[oneplane]

You don't really own any high-tech stuff anyway (with that interpretation). You can't boot your Intel of AMD CPU without their signed and sometimes encrypted code. You can't even initialise a single core, let alone the DRAM controllers.

Everyone likes to point at Apple, because that's easy, but it's neither new nor big nor special. There are practically three things at play:

- root-of-trust, if you have a better solution than CA-based signing, by all means, let the world know

- NDA/IP/Lawyerisms

- Apple and many others aren't selling hardware, they are trying to sell experiences or ecosystems, and that is the only reason they exist at all and also the reason a lot of the beige box hardware companies are either less visible, less profitable or both

Is it fun? No. But it's not some sort of automatic malice or 'haha you don't own things but you thought you did' all the time either.

[jmnicolas]

> You can't boot your Intel of AMD CPU without their signed and sometimes encrypted code.

Except that Intel and AMD don't care what you run on your machine, they don't lose money if you don't run their software.

When you run Linux on a MAC, Apple isn't getting money from their iCloud subscriptions and from the store so they have a motive to stop you from escaping the walled garden.

[Grustaf]

You don't need iCloud to use macOS. And macOS itself is free, as is their awesome office apps, XCode and a lot of other useful apps and services.

[jmnicolas]

Of course but if you run Linux they're sure you will never earn them any money from these services.

So at one point they could decide that they don't want people to use Linux on their Macs and there's nothing you could do.

Look at what happened to CentOS.

[Grustaf]

If they can sell you a mac for $1500 I don't think they are very concerned that you're not spending 50 bucks a year on iCloud.

I mean, if they prevent Linux you probably won't buy a mac at all, you won't prioritise using an M1 macbook over using Linux if you're a hardcore Linux nerd.

Bottomline is that yes they are greedy, but they are not trying to stop people from installing Linux on macs just to perhaps earn some extra dollars.

[lrvick]

Counter point: they have no problem charging $1000+ for iPhones and lock them down to only run the operating systems and apps they approve because consumers of them were largely not technical enough to understand they don't own their own devices.

Apple is motivated to do this as soon as they feel they can get away with it and keep profits as high or higher.

[Grustaf]

I’m not saying they have any moral objections to locking the macs, it just doesn’t make any financial sense. Enough people want to run windows or linux for them to make the effort to make that possible. It’s also more in the spirit of PCs to have this possibility.

For phones, basically nobody wants to run android on an iphone, so it makes no sense to make it possible.

Keep in mind that they don’t lock down iOS because they hate our freedoms, it’s because it is much harder to make it safe and secure if it’s also very open. And since the market of people wanting to run other OSs is so small, they don’t want to take the additional cost.

As to owning you device. Unless you buy real hand stitched shoes with leather soles, your shoes are most likely completely impossible to repair, they’re basically molded rubber. It’s not because Nike hates freedom or even because they want you to buy new shoes more often, it’s because it’s so much cheaper to make shoes that way. But would you argue that you “don’t own your sneakers”?

[oneplane]

iCloud is free unless you pay for extra space or features, and most people I know of don't.