Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't matter whether it's the tyranny of Samsung being dicks or the tyranny of the copyright cartel jamming the fiction that is intellectual property down our throats (and thereby being dicks) that is fucking up one's phone. Perhaps the law needs to recognize that buying hardware should come with rights to the firmware. If all hardware is useless without firmware, then all hardware is useless without additional…
I think we should have a clear separation between hardware and software companies. This is how it worked in the old days when the internet was built. Hardware companies are getting too much power over our data, and we need more freedom of choice in how our data is treated and by whom, regardless of the hardware that we own. A company can be "good" one day and "bad" the next day. We shouldn't be forced to throw away a…
I think that's an exaggeration, isn't it? Aside from the old PC industry (still surviving today), most computers were produced as a whole: whether it was Sun microcomputers and SunOS or Atari STs and GEM or Apples and MacOS, they were paired.
The development of separate and competing operating systems and computers, with interchangeable parts and well understood standards, was an innovation but a temporary one.
> and we need more freedom of choice in how our data is treated and by whom, regardless of the hardware that we own
To that end, we need operating system developers to design data-first systems, where the user is in control of their data. Moreover, the liability for data loss and leaks in service-provided cloud storage should be so high that companies will be nervous about storing your data. It's so frustrating to me the number of apps where you install them, and you can't do anything with them without having a user account - even though there's no legitimate reason for them to have a user account for me!