Apple actively design their products to not allow you to reconfigure them even if you have the tooling. The shirt manufacturers do not prevent me from taking a old shirt and making oil rags from the fabric.
That doesn’t seem quite so evil, does it?
Yes, a device manufacturer putting locks on my device that I can only open by "apply[ing] through a form on their website" does seem pretty evil to me.
"I sold him the car, officer! I just refuse to give him the keys to actually start it."
I understand the risks of allowing local network access, I'd like to unlock the lock.
Why does apple still have control to say no?
> Note: You can test your app using the iOS and iPadOS simulators without an active entitlement, but using multicast and broadcast networking on physical hardware requires the entitlement.
You’re free to access that functionality of your device, using software that uses it responsibly.
So using it solely in ways Apple approves of - Since they're the arbiter of "responsible" here.
So how do I own this device again?
Who the fuck is Apple to tell me what responsible use looks like on a device that I own, on a network that I own, in my own damn home.
Similarly, I own a car. Can I take off the seat belts? Physically, yes. But legally, a vehicle without a seat belts is no longer a car and I lose the right to enjoy driving it on public roads.
Ownership was never about physical possession. It's about gaining some rights.
Back to phones, the challenge is to demarcate what rights does an owner get when they buy a phone. To side with Epic Games, the discussion is even more complicated by Apple's (purposeful) confusion of owning a phone with having access to an ecosystem of apps for that phone. I can do whatever I am capable of with my iPhone, but I may lose access to the ecosystem of apps.
You not being allowed to drive a car without seat belts has nothing to do with the car, and everything to do with the road.
You own the car. You share the road.
You can drive that car anywhere you want with permission from the owners, you just can't share the road we all paid for together unless you put on a god-damned seat belt so that John the EMT doesn't have to see the 4th smeared human body on the shared road this week when you crash it.
(You might own some networks. But you also might own some roads. We'd stretch the analogy to your home WiFi being akin to your driveway, I guess.)
The fact that that is an extremely complicated thing to do is not apple’s problem.
My issue is that Apple (and many other manufacturers, this isn't really Apple specific) add complexity solely to act as digital locks on what is otherwise a fairly obvious and achievable task.
Take your ROM example - Why should I even need to rip it off and replace it? I know damn well how to flash ROM. I have the software tools available. I have the image file with all the drivers I need/want. The only thing stopping me is digital locks in the device.
Are the locks themselves evil? No, clearly not - I lock my house when I leave, and I'll probably leave my phone locked most times too.
Are the locks evil if I don't own a key? Pretty clearly yes.
Can I rip the whole device apart, interface directly with the ROM, and flash it? Probably - assuming I buy some much more expensive hardware. But that sorta defeats the point of having the device, yes?
Just like it's not reasonable to sell me a car without a key.
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- Congratulations - you own this brand new car you just bought!
- Great! Thank you so much, can I have the keys to drive it now?
- No, no... of course not. When you want to drive it, you phone us up, and we come unlock and start it for you
- Wait... what? That's bullshit - I just bought this car!
- Well, you're welcome to break a window and hotwire it to drive it. But do be aware we'll report this as theft to the police, and depending on what you tinker with we might also throw the DMCA at you
- I just want to be able to drive MY car as fast as I like!
- okay, but the trouble is the way this car works, if we give you the ability to disable the speed limiter, there's literally no way we can do that that doesn't also open up the possibility that when you turn on the radio, the radio station might broadcast an ad that causes an uncontrolled acceleration.
- that's a stupid way to design a car
- well yes, but this is an analogy car, not a real car. The real system in question is a turing-complete networked device designed to run arbitrary third-party software, so... the analogy is going to be slightly flawed.
And no, Apple isn't going to report a theft if you physically damage your phone, nor are they going to have a DMCA complaint if you hack your own phone in ways that let you change the way the software on it behaves (you might run into DMCS issues if you try to distribute tools to help other people do that, which is... definitely dubious, but that's what the law says; it doesn't have a great deal to do with this case of the Apple restrictions on which software the OS trusts to use its multicast API, though.)
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This - this piece here is the fallacy in your argument. There absolutely are ways to do this. Matter of fact, Apple themselves have a nice little set of digital keys that lets them turn all these locks off as they please.
So the argument is not "We have no way to do this safely" it's "We don't believe you (the owner of the damn device) can be trusted to do this safely."
Which brings me right back to - you don't own the damn thing.
Apple adds these arbitrary digital locks since they protect against the threat model of physical access, whether that be an attack thanks to leaving the phone unlocked or giving your passcode to your friend to use for a while. This is all in disregardless of whether or not the customer actually has this as part of their personal threat model.
Which they still own and have.
Adding an optional "You phone us and we can unlock your car with a copy of your key" is fine by me. As long as I still have the fucking key.
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For the second part - The security boogey man is not a compelling argument to give up ownership rights and enter digital serfdom where you only own a device if you use it in the way the manufacturer intends and approves of.
I'm not asking them to stop selling devices with locks. Hell, I'm even fine with them keeping a copy of the keys (which they have right now). I'm just saying: As the owner of a computer, I deserve to have a copy of the fucking keys that make it work.
Zero of which will be bought by me.
>Apple adds these arbitrary digital locks since they protect against the threat model of physical access
Apple can add as many arbitrary digital locks as they want. The problem is that they keep the key instead of giving it to the user.
Under the DMCA, if you rearrange the atoms or attempt to describe how to rearrange the atoms in a way not approved by the phone manufacturer, you are a criminal.
Copyright, and in particular the DMCA, has superseded your ownership of the atoms. You must do with them as the true owner of the atoms (Apple for example) permits.
No object should ever actively, uncompromisingly preclude me from using it to do something of which it is capable. Objects can suggest I take a certain course of action, but ultimately they must follow my instructions without trying to impede me. Any other way and I don’t truly own the object.
It is up to you to figure out how to get the electrons in the antenna to wiggle in the appropriate manner to make that happen, but there are absolutely no constraints preventing you, as the owner of said iPhone, from doing so.
Yes it will. The premise of your claim is wrong. It impedes me from doing lots of things, like running apps that aren’t approved by Apple.
Good luck with that, but don’t blame the device - the object you bought and own - for your failure to be able to.
When you buy a phone, you definitely own all the atoms in it. You can take it apart and use the bits to make jewelry. You can take all the phones you have and assemble them into a piece of wall art. Apple has no say in what you do with the object.
But your belief that physical ownership of the object should mean you can make it do anything you want is… bounded by your actual capability to do so.
You can probably extract some of the parts of your phone and reuse them - maybe with care and patience you could figure out how to use the screen, or the battery, or the camera as part of another device. Again, not something Apple can stop you doing.
But expecting to be able to use a device to do something you want to merely because you know the potential to do so is inside is an unrealistic expectation. A cotton t-shirt might contain enough thread to be able to be woven into a pair of shorts, but you can’t complain to the manufacturer that the way they made the t-shirt makes it hard for you to turn it into shorts. They sold it to you in a useful, valuable configuration. They’re not obligated to make it easy for you to reconfigure it to your will.