That's easily solved, ain't it: check the "tech savvy" box, and all "safeguards" are off?

Yet instead, we are getting increasingly fewer phones with unlockable bootloaders and root access available. What gives?

I've also checked out my mom's phone a year or so back: she had so many crappy apps from official store that it was barely usable. Stores do not really help.

What possible motivation would Google or Apple have to appease such a small percentage of their user base?

I’m “tech savvy” and I would never click that box. Frankly I can’t think of something more risky than installing some random piece of software on a device that I need and use everyday.

If that's the case, what is a practical difference between you having access to your device or not?

You could be installing random crap from the store, or not from the store. Or you could not be installing random apps from either.

I don't feel any more protected by device restrictions. Yes, containerization helps, but I like having root on my device (eg. I backup different .sqlite files from different apps through ssh to my phone). My phone has FDE, and is probably not at all less "safe" than yours.

There are a number of mobile phones out there that are fully open. If you need root, go buy one. You seem to have a specific need that I am quite sure that 99.999% of the mobile phone using world do not have and never will have. If I am apple, I recognize that making a phone that makes the .001% happy probably will frustrate the 99.999%. They are quite happy to give that market of maybe 150k users to someone else to keep their 1.5B users content.

Outside of really niche stuff like the Pinephone there aren't. Because of things like this Android is increasingly incompatible with that use model and these days it's pretty safe to assume "phone" == "corporate administration you have no control over."

All that tells me is that there is little to no market for these wide open devices and the existing user base is not sweating the use of manufacturer app stores.

No one outside of a tiny group of techy tinkerer types really cares.

Google Pixel phones for a while have been the phone of choice as they allowed easy root and bootloader access. Not sure if that's still the case, though, as they've been pivoting.

Other manufacturers offer it as well — these options continues to exist, and while it's certainly not a high percentage of the market, some of these phones sell because of openness.

Niche manufacturers usually focus on "stronger" openness (Librem, PinePhone, Fairphone...) — but they provide subpar hardware compared to mainstream top-end. Eg. most recent release in Volla Quintus (https://volla.online/en/volla-phone-quintus/) uses SoC that is half the speed of Google's Tensor G4 in both single- and multi-threading benchmarks: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-mediatek_dimensity...

So I generally go with phones which can get their bootloader unlocked and which can be rooted, to ensure I have full control of them. I did, in the past, use Ubuntu Phones (Meizu MX4, Nexus 4), HP/Palm Pre Plus and 3 (webOS with full root access), Nokia N9, Motorola A1200 etc — all as my daily drivers. I did get PinePhone, but that thing is sloooow. Since, I've switched to plain Android phones which allow you full control.

The idea of a smartphone you control is a little absurd, the whole point of a smartphone is to sell access to you to other people, that's where all the money is.

There are plenty of devices you have full control over but they're not called phones for that reason.

Uhm, I see that you are playing the devil's advocate here, but I'd note that phones being bought today cost more than laptops sometimes — if that's not where the money is, could we at least get them much cheaper?

> You want to take a device that is targeted for “everyone” and not just tech savvy people and provide no control or standard to what can be loaded on it? The very idea of it is horrifying to me.

Were you horrified by the Apple ][?

This is no argument at all. When the Apple II was released microcomputers were still very much in the realms of enthusiasts, and were beginning to make inroads into education.

The Apple II was never used by “everyone” and nobody expected it to be, even towards the end of its quite long life.

No question, it was a stepping stone to where we are today but you can’t compare an enthusiast/early adopter product from nearly 50 years ago to contemporary Android and iOS devices that are intended for “everyone”, in the way you’re attempting with your comment.

Nope, but I didn’t have whole countries and millions of bad actors actively trying to steal information and act maliciously on that device either.

Having to caveat it with "in the early '00s" already invalidates your thesis; it means we've managed to largely fix this issue on PC without resorting to giving away device ownership.

I don’t think it invalidates the argument at all.

I think it’s more a reflection that people mostly use other devices, like phones and tablets, for tasks they might have used a PC for 20 years ago - at least outside an office environment.

That’s not to say the PC experience hasn’t improved - certainly Windows is at least more secure - but that it’s not the only factor, and I don’t think it’s the biggest factor either.

One data point for you: the last company I worked for, when I joined in 2017, already >50% of external users were accessing our service via mobile devices.

The formfactor is the biggest, possibly only, factor. The handheld formfactor works way better for most people than a huge (or even small) stationary brick, or even a laptop.

You think that companies adopting different technologies to discourage installing software that might be malicious because it hasn’t been reviewed as safe invalidates my argument?

Ok, then.

I remember the turning point in one early relationship was when I uninstalled Bonsai Buddy from a friend's computer and caused a meltdown.

Fuck that purple gorilla.