[snoot]

> tech people who learned to program because their 8088 was completely open and free to let you actually create things and learn about computing, so many of you will defend this terrible situation.

There is nothing terrible about Apple making devices my 80+ year old mother can safely and easily use.

I have a Mac, and I also have Linux machines. Nothing is stopping people learning about computers.

Why would anyone spend $1000 on a computer from Apple if it’s not what they want?

[horsawlarway]

> There is nothing terrible about Apple making devices my 80+ year old mother can safely and easily use.

This - this line is the part of your argument I find fairly bullshit.

There is nothing stopping Apple from making the same device, but giving you the keys to install your own software on it. Hell - They can even bury it in the settings, or lock it down through a provisioned profile so you can help your mom by turning it off if you're worried.

Instead - you're arguing that apple should abuse their position to keep other competition locked out. Because you think it makes you "safer". I don't think it makes you safer. I think it makes life easy for you, at the expense of everyone in the long term.

You have fallen - hook, line, and sinker - for the marketing of the richest company in the world, telling you "trust us - we'll keep you safe". You should ask more questions about why they need to do it this way. Why keeping you safe involves abusing their power.

That's the same safety China promises with their great firewall. Trust us - we'll keep you safe, happy, and ignorant.

Maybe that's a good deal to you - I think it's a shitty trade.

[skissane]

> There is nothing stopping Apple from making the same device, but giving you the keys to install your own software on it.

They do, at the app level. As a developer you can install whatever app you want on your own devices, even apps which would never be allowed in AppStore or TestFlight (although still not with all the entitlements Apple’s own apps can get.)

OS level, your point stands.

[CiaranMcNulty]

> There is nothing stopping Apple from making the same device, but giving you the keys to install your own software on it

You... don't think you can install your own software on MacOS?

[cosmojg]

> Why would anyone spend $1000 on a computer from Apple if it’s not what they want?

Because marketing.

Then again, maybe the truth is that what people really want isn't the best tool for the job but the best-marketed tool for the job, and they spend their money accordingly.

[snoot]

Apple explicitly advertise that their computers are locked down. It’s part of their marketing. If people didn’t want it, this wouldn’t work.

[yamtaddle]

> Nothing is stopping people learning about computers.

Hell, it's easier and cheaper than ever. You can run Linux in your browser on an iPad, just by visiting a URL. Or shell into various free-tier VMs, for... free. Maybe a one-time cost for an SSH/Mosh client if you're on iOS I suppose. Swift Playgrounds and a hundred other learn-to-code apps and sites exist. And that's if you're "stuck" with a locked-down device running iOS—you can pick up cheap but pretty damn powerful second-hand x86 computers with money earned from a shift or two at McDonalds and do whatever you want with them. Practically all libraries have lots of computers now (and see again that you can run Linux in a browser, or remote into VMs from the browser, if you're concerned about how locked-down a library computer might be). I routinely end up with free or nearly-free surprisingly good computers (even Apple ones!) without even trying.

Resources, including entire books, available for free and on demand—and almost any information relating to computers is free if you're willing to sail the high seas and hoist the Jolly Roger, which is exactly what learners did back in the "good old days", too (but we pirated software, not books, mainly because the books were rarely available in digital form and we had worse ways to read them than we do now, even if they had been available).

[horsawlarway]

But hey - I'm free to send multicast packets from that iphone on a network I own, right? Because part of the learning is the doing things with the skills you learn later.

I'm free to install software I write on that iphone, right?

I'm free to sell the software I write using those skills to those other people, without risk of Apple arbitrarily shutting me out, right?

Or much more malicious, moving me down below their own shitty version, right?

All of those things - the things someone who goes to the trouble to learn about computers might want to do - I'm free to do those?

[gambiting]

>>There is nothing terrible about Apple making devices my 80+ year old mother can safely and easily use.

I just don't understand this argument. Never did and I don't think I ever will. If apple allowed you to install custom apps, it would change NOTHING for your 80+ year old mother. Literally nothing. Her device would still be just as safe and secure as ever before.

[pdabbadabba]

At the same time, almost everyone in my family over the age of 60 who uses a non-Apple device has their devices completely sodden with crapware (and probably worse), to the point where they periodically have to taken them in to some sort of computer "repair" person to have them serviced (i.e., the garbage removed).

