| > Right to repair. The interactions between a silicon chip and software drivers has nothing to do with right to repair. Never has been. > Alternatively maybe anti trust, since using your monopoly on hardware to get a monopoly on software Apple doesn't have a monopoly on any hardware, except insofar as any company has a natural monopoly on their own products, as made explicitly legal by copyright and patent laws. Furthermore, one has to remember that there's a world outside of commodity PC hardware. The notion of hardware and software being separate is the rare exception, not the rule. Other than commodity PC computer hardware, nearly every product sold is both software and hardware bundled as a unit, with no marketplace expectation of end users replacing the software with an alternative. Whether you're talking about a car, washing machine, television, digital camera, microwave oven, garage door opener, CD player, indoor-outdoor thermometer, label printer, or an air conditioner, the software that comes with it is seen as part of the product. In fact, this is even true for many computer components—companies like Nvidia aren't being any more helpful about their GPUs as Apple is with theirs. Apple's computers straddle an interesting boundary between consumer devices and commodity PCs. But make no mistake, Apple isn't obligated to do anything here. You're not entitled to something because you want it. > using your government granted monopoly on creating the exact hardware (copyright), or some of the features in the hardware (patents) to get a monopoly in an adjacent area (running software on that hardware) Obviously legal. See above. > Alternatively an interpretation of the quid quo pro of intellectual property Obviously legal. See above. |
Well, that's perhaps because that interaction's importance for the functioning of ubuquitous things in life is a relatively recent thing. I don't understand why there's supposed to be some fundamental reason why we can't change our laws to encompass also the right to repair software, or to the right to repair the interactions between hardware and software. Sure, these things aren't rights today – but who's to say we can't make it so?