Almost all of this could be achieved via third party apps if the screen time data was available via an API and background app mode. I understand why it's not though as it's a lot of personal data. However Apple does provide access to health data via the HealthKit so maybe they can do something similar for Screen time?
Did they make any API changes in iOS 15 announced yesterday?
I really like the idea of having permissions for what kind of experience an app can show. For example, if Facebook had a way to disable infinite feeds and disable videos then I'd be more likely to use it on my phone (whereas right now, I never use it).
We have permission settings for things like camera, microphone, and file system access. Why not go an extra step and add permissions on how apps take up our time.
This concept is really well put together, and I would love to see it come to life.
That said, this quote made me laugh out loud
> For example if you're struggling to use Tinder responsibly, you could create a condition that you can only use the app while FaceTiming with a friend.
Things like infinite scroll and autoplay should come with an option to turn them off and I think that’s well presented. Those are kind of dark patterns after All. Though, Apple probably isn’t in the position to enforce that; we unfortunately need to live with Jailbreak tweaks for them.
But the rest of the post feels so off. Constantly nagging yourself to close social media? Reminding yourself that social media is a waste of time by asking whether the time is “well spent”? No thanks. These are just dark patterns but flipped to the other side. I want control over what I do, not a random program deciding what I should do.
I also have never found Screen Time restrictions to be effective; either I unlock the restrictions by myself, or I just find other ways to waste the time. The reason people waste so much time with social media, I think, is because they simply don’t have anything else to do, or they’re not motivated enough to do what they should do.
What if the reminders could be more personalized or something that you write to your future self. For example: "Are you scrolling on the couch again amigo?, stop and hang out with your family!"
Alcoholics want booze, but many of them wake up every day thinking today they won't drink anything, but they still do.
Infinite scroll is a dark pattern in the way it gives you something your addicted brain wants, and therefore you think you might want, but it's actually just a way for them to get more money.
Personal anecdote: I hardly read more than the front page on HN, even though I consider HN one of the least 'time wasted' sites I use, because I usually learn a lot because of it. On Reddit I just keep scrolling even though I often consider it wasted time in hindsight. I don't want HN to get infinite scroll and I deleted the Reddit app from my phone.
> Infinite scroll is a dark pattern in the way it gives you something your addicted brain wants, and therefore you think you might want, but it's actually just a way for them to get more money.
Dark patterns are particular UI patterns that are of a certain objective type regardless of whether or not the user is an addict.
Infinite scroll is not in the list.
Slot machines are addictive and are designed to get people to play as much and as long as possible, but they assiduously avoid dark patterns because people will avoid machines that pull that sort of bullshit and choose ones that don't.
I think dark patterns include patterns designed to create addiction. I imagine a tremendous amount of slot machine design is about creating addiction.
The line between enjoyment and addiction is certainly not clear, or the same for everyone. But anything strongly designed to repeatedly pull you into repetitive behavior that you reliably find wasteful or harmful afterwards, is dark.
Wikipedia defines dark patterns as: "A dark pattern is a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things". Infinite scroll in many cases obviously fits this category as it tricks people into spending more time in an app. Fast company actually calls it the most prevalent dark pattern in this article:
Also, implying that slot machines don't apply dark patterns is incredibly naive. I'm pretty sure they do everything to make it seem like they don't. But even using a plastic card in stead of cash can be considered a dark pattern, because it disconnects you from the intrinsic form and it just because a number on a screen, causing it to lose its value while playing.
Infinite scroll isn't a trick. It gives the user precisely what they indicated they want: more content.
If it took them to a different view, or made a purchase, or caused some negative side effect that the user then has to engage with to cancel, then it would be subterfuge.
Giving the user more of what they explicitly desired (and provided user input to request in the form of a swipe up) is the opposite of a dark pattern.
A good example of a dark pattern is when cancel/confirm buttons swap places from their usual locations on the sale screen, to trick a user into clicking buy when they meant cancel. When a user gives the gesture for "more content" and they get more content, that's simply an app that works well.
It's not the UI that makes social interaction addictive. Second landlines for teenagers "addicted" to social networking was a thing long before Instagram.
> Infinite scroll isn't a trick. It gives the user precisely what they indicated they want: more content.
I actually added a source that says that infinite scroll can be considered a prevalent dark pattern. I think this will become a useless discussion because there's no clearly defined definition of what is and isn't a dark pattern and I think that in the end it's how the user experiences it. To me it's a dark pattern, because I don't want to scroll infinitely, but I do it anyway. To you it isn't because it gives you precisely what you want. The only solution seems to agree to disagree.
