Apple and Google are still a problem, but they are a secondary problem.
The problem right now is that even if I had a couple of million dollars lying around, I STILL couldn't reliably get a piece of hardware certified for the cellular network. I would have to set up a company, spend untold amounts of money bribing^Wwooing cellular company executives for a couple years, and, maybe, just maybe, I could get my phone through the certification process.
The technical aspects of certification are the easy part.
The problem is that the cellular companies fully understand that when it happens their power goes to zero because they suddenly become a dumb pipe that everybody just wants to ignore.
That's why this will take legislation.
The sheer technical difficulty is what makes this kind of thing impractical.
The network does validate that a SIM card is a real SIM card, but you can put a "real SIM card" in anything.
It should be able to make an OS. It should be able to write drivers. It should be able to port code to new platforms. It should be able to transpile compiled binaries (which are just languages of a different language) across architectures.
Sure seems we are very far from that, but really these are breadth-based knowledge with extensive examples / training sources. It SHOULD be something LLMs are good at, not new/novel/deep/difficult problems. What I described are labor-intensive and complicated, but not "difficult".
And would any corporate AI allow that?
We should be pretty paranoid about centralized control attempts, especially in tech. This is a ... fragile ... time.
You can feed it assembly listings, or bytecode that the decompiler couldn't handle, and get back solid results.
And corporate AIs don't really have a fuck to give, at least not yet. You can sic Claude on obvious decompiler outputs, or a repo of questionable sources with a "VERY BIG CORPO - PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL" in every single file, and it'll sift through it - no complaints, no questions asked. And if that data somehow circles back into the training eventually, then all the funnier.
While it would be a burden to require a degree of openness, it's not like companies are all rugged individualists who would never want to see legal restrictions in the field.
It's just a question of what is overall best and fairest.
Restrictions can both help and hinder innovation, and it's innovation that in the ling run makes things improve IMO.
And that is what is wrong here. Even the smallest nation should be far more powerful than the largest corporation. But corporations are now more powerful than most nations, including some really big ones. So the only way to solve this is to for an umbrella for nations that offsets the power that these corporations have.
The first thing you notice when you arrive at Brussels airport is the absolute barrage of Google advertising that tries to convince you that Google is doing everything they can to play by the rules. When it is of course doing the exact opposite. So at least Google seems to realize that smaller nations banding together wield power. But they will never wield it as effectively as a company can, so we still have many problems.
Sometimes, I want wide open hardware that lets me do whatever I want. Innumerable companies serve this need.
Other times (indeed, most times) I want locked down hardware because of the massive benefits. That's why I use macs and iphones, and strongly advocate others use them too.
Yet a bunch of assholes want to rip that option away from me.
You guys keep not installing what you don't want - that's fine and your choice - but don't remove mine for no reason.
When app developers have the ability to bypass the walled garden, they have many incentives to do so ranging from financial to wishing to circumvent scrutiny. This will include an increasing amount of popular and useful apps, decreasing the options available to those who want to stay in the walled garden. For less technical users they will blindly follow instructions to leave the walled garden.
You are removing the choice of users who want a walled garden by supporting legislation forcing these ecosystems open.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N700_Series_Shinkansen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N800 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900
Making hardware friendly to multiple implementations is good for everyone.
Yeah, it's called "competition", which time and again throughout history has proven to force all involved parties to improve or perish (good for everyone; at least the "improve" part). Lack of any has proven to foster "enshittification" to the most extreme levels (absolutely bad for everyone).
Locked-down app stores certainly have significant utility and even should maybe be the default depending on the device, but calling people "assholes" for asking for an escape hatch is extremely odd.
The key is that if you choose not to run that software, your hardware should not be constrained. You own the hardware, it's a tangible thing that is your property.
Boils down to a consumer rights issue that I fall on the same side of as the author.
Also worrisome are e-fuses, which allow software to make irrevocable physical changes to your hardware. They shouldn't be allowed to be modified except by the owner. (See Nintendo Switch updates blowing e-fuses to prevent downgrades.)
In practice, a whole lot software would have to be open source too so that the hardware is reasonably usable. The layers you'd need to let an iPhone run android well, or a Pixel phone to run iOS are not small.
