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Your phone is an entire computer

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Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#191

Post by scoofy »

why_at wrote: post #185
purplehat_ wrote: post #91

I really don't understand the argument here. That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation. Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form, but given that the vast majority of users wouldn't do anything different with their phones if a shell was present, this is in my opinion not that large of an effect. The snide around "clicking on links is da…

>On the other hand, being cryptographically locked-down is an optional feature. If you don't like it, buy a computer without that feature. But that's the thing, where can I buy a phone without a locked-down operating system? GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel is basically the only option right now, and this still has problems thanks to hardware attestation in a lot of apps that the ecosystem forces us to use. This is large…

>Somehow we managed to survive without the majority of society being scammed out of their life savings before Apple came in with the iPhone and locked down iOS

What on earth are you talking about? People have been getting scammed since the days of AOL! What an insane perspective. It's not about total money lost from scams. It's about the amount of impact it has on the individuals who get scammed. What's the problem with Russian roulette after all? Most people playing Russian Roulette are absolutely fine! The point is that the damage done to the few people who get scammed is so high, we ought to care about their lives too. At the end of the day, it might end up being us... it probably won't, but it might.

Yes, monopolistic network effects are a problem, but that can be handled with regulation.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#192

Post by xg15 »

purplehat_ wrote: post #91

I really don't understand the argument here. That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation. Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form, but given that the vast majority of users wouldn't do anything different with their phones if a shell was present, this is in my opinion not that large of an effect. The snide around "clicking on links is da…

> because for most people a phone is not a toy (or at least, not just a toy) - it has their communications history, their bank information, their passwords, any many more. And it's really easy to steal people's phones on the subway. This isn't about freedom of computing, this is about the fact that an iPhone in BFU is nearly as secure as a GrapheneOS phone.

If that were the entire reason, the straight-forward thing would be to give the user tools to secure the phone, such as setting a password and encrypting data based on that password.

It wouldn't make sense to spent enormous amounts of resources to "secure" the phone against its own user, yet that is what they do.

I think a more honest explanation is that they aren't just securing their own corporate power, but also the power and business models of all kinds of app developers - this way, developers can sell trivial UI improvements as "premium features" or even put in deliberate anti-features and the user can't do anything about it.

Games can put in loot boxes and microtransactions, YouTube can declare that keeping a song playing and putting the phone away is a premium feature and movie rightsholders can decide the exact circumstances under which a movie may be watched.

That's all before the ubiquitous tracking and data collection.

Everyone wins, except the user...

> and just wants to be able to open LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs without having their 401k get drained.

So do I, even if I'm a tinkerer. That's what sane permission settings and - if you like - a locked bootloader are for. What you don't need for that is to restrict the owner from unlocking the bootloader.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#193

Post by amelius »

fragmede wrote: post #187
amelius wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation. And why should the entity locking down the design be the same entity as the one selling it? Is that a feature too? You can't imagine a world where people can install different services by different providers to protect their devices? And have some actual competition? And therefore choice?

We almost had that with the browser wars, when Microsoft was forced to have customers choose which browser they wanted when they got a computer. Operating system choice was already lost to Windows, but at least browser, they were forced by EU directive to let the customer choose which one they wanted. Then the game changed, and now it's basically Google or Apple for your smartphone, with a tiny bit of competition tha…

We really need to have a "no-tether law" that says that the consumer should be able to break all ties with the vendor and still be able to use the device as advertised.

Otherwise, you bought a service, not a product.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#194

Post by zozbot234 »

Unit327 wrote: post #183
kube-system wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPhone is designed to be a good smartphone, not a good NAS. It is silly to expect anyone to compromise the design of a mass market product to support some esoteric MacGyvering entirely unrelated to the original product. Should we all expect Toyota to design their ECUs to be used as a NAS?

