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 any hardware when that happens.

Does that mean concessions on how well everything is integrated (in the view of the company and some people)? Probably, but that is of minor concern imho.

> 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.

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!

The thing was that with computers we had the BIOS, that defined an open (well, in the first days it was proprietary but became a de facto open specification) that allowed interoperability between hardware and software, to the point that it provided the most basic functions to be able to boot whatever operating system you liked.

We should have done the same on the mobile, there is no reason why this works on computer and not on smartphones, if not commercial reasons. Why on a macbook I can install Linux but on an iPhone I can't boot whatever operating system I want? It's not a matter of security, because it's the user that chooses to change the operating system.

All modern investment in this space is explicitly trying to push for better hardware software co-design. This is seen as the path forward in light of Moore's law dying. There has always been a boundary where your ownership of software truly begins. In PCs it was at the firmware, and with smart phones it has been at some arbitrary location the os vendor has seen fit. The web had been the most crippling place for user control of software, and they own no part of the devices software or hardware.

> All modern investment in this space is explicitly trying to push for better hardware software co-design.

I'm ok with hardware vendors writing their own firmware. The problem I have is when they push updates, and take over control of my hardware.

So hw/sw codesign is fine, as long as it is sold as a hardware unit that I control.

> This is seen as the path forward in light of Moore's law dying.

At this point I care more about having control over my data and devices than about Moore's law.

IMHO mainstream consumers are clearly voting with their wallets that the benefits of hw/sw integration are more important to them than the drawbacks of hw/sw integration.

That's because consumers are greedy and shortsighted actors which need help from an external entity to prevent them from getting trapped in a local optimum.