The smartphone does not consist of just one processor, it's a collection of dedicated processors, each running custom algorithms locally. Sure, there's software running in the application layer, but it's playing more of a coordination role than actually doing the work. Just think of sending a packet over the internet and how different it is between a smartphone and a computer, how much more complex a cellular modem is compared to a network card.
It's less about software now and more about hardware accelerated modules. Even CPUs run primarily on microcode which can be patched after the fact.
These patterns are cyclical. It will take a number of years before we return to standardized compute again, but return we will. Eventually.
That's why I continue to use non-corporate operating systems such as NetBSD and OpenWRT
s/should/must/
I'm not convinced there is some inalienable right to load an OS onto any hardware but said hardware/OS should never be on the critical path to anything a citizen needs to do.
Actually enforcing the anti-monopoly rules on the books would help, too.
And while we're making wishes, we could kill the VC-backed tech play by enforcing a digital version of anti-dumping laws.
With those rules in place, we'd see our market engine quite a bit more aligned with the social good.
If a manufacturer makes a device locked down, it's the technological protections preventing you from running your own code. Not IP/copyright. Sometimes they get jailbroken but sometimes not.
As someone who enjoyed Linux phones like the Nokia N900/950 and would love to see those hacker-spirited devices again, statements like this sound more than naïve to me. I can acknowledge my own interests here (having control over how exactly the device I own runs), but I can also see the interests of phone manufacturers — protecting revenue streams, managing liability and regulatory risks, optimizing hardware–software integration, and so on. I don't see how my own interests here outweigh collective interests here.
I also don’t see Apple or Google as merely companies that assemble parts and selling us "hardware". The decades when hardware and software were two disconnected worlds are gone.
Reading technical documentation on things like secure enclaves, UWB chips, computational photography stack, HRTF tuning, unified memory, TrueDepth cameras, AWDL, etc., it feels very wrong to support claims like the OP makes. “Hardware I own” sounds like you bought a pan and demand the right to cook any food you want. But we’re not buying pans anymore — we’re buying airplanes that also happen to serve food.
(Hell: I'd personally be OK without "documentation"... it should simply be illegal to actively go out of your way to prevent people from doing this. This way you also aren't mandating anyone go to extra effort they otherwise wouldn't bother with: the status quo is that, because they can, they thrown down an incredible amount of effort trying to prevent people from figuring things out themselves, and that really sucks.)
heh.
However the interests you mention aren't collective at all but very singularly the ones of the manufacturer only
Will it be as good as the iOS implementation? Probably not. But it's hardly an impossible fact and not one that has to be done entirely over and over for every device. The Asahi folks showed it could be done despite hostile conditions.
but ultimately it doesn't matter, if the market could bear the additional cost a competitor could emerge... but they barely do anywhere
honestly at this point in life I think it would be easier to change society to be structured in a way to make the people running these companies want to give it to you
the change impacts closed source software distributed without verification which is by definition unknown so the "want" is not possible - i.e. you can't know if you want to run it.
I think that's a huge difference from the sideloading issue, though. Which is effectively saying "you must purchase all your software for this device from us, even if it's not our software, and even if it's available elsewhere for less".
I get how one statement creates the monopoly that allows the other statement, but I think they are still two separate statements.
except in about a hundred million examples where the niche software that is running on the niche hardware has no viable alternative.
In The Real World when you have a component that breaks somewhere, and the manufacturer of the thing either fails to help or no longer exists you contract a third party to retrofit a repair module of some sort, or you do the work yourself to get the thing working.
How does this principle apply when the producer of the thing booby traps it with encryption and circuit breakers?
Software is special, comparing it to other industries never works well.
No there isn't, and one of the main problems.
I've been delighted to get my parents on iPhone+iPad for simplicity (and they have too). It feels this crowd sometimes assumes every barrier put in place is anti-consumer, but it's not. Blocking access to sensors, limiting background runtime, blocking access to other app's data, limiting it to reviewed apps... are all great things for most people. Most people don't have the technical literacy to have "informed consent" prompts popping up every 5 minutes, and most of them know it too. Most folks don't mind trusting Apple to make the tougher technical calls for them, and actually appreciate it.
Make cool hacker centric hardware. Make cool easy to use, locked down, and foolproof hardware. Both can and should exist.
