> They didn't start locking things down until the iPhone.

They sure have tried since forever though. My uncle complained about Apple for this very reason ~20y ago…

Before the iPhone, what was their attempts at that? I remember using OSX a bunch before the iPhone was public, but never remember any of the ways they tried to lock it down, I might have been too young then.

Getting music on an ipod was always a pain unless you bought the music on itunes or ripped a music CD directly with itunes (yes, that was an actual feature. hard to imagine these days).

No simple drag and drop onto a mounted USB drive like all other mp3 players back in the day. Maybe more of a lock-in attempt instead of lock down, but related imo.

Anything you dropped into your computer's MP3 directory would sync to your iPod. It didn't matter where you got the music from.

The restriction was that an iPod would only sync tracks from one computer at a time, which was a demand of the music rights holders.

You can still rip CDs with Apple Music. In fact, that's the only use I have for that app (I recently lost a hard drive with music and I'm in the process of backing up all my CDs again).

> ripped a music CD directly with itunes (yes, that was an actual feature. hard to imagine these days).

These days? Last week (though WMP). My retired father's old computer died, his new one, no CD slot. Emails me from Australia asking how to rip his CDs for his media player. He's not an audiophile but he's not a technophile (and his blues music collection is sufficiently large that at least one of the blues radio stations in his city will on occasion ask him to borrow something because they don't have it in their library.

Told him to get a USB CD player and a card reader (his media player is on micro/SD).

Their previous lock-downs were on the hardware level, not offering ISA slots and stuff. The original Mac (then Mac+ and classic) had no expansion slots at all, and they started adding them only later.

Exactly. After the Apple II, it was a post-Woz world. There’s a reason Apple owns so many patents on proprietary types of screws...

[delayed]

"locked down" is a vague, moving target. The criticisms of pre-OSX MacOS was that it was an operating system for little babies, and not serious tech enthusiasts and power users. Also they were too expensive, and you can build a PC that is 100000x more powerful for cheaper. This literally hasn't changed.

[delayed]

Uh where’s the cheaper MacBook neo that is 100000x more powerful?

it’s sarcasm

So you think people are building their own laptops?

wasn't that about when the iphone came out?

First iPhone was 18 years ago, but yeah it around the time of the first iPhone. IIRC he actually mentioned that because he had already been confronted to Apple’s lockdown before the iPhone. It was a long time ago and I was young, so I don’t remember the details.

There was a decade between them.

My uncle shouts at cats and thinks the CIA have an implant in his fillings, but I'm not claiming that as proof on HN.

I'm in my fifties, have been involved in computing since I was a kid and I like Apple's stance on this because the threat landscape has changed, particularly for non-tech-savvy people. If you want that freedom there are various *nix flavours to choose from, you're not compelled to use Apple.

"Installation rights", fucking hell.