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Your phone is about to stop being yours

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Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#661

Post by BiteCode_dev »

milkshakes wrote: post #655
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

So if they don't give you an apple dev account, or close yours, you can't.

Case in point.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#662

Post by freedomben »

coldtea wrote: post #644
globular-toast wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> 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? A better comparison is buying a chair where the seller gets to aprove who sits and when.

Indeed, and think how much more secure this is for Grandma! What if a scammer comes over and wants to sit? Won't somebody please think of Grandma

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#663

Post by SomeoneOnTheWeb »

blurrybird wrote: post #657
Xunjin wrote: post #16

Let me play out a scenario, imagine to use a Desktop Hardware like a complete built rig, you would need a specific OS like Windows 11 and you could not run Linux on it, just because it's a vendor lock-in. Why is this acceptable for phones but would not for the case above? I know a lot of people don't care, and that's ok, but we should root for an open choice for the users.

So you mean, Macs and macOS? All modern devices are appliances, not computers. They perform the specific functions that they were programmed to perform, and do not allow arbitrary execution of calculations on the underlying hardware. Many people, mostly folks who adopt the Apple ecosystem, see this as a positive thing that allows them to delegate undifferentiated decisions on security and ways of working to the vendo…

You _can_ run other OSes on Macbooks. They're not locked in at all, it's simply that the drivers aren't open source and the hardware is undocumented, but with enough effort (e.g. Asahi) you can run technically anything on it.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#664

Post by [deleted] »

cesarb wrote: post #519
fsflover wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The open open choice already exists. Unfortunately, not in my country. > Sent from my Librem 5 running GNU/Linux. Can I buy a Librem 5 here in Brazil? (Unless it has ANATEL certification, which I doubt it has, buying online from outside the country is not an option, since it will be rejected by customs.)

[deleted]

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#665

Post by kakacik »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #412
fainpul wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even after Google puts this crap in place, you can still uplodad your own apps to your own Android devices, using ADB. Doing the same for iOS, using Xcode, costs you USD 100 or more (depending on country) per year . I'm in no way defending Google here, just pointing out you're going from bad to worse and think it's a good thing.

Yeah but where you were losing a lot, you're now losing only a little bit. And on the other side, the benefits of using iOS over Android spyware outweighs the cons now.

Can I plug iphone via usbc and access photos and videos directly and rest of the filesystem directly? Thats my flow, I am not buying a phone which has this artificially disabled 'for my own good', while being unix under the bonnet. Insult to my intelligence and all that.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#666

Post by kakacik »

mbgerring wrote: post #636
poolnoodle wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really think Apple doesn't gather data on what you do on your devices? This notion that Android == spyware is so old and boring but HN just loves Apple.

Google gets nearly all of its revenue from targeted advertising, and Apple does not. Apple has an incentive to restrict or completely deny third-party data collection, because they’ve made privacy a major part of their brand marketing and there is major reputational risk to Apple for being caught lying about this. Apple’s “Ask App Not To Track” feature made such a measurable dent in the revenue of various surveillanc…

Apple's ad revenue is growing massively past few years, projected to be 13 billion revenue stream next year. Where do you think those ads are ending up, and do you really believe they are non-targeted? So while your statements are still somewhat valid, not that much and not for that long.

Also, for anybody from outside of US, its US 3-letter agencies that pose biggest actual security risk since US laws treat us as sub-humans. Apple is as translucent to those as Android. But I get it, its still much easier to make PR campaign based on security for Apple than Android.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#667

Post by brookst »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #583

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 whic…

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.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#668

Post by brookst »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #661
milkshakes wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So if they don't give you an apple dev account, or close yours, you can't. Case in point.

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”?

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#669

Post by tclancy »

Xunjin wrote: post #16

Let me play out a scenario, imagine to use a Desktop Hardware like a complete built rig, you would need a specific OS like Windows 11 and you could not run Linux on it, just because it's a vendor lock-in. Why is this acceptable for phones but would not for the case above? I know a lot of people don't care, and that's ok, but we should root for an open choice for the users.

Because phones aren’t computers first and foremost. It can be hard to see it at this forum, but phones aren’t computers, they are intended to be general purpose devices to solve a set of problems for the vast majority of people on the planet. And a subset of those problems involve things like money and personal information. So the device needs to be secure, even (perhaps especially) from the end user themself because it needs to try to withstand compromise even when the user is drunk or sad or in a rush.

I am not arguing you need to like where this has led, but you have people in sibling comment threads here arguing we need to push back on things assuming you will use a phone when the whole revolution has been getting most of the world online by making phones widely available.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#670

Post by gonzalohm »

blurrybird wrote: post #657
Xunjin wrote: post #16

Let me play out a scenario, imagine to use a Desktop Hardware like a complete built rig, you would need a specific OS like Windows 11 and you could not run Linux on it, just because it's a vendor lock-in. Why is this acceptable for phones but would not for the case above? I know a lot of people don't care, and that's ok, but we should root for an open choice for the users.

So you mean, Macs and macOS? All modern devices are appliances, not computers. They perform the specific functions that they were programmed to perform, and do not allow arbitrary execution of calculations on the underlying hardware. Many people, mostly folks who adopt the Apple ecosystem, see this as a positive thing that allows them to delegate undifferentiated decisions on security and ways of working to the vendo…

> They perform the specific functions that they were programmed to perform

That's the thing. You may have bought a device that was meant to perform a task but after some time the company decides that now it should do a different task. I think that's what stops making you the owner. You can't really choose what to do with it.

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