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Someone here on HN used the term "cloud terminal" for modern electronic devices, and I think that is a very fitting name for phones and tablets. They are defini

Someone here on HN used the term "cloud terminal" for modern electronic devices, and I think that is a very fitting name for phones and tablets. They are definitely not computers because they do not actually give the user access to general purpose computing in the sense that the users can control exactly what computations the device is going to execute. They are just terminals whose production costs we cover but which are actually owned by the cloud providers. Also: The internet is slowly turning into a handful of clouds, and it is only a matter of time before you cannot meaningfully host anything by yourself outside of these clouds because your cloud terminal will refuse to talk to it.

janalsncm 6mo ago
Speaking as someone who has built local-only apps (partially because I don’t want the hassle of maintaining a server): There are plenty of useful apps that run locally on a phone. You can even run a whole LLM on your phone. The shiniest and most popular apps are cloud terminals but the iPhone is actually a pretty darn powerful device.
- ulrikrasmussen 6mo ago
  Plenty of useful apps != general purpose computing capabilities. You are not allowed to run computations that have not been approved by Apple if you are using an iPhone. Yes, the hardware is powerful, but it is cryptographically locked down. It is physically local, but the control of the hardware is entirely non-local and 100% owned by Apple.
  - milkshakes 6mo ago
    unless you're using an API that requires an entitlement, you can still get an apple developer account and sign whatever code you want and run it on your devices.
    - BiteCode_dev 6mo ago
      So if they don't give you an apple dev account, or close yours, you can't. Case in point.
      - brookst 6mo ago
        Did you just move the goalposts from “you can’t run arbitrary code today” to “hypothetically, in the future, Apple could prevent running arbitrary code”?
        engeljohnb 6mo ago
        Anything that needs Apple to say "yes" before it runs is not "arbitrary."
        jlokier 6mo ago
        As with Google accounts, it's not hypothetical, it's a risk. People do occasionally get locked out of being an Apple developer for reasons they cannot foresee. > Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114 > Apple bans entire dev account, no reason given https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44601548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44601548
        brookst 6mo ago
        It’s still rhetorical sleight of hand. I could have a stroke that leaves me unable to program. Does that mean I am not truly free to program today? Those are risks, but they do not change the on-the-ground reality today, and the claim was that users, today, cannot use these device as general purpose computers.
        ulrikrasmussen 6mo ago
        No it's not. I need permission by a third-party to be able to program a device I supposedly own. I need to give them money, I need to give them my identity, and I need to tie my identity to any distribution of the software I make if other people are to be able to install it. This is not a rhetorical sleight of hand, this is just saying that I am not truly in control of the device that I have bought.
  - pcwalton 6mo ago
    You can run arbitrary computations on iOS devices if they're written in JavaScript, WebAssembly, or Swift (via Playgrounds). All of these are Turing complete, and all three compile into machine code. What you don't have without an Apple developer account is direct machine code access. Also note that apps like Pythonista allow you to write programs that call arbitrary Objective-C APIs without permission from Apple. This means that you have a Turing-complete language running unsigned code that can do anything a signed app can do. Your programs do, however, execute slowly.
- bean469 6mo ago
  > The shiniest and most popular apps are cloud terminals but the iPhone is actually a pretty darn powerful device. They are powerful from a computational perspective, but the point was that it's a hassle to run a custom binary on them as compared to regular computers. You get a powerful device that is not flexible in this specific sense, so much of that power is not utilized
globular-toast 6mo ago
Well, they can do computing, but it's awkward and most people don't use them for that, it's true. The question of ownership is interesting. If I buy a chair, it doesn't make a very good table, does that mean I don't own it? Most people don't know what general purpose computing is. To them a cloud terminal is a computer. So, to them, they do own their devices because that's all they are. I feel like some of us think we got close, or anywhere near, what Stallman has been advocating for most of his life. But I'm afraid we didn't. We all chose convenience. We chose to believe that one man was enough to hold back the tide against enormously powerful corporations and governments. Some even turned their back on Stallman. And some even work for the enemy. We haven't really lost anything here. It's just becoming more clear what we actually have.
- andai 6mo ago
  A phone is a computer whose creator is incentivized to make it pretend it isn't a computer, because it harms profits if they don't. Increasingly, so is the government, because freedom of computing is incompatible with surveillance, age verification etc.
- ulrikrasmussen 6mo ago
