For most of that time I had Linux/BSD/Win/Mac machines that I'd use for different things, the Mac being the "personal" computer first option. At some point Windows became unbearable and I simply stopped using down to the point I couldn't justify maintaining a machine for it neither in the physical nor logical sense (even maintaining familiarity with what's on them). This was roughly 2~3 years ago and being forced to switch to Win10 eased the decision to just EOL it.
Recently I'm doing most of my daily stuff on a Linux desktop machine (I've been a Linux user since the mid 90s) partly because of the lockdown. In the desktop, Linux has been the best experience for me for many years. Just not on the laptop for a variety of reasons. With Apple's increasing anti-user hostility I think it's time to deal with the mild problems and annoyances your typical Linux laptop is expected to cause.
Back when I left Windows, Windows 7 had just come out, and I switched over to Linux and FreeBSD because I learned about those at the university and I came to appreciate open source software.
Then came smart phones and I heard that Android ran Linux. So I was like wow finally a computer in my pocket where I can do everything I can on my laptop!
But I soon learned that this was not the case.
Mobile platforms are fundamentally different, and the terminal is not relevant for most things I want to do with a phone.
I want to record videos, watch videos, talk to people, read stuff. And I still have an SSH client on my iPhone for when I need to remote into my server to do stuff on it while on the go.
And iPhone is giving me the best experience, with the addition of being really tight on the security. And for my phone this is what I want.
I am staying with Apple until they take it too far. Then I will leave them in a heartbeat. But for all the years I have been using iOS, everything Apple has been doing has been a betterment of the experience.
The only one thing really that bothered me was I had a magazine subscription and reading those magazines is in theory only possible on iOS. Even though actually it’s just an app for reading PDF files. And I didn’t have access to the PDF files directly. But that was a minor thing anyway, and recently I jailbroke an old iOS device that I have had laying in a drawer that was running an old iOS version and I was actually able to extract PDF files from the app.
But that subscription or two that I had, those were an exception anyway. Mostly when I read something on the phone I read on the web. And all of the eBooks that I have ever bought I have bought on the computer and not locked down in an app.
I do all these things on an OS that is entirely a open source community effort using absolutely nothing proprietary. F-Droid and it's derivatives offer all these things easily. Maybe I'm missing the point here?
Can we see the source code for your iphone ssh client? How sure are you about its security?
Computer freedom and programming is about far more than the terminal.
My biggest issue with the locked down nature of phones/tablets is that they hold the next generation of programmers, and instead groom users to be just dumb consumers.
For many people a phone or tablet is their first and often only computer. Especially in emerging markets. You can't create on these devices, they are designed only to consume.
No more curiosity driven discovery of programming. You're not allowed to extend your device, that is reserved for silicon valley elites who can afford an additional $1500 device. So stop asking and just consume what they produce for you.
Not sure I agree entirely. You still have apps for making music and video content, as well as drawing and painting etc. But I absolutely see your point. Hopefully with time they will make it possible to write and compile apps on iOS directly.
I'm not holding my breath for this. There's no indication that they're planning on it and every step taken since the inception of the iPhone has been to lock the device down more in the name of "security."
Android and Chromebooks are the same.
For linux on mobile, You want Sailfish OS - https://sailfishos.org/ not Android. Also see https://jolla.com/ who made it.
Why not support a FOSS mobile like Pinephone or Librem?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_mobile_p...
Phones aren't simple enough that the end user can manage everything it does and the software world isn't well behaved enough that we can exist without gatekeepers.
Contrast the locked down model to the open source approach. Yes, there are nefarious operators in the world of open source. On the other hand the privacy concerns are much lessened. Now there are many reasons for that, but two of those reasons are the visibility of how the software works and the ability to modify it when necessary.
There is no true ideal version of this, there is no perfect world and there is no situation in which you can have full control but also have full protection without also knowing everything about the system you have.
Phones and Computers are 'appliances' that do not need to be changed by the user (and we are talking about the mass-market user here), if anything it needs to prevent being changed by the user due to the larger ecosystem a device is part of.
You can make the choice to not be part of the ecosystem, but most people would very much like to be part of a system, together, and one way of doing that is to have a level of sameness and consistency that so far is not viable without some sort of 'appliance-like' properties of the devices in question.
You can still buy a different device, not take part in an existing system, and do whatever you want. But you will have a hard time getting the benefits of interconnection, scale, and support. Those three elements are pretty much why some brands or devices are sold in masses and some aren't.
To this end I simply have multiples of most things. Some just need to do what it does for everyone else (interconnect, function the same way every day, have some company bear responsibility for practically everything), others are for me (open source hardware, open source software, no protections, but also no end-user support or responsibility).
This may not always be true, in a practical sense, for those with intense cultural pressure to fit in. And fitting in means having a green bubble, i.e. Apple phone.
The mass consumer market won't all join IRC to chat, they could have (and still can) for decades and it just isn't happening. And that's fine, but that also means that other systems (like iMessage but also Facebook) gain users with all the lock-in that comes with that.
In any case nobody I know feels constrained by their choice of messenger app.
Probably because you've already excluded them
But no - I mean because they use multiple apps. E.g. WhatsApp, or Facebook messenger, or Signal etc. Even the people I know who have iPhones tend to use these things. If I want to know what kind of phone someone uses, I generally have to ask.
The thesis seems to be that people are so unable to think for themselves that they are compelled to choose their device by means of colored bubbles.
If this is really true, then surely it’s the best argument one can possibly make for why the ecosystem needs to be locked down.
> You can still buy a different device, not take part in an existing system, and do whatever you want.
The point is you can't. Intense social pressure to interact with people who _do_ take part in the existing system means you have to partake in the existing system to interact.
My friends use Messenger so I need a facebook account, or my family uses WhatsApp so I need a non-rooted android phone.
No mainstream messaging apps support federation and many are hostile towards reverse engineering. WhatsApp for example will permaban accounts who do not use official clients in the name of "security."
You don't notice because you have already excluded anyone who chooses not to use a mainstream Android or iOS device. Or anyone you know who _would_ like to make that choice doesn't, cause they don't want to be that one friend who can't be reached as easily as the rest of the group.
It’s true that if you need to interact with people on most of these systems, you need an account. I have a Facebook account I use only for messenger, and I would prefer not to.
However, your argument has a few flaws.
1. I obviously haven’t excluded the people would would like to choose a non-mainstream device but who hasn’t.
2. You seem to assume that I won’t install apps so that I can communicate with people who don’t use the networks I’m already part of. That’s not a reasonable assumption. I have quite a few messaging apps installed, some of which I use with just one person.
The question this raises for me is - are there any federated messaging networks that do not have any clients available for mainstream platforms, but are in significant use?
There is a large vocal population there that seems to _want_ Apple to continue to lock down and take control of their devices, all in the name of "security." Read any comment thread on the Apple vs Epic lawsuit, lots of people defending Apple's "right" to dictate what you can and can't do with your own device.
While there are others on here who don't think this way, I find is a disappointingly small minority on a site which calls itself "Hacker" News.