A NAS is just an example, here's a better one; I love to use my old phones as wall mounted displays and controls for home assistant, or as remote music players plugged in to some speakers that I can hook into in music assistant. Some of my old phones are more than capable of this hardware wise but are locked to older versions of android and can't run anything built for a newer version, so they end up as ewaste intste…

You can do this but you have to remove the battery and hook up the circuitry to external power. This practically turns the phone into a glorified SBC. It may still be worth it since there's more of a mass market for phones than SBCs (and phones come with lots of extra hardware components that can be useful) but it's not that huge of a win.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#195

Post by fragmede »

albuic wrote: post #144
purplehat_ wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point, but that solution doesn't address the market for theft, so there's a tradeoff there.

And it is not stopping people from steal IPhones as they can resell parts as usual.

The stolen parts have serials on them that get blacklisted. iOS isn't going to run with a camera that's been marked as stolen.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#196

Post by MBCook »

bottlepalm wrote: post #44
MBCook wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would also seriously hurt the sales of Macs. Even more so now that the Neo exists.

It would explode sales of Mac. OSX on iPhone, people wouldn't need the separate Windows laptops they're used to. OSX on iPhone is the gateway for consumers into the OSX ecosystem. And when those consumers want more powerful hardware, instead of buying a more powerful Windows laptop/desktop - they buy a Mac instead. I feel like Apple knows this as well, so I can't figure out why they haven't pulled the trigger. Anti-t…

I don’t think it would be an antitrust risk.

I don’t understand the argument for why allowing it would mean more Apple computer hardware sales though. Could you explain why you think that would happen?

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#197

Post by xg15 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #190
why_at wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On the other hand, being cryptographically locked-down is an optional feature. If you don't like it, buy a computer without that feature. But that's the thing, where can I buy a phone without a locked-down operating system? GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel is basically the only option right now, and this still has problems thanks to hardware attestation in a lot of apps that the ecosystem forces us to use. This is large…

> hardware attestation in a lot of apps that the ecosystem forces us to use Only a tiny amount of apps force you into hardware attestation, and these are mostly around banking, mobile payments and the like. So just use a separate, locked down device for those (where the anti-fraud protection of a locked-down system can be a benefit) and your more open day-to-day device for mostly everything else. A hidden advantage i…

And what gives you the confidence that the amount of apos will stay tiny?

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#198

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

purplehat_ wrote: post #91

I really don't understand the argument here. That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation. Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form, but given that the vast majority of users wouldn't do anything different with their phones if a shell was present, this is in my opinion not that large of an effect. The snide around "clicking on links is da…

So exactly what “proprietary standard” does Apple use as far as media, files, connectors etc?

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#199

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

purplehat_ wrote: post #111
throwaway27448 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understood this stance more 10 years ago, but now we have many layers of fairly well documented exploit tactics and none of them rely on the app store. However forcing users to use an app store was supposed to benefit us has clearly failed. And, somehow, the indignity of being forced into paying apple a 30% tax for a market they wholly own never comes up alongside other paternalistic arguments....

Can you elaborate on "fairly well documented exploit tactics"? My impression is that most of these are either social engineering, for which we need to hire better designers, or complicated chains of hard-to-find primitives only accessible to state actors. There's definitely problems but the solution isn't to make the iPhone a general purpose computer. We definitely need to defend the existence of general purpose comp…

It came out in the Epic trial that 90% of App Stors revenue comes from shitty pay to win games and loot boxes - cry me a river for them.

Most of the other revenue that companies make from mobile are using the app as a front end to services where payments never go through the App Store

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#200

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #159
purplehat_ wrote: post #91

I really don't understand the argument here. That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation. Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form, but given that the vast majority of users wouldn't do anything different with their phones if a shell was present, this is in my opinion not that large of an effect. The snide around "clicking on links is da…

I like iPhones because they are a little bit restricted. But let’s be real here. They should have unified everything 5 years ago. Your phone should plugin to a screen and be a “netbook” level device and anything 13 inches and up should be running MacOS. The iPad should have a real affordable keyboard. These limitations are no longer designed to make the product better.

It does have a “real affordable keyboard” - any BT keyboard and mouse. My wife uses both that came from Amazon for $30 bucks each
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