  We did not all choose convenience over freedom, but the majority did. Those of us who chose freedom were still able to participate in digital society, albeit with a bit of added inconvenience, but this is becoming increasingly difficult as cloud terminal use is becoming a prerequisite for doing banking, using public transport or even verifying your age on the internet. The chair analogy is a bit weird, because I am actually free to buy a chair, disassemble it and somehow use it as a table if my needs for a table for some weird reason happens to coincide with the form factor of the chair. I don't think the analogy really works, but if a chair worked as a modern phone then it would be built with one-way screws and in general be built to lose structural integrity if you try to disassemble it. A better analogy is roads. Anyone can put any car on the public roads (they may be breaking the law if the car is not legal). But we are moving towards a world where the roads will slash the tires of any car which isn't approved by Ford or Tesla. Ford and Tesla didn't build the roads, but they somehow took over the control of them.
- 6mo ago
brookst 6mo ago
IDK, not really a fan of redefining computer to make a rhetorical point. It seems counter-productive to tell people the computing device they think as a computer isn’t really a computer. It’s like saying my car isn’t really a car because I can’t adjust spark timing. Someone could make that semantic argument but it’s hard to imagine anyone would care.
- modo_mario 6mo ago
  >It’s like saying my car isn’t really a car because I can’t adjust spark timing. What if it only drives along select predetermined monetised routes?
  - kuboble 6mo ago
    Even a car that you are not allowed to drive at all is still a car. It just isn't your car.
    - falcor84 6mo ago
      Exactly! Our argument shouldn't be about the device's capabilities, but about its ownership. And increasingly, as this enshittification progresses, the person buying the device is becoming less and less its owner.
    - modo_mario 6mo ago
      Sure. But a taxi is a car yet it doesn't quite take up the same mental spots. People will say they came by taxi instead of by car. People won't say they don't see the value in selfdriving capabilities or repairability because they can just get a taxi. Etc
  - sudb 6mo ago
    I think we call those buses, usually!
    - PurpleRamen 6mo ago
      No, a Bus is a big car with more space for passengers. The Route has no relation to the naming.
gosub100 6mo ago
> it is only a matter of time before you cannot meaningfully host anything by yourself outside of these clouds because your cloud terminal will refuse to talk to it. That's well on its way. Try to log into your bank (or countless other sites) using a VPN. They flat out turn you away. If you don't use VPN but use a different computer or connection you get grilled with "prove you're a human". I get that they are doing anti spam and fraud steps, but the logical conclusion of where this ends up is "if we don't recognize you from our mountains of tracking info we've been compiling, we don't want to do business with you".
ubermonkey 6mo ago
Super predictable for HN to trot out the "tablets and phones aren't computers" line. It's still wrong. Countless people use them for all their computing needs. Overwhelmingly, though, these people are not the sort to comment on HN. They are Regular People, not Professional Computer Touchers, and their needs are absolutely met.
effdee 6mo ago
> they do not actually give the user access to general purpose computing in the sense that the users can control exactly what computations the device is going to execute What prevents the creation of an App that allows one to do exactly that?
- alecsm 6mo ago
  The official store won't accept it and you can't sideload it.
  - surajrmal 6mo ago
    You can in fact side load it. There are no restrictions on apps loaded via adb. The 24H restriction period on side loading only applies to apps retrieved by other means.
    - greenavocado 6mo ago
      Oh wow, you can sideload it? Amazing. All grandma has to do is install Android Studio, enable developer mode, tap the build number seven times, flip on USB debugging, plug into a laptop, accept an RSA key fingerprint, and pop open a terminal. You know, the way normal people install apps.
      - krieger_857 6mo ago
        >> they do not actually give the user access to general purpose computing in the sense that the users can control exactly what computations the device is going to execute i don't think we were talking about grandma use case
        saintfire 6mo ago
        Its hyperbolic but hits the point. I've helped multiple coworkers (in a non-computer related field) sideload F-Droid for a few spyware/ad free apps they liked the look of. Id sideload my own phone using adb but I'd tell them theyre out of luck.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
II2II 6mo ago
> Someone here on HN used the term "cloud terminal" for modern electronic devices, and I think that is a very fitting name for phones and tablets. Not really, at least not in the case of Android. We have been able to install (and develop) software for these devices since day one. To me, that is pretty much a general purpose computer. The only real difference are peripherals, which is better suited for content consumption than creation. Even then, it is trivial to add a keyboard, mouse, or printer. Other forms of I/O are "walled off" behind permissions, but most of those have to do with privacy (very few computers have things like GPS, accelerometers, etc.). The big difference after that is the cellular modem, where security is a big concern. Yet that mostly affects phones. I'm not sure I would even agree with it in the case of iOS. The distinguishing difference between iOS and Android is that the development and distribution of third-party software is restricted by the vendor. I don't think that makes it any less of a computer. Contrast that to the typical ereader. Technically it is a general purpose computer, but most ereaders are developed to support a singular purpose. You aren't going to be installing third-party apps in the course of normal usage.

