negatively unalloyed. That is, it can always be removed without an associated (positive) tradeoff for the consumer.
  - paulmd 2y ago
    > the obvious reality that the lockdown of hackability, serviceability, access to parts is deliberate. I mean yes, it literally is, the law requires that smartphones incorporate a killswitch capable of resisting a device format/reload of the OS. This was seen as a consumer benefit in 2014, and did succeed in bringing muggings and phone theft down by as much as 80%. https://www.pcworld.com/article/440002/10-things-to-know-about-the-smartphone-kill-switch.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/440002/10-things-to-know-abo... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/11/london-smartphone-theft-drops-after-kill-switch-introduction-iphones https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/11/london-sm... https://www.pcworld.com/article/431818/drop-in-smartphone-thefts-after-killswitch-introduction.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/431818/drop-in-smartphone-th... This is what the sibling means about tradeoffs: people at the time wanted the tradeoff of fewer muggings. The killswitch was seen as a benefit, and largely Apple is in fact just responding to the legislative requirements pushed upon them. And if you have to have a killswitch that can resist a OS reformat… there has to be some component pairing mechanism that works underneath the OS layer, naturally. That is the sensible way to implement it, otherwise you'd just swap in a new motherboard and hey, phone's working again. Or strip the phone for parts. The idea of parts being anti-theft/strip-resistant is pretty much inherently in contradiction to right-to-repair. And again, I think people probably understand that... but never forget that theft-resistance was a legislative initiative pushed over the objections of Apple and other phone vendors at the time, having some unforeseen consequences. People actually did want this, people lobbied for this, as much as modern readers may not believe it. https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/is-the-smartphone-kill-switch-really-bad-for-business-in-california/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/is-the-smartphone-kill-swit...
- coldtea 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - skhunted 2y ago
    The topic at hand is not about a preference that most people would not find objectively good or bad. Why is this particular preference bad enough that one should feel bad for having it? Without statements supporting this view your post doesn’t make much sense.
    - kragen 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - lolinder 2y ago
        This subthread could exist verbatim in any comment thread because it's devoid of substance. "Some positions are better than others", "why?", "because {poignant but vague analogy}". Why specifically is it bad for people to prefer devices that are small and tightly integrated to devices which are repairable but make trade-offs to get there? I own a Framework laptop for its repairability but would warn anyone interested in it that the battery life won't work for all use cases. It's a trade-off that I've made that doesn't make sense for everyone.
        kragen 2y ago
        it isn't
        coldtea 2y ago
        >Why specifically is it bad for people to prefer devices that are small and tightly integrated to devices which are repairable but make trade-offs to get there? For repairability, upgradability, hackability, the environment, waste, tighter vendor control, and so on... Do you need more reasons?
        2y ago

I implore you to not trivialise and belittle “humans” for not always prioritising what you personally would like them to. Different people have different preferences, and that can and does can happen intelligently, not just the result being “wooed” by marketing or whatever.

freehorse 2y ago
However you call it, it is essentially trading one's freedom for convenience. Yes it is a result of more general social dynamics rather than mere advertising, it even follows the political trends of our times. But it is time to realise the price we pay for this sort of convenience, and that it does not come for free. Advertising does not tell that.
- walterbell 2y ago
  In our quantified society, we might need some numbers to characterize relative freedom and convenience.
klabb3 2y ago
I mean that could be true only if you don’t account for the obvious reality that the lockdown of hackability, serviceability, access to parts is deliberate. Personal preferences matter little in a duopoly industry. Sure, you could argue that other aspects are more important than serviceability, but it’d be insane to argue that people want less serviceability. So in short, we were better off in this aspect before. 100%.
- macintux 2y ago
  Serviceability is not an unalloyed good. There are always tradeoffs.
  - cgriswald 2y ago
    From the point of view of the consumer, serviceability is negatively unalloyed. That is, it can always be removed without an associated (positive) tradeoff for the consumer.
- paulmd 2y ago
  > the obvious reality that the lockdown of hackability, serviceability, access to parts is deliberate. I mean yes, it literally is, the law requires that smartphones incorporate a killswitch capable of resisting a device format/reload of the OS. This was seen as a consumer benefit in 2014, and did succeed in bringing muggings and phone theft down by as much as 80%. https://www.pcworld.com/article/440002/10-things-to-know-about-the-smartphone-kill-switch.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/440002/10-things-to-know-abo... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/11/london-smartphone-theft-drops-after-kill-switch-introduction-iphones https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/11/london-sm... https://www.pcworld.com/article/431818/drop-in-smartphone-thefts-after-killswitch-introduction.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/431818/drop-in-smartphone-th... This is what the sibling means about tradeoffs: people at the time wanted the tradeoff of fewer muggings. The killswitch was seen as a benefit, and largely Apple is in fact just responding to the legislative requirements pushed upon them. And if you have to have a killswitch that can resist a OS reformat… there has to be some component pairing mechanism that works underneath the OS layer, naturally. That is the sensible way to implement it, otherwise you'd just swap in a new motherboard and hey, phone's working again. Or strip the phone for parts. The idea of parts being anti-theft/strip-resistant is pretty much inherently in contradiction to right-to-repair. And again, I think people probably understand that... but never forget that theft-resistance was a legislative initiative pushed over the objections of Apple and other phone vendors at the time, having some unforeseen consequences. People actually did want this, people lobbied for this, as much as modern readers may not believe it. https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/is-the-smartphone-kill-switch-really-bad-for-business-in-california/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/is-the-smartphone-kill-swit...
coldtea 2y ago
[flagged]
- skhunted 2y ago
  The topic at hand is not about a preference that most people would not find objectively good or bad. Why is this particular preference bad enough that one should feel bad for having it? Without statements supporting this view your post doesn’t make much sense.
  - kragen 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - lolinder 2y ago
      This subthread could exist verbatim in any comment thread because it's devoid of substance. "Some positions are better than others", "why?", "because {poignant but vague analogy}". Why specifically is it bad for people to prefer devices that are small and tightly integrated to devices which are repairable but make trade-offs to get there? I own a Framework laptop for its repairability but would warn anyone interested in it that the battery life won't work for all use cases. It's a trade-off that I've made that doesn't make sense for everyone.
      - kragen 2y ago
        it isn't
      - coldtea 2y ago
        >Why specifically is it bad for people to prefer devices that are small and tightly integrated to devices which are repairable but make trade-offs to get there? For repairability, upgradability, hackability, the environment, waste, tighter vendor control, and so on... Do you need more reasons?
        2y ago