HN shows 30 stories on front page. If they reduce it to 5 your usage may decrease so are they following a dark pattern? or if they increase the no. to 50 will it become a dark pattern?
How about 5000? This then becomes a useless discussion of where, between 0 and infinity I will deem it a dark pattern or not. I don't know, but I do consider infinity with the purpose of keeping people engaged a 'dark pattern', as do others of you look at the article I shared. Maybe you don't and that's fine.
> Dark patterns are explicitly designed to conflate or deceive.
Well, yes - normally you are scrolling to the bottom of the page. And when you reach the bottom, you stop, or you need to explicitly click "Next". But with infinite scroll, there is no bottom. You never reach a final or semi-final point. It's designed to maximize your time spent on the website/app, not for your well-being or helping you achieve your original aim - which was to absorb a limited set of information, not scrolling mindlessly forever.
But it's only a dark pattern in the right (wrong?) context, no? For instance, my webmail has infinite scroll and it's damn convenient. Yet, I never find myself mindlessly scrolling through my mail. It doesn't increase the time I spend on the site... quite the opposite.
Likewise, I swear Google was playing with infinite scroll in their search results recently, where I didn't have to hit next to see the next page of results. Same result for me - it was convenient and I didn't find myself spending more time looking for/at search results.
But when the context is addictive content, infinite scroll is always there to spoon feed you one more helping.
More often than not, infinite scroll isn't actually the UX pattern you're looking for. But on occasion, it does make sense. However, when combined with insidious content, a dark pattern it does become.
> Infinite scroll is not a dark pattern. Dark patterns are explicitly designed to conflate or deceive.
This comment doesn't deserve to be downvoted. I came to this thread holding this exact view. The ensuing discussion changed my mind. It's honestly asked and respectfully answered, the stuff this community is made of.
Yeah this is cool as an option. but don't make it as a default. A lot of people actually love the automatic feed. Of course they're not here on HN reading stuffs. So you won't know what actual majority of user want.
I think what they are saying is to remove the addiction, not ask if someone want to be reminded to wake up from the addiction.
The question for me comes down to, is there such a thing as social media without the addiction, where the financial incentives to the company aren’t tied to and engagement and behaviour. I’d like to think that’s possible.
Some people feel like television, and phones in general, are bad influences. Should Apple build in reminders for their first party products, too. A popup telling you that talking on the phone for three hours a day is bad for you, or that encourages you to not binge on that TV series?
I think the application should be judged, not the method necessarily.
Example : I have added/used extensions built to allow certain websites (google search, for example) to use infinite scrolling.
I never voluntarily added other 'dark patterns' to my interfaces, thus I think the way such a mechanism is applied is a major factor as to whether or not it's abusive.
>Constantly nagging yourself to close social media? Reminding yourself that social media is a waste of time by asking whether the time is “well spent”?
It's a business opportunity for Apple to be able to judge what gets graded as good, bad or a waste of time. That's what this is about in my opinion.
I really dig the "infinite scroll" part. I hate this "feature" from the bottom of my heart. I also like the "conditions" feature.
However, I'm not a fan of my device analyzing my behavior and bombarding me with notifications and questions every 15 minutes. To me, that's distracting and way too much noise. I like the way Screen Time already works. Leave the consequences to me, but give me an opportunity to check them.
I like the idea behind a lot of these things, but it seems like a ton of overhead, both for software implementers and users. It seems kind of odd to claim these changes could be so profound when it seems like it's really only going to be useful for a superuser who's already aware of their screen time issues and would be excited to be able to choose from X toggle options. Additionally, "you are wasting time on your phone, do you want to lock your screen" seems like a feature that would fly with only a very limited set of users.
Instead of hooking in to Facebook and adding content settings, to me it seems that in this case the "we should increase data/platform interop" line of thought offers a better solution than hoping the Apple ship can steer in this direction.
For that matter, do we know how many people use screenttime tracking/mitigating features anyway?
“When you schedule downtime in Settings, only phone calls and apps that you choose to allow are available. Downtime applies to all of your Screen Time-enabled devices, and you get a reminder five minutes before it starts“
I'm not site how a router would identify "mindless browsing", but turning off Internet at certain times is a feature many routers have built in, usually under parental control. Worth a look if you haven't checked.
Personally I ended up with a bit different solution, I wanted to do something similar, but needed it to work on my phone also so I ended up using nextdns to block part of the Internet (reddit and Facebook) after 10. Works reasonably well as trigger to stop my worst doomscrolling offenders.