janalsncm 6mo ago

Speaking as someone who has built local-only apps (partially because I don’t want the hassle of maintaining a server): There are plenty of useful apps that run locally on a phone. You can even run a whole LLM on your phone. The shiniest and most popular apps are cloud terminals but the iPhone is actually a pretty darn powerful device.

ulrikrasmussen 6mo ago
Plenty of useful apps != general purpose computing capabilities. You are not allowed to run computations that have not been approved by Apple if you are using an iPhone. Yes, the hardware is powerful, but it is cryptographically locked down. It is physically local, but the control of the hardware is entirely non-local and 100% owned by Apple.
- milkshakes 6mo ago
  unless you're using an API that requires an entitlement, you can still get an apple developer account and sign whatever code you want and run it on your devices.
  - BiteCode_dev 6mo ago
    So if they don't give you an apple dev account, or close yours, you can't. Case in point.
    - brookst 6mo ago
      Did you just move the goalposts from “you can’t run arbitrary code today” to “hypothetically, in the future, Apple could prevent running arbitrary code”?
      - engeljohnb 6mo ago
        Anything that needs Apple to say "yes" before it runs is not "arbitrary."
      - jlokier 6mo ago
        As with Google accounts, it's not hypothetical, it's a risk. People do occasionally get locked out of being an Apple developer for reasons they cannot foresee. > Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114 > Apple bans entire dev account, no reason given https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44601548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44601548
        brookst 6mo ago
        It’s still rhetorical sleight of hand. I could have a stroke that leaves me unable to program. Does that mean I am not truly free to program today? Those are risks, but they do not change the on-the-ground reality today, and the claim was that users, today, cannot use these device as general purpose computers.
        ulrikrasmussen 6mo ago
        No it's not. I need permission by a third-party to be able to program a device I supposedly own. I need to give them money, I need to give them my identity, and I need to tie my identity to any distribution of the software I make if other people are to be able to install it. This is not a rhetorical sleight of hand, this is just saying that I am not truly in control of the device that I have bought.
- pcwalton 6mo ago
  You can run arbitrary computations on iOS devices if they're written in JavaScript, WebAssembly, or Swift (via Playgrounds). All of these are Turing complete, and all three compile into machine code. What you don't have without an Apple developer account is direct machine code access. Also note that apps like Pythonista allow you to write programs that call arbitrary Objective-C APIs without permission from Apple. This means that you have a Turing-complete language running unsigned code that can do anything a signed app can do. Your programs do, however, execute slowly.
bean469 6mo ago
> The shiniest and most popular apps are cloud terminals but the iPhone is actually a pretty darn powerful device. They are powerful from a computational perspective, but the point was that it's a hassle to run a custom binary on them as compared to regular computers. You get a powerful device that is not flexible in this specific sense, so much of that power is not utilized

globular-toast 6mo ago

Well, they can do computing, but it's awkward and most people don't use them for that, it's true. The question of ownership is interesting. If I buy a chair, it doesn't make a very good table, does that mean I don't own it? Most people don't know what general purpose computing is. To them a cloud terminal is a computer. So, to them, they do own their devices because that's all they are. I feel like some of us think we got close, or anywhere near, what Stallman has been advocating for most of his life. But I'm afraid we didn't. We all chose convenience. We chose to believe that one man was enough to hold back the tide against enormously powerful corporations and governments. Some even turned their back on Stallman. And some even work for the enemy. We haven't really lost anything here. It's just becoming more clear what we actually have.

andai 6mo ago
A phone is a computer whose creator is incentivized to make it pretend it isn't a computer, because it harms profits if they don't. Increasingly, so is the government, because freedom of computing is incompatible with surveillance, age verification etc.
ulrikrasmussen 6mo ago
We did not all choose convenience over freedom, but the majority did. Those of us who chose freedom were still able to participate in digital society, albeit with a bit of added inconvenience, but this is becoming increasingly difficult as cloud terminal use is becoming a prerequisite for doing banking, using public transport or even verifying your age on the internet. The chair analogy is a bit weird, because I am actually free to buy a chair, disassemble it and somehow use it as a table if my needs for a table for some weird reason happens to coincide with the form factor of the chair. I don't think the analogy really works, but if a chair worked as a modern phone then it would be built with one-way screws and in general be built to lose structural integrity if you try to disassemble it. A better analogy is roads. Anyone can put any car on the public roads (they may be breaking the law if the car is not legal). But we are moving towards a world where the roads will slash the tires of any car which isn't approved by Ford or Tesla. Ford and Tesla didn't build the roads, but they somehow took over the control of them.
6mo ago

