[loup-vaillant]

> Phones are unique in the consumer space because of how—

—they were marketed as phones that can compute, instead of as computers that can phone.

That's the crux: people would never have accepted the restrictions on computers like the iPhone, if that thing were instead sold as a general computer called the iPalm or similar. But since it's sold as a phone, any thing else it can do is more easily perceived as a bonus, and we hardly feel the restrictions at the beginning.

Only people who see smartphones for what they really are, general purpose palmtops that can make phone calls, can really perceive the egregiousness of those restrictions. The first step then, is generalising this understanding to everyone.

A good first step, I think, would be to start naming those things more accurately. I'd personally suggest "palmtop".

[astrange]

It isn't a general purpose computer. The form factor is compromised to make it work as a phone and it doesn't matter how good the CPU is.

A general purpose computer would be hard to use if it had an OOM killer instead of swap and if running the CPU full speed shut it off because it got too hot inside. (Using it too hard can also drain the battery even if it's on a full strength charger.)

[ClumsyPilot]

> It isn't a general purpose computer.

This is straight up lala-land. Phones do banking, browsing, document writing, printing, video editing. Many people don't even have a computer.

> OOM killer instead of swap

Windows 10 apps work like that.

> Running the CPU full speed shut it off because it got too hot inside.

Happens to some crappy laptops. These are basically irrelevant details.

[bbradley406]

>Happens to some crappy laptops. These are basically irrelevant details.

Don't most modern (>2010) CPU's thermal throttle until they are back within operating temps? You'd have to stuff a laptop inside a backpack while maxing it to get it to overheat to the point of resetting

[astrange]

Phones do browsing only until you switch to another app and it has to kill the tab to save memory.

And remember, they don't do Flash ;)

It's web pages that changed to fit on phones, more than the other way round.

[dvngnt_]

you can add a keyboard to a phone the same way i can add a keyboard to my desktop to function.

phones are actually more general-purpose since they travel with you and know where you are.

[AsyncBanana]

At this point, most people likely associated the word "phone" with something closer to a modern smartphone than a landline. Language can change. From my point of view, the problem is more that Apple set a precedent of these restrictions due to them being the first mover, and few mainstream phone companies have tried to break out of this idea (even though other phones are technically more flexible if you try hard enough).

[loup-vaillant]

> From my point of view, the problem is more that Apple set a precedent of these restrictions due to them being the first mover, and few mainstream phone companies have tried to break out of this idea

It's even worse than that: though I stand by what I said, you're correct, people are gradually realising that the difference between their smartphone and laptop/desktop (if any), is one of degree, not kind. But we don't see the push back we would have seen if they had realised right away. Instead, as you rightly point out, companies are building on Apple's precedent to try and expand their model to our good old laptops and desktops.

And it looks like they're succeeding. It would seem one has to pay Apple to even get the right to distribute a regular MacOS program regular users can actually execute (no Apple developer plan, no code signing). And newer versions of Windows are displaying increasingly scary warnings for programs telling you they "protected" your computer, which are bad enough that we get tutorials about how to get past them.

[paulmd]

Surely first-mover for smartphones is palm or blackberry or even Windows Mobile.

Yes, apple has about half the market today, that’s not the same thing as being first-mover. In fact it’s actually completely different because people had to make the choice to move away from the first-movers to apple.

People literally did give up their blackberries and palms and Jornadas for iPhone, consciously and deliberately, because it was a better product. And now you want to change the product and erode the benefits back to the minimum standard defined by android. That’s a taking.

[loup-vaillant]

It was a better product. But it would be quite a take to say their tolling & gate keeping was a significant contributor.

It was a better product because of its capacitive multi-touch screen and its overall speed (which I must insist depends more on what apps are installed by default than on the restrictions on third party apps).

[tpmoney]

> But it would be quite a take to say their tolling & gate keeping was a significant contributor.

Do you remember the first iPhone? Or for that matter what "mobile development" looked like before the iPhone? The first iPhone was more "tolled" and "gate kept" than any iPhone we have today. There was NO app store. To get an app on the iPhone, Apple had to make it, which meant you had to be big enough for Apple to care. Google got a Youtube app because they were that big. At some point Facebook had a built in integration (though I don't remember if it was a full fledged app). That was it. Development for the phone was going to be "web apps" only, without the biggest "web app" framework at the time, Flash. Compared to the first iPhones, a modern iPhone is wide open to all sorts of developers.

But perhaps more than that, even that first iPhone was leaps and bounds for most people over what prior devices were (save perhaps Palm Treos) in terms of "openness". Before the iPhone, the carriers decided what your phone could and couldn't do. A Razr phone from AT&T could send and receive data over bluetooth (like contacts and ring tones). That same exact phone from Verizon could only use bluetooth for headsets. Data transfer was locked down to vVrizon's own service (with a fee of course). Mobile app development was a crap shoot of different sdks and licensing costs per device, and then a hope that each carrier would allow your bejeweled clone, and served up through their services, of which they took HUGE cuts of the revenue. The 30/70 split of the iPhone app store was quite literally "revolutionary" in the cell phone space.

Which leads one to wonder if the tolling and gate keeping is such a hinderance, why is it that the iPhone remains so successful despite their largest competitor having none of those restrictions, pretty much from the get go. It's not like Apple was open and suddenly slammed the gates down on apps and iPhone development. And it's not like Android's openness is brand new. So the question that has to be asked is why does Apple continue to sell so well despite the restrictions? Why hasn't Android eaten all of Apple's market share as a massive open platform where anyone can do anything?

[loup-vaillant]

> Which leads one to wonder if the tolling and gate keeping is such a hinderance

I don't know, perhaps you should ask that to someone who actually made that argument? If I recall, people are still buying cigarettes, are they not? Stuff doesn't have to be good for you to sell good.

---

I don't dispute the facts you lay out here. I'll even cite game console as other general purpose computers that were (and still are) quite heavily locked down too. Apple however made one step further, and managed to sell a locked down general purpose computer for purposes other than gaming.

At the root of it all, I think, is how hardware vendors got away with selling their stuff without the full manual. Some instead provide a proprietary Windows driver. Others hide keys in them, don't tell users what they are, and then lobby to send heroic reverse engineers to jail. If I was the regulator I would probably start there.