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Before them, phones used to be more or less open Wow. Just… wow. Excuse me while I get permission from sixteen levels of managers inside Cingular, U.S. Cellul

Before them, phones used to be more or less open Wow. Just… wow. Excuse me while I get permission from sixteen levels of managers inside Cingular, U.S. Cellular, Cincinnati Bell, PrimeCo, and the fifty different regional carriers calling themselves "Cellular One" to offer my app on their networks. I'm not claiming that iPhones are open to the extent that HN griefers want it to be, but you must have been freshly hatched in the years before the iPhone to think the ecosystem was open. I say this as someone who developed some of the first mobile phone weather apps. (Before "app" was even a word.)

stavros 6mo ago
Or, you know, there's more than one country in the world. I could flash my Nokia 6210 with whatever firmware I wanted, but I guess that doesn't count, because Nokia and Ericsson aren't American companies.
- mapontosevenths 6mo ago
  I may be guilty of the same thing you're mentioning (I'm in the USA), but my Nokia 6210 came with a carrier lock and I wasn't even able to visit websites via the WAP browser unless my carrier approved of them because WAP acted like a sort of mandatory vendor operated proxy that allowed them to see and filter everything the phone did. They would, for example, filter out websites about ringtones to try and force you to buy theirs for $0.99/piece. My experience with a Nokia 6210 was very much the opposite of what you describe.
  - goku12 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    - jen20 6mo ago
      It was exactly like the GP described in the UK too. All-powerful carriers at a time when Apple was almost bankrupt, before Google was a verb and before Microsoft made phones that would crash just sitting waiting for a call.
      - goku12 6mo ago
        [dead]
    - reaperducer 6mo ago
      That's very much a product of the American oligarchy And yet it happens in dozens of other countries that are not America. You may be surprised to learn that the whole world is not Europe. The colonial era is dead. with Apple, MSFT and Google at the forefront None of those companies had phones in the era we're discussing.
      - goku12 6mo ago
        [flagged]
- reaperducer 6mo ago
  I guess that doesn't count, because Nokia and Ericsson aren't American companies. The discussion is about Apple. Which is an American company. But if taking discussions off-topic is what gets you off, have at it.
  - stavros 6mo ago
    > Apple basically spearheaded the war on general computation. Before them, phones used to be more or less open, Apple cracked down on that very quickly.

stavros 6mo ago

Or, you know, there's more than one country in the world. I could flash my Nokia 6210 with whatever firmware I wanted, but I guess that doesn't count, because Nokia and Ericsson aren't American companies.

mapontosevenths 6mo ago
I may be guilty of the same thing you're mentioning (I'm in the USA), but my Nokia 6210 came with a carrier lock and I wasn't even able to visit websites via the WAP browser unless my carrier approved of them because WAP acted like a sort of mandatory vendor operated proxy that allowed them to see and filter everything the phone did. They would, for example, filter out websites about ringtones to try and force you to buy theirs for $0.99/piece. My experience with a Nokia 6210 was very much the opposite of what you describe.
- goku12 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - jen20 6mo ago
    It was exactly like the GP described in the UK too. All-powerful carriers at a time when Apple was almost bankrupt, before Google was a verb and before Microsoft made phones that would crash just sitting waiting for a call.
    - goku12 6mo ago
      [dead]
  - reaperducer 6mo ago
    That's very much a product of the American oligarchy And yet it happens in dozens of other countries that are not America. You may be surprised to learn that the whole world is not Europe. The colonial era is dead. with Apple, MSFT and Google at the forefront None of those companies had phones in the era we're discussing.
    - goku12 6mo ago
      [flagged]
reaperducer 6mo ago
I guess that doesn't count, because Nokia and Ericsson aren't American companies. The discussion is about Apple. Which is an American company. But if taking discussions off-topic is what gets you off, have at it.
- stavros 6mo ago
  > Apple basically spearheaded the war on general computation. Before them, phones used to be more or less open, Apple cracked down on that very quickly.