I love this, but do we really think that Apple also isn't using engagement with your phone as an internal success metric? If people use apps less often, they are probably using less apps. If people use less apps, Apple's revenue drops.
Unlike Apple's attack on privacy which makes them a differentiator in the marketplace, only at the expense of others, I don't see what's in it for Apple to do this?
Apple still primarily makes money from hardware sales. They'd rather get you working out, buy an airpod pro, and subscribe to fitness+ than spend time on Facebook.
Apple made 72.3B revenue from app sales in 2020. This is not an insignificant amount of money, regardless of where it stands next to their hardware sales.
Furthemore, if people are using smartphones less maybe they'll realise they don't need an expensive smartphone to check whatsapp...
Apple did announce ScreenTime API, which enables developers to do some of the things mentioned in the article.
Plus Apple’s revenue isn’t based on app engagement; it’s hardware and services primarily. Using some apps less doesn’t impact the big picture of subscriptions (Music, iCloud+, News*, etc.) or hardware purchases like a new iPhone, AirPods, etc.
Apple really is in a unique position. However their are a few areas in which they drastically lack and TBH it is not App privacy disclosure - everyone knows Facebook is physically, mentally, and spiritually bad /s
I was quite anti-Apple for a long time on the basis of it being a luxury brand that restricts the freedom of its users.
But it recent years as phone performance has become less of an issue meaning Apple's older phone models are basically just as good as mid-tier current year Android, the luxury label is not as extreme.
Additionally the M1 launch which basically transformed their 'real' computer laptop from being overpriced and literally hot garbage - to the best* dollar for dollar mobile machines.
So basically Apple has the hardware and software polished and at a great value but they have a very integrated ecosystem which means a single flaw breaks the whole cohesion.
Primarily, E2E encryption is broken by design because iCloud backup are not E2E and you can't know if any message recipient has iCloud enabled. Sure you could just use Signal/Matrix/etc but it breaks the cohesion - does your Apple watch get Matrix notification with the same polish as iMessage?
Also iMessage is also still iOS only right? Which is just insane. For a time Blackberry messenger was the best thing but it didn't last partly because it was vendor locked.
Whild I can ignore limits of phone OS's for the sake of security; MacOS is sort of anti-user to the point that third party projects like Homebrew work day & night to fix the ecosystem. Luckily now Nix(OS) on Darwin is an option for a more complete ecosystem but it is still other people fixing Apple's mistakes for free which is just unbearable.
Considering Microsoft runs Github which I believe Hombebrew and NisOS still both use extensively and I believe they do so for free or very cheaply(?) In any case, Apple seems like a poor steward of open source compared to other FAANGM(?) companies... maybe I am wrong but the G, M, & F seem more active than the Apple. Apple did just kill/abandon CUPs etc.
Again, I would just like to be wrong. Maybe you can already use Linux with Apple devices very well and maybe turning off iMessage and iCloud solves the E2E problem. But it just seems like Apple is 90% of the way there but refuses to do the last 10%.
I guess what I mean to say is Apple has some real problems to fix of its own before it should critize other apps even more. For instance, does iMessage come with a warning about broken/nerfed E2E? Or that mobile Safari has an anti-user and anti-standards implementation of PWAs (again last I check)?
> does your Apple watch get Matrix notification with the same polish as iMessage?
yes, actually. Element iOS has dedicated Watch support and provides parity to iMessage (ability to react and reply etc to msgs). There’s also native Apple Watch Matrix clients so you don’t need to be tethered to your phone.
Meanwhile, today Microsoft gifted us a brand new "News & interests" area in the taskbar lobbying for our focus and attention. Successfully... I even had to google how to turn it off, and write this comment.
Also had to do the same. The method of disabling it, while not immediately obvious, didn't seem intentionally user-hostile. However, the idea of modifying any part of a user's desktop without their explicit input is troubling to say the least.
Exactly why more people should switch to Linux on their desktops/laptops.
> but Linux sucks, it's ugly, it's broken, it doesn't work, blah blah blah!
The amount of time people spend complaining about the evil shit their monopolist is doing to them would be better spent learning how to use Linux. It's not that hard.
A farmer isn't going to make changes to their business model because the cattle is complaining. Microsoft is going to keep doing what they're doing until the government steps in (which is unlikely to happen any time soon). Same goes for Apple, Amazon, Google, and all these companies that are immune to competitive forces.
