> there's a class of users for whom a general computing device isn't just overkill, it's downright dangerous

I am not sure if you are trying to come off as snobby, but that's how this reads.

This 'class of users' is in many cases very technical people who just don't want their phone to be anything other than an appliance. It's quite common to love tinkering with things, while not wanting to tinker with everything.

No, I didn't mean it at all. I was thinking of my mother-in-law, who I'm very grateful uses an iPhone.

Highly technical people may choose an information appliance as well, and that's fine! All the more reason for such a thing to exist.

Consider the impact on living standards for a person [0] who is capable of transferring money without understanding the consequences, ex a child or a demented person.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2023/01/30/1152448758/an-older-persons-m...

Except Apple's walled garden doesn't protect you from financial scams.

Apple is more like a television manufacturer that only lets you watch Disney+. The extent to which they protect their walled garden is not for the benefit of the consumer.

But it's worse than appliance. Appliance doesn't actively block you from using it for something not listed in instruction manual

If you feel around the margins, you can find exceptions for everything. e.g. You can cook a fish in a dishwasher. But while anyone can modify a toaster to do wild things, they aren't designed to facilitate that and it isn't a mainstream thing to hack your toaster.

PCs are hackable by design. It's a perfectly mainstream thing to build your own PC from parts. Hacking toasters, on the other hand, is not mainstream. Best Buy sells toasters, but not parts for toasters.

I personally wouldnt draw the line between information appliances and computers at whether the manufacturer actively blocks you (as Apple and John Deere do), but rather at some combination of what the intended purpose is, and whether hacking and customization is considered mainstream or fringe.

Hacking toasters and dishwashers and microwaves and refrigerators is possible, but fringe. Hacking cars and houses is mainstream.

> It's a perfectly mainstream thing to build your own PC from parts.

Is it? Most PC (or notebook) users buy whichever one is on sale at the store, or they use one provided by their company. This does not strike me as inherently different to how people buy toasters or dishwashers.

Of course, there does exist a niche of people who like building their own PCs, but this does not imply that this is the mainstream case.

I think a better analogy for the toaster would be blocking people from heating their waffles or fish sticks in it. And Apple takes it even further than limiting it to bread, it's only meant for gluten-free slices from San Fransisco. Anything else and you void your warranty. Also the cord stops working every 2 years.

Not to really beat an analogy to death, but a better comparison is Keurig. Its a coffee machine that JustWorks (tm) precisely because it packages up all the "hard parts" in custom stuff. If you buy their pods, you can just toss it in and its good. If you want to use your own coffee.. you need a custom pod that can accept coffee grinds, you need to refill it every time, etc. If you want to make espresso with steamed milk.. you basically can't use a Keurig. No one can really sell Keurig pods without a license, and they used to actively try and keep you from using unlicensed pods.

I have an espresso machine, and you need to calibrate the pressure, the temperature, clean all the parts regularly (far more than a pod machine), you need to fill the coffee grinds in a way that is distributed so the water runs evenly, you need a coffee grinder that makes less-coarse grinds, etc... its far more work, but the coffee is exactly how I like it.

An appliance is engineered to serve a narrow set of purposes, which can also be said for iOS. The only way in which an iPhone is worse is that it is an information appliance built on hardware that could be general purpose if run with different software. But if you consider the appliance to be both hardware and software, it is no more restrictive than any other appliance.

The difference is that iPhone is intentionally restricted by Apple to not allow you to use it in unintended ways, which "incidentally" brings a lot of additional profit to the company.

Relevant (and worth reading, if you haven't seen it):

"Unauthorized Bread" by Cory Doctorow