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by paulmd 911 days ago
> How is your tinkering enhanced by Apple making it difficult to communicate outside of their kingdom?

OP didn't say they tinkered on their phone - actually the total opposite. Read it again.

"I do more than enough tinkering but my phone‘s supposed to just work."

Anyway, you've missed the point that at the end of the day there's real-world benefits to many of the things people complain about. The FindMy lockout prevents phone theft (and has strong reductions in theft rates for these users). Serializing parts prevents thieves from stripping stolen phones and selling for parts. Having only one app store prevents large players with high network effect (tencent, facebook, etc) from demanding you install their app store to bypass the Apple's review/permissions process to spy on you (FB already got caught using dev credentials to do it anyway). Etc.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-...

I tend to agree, that a phone is not where I care to tinker in my life. Having it be secure and well-integrated is more important to me, I have a PC if I want to tinker. I can sign and sideload apps already if I want to try something (for 7 days), or getting an official dev credential extends this to 30 days. Android phones have a real problem with OS support lifespan and OEM parts availability, and I have no desire to install third-party ROMs and then spoof safetynet so I can run my bank app. Assuming that's even an option at all - Sony for example will wipe the camera's firmware when you unlock the bootloader, so it degrades a premium cameraphone to flip-phone levels.

"Not everyone wants to be stallman trying to figure out how to root their phone and spoof safetynet" is actually a great way to put it.