Google started doing this on mobile with their chrome for android. Some time ago they introduced an alternative method of presenting open tabs in a grid instead of a list. They of course made the new setting the default and you have to do a Web search to find out how to revert it to the previous setting.
They also disregard your choice upon every update and switch you back to grid view.
Google has become the epitome of bad ux and user-hostile design.
You paid once, yes, but what about recurring payments?
Tongue-in-cheek LotR reference, but, it was pretty clear that Microsoft changed tactics after releasing Windows 10, turning it into an auto-updating evergreen OS without paid updates. They're earning money elsewhere now - Office365 and Azure are their big cash cows, I believe. But other departments are pressured to make money too.
"News & interests" is another avenue for Microsoft to promote Edge. If you click an article in the "News & interests", it opens in Edge, even if your default browser is set to something else.
my dad was asking me how to get rid of that yesterday because it was annoying him. i noticed that he also had the cortana search box on the left of the taskbar and asked if he ever used it and he said no. all these years it's just been there taking up valuable space and then 'new & interests' appears out nowhere last week and starts talking up even more valuable space. my poor dad had about 8 programs open but there were all squashed into the middle of the taskbar. makes me wonder about how many other people are living in these awful conditions
When you have hundreds of teams of people whose promotions are driven by what gets deployed and seen by the user, it is almost inevitable that we reach this situation.
Yes, let a userbase that is dominated by american, white, middle-class people determine what is time well spent. I'm sure that's gonna be applicable to everyone in the world.
Habitual addiction and chemical addiction are not the same things. Cutting Facebook cold turkey has few if any of the side effects cutting alcohol cold turkey has.
There is psychological addiction and chemical addiction. Both suck, and you are likely better off gradually decreasing the activity/drug in both cases, but there is a real difference that in the latter case you must gradually decrease it, else you will have very severe side-effects, for example with alcohol it is called delirium tremens.
Of course it has. Just because it isn't directly based in a physiological reaction doesn't make it less real. And it is in general a mistake to make a clear distinction between what is mind and what is matter. They are the same.
Perhaps alcohol is a bad example because you can quit it completely. That's not really the case with something like a smart phone, so perhaps the better comparison is food. You can't stop eating food completely if you struggle with addiction, but you can learn healthier habits.
True. Planned impediments can help, just like making sure alcohol never enters your front door.
I've used my phone's parental features to limit usage of social apps to one hour. It's protected by a somewhat randomly chosen PIN that I don't memorize but store in my password manager. If I want to override the time limit, I have to go and look up the PIN. Most of the time... too hard, move on to something more productive.
I 'solved' this by creating a new account, under a different name (yes, I know it's 'against the rules') that is purely a member
of the local groups. It has no friends, no timeline posts, just for staying up to date with community events.
I have no real reason to check it, as there is not really anything posted, but I can hop on once or twice a week to see what is coming up.
Unfortunately, that's the best way I've found to know what goes on in the village vs not actually wanting to participate in Facebook
Your solution has been around since the dawn of Facebook and has had no affect on the majority of Facebook users. The proposed solution actually could. Sometimes, it turns out that the best solutions are in fact complicated.
I deleted my Facebook account last year. Next week I found myself mindlessly scrolling Reddit. I blocked Reddit on my phone. Next week I was scrolling Linkedin (sic!). Humans just haven't adapted to this new era with endless information in a packets that are designed to be as addictive as possible.
I think I should just get rid of my smart phone, but that's easier said than done.
And stop using Instagram or WhatsApp or TikTok or LinkedIn. But can you, though?
Can you be the one single weird person in a group of 50 that says "I'd rather not have pictures of this event with my face on them posted on Insta, please"?
How do I keep contact with relatives -- like cousins, aunts and uncles, etc -- who I care enough about to want to chat with / see what's up in their lives, but not enough to call on a weekly basis?
iCloud photo sharing? Works with people that do and do not have iPhones/Macs. At least I know that non-Apple users can see photos in a shared album; I don't know if they can add photos to a shared photo album as well - I've never tried that.
Several years ago I got tired for Facebook and quit it. My parents, in-laws, and siblings have an Apple shared photo album for "general" content and we occasionally set up albums for the same group of folks when there's a big event/trip/etc.
We occasionally Facetime or use chat via Messages. Email's are in the mix as well.
While tricky, I agree in concept. It's hard to stop using social media, and as much as I'm proud that I don't use Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter any more, here I am, commenting on a post on HN. They're different for sure, and HN causes more thought and more learning, but there are still days that I spent too much time and end up on page 3 of Ask HN.
