[Xunjin]

Let me play out a scenario, imagine to use a Desktop Hardware like a complete built rig, you would need a specific OS like Windows 11 and you could not run Linux on it, just because it's a vendor lock-in.

Why is this acceptable for phones but would not for the case above?

I know a lot of people don't care, and that's ok, but we should root for an open choice for the users.

[michaelt]

> Why is this acceptable for phones but would not for the case above?

PCs happened by accident.

Before the PC, people had TVs - devices not for creating, but for passively consuming content made by big corporations and the state. And we had games consoles - devices not for creating, but for playing games made by a medium-sized company, with strict approval by a huge company (who want a cut). Strictly censored to be age-appropriate, naturally. Pirate radio? Straight to jail.

Before that people had newspapers - media for passively consuming, intended for mass readership, written at the behest of rich newspaper barons with certain political opinions they're keen to push.

And after the PC, we have smartphones - devices not for creating, but for consuming content feeds, curated by big corporations, with rich owners with certain political opinions they're keen to push. A huge company eager to take a cut. A tiny screen, and a keyboard that puts curly braces three keypresses deep. Can't even debug a web page without connecting to a PC. And soon to be strictly censored to be age-appropriate.

The PC is really the outlier here.

[handoflixue]

Alongside TV we had cameras, and families across the country filming birthdays and other special occasions.

Alongside newspapers we had 'zine culture and mail-order pamphlets.

There has always been the option to contribute - the Apple iPhone is quite possibly the first exception.

[testing22321]

You could film and put it on your tv, but you couldn’t create and distribute to the medium at large

[kombookcha]

Not with the same reach, but some people kinda could! Specifics depended on where you were in the world, but it existed and to some extent still does. In spite of a very rough decade and a half since 2010 culling many of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-access_television https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_television_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swindon_Viewpoint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_television_in_Austra...

[Jtarii]

Weirdo eccentrics sure found a way to distribute their shot on home video b-movies.

[account42]

And you can still use the camera app to post your pictures to social media. It's hardly the same level of creative participation that the PC invites.

[ozgung]

I think this was because of the “IBM PC Compatible” market. IBM was using off-the-shelf components for its PC system and other manufacturers reverse engineered and cloned the system and started selling IBM clones. Interestingly Microsoft who controlled the OS became the monopoly and gatekeeper of that market, not IBM (hardware). MS was making a ton of money by selling OS licenses and online software stores was not a thing since the Internet was nonexistent/limited. “Developers, developers, developers” were the king in that business model so they didn’t need to give a cut to MS or IBM to build on a PC system.

Saying that I think the situation in the smartphones today is less about the business model and more about control and surveillance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible

[estimator7292]

That's really not true at all. Are you aware of the entire home computer industry of the 70s and 80s? Before PCs, you had a beige box you plugged into your TV and typed in games line by line out of a magazine. They DIY scene was enormous as a percentage of total users.

They also blur the line between "computer" and "console", since the NES is practically the same architecture as many contemporary "computers". Homebrew games existed, and weren't that far out of reach. Homebrew has existed on pretty much every console ever.

PCs weren't an accident in any way. They are a direct descendant of "home computers". That's why they were called "personal computers" in the first place.

[code_duck]

It’s the same situation as game consoles. Custom built hardware that is only meant to run the one specific vendor OS. There have been many other computing devices like that in the past as well. The general purpose desktop computer that allows a choice of operating systems is actually less common than the other way. Historically, people didn’t expect to run alternate operating systems on a mainframe, 80s and 90s computers like a Commodore 64, Power PC Macs, Amigas and DOS/Windows machines until Linux came along.

[cestith]

That’s odd, because I remember being a user of MUSIC on the university System/360. I imagine it also sounds odd to all those people who ran AT&T Unix on their PDP/11 systems instead of a Digital OS like RTS/11. Or the people who ran Xenix on their PCs. Or the folks like me who installed OS/2 on what was sold as an MS-DOS machine. Then there were the folks who ran A+ on their Atari.

[code_duck]

Oh yeah, odd. Anyway, I’m aware of alternate mainframe OSs but I’m not sure how common using one was. Other than OS2, alternate OSs for other systems were rather rare, though it is worth noting that they were not forbidden or blocked.

[jech]

> I’m aware of alternate mainframe OSs but I’m not sure how common using one was.

Extremely common at major universities and research centres. CTSS, ITS, TENEX, Multics, Unix and even VM/370 were all alternate operating at some point.