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These things are never thought through. Sure, Apple could unlock the whole thing, tell everyone to go nuts. Who's writing the damn drivers? Apple's certainly not obligated to open source theirs, I also can't imagine them signing someone else's. So we end up with a bunch of homebrew drivers, devices crashing, getting pwned, and the dozens of people who install a third party OS on their iPhone write furious articles that get voted up to the front page of HN.
That’s why I love my iPhone, but I’m not super happy about what happens with my Mac.
There’s something in the reality that it’s the app developers not the user that are being restricted by Apple. Apple keeps the app developers from doing things I don’t like for the most part. I don’t feel very restricted.
But I don’t want my computer to become a walled garden. It’s only OK for my phone.
Makes me think that google did this now since trump has been criticizing the DMA, so now they feel empowered by their leader to break the law
Fully open phone systems consistently fail to sell enough to make a difference, which is a bit of a shame, but honestly at this point the market has spoken.
As a developer I write apps for myself and I side-load them. Why take away my right to do so, just because other people can't then nobody should?
However, I strongly believe that - should one choose to do so - you should not be stopped from jailbreaking, cracking, etc. manufacturer restrictions on the hardware you own. Companies aren't obligated to support me doing this - but why should legislation stop me if I want to try? (You can easily guess my thoughts on the DMCA.)
Where does one draw the line on support? If I jailbreak an iPhone, should I still get Apple customer support for the apps on it, even though they may have been manipulated by some aspect of the jailbreak? (Very real problem, easy to cause crashes in other apps when you mess around with root access) Should I still get a battery replacement within warranty from Apple even though I've used software that runs the battery hotter and faster than it would on average on a non-jailbroken iPhone?
I feel like changing the software shouldn't void your warranty, but I can see arguments against that. I probably fall on the side of losing all software support if you make changes like this, but even then it's not clear cut.
I’ve given talks on how various jailbreak exploits work in order to teach people how to protect their own software but also with the suggestion that we should be able to do this.
It’s nuts that personal computers aren’t personal anymore. Devices you might not think of as PC’s… just are. They’re sold in slick hardware. And the software ecosystem tries to prevent tampering in the name of security… but it’s not security for the end user most of the time. It’s security for the investors to ensure you have to keep paying them.
Buy a more open phone if you want one, but stop trying to use legal means to force the software on my phone to be worse for my use-case just because you want to have your cake and eat it too.
1. Open, hackable hardware for those who want full control and for driving innovation
2. Locked-down, managed devices for vulnerable users who benefit from protection
This concept of "I should run any code on hardware I own" is completely wrong as a universal principle. Yes, we absolutely should be able to run any code we want on open hardware we own - that option must exist. But we should not expect manufacturers of phones and tablets to allow anyone to run any code on every device, since this will cause harm to many users.
There should be more open and hackable products available in the market. The DIY mindset at the junction of hardware and software is crucial for tech innovation - we wouldn't be where we are today without it. However, I also want regulations and restrictions on the phones I buy for my kids and grandparents. They need protection from themselves and from bad actors.
The market should serve both groups: those who want to tinker and innovate, and those who need a safe, managed experience. The problem isn't that locked-down devices exist - it's that we don't have enough truly open alternatives for those who want them.
It should be possible to participate in the modern economy using standard technology.
To this end, I think there should be a mandate that all govt and commercial infrastructure apps offer a progressive web app with at least feature parity with proprietary phone apps.
Want me to use a phone to pay for lunch, EV charging, parking or a toll? Great. It needs to be doable with anything running firefox, safari or chrome.
There's no reason we shouldn't be able to run what we want on our hardware, without having to trust anything other than the microkernel inside the operating systems.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_security
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_operating_sys...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Account_Control
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppArmor
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux
DrillShopper•1h ago
No, says the car manufacturers, those cycles belong to us
No, says the nerds in Redmond, your computer belongs to us
add-sub-mul-div•1h ago
Krutonium•1h ago
rogerrogerr•1h ago
Spooky23•22m ago
I’d guess in 5 years you’ll start getting friction for using AD, and heavy push towards cloud services first. You’ll probably have to subscribe to legacy features or migrate to Azure to use them.
Their legacy systems management tool is a zombie product, and the replacement is Intune, which and an MDM solution which locks you out of your computer similar to Android or iOS.
I’ll be retired, so IDNGAF, but in 15 years, Microsoft will be capturing all of the value they give you for free in windows. The future will look like a 1980s mainframe.