[zoul]

I would guess you have never worked as a technical suppport for your family’s computers? Because even if I very much understand your point, not being able to run untrusted code absolutely is a security advancement in certain situations. It is SO refreshing and liberating to be able to say: Do whatever you want with it, it’s very hard to damage on the software side.

[grumbel]

That has nothing to do with untrusted code, but with how well programs are isolated from each other. You don't have to restrict the user for that.

Take the Web, we all run untrusted programs 24/7 there, every single snipped of Javascript is an untrusted program. Yet it neither does damage to our systems nor does it prevent the user from opening up the developer tools, hacking away on existing websites or making their own.

The Web isn't perfect either, but it's worlds better than Android and Co.

[jgerrish]

Ahh, the fix the "technical support" gambit. Good PR, connects with a sizable subset of the target.

Susceptible to damage by inkjet cartridge DMCA attack.

Replace by "email support", nobody likes spam, much harder to defend. They've been softening up people with the anti-social media work, so it's palatable.

Good catch! I really am sorry if that's damaging or condescending, it's meant as a golden rule thing.

[ouid]

what kind of person who comments on hackernews doesnt do unpaid tech support for family members?

yes, i do, and the thing that i mostly find is people paying for "legitimate products" that their computers can do for free with essentially no additional hassle. Apple and google arent in the business of protecting your naive family members, they are in the business of monopolizing the exploitation of your naive family members.

Just yesterday i discovered that jpeg compression is broken in preview, and has been for years. The top result for what to do about it on the macos subreddit is to pay for image editing software.

i suspect you of arguing in bad faith.

[fartcannon]

Instead of ruining computing forever, you could just say no to your imaginary family of people incapable of learning. Boundaries!

[alexvoda]

Or you could just not give them admin rights and create limiter users for them. You do not have to surrender super-admin right to corporate overlords to solve this problem.

[corrral]

You can really tell who lived through the era of 20 stacked, all-unwanted browser "toolbars" and Bonzi Buddy and such, and who didn't.

That didn't go away because people learned. And it never would have.

[fartcannon]

You want to limit what current and future generations of people can do with their computers because of something a computer illiterate grandma may have done in the 90s?

No. Those people get newspapers and landlines.

[corrral]

You badly overestimate both the ability and interest of average people in learning to administrate their computers. They just want to get shit done and go do something else. Computers are a tool at best, and more often a super-annoying thing they have to deal with but hate every second of it.

If they actually like any of the computers around them, it's probably the most locked-down ones: their phones and video game consoles.

[EDIT] That is, you're way off in thinking it's only a bunch of soon-to-be-dead grandmas who have trouble operating computers that don't prevent them from fucking things up too badly. The "digital native" generations are barely better.

[fartcannon]

You can have a locked down mode. You can even sell it turned on by default. But to exclusively prevent everyone from using their computers as they see fit because you think some people are too stupid to handle it? I don't believe you actually want that. I believe that's an excuse to ensure Apple gets a cut of everything that happens on their soon to be landfill machines.

If yes, man that's really dangerous thinking.

[corrral]

I have almost zero interest in haxoring my phone, and just want it to always work and not let 3rd parties steal my info, automatically.

And I'm a life-long computer geek who's done professional mobile development. Most people care even less than I do. They just want it to work, because computers aren't their life, they just use them to get stuff done, or when someone else tells them they have to. Would it be sort of nice to have the option to unlock it? Yes, exclusively so I could run pirated games in emulators more easily, which is the only thing non-programmers I know with unlocked Android phones use all that freedom of theirs for. For most people, they'd not pay even a couple dollars to have the unlock option. It's worth basically nothing to them, because they do not have any actual use for it. But sure, it'd be nice. It's just not a big deal.

> If yes, man that's really dangerous thinking.

The NES had a DRM chip—a bad one, but still.

Some computers have been appliances, and some have been programmers' machines, for a long time, and the sky hasn't fallen. The former have just eaten some of the use cases for the latter, where a fully-capable general-purpose computer was at least as much of a liability as a boon.

Even Apple still makes normal-ass computers for people who need them. If your reaction to that statement is "pft, yeah, but they're clearly trying to get rid of those", well, people have been saying that for more than a decade, and it still hasn't happened and doesn't seem to be any closer, so... I'll believe it when I see it.

[ece]

Consoles play games and media, off course people like them. Did the PS3 having the Other OS feature mean people enjoyed gaming on it less? I don't think so. Piracy as the given reason to take the feature away is a poor one, they could've better isolated the gaming partition. Apple designs their products to be more user friendly than most, it shouldn't stop users from doing what they want. They don't on the Mac, but they do on the iPhone.

[Iolaum]

Agreed. However should Operating Systems for consumers only really cater to that use case? Because that is the problem IMO.

[fartcannon]

Yes, because the PR requires there be no ground given on this talking point.

[pessimizer]

> Do whatever you want with it,

That's the opposite of what is being said.

[dekhn]

That's why I got my dad a chromebook. ChromeOS is a really well-engineered system- good enough that I never ever worried about security.

[goodpoint]

This is not what ouid wrote.