brookst 6mo ago

IDK, not really a fan of redefining computer to make a rhetorical point. It seems counter-productive to tell people the computing device they think as a computer isn’t really a computer. It’s like saying my car isn’t really a car because I can’t adjust spark timing. Someone could make that semantic argument but it’s hard to imagine anyone would care.

modo_mario 6mo ago
>It’s like saying my car isn’t really a car because I can’t adjust spark timing. What if it only drives along select predetermined monetised routes?
- kuboble 6mo ago
  Even a car that you are not allowed to drive at all is still a car. It just isn't your car.
  - falcor84 6mo ago
    Exactly! Our argument shouldn't be about the device's capabilities, but about its ownership. And increasingly, as this enshittification progresses, the person buying the device is becoming less and less its owner.
  - modo_mario 6mo ago
    Sure. But a taxi is a car yet it doesn't quite take up the same mental spots. People will say they came by taxi instead of by car. People won't say they don't see the value in selfdriving capabilities or repairability because they can just get a taxi. Etc
- sudb 6mo ago
  I think we call those buses, usually!
  - PurpleRamen 6mo ago
    No, a Bus is a big car with more space for passengers. The Route has no relation to the naming.

gosub100 6mo ago

> it is only a matter of time before you cannot meaningfully host anything by yourself outside of these clouds because your cloud terminal will refuse to talk to it. That's well on its way. Try to log into your bank (or countless other sites) using a VPN. They flat out turn you away. If you don't use VPN but use a different computer or connection you get grilled with "prove you're a human". I get that they are doing anti spam and fraud steps, but the logical conclusion of where this ends up is "if we don't recognize you from our mountains of tracking info we've been compiling, we don't want to do business with you".

ubermonkey 6mo ago

Super predictable for HN to trot out the "tablets and phones aren't computers" line. It's still wrong. Countless people use them for all their computing needs. Overwhelmingly, though, these people are not the sort to comment on HN. They are Regular People, not Professional Computer Touchers, and their needs are absolutely met.

effdee 6mo ago

> they do not actually give the user access to general purpose computing in the sense that the users can control exactly what computations the device is going to execute What prevents the creation of an App that allows one to do exactly that?

alecsm 6mo ago
The official store won't accept it and you can't sideload it.
- surajrmal 6mo ago
  You can in fact side load it. There are no restrictions on apps loaded via adb. The 24H restriction period on side loading only applies to apps retrieved by other means.
  - greenavocado 6mo ago
    Oh wow, you can sideload it? Amazing. All grandma has to do is install Android Studio, enable developer mode, tap the build number seven times, flip on USB debugging, plug into a laptop, accept an RSA key fingerprint, and pop open a terminal. You know, the way normal people install apps.
    - krieger_857 6mo ago
      >> they do not actually give the user access to general purpose computing in the sense that the users can control exactly what computations the device is going to execute i don't think we were talking about grandma use case
      - saintfire 6mo ago
        Its hyperbolic but hits the point. I've helped multiple coworkers (in a non-computer related field) sideload F-Droid for a few spyware/ad free apps they liked the look of. Id sideload my own phone using adb but I'd tell them theyre out of luck.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

II2II 6mo ago

> Someone here on HN used the term "cloud terminal" for modern electronic devices, and I think that is a very fitting name for phones and tablets. Not really, at least not in the case of Android. We have been able to install (and develop) software for these devices since day one. To me, that is pretty much a general purpose computer. The only real difference are peripherals, which is better suited for content consumption than creation. Even then, it is trivial to add a keyboard, mouse, or printer. Other forms of I/O are "walled off" behind permissions, but most of those have to do with privacy (very few computers have things like GPS, accelerometers, etc.). The big difference after that is the cellular modem, where security is a big concern. Yet that mostly affects phones. I'm not sure I would even agree with it in the case of iOS. The distinguishing difference between iOS and Android is that the development and distribution of third-party software is restricted by the vendor. I don't think that makes it any less of a computer. Contrast that to the typical ereader. Technically it is a general purpose computer, but most ereaders are developed to support a singular purpose. You aren't going to be installing third-party apps in the course of normal usage.