Sometimes one in that 0.01% end up creating a world changing operating system like Linux.
I shudder to think what the world would have be if Andrew Tanenbaum/Linus/Wall/etc had to wait for a week long review after creating their software and got rejected every time because Apple support told them.. "Are you out of your freaking mind!? You possibly can't think we will let you do anything remotely like that on our hardware. P.S. Also your account is now permanently banned."
Is that 0.01% really deterred by one particular OS and hardware platform being restricted? There's alternatives.
What is the equivalent phone today to the X86 Linus did his work on? Neither iOS or Android is anywhere near this, so what are the alternatives?
The great news is that we had options then and we still have options now.
I keep reading this. What alternative do we have today that is as open to tinker and invent on as x86 hardware that is also widespread enough that it actually makes any difference at all?
> What alternative do we have today that is as open to tinker and invent on as x86 hardware that is also widespread enough that it actually makes any difference at all?
x86 hardware.
Re:iOS 15 Humane
by Ar-Curunir on Thursday June 10, 2021 @03:46AM
(#27458046)
There’s plenty of hardware that runs Linux just fine, and allows deep tinkering.
In the mobile world, Android allows tinkering, but also achieves much worse privacy and security guarantees
Linux became as popular as it is because it could run on the most widespread desktop hardware: IBM PC compatibles. And that was possible because it was an open ecosystem.
Librem 5 and Pinephone both allow deep tinkering without privacy problems.
That is a disingenuous comparison though. Compare X86 market share when Linus started coding Linux and Librem/Pinephone market share today. The difference is that to have a snowball's chance in hell to grow and spread you need to be able to thinker and invent on the hardware most people use.
I sympathize with the tinkerer mindset, but this mindset exposes serious lack of empathy in exposing REAL risk to REAL people by allowing anybody to hack devices simply to satisfy 0.01% of users who want to run a custom bootloader. This is not a valid engineering trade-off for a "trillion dollar company". The world doesn't revolve around you. There are other products on the market for tinkerers that don't involve exposing everyone from your grandma to politicians to serious security and privacy breaches.