Some people apparently need help making judgment calls about what is and is not safe to install on their devices. I feel like Mac OS might strike the right balance here: you can install anything you want, but the OS throws up speedbumps if the app doesn't have the right signature, is not from the App Store, etc. These protections can be easily circumvented, but they send a signal that you should think twice about doing so if you don't really know what you're doing.

[klodolph]

Apple lets you install custom apps on Macs, it’s just iOS devices where it’s a pain.

On iOS devices, you have to use a developer account to sideload the app and it only works for a short time, IIRC. I’m fuzzy on the details because the places where I’ve worked, it mostly just worked although the experience was way, way better on Android. At one point I was on a team that ran a system for deploying apps for sideloading, and for years I’ve been carrying both an Android and iOS phone, so I feel like I have a handle on these differences, but I also am missing out on some of the problems that our team already solved.

On macOS, you can download an app and run it. Depending on the provenance of the app and the security settings, you may get a message like “this app is from an unknown developer” with no apparent way forward. The solution is to right-click the app and select open from the context menu. When you open an app by right clicking on it, the OS gives you an option to open the app. This depends on security settings, but I think this is allowed by default.

There’s a lot of malware out there these days and I think it is good and correct that it should not be obvious how to run arbitrary software you downloaded. We know people will just click through dialog boxes to try and get where they’re going, which is way (for example) there’s no button to visit an HTTPS site with a broken certificate in most browsers these days. Some things should not come with instructions, because the risks are too great for unskilled users.

[snoot]

Clearly not true. A lot of spyware and malware masquerades as legitimate software.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

> If apple allowed you to install custom apps, it would change NOTHING for your 80+ year old mother. Literally nothing. Her device would still be just as safe and secure as ever before.

Not it would not still be as safe.

Malware and scams would come with instructions to install their custom bad app.

“Install this custom Deals app to save money”

[throwaway09223]

"There is nothing terrible about Apple making devices my 80+ year old mother can safely and easily use."

There very clearly is something terrible about this level of control. You're arguing that there's also some benefit -- yes of course there could be. But the point is that there are also massive problems with this level of control, some of which pose existential threats in areas far more important than (entirely debatable) usability improvements.

These problems can be solved in other ways. You can do what I did and remove administrator access entirely. You can create a curated list of appropriate apps without the totalitarian aspect. You can let people opt-in to various levels of filtering and control over software without excluding people who want to ahem think different.

You're presenting a pretext, not a credible and necessary conclusion.

[camhart]

> Easily use

I am tech savvy. iPhones are not "easy" to use. It's a nightmare of hidden gestures to accomplish even the most basic things.

Yes, for someone who spend 8 hours / day on their phone you eventually learn the necessary gestures. But that's no different from Android or any other electronic device.

[AlbertCory]

> making devices my 80+ year old mother can safely and easily use

only today, I was talking to a lady walking her dog, who's close to 80 (I don't ask her that), and she owns an iPhone. When my phone started talking, she commiserated that she's always getting woken up because the phone is making noise and she can't make it stop. I told her to keep it in another room like I do.

I have Android, but if I look it up : https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208353

apparently there IS a way. Either it doesn't work, or she doesn't know about it.

[Barrin92]

>There is nothing terrible about Apple making devices my 80+ year old mother can safely and easily use.

in contrast to what other phone? Was your 80+ year old mother sideloading bootleg apks on her android after turning on developer mode? This is the reverse version of "but think of the children" except it doesn't even make any sense. In every one of these threads there's a mysterious influx of senile parents who apparently can be trusted with the call function of the phone and fend off every fake grandson phishing attempt but not the option to install software

[snoot]

This isn’t in contrast to Android. That’s just a matter of usability.

It’s in contrast to the openness of the platform people seem to be demanding from Apple. Current Android is obviously not open enough for them, so it’s not a valid as a point of comparison.

[caboteria]

> There is nothing terrible about Apple making devices my 80+ year old mother can safely and easily use.

You're right. It's also true that there's nothing terrible about making devices that Chinese dissidents can safely and easily use. Luckily there is no government that wants to limit your mom's freedom (unless she happens to be a Chinese dissident).