Part of the fix is having something else to do. If I'm waiting on a code review, I might slip into HN or Reddit. I guess a solution would be having very flexible, productive tasks to do. Duolingo seems like a good one, but I personally don't have too much of a want to learn a new language.
Would be really nice to have this, but what are the chances?
I am still thinking it would be better to be off-facebook (already got off twitter, instagram and other networks), but keeping in touch with local community is not possible then.
Even though this article is sarcastic(?) I can't help but get genuinely angry at these trillion dollar companies thinking they know what is better for us and trying to control and police everything. This is even worse than govt censoring porn and cuss-words back in the day thinking they know what is moral for the society.
I was just talking to a friend the other day on how badly Apple and Google are trying their best to kill curiosity and creativity. I mean when I first got my 286 the machine was just full of possibilities. I think learning the ins and outs of it was more fun than doing anything productive.
I used to hack away at it all day and night. Learning about interrupts, tinkering with the BIOS settings, hacking the serial port, irq, etc. Now everything is just locked down. In my latest phone I can't even run `fastboot` as that too has been locked down permanently because "security".
Thank god we have Linux created before all this Bullshit started happening. If Apple, Google and Microsoft was in charge of things as they are now, we wouldn't even have any hardware to run anything else than Windows and iOS.
Reminds me of the "women want pockets in all their clothes" angle. If it were vital, someone would be making buckets of money from that exact solution. That you don't hear about it suggests that fashion-first is king in the sort of clothing you wear out.
Every year there's a new pitch from a modular laptop or a hackable smartphone. Never met anyone who uses one though.
I don't think the article is sarcastic given the nature of their app.
Where does one draw the line though? ESG[1] is becoming increasingly important to investors and I already see financial institutions instituting controls in their apps around gambling [2].
When should large companies with sufficient reach implement opportunities to address social harms?
It is not and it is worrying. I think Apple is doing a great job about privacy, but it’s a fine line the one between user advocacy and the ethical state model…
i started programming in 94, i've passed through all the phases. honestly, what i want now is a phone that just works, without needing to hack anything. i presume i'm not representing the miniroty of ios users here. i don't think it's possible to do both of those things (stability vs hacking) in the same time, without a compromise and i voted with my wallet for what apple did.
there are options for everyone, if you want to hack it, good, there's android for that. there are even phones that you can customize. if you want a stable black box, there's ios, this is well known before you buy it. there are options for every one of us...
i think you guys forget that this is an echo chamber and the real users out there are not tech savy. i
let me come back to you with a question: do you have an example where this works?
being hackable means exactly the opposite of stability: you can change low level features and break things. if there is a chance to do it, people can be tricked to do it. of course, i'm excluding here people who have knowledge, as i continue to belive that they are a minority.
> being hackable means exactly the opposite of stability
Any computer with preinstalled Linux will "just work". Typical users will only install apps from the repositories, and those are more secure and private than App Store.
Yes. On my laptop, Linux is extremely stable, and yet extremely hackable. What, Linux doesn't work for you flawlessly? 99% chance it's drivers, which has nothing to do with stability and everything to do with the limited amount of effort that people have poured into drivers on that particular platform.
> being hackable means exactly the opposite of stability
False. "Stability" implicitly means "without modifications". There's no product or (human-made) system in existence that remains stable once you start making arbitrary modifications to it.
> if there is a chance to do it, people can be tricked to do it
Yes, and "freedom" (which is a core tenet of the United States Constitution, where most HN commenters are based) includes the ability to do things that will hurt yourself. "We know what's better for you than you do" leads to tyranny the majority of the time (as it does here, where Apple has full control of their devices and regularly makes decisions that hurt their users).
Moreover, it's relatively easy to design a system that prevents the vast majority of users from shooting themselves in the foot (by making root(-adjacent) access difficult to acquire by accident and fairly difficult to be tricked into doing), and coupled with actual education would keep the levels of this particular kind of computer fraud (where someone convinces you to bypass your computer's security features) well below the rates of other computer fraud (such as falling prey to scam emails).
I know many people using Android devices, with no problem "getting tricked into" breaking things. And yet, on mine, I can easily enable side-loading, or even unlock the bootloader.
ChromeOS is a similar story - even more so, actually, given that it can run a full fledged Linux distro within the system.
Another peak self-absorbed Hacker News comment, in which we learn that curiosity only means tinkering with devices, learning how they work to the bits, plus some random Linux thrown in.