> Other than OS2, alternate OSs for other systems were rather rare,

You weren't there, were you? A lot of people replaced MS-DOS with DR-DOS before Microsoft deliberately broke it with Windows. A little later, a number of people were running Unix System V on their PCs, to the extent that there was a regular column about Unix in Byte.

[code_duck]

Didn’t Microsoft somehow ruin Dr DOS? Not technically, but didn’t they sue them or something? Which would mean this is the same issue, 40 years later. Yes, I was there on the 80s, but I had a Commodore 64. We did use GEOS, if that counts. I was not present for the 70s.

[jech]

> Didn’t Microsoft somehow ruin Dr DOS?

They added some obfuscated code to Windows 3.1 that made it refuse to run on DR-DOS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code

[rTX5CMRXIfFG]

> at major universities and research centres

So not common outside of ivory towers, no?

[nerdsniper]

That was a huge fraction of computing at the time. Before 1992 or so, the only people I was aware of that was into computers were all associated with a University. Typewriters were still actually very common.

[tliltocatl]

Before IBM PC computer's weren't particularly commonplace outside of ivory towers either.

[cestith]

I went to a regional state university. We had an older IBM mainframe with a hypervisor and the students and faculty were all users on MUSIC/OS. This was in the early/mid 1990s.

[fsflover]

Steam Deck exists and works quite well. No lock-in necessary.

[blurrybird]

So you mean, Macs and macOS?

All modern devices are appliances, not computers.

They perform the specific functions that they were programmed to perform, and do not allow arbitrary execution of calculations on the underlying hardware.

Many people, mostly folks who adopt the Apple ecosystem, see this as a positive thing that allows them to delegate undifferentiated decisions on security and ways of working to the vendor.

I am one of those people and hope that Android remains open so that people don't expect Apple open up their hardware, which will result in fragmentation.

[DoctorOW]

You can absolutely install Linux on a Mac. Back before Apple made custom CPUs they supported and even advertised installing Windows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_Camp_(software)

[gonzalohm]

> They perform the specific functions that they were programmed to perform

That's the thing. You may have bought a device that was meant to perform a task but after some time the company decides that now it should do a different task. I think that's what stops making you the owner. You can't really choose what to do with it.

[SomeoneOnTheWeb]

You _can_ run other OSes on Macbooks. They're not locked in at all, it's simply that the drivers aren't open source and the hardware is undocumented, but with enough effort (e.g. Asahi) you can run technically anything on it.

[trashb]

all appliances used to come with schematics and repair manuals, there was no prevention of modification or repair. We're talking cars, washing machines, dryers, radios etc.

Separate from computers and phones locking down devices is a much wider issue, usually it is only implemented to reduce liability of the manufacturer or to allow for planned obsolescence.

[modo_mario]

>which will result in fragmentation.

Why? And how does that bother you?

[tclancy]

Because phones aren’t computers first and foremost. It can be hard to see it at this forum, but phones aren’t computers, they are intended to be general purpose devices to solve a set of problems for the vast majority of people on the planet. And a subset of those problems involve things like money and personal information. So the device needs to be secure, even (perhaps especially) from the end user themself because it needs to try to withstand compromise even when the user is drunk or sad or in a rush.

I am not arguing you need to like where this has led, but you have people in sibling comment threads here arguing we need to push back on things assuming you will use a phone when the whole revolution has been getting most of the world online by making phones widely available.

[trashb]

I think historically it has existed like this due to regulation regarding radio sending equipment and the integration between the platform (CPU) and modem in phones.

Due to this the equipment manufacturers where never incentivized to have a "open" ecosystem for the CPU+modem combo. That's why there is no OS war on a per device basis, most phones supports 1 OS officially.

[kuhsaft]

The vendor lock-in scenario for desktop hardware already exists with the latest x86 generation of gaming consoles. Gaming consoles are locked down because the hardware is subsidized with the expectation of revenue from the digital marketplaces they provide.

The yet-to-be-released Steam Machine is not subsidized and is unlocked. Steam is a OS agnostic digital marketplace, so it doesn't matter what OS you install on the machine.

Microsoft doesn't see a threat in allowing other OSes on their Surface hardware because the majority of their revenue comes from M365.

It's just market forces really. In the end, phones provide enough utility for the majority of users while being locked down. There's nothing stopping you from buying a fully-open phone, but there's just very little utility in it for the majority of users.

