In a sane society these features would allow secure voting.

In this one... that's not what they'll be used for.

This is the end game for the corporate internet. Not only can all your activity be logged, but if any of it is unwelcome - on any scale, from family to school to work to country to world - you can be locked out.

An operating system that prevents other operating systems from being installed is the equivalent of a citizen that becomes a dictator.

I feel like it's flawed. Voters and politicians abuse it left and right - pun intended. I don't think we ever came up with anything more humane though, and I don't wish to change it for anything other - to be honest, for the simple reason of not wanting the responsibility that goes along with it.

Choosing a party is not like choosing an OS for your PC, though. Choosing the OS would be like choosing the political system - and recognizing the incredible privilege I have by being born into a democracy, I very much wouldn't like other people to change it.

Going further into democracy, while you might put an X on a paper sometimes, still forbids a very high number of actions. I'd liken it to having the power of choosing between Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store for your phone. Which, getting back to the point, is safer for the users than installing any third party software. Like how in a well functioning democracy, I'm forbidden to do a great many things, but also I can feel safe in the thought that others have the same restrictions too.

So, putting it all together, someone should choose and restrict which OS can be installed on your PC, so that you can feel safe in the thought that everyone has the same restriction?

At least that's how I managed to understand your comment to the best of my abilities, so hopefully I'm missing something. Though if there is such a something, the point did not get across successfully.

I think if I pick two groups: all iPhone users, and all PC users, PC users en bloc are in greater general digital danger than iPhone users. By digital danger, I'm thinking of malware, ransomware, phishing and successful hacking. And I think this is because of how tightly Apple controls their devices. And so, I'd consider an iPhone a safe choice - for example a safe recommendation for someone who doesn't want to spend time managing their device.

This makes sense to entities providing a service, and also for many who doesn't mind not having control over their something, which is, I think, very similar to how we don't really have control over a great many of things. This is the point I wanted to get across to the original commenter, who protested "god forbid you have control of your own PC?".

> [...] which is, I think, very similar to how we don't really have control over a great many of things.

This is a very handwavey sentence and is doing far too much work in your reasoning. Yes, you don't have control "over a great many things", because the point is so vague so as to be meaningless. But it doesn't at all follow from that vague sentence that we should allow total corporate/government control over our personal digital devices.

In this case, the proposed cure is far worse than the disease.

I agree. It's basically appointing a dictator and hope that they'll stay benevolent.

With my reasoning I wanted to capture what people might think, while accepting something that they have no control of. I have a hard time with this, because I got a PC in my formative years and I loved to tinker with it, and hated, and still do, everything that stood in the way of that. But the general population doesn't share this experience. And if I look at my own life, I only have this experience with computers (and smartphones), all the other things are, even if not centrally managed, out of my control. At the first wrong noise I have to call an expert who hopefully fixes it and is hopefully benevolent to me, because I have no clue what happens to the device I own. Or even my own body, now that I think about it. And so, the PC and the phone is just in a long list of things that people depend on, but not control.

The addendum being here, and what most people miss who feel the way I described above, is that our ever-connected devices make a "paper trail" unprecendented in history. And it can be centrally managed, activated, replayed, assembled, or even more tracking could be remotely controlled to an extent[0] - and to an even larger extent with a specialized application[1]. This is where the otherwise similar level of "not being controlled" can lead to a much worse situation than ever before. And I wish I could point this out empathetically to people without sounding like a lunatic.

[0] https://money.cnn.com/2014/06/06/technology/security/nsa-tur...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)

God forbid most people I know have control of their own PC, they have no clue, and nor should they need one.

iPhone users are safer from malware, PC users are safer from governments and Apple controlling what they can do on their computer.

Never-ending balance between safety and freedom.

The computer that requires a physical switch to disable secure boot is a good compromise (see many Chromebooks)

Oh, modern democracies solved this nasty problem of voters possibly making the wrong choice by simply providing only the right choices to chose from: you get two slightly different brands of shit whose policies mostly coincide, enjoy your right to vote.