There are several, very easy to imagine mechanisms that both provide user freedom and security/idiot-resistance at the same time.
For instance, extending the "parental control" feature to have a toggle for sideloading - then, you just turn on parental control, toggle that off, and keep the PIN. Done.
The idea that the features of the product should completely unnecessarily be restricted for all users for the dubious benefit of a tiny subset of them is laughable. The only logically consistent motive to advocate for this is profit.
If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.
Very, very bad and consumer-hostile sentiment that is inconsistent both with good ethics and with the way that the regulatory system works currently.
Regulations on goods sold exist for a purpose - to allow the user to generally buy things while having some guarantees about their lifetime/security/safety/consistency with marketing/etc.
"If you don't like it, don't buy it" implies that companies should be able to sell goods made with toxic substances, not honor their warranties, lie on their marketing, and steal and sell your personal medical information. This is bad.
If I buy a product, I expect to be able to do whatever I want with it, and to not have arbitrary limitations on how I use that product that exist purely for the sake of making the seller more rich, and this is consistent with the way that consumer protection regulations work in general.
> Uniformity and convention over configuration and customization is why people feel why iOS is more stable and secure than the Android ecosystem as a whole.
False. The vast majority of people have no opinions of whether Android or iOS is more secure. Slightly more, but very few, of them have any opinions on their relative stability, and you can attribute exactly all of that instability to a mix between (1) manufacturers making terrible drivers and support packages for their hardware and (2) Google being generally bad at designing software. It has nothing to do with "uniformity" or "convention over configuration" at all.
No one is forcing you to buy products you don’t like. You’re confusing government sanctioned duopolies (created from bad regulation) like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T for Apple. You are free to buy alternative products from other companies.
> It has nothing to do with "uniformity" or "convention over configuration" at all.
Actually it does. The hardware is uniform and consistent, and therefore so are the drivers. There is a price to choice. Google is also one of the best software companies in the world.
There are choices made for use - having a phone on which everyone around communicates, having an internet connection from the only provider in the area.
Uniformity is a choice if the alternative is a viable choice and this is a complex matter.
And look where it got us.
With regulations. That people generally accept and agree are necessary to some extent...
> No one is forcing you to buy products you don’t like.
...even for goods that you have the option of not purchasing. It literally doesn't matter how many baby bottle manufacturers there are in the US - it is illegal for all of them to put BPA in their baby bottle products, regardless of whether their competitors don't.
> You’re confusing government sanctioned duopolies
No, I'm not. The US has boatloads of laws making it illegal to sell various things in markets where there's absolutely no monopolies/duopolies/oligopolies and buyers have ample choices, such as the above.
> Actually it does. The hardware is uniform and consistent, and therefore so are the drivers.
You're intentionally changing the use of "uniformity" from being about high-level OS user-facing design ("the features of the product should completely unnecessarily be restricted for all users for the dubious benefit of a tiny subset of them" + "Uniformity and convention over configuration" = talking about OS design) to implementation, which is a completely separate issue that's unrelated to the current discussion about user freedom. This is an admittedly clever slight of hand, but makes your point no less invalid.
> There is a price to choice.
Sure - but you haven't shown what the price is to allowing users to use whatever app store they want, you've just brought in completely irrelevant examples like phone hardware choice.
> Google is also one of the best software companies in the world.
Regardless of the truth of this statement, it doesn't change the fact that they're generally bad (note that "bad" is absolute, "best" is relative) at designing software, per my lived experience with dozen of bugs in dozens of Google products across browsers and operating systems over years of use.
Apple's freedom is to make their devices as they see fit. User's freedom is to vote with her wallet. Feel free to buy whatever device you like if you want to have the ability to shoot yourself in the foot and get pwned, I like to have it in some circumstances but it's not what I would recommend to all of my non-tech contacts. I appreciate most EU privacy laws but not where it comes close to taking people's choice to voluntarily give up some freedoms for security, it's the opposite of empowering them.
> The vast majority of people have no opinions of whether Android or iOS is more secure.
This is just some random unsubstantiated claim. Apple buys entire billboards in city centers that basically promote privacy. You are saying you know better than their entire marketing department.
Even laypeople pay attention and notice that it's their Android owning friends' bank accounts get hijacked but not iPhone owning friends, etc.
> you can attribute exactly all of that instability to
Whatever you attribute this to, potato, potato, the end result is one has been more stable, more secure, supported for longer, more profitable for indie app developers etc than the other.
So much misinformation
No one is forcing “everything to be homogenous”. If you don’t like homogeneity, then avoid it. It’s not hard to understand. My choices are none of your business just like I’m not going to criticize you for wanting more freedom to customize your device at the expense of security and stability.