[ThatMedicIsASpy]

We have vendor locked-in hardware as well (blowing fuses on threadripper/epyc to disable running on a different mainboard)

[lucb1e]

No need to play this scenario in your head, here it is in the real world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_RT

Few interested hardware vendors, discontinued after 4 years. "mixed reviews at launch, while critics and analysts deemed it to be commercially unsuccessful"

Windows 10 S was another attempt that "Similarly [restricts] software installation to applications obtained via Windows Store." Cancelled after one year.

Exactly the fate I wish upon closed ecosystems. The only question is why iOS is different. I am inclined to say it's the brand status that overpriced luxury goods have that draws rich people initially, making it lucrative and perhaps even a tad prestigious to be there, but surely it's more than that?

[kuhsaft]

I think it’s because the Microsoft Store barely has any apps that users use. The Microsoft Store didn't support the Win32 API, so developers had to rewrite their apps.

iOS was a new SDK from the start.

[lucb1e]

Wait, you lost me somewhere. The MS store didn't support the old way of doing things, people had to rewrite their software; yet iOS was... new as well? People had to start from scratch and so that worked?

[kuhsaft]

Sorry, the statements were a bit disjointed.

iOS existed before the Microsoft Store. The apps developed were brand new. No backlash from a new SDK and platform.

Windows RT is closer to iPadOS though. For iPadOS, apps just worked since it’s based off of iOS.

The Microsoft Store only supported a new half-baked SDK that limited what applications were capable of. Developers already had Win32 apps and rewriting them with the new SDK seemed pointless just to support what seemed like a needless limitation.

[userbinator]

> we should root for an open choice for the users

I see what you did there... and agree completely. If you don't have root, it's not yours. All my Androids (none from this decade) are rooted and I plan to keep them that way.

[hightrix]

If computers were invented by the Silicon Valley of the 2020s, this would absolutely be the case.

[dghlsakjg]

To be fair, many early computers were tied to the OS.

[TeMPOraL]

But they didn't have technology yet to do it properly, so it was trivial for people to sever the tie and install alternative OSes - trivial enough that it was also easy to teach others how to do it.

Now, the tech to make that tie near-unbreakable exists.

[dghlsakjg]

Can you install an alternate os on the original Mac or a C64?

I was only aware of that possibility for pc clones

[TeMPOraL]

You could if someone made one, presumably. OS is just a program, after all - and 20th century hardware couldn't stop you from completely rewriting the software on it.

The problem today is that modern computers are designed to prevent this, by means that can provide mathematical proofs you won't be able to defeat the protection in any useful sense before the Sun burns out. You have tamper-proof fuses embedded in microchips, and some systems have cryptographic hashes in every major component to prevent you from replacing something too hard to reprogram, etc.

We're yet to see a fully locked down computer (smartphones are close), but the tech for it is there.

[ben_w]

I briefly tried some flavour of linux on a Performa 5200, PPC chip.

Here's an alternative OS for the C64, though I no longer have such a machine to try it on: https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Contiki

[dfxm12]

In general, vendor lock in is the natural state, especially under capitalism. Being able to (so easily) install Linux on a PC is an exception.

On the topic of Windows, it took lawsuits to allow OEM's and users to remove IE.

Open choice will always be an uphill battle.

[59percentmore]

From the state's perspective, probably along the same lines as why long guns are allowed with permit in many countries where handguns are banned.

[fainpul]

Because you can conceiled carry a smartphone? Please explain.

[59percentmore]

Yes? Modern portable computing enables counter-surveillance of police, better communication and knowledge access for dissidents, and interface with institutional computer systems for any number of ends. The George Floyd protests don't happen if the bystanders didn't have smartphones, or if protestors had to carry around an Alienware tower; the Snowden leaks don't happen at the magnitude they did without memory miniaturization. There are international examples, too, and commensurate crackdowns on computing freedom (particularly in Hong Kong).

You've got a supercomputer and a library and a set of video production equipment in your pocket, among other things. The capabilities of such a device are fundamentally different from something that's tethered to a desk or that's conspicuous when out-and-about. The idea of it being open and untrackable is exciting for some and terrifying for others.

[raincole]

Out of all the things that have computational power, PC is pretty much the only one that comes with a built-in way to replace its own system. Xbox, PlayStation, Telsa, Smart Fridges, etc. don't have this ability from the beginning.

So yeah, the society has largely accepted this. PC is the exception.