Maybe purchase a different product that more closely aligns with your needs.
0: ie. someone watches you enter your apple id and passcode and later swipes your phone, only to sideload spyware that hides itself from the UI, then re-plants your phone without you knowing
Yet, it's up to me to decide whether I want that security or whether I want to trade security for freedom/flexibility. Not you, or any other authoritarians seeking to exert control over others.
> Maybe purchase a different product that more closely aligns with your needs.
This is an incredibly toxic and user-hostile sentiment that also is completely inconsistent with the way that consumer protection laws work in general[1].
I absolutely can manifest that choice - but it doesn't matter, because I have the right to be able to make that choice for any particular manufacturer.
> To quote your linked comment, I wouldn't expect you nor any other sane consumer to purchase goods that are "made with toxic substances, not honor their warranties, lie on their marketing, and steal and sell your personal medical information".
It doesn't matter that you wouldn't expect one to - it's wrong for a seller to sell one of those things at all, and that's why we've enshrined into our legal system that "some bad things are illegal to sell, regardless of whether the consumer has the ability to avoid them or not".
> Apple does not do any of that
It's pretty blindingly obvious that I'm not claiming that Apple is doing any of those things, and just using that as an example of the point that "some things are illegal to sell".
> and I think that you're intentionally derailing the discussion by comparing their guidelines + practices to any of the above.
The one who is doing that is you, by intentionally misinterpreting my words and reading things that I didn't write. The comparison is entirely apt - "we have laws against selling/doing some bad things x, Apple is selling/doing bad things y, even though x != y it's reasonable to have laws against also selling/doing bad things y".
Discussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11231631
Instead, the proposal is that people be able to install whatever software they want, that runs as a normal iOS app subject to the iOS security restrictions. Being able to install a non-Apple-approved app does not give you the ability to read and write arbitrary kernel memory, or do other actually dangerous things.
This is a strange red herring. Attacks of this form are protected from by the OS, not the App Store. You can't do attacks like this by sideloading apps onto your own phone in developer mode because iOS itself protects against this - and we're discussing specifically allowing users to choose what App Store they use, not relaxing any of the security restrictions of the OS. Someone familiar with the basics of OS design would be aware of this distinction.
Sure, you could say that I should just use this "Developer Edition", but that requires me to have access to install it on every puter I walk up to (just to be prepared for somewhat common web attrocities like full-page elements that prevent me from interacting with the page in ways that I feel should never be forbidden).
I don't tend to see 'warning' messages in the dev console that seem to be attempts to dissuade me from using the dev tools. Maybe…twice in >20 years?
https://www.kandji.io/mdm/start/product/?nis=8
https://www.jamf.com/lp/apple-mobile-device-management-mdm-j...
https://www.hexnode.com/mobile-device-management/macos-devic...
Even today it is not ok to be careless with what you put on your machine, but in a couple of decades, it could be a true disaster, specially if public services are fully tied to your digital identity. You would not want your digital self to be entertaining any random* program as guest.
* effectively random - see first point
But having a debilitating disease is a different story and beyond the persons control.
Given a choice, I and many others here will continue to learn and adapt.
The subset might include you, or a majority of HN people even. Just a smaller % of population than currently.
Regards your > Given a choice
If you have family with such issues, you know it wasn't a choice. Getting older means facing mental plasticity slowdown. You can work to be fit on that front sure, but it is an issue that we will all face and not everyone will choose as you do.
I am not sure I agree with GP's assertion that technology will be inherently harder to deal with though.
This issue can not be decided based on what is appropriate for a niche segment of society. We have a variety of options to serve the general society -- state/control, state/licensing, state/regulation, private/corporate, public/ngo, public/community, personal/ai, personal/expertise. These are not mutually exclusive options and we should discuss the possible configurations, optimal for general societal welfare, rather than denying that the problem exists.
One possibility that comes to mind is that we could possibly rely on trustworthy AI to help us understand the implications of using X in full. So if not walled gardens maybe private landscape architects or AI gardeners.
But one of the two will be required for digital life.
Security researchers, for example, can disable it. And use this to find security vulnerabilities.
The point is, as users we should have the ability... Apple (or any company) should not be allowed to dictate what people are & are not allowed to do on the devices they own.
I don't want to buy a Nokia. Apple's hardware is really good and I want to buy their devices. I just don't want to become a serf in their digital fiefdom.
There is no reason to consider the OS and the App Store part of the device, other than marketing.
I paid for an iPhone for my mom so that she could not load whatever she damn well pleases, because if she does I have to deal with the mess afterwards.
Some folks are okay with walled gardens for specific purposes. If that's not you, that's fine. Perhaps Apple iDevices are then not for you.