This comment is ignoring that a device that does all that without you having to worry about how it works is a tool way more powerful than one in which you need to at least know how to build everything from scratch with an enormous learning curve.
Curiosity can be about design, the arts, literature, drawing, composing music, making and editing videos. All of which you can do so much better and so much more democratically on these “opinionated” devices.
So please, enough with this narrative, it’s really outdated and based on such a limited world view.
> BigTech is trying to make open computer hardware and software illegal, because "security".
I wonder what they stand to gain from this, since they wouldn't bother if there wasn't a benefit.
Android I can possibly understand, what with Google being an ad-company and expecting to track users. But Apple doesn't seem to be doing that all that much anymore.
For the tractor situation, John Deere & friends expect to capture the business of independent repair shops, so there's a gain in their locking down the devices.
If I buy an iPhone to run myOS on it, how's this a loss to Apple? Especially since they don't charge for IOS updates, and they also support their phones for a long time, so if I don't buy a new iPhone every year it's not because I'm running some custom OS. My iPhone 7 still has all the latest updates and I haven't paid Apple one cent ever since I bought it used more than four years ago.
Apple is not in biz of selling phone or laptop. They sell complete ecosystem. If you own an iPhone, airpod are magical, AirTag/iCloud makes sense. Why not also buy Macbook to tinker with own apps and an iPad when you need pencil/touch. And not just current, you also capture all future innovation, so you can charge for digital downloads. You can make new rules to charge for all digital transactions across all apps.
What you are suggesting is to allow 3rd party to join in the ecosystem.
If IBM had been smarter and launched PC as a closed platform it would have been a 10/100 trillion dollar enterprise.
> What you are suggesting is to allow 3rd party to join in the ecosystem.
Not necessarily. They could still continue to charge for every download, just as I can, and already do, listen to music on my iPhone without an Apple Music subscription and without purchasing from the iTunes store.
If I want the whole Apple experience, I will continue using macOS / IOS. Hell, that's the reason why I started buying MacBooks when I could afford them: the "apple experience".
But I also run Linux on my work PC, because for that I don't care about the Apple experience. But I hate my HP laptop, for comfort reasons. If I could buy a MacBook and have Linux run on it as well as it does on the hp, I would (because I love the hardware) and that would be a net gain for Apple, wouldn't it?
I get the whole point of the "experience" and "ecosystem", etc. Up until a few years ago I absolutely loved it. Still love my iphone and wouldn't switch to android.
But now I can't stand macOS anymore for my work needs. I'm looking to buy a new laptop to use Linux on it. The offers from Lenovo / HP / Dell don't look all that great to me. I would absolutely buy an MBP if I knew Linux worked perfectly on it, but I know it doesn't, so Apple doesn't get to make a sale.
The point is: If I want to tinker with an iPhone and would not buy one if I couldn't, why is it a loss for Apple to sell an extra phone, even if the buyer won't consume their other digital products? The seller wouldn't have consumed them anyway, especially without buying the iPhone.
Yes, there's the support side of things, but again, they could have some sort of warranty voiding system in place.
There are fundamental engineering trade-offs here. The amount of effort required to secure a device AND make it accessible to "tinkerers" would be an effort worthy of an MIT research lab. It's not trivial, and a huge security risk to satisfy 0.01% of the user base. Especially when such users will likely just buy an open source device anyways. Seems like a huge waste of effort to me.
Do you think Apple engineers don't have access under the hood? Simply provide that access to those who request it, everyone else can keep it locked. Problem solved.
I'm not overly familiar with the low-level details of iPhones and Android phones, but it's not clear to me why it would be such a big effort to allow one to install whatever OS they like on an iPhone.
Maybe display a big, scary "unofficial OS, you're on your own, don't bother us if your iPhone becomes unusable". Maybe have one jump through some hoops, like getting an "approval" code by signing some mile-long EULA on the iCloud account stating you forego any software-related warranty / support.
This should be enough to deter "regular users" from messing with their phones, and Apple wouldn't have to go to any length to guarantee that a "restored" device isn't compromised. Kind of like the KNOX thing on Samsung phones used to work.
And this actually seems to be possible, since people are having success with running Linux, a non-apple sanctioned OS, on the M1 Macs, which have the secure enclave, etc. My understanding is that whatever issues they are experiencing are related to hardware support.
I think the point there isn’t a technical challenge, but rather a business challenge. Namely, Apple probably actually cares about how satisfied their customers are. They probably could easily make their iPhones support following instructions from some forum about how to install Fortnite hacks, but some of those hacks are going to cause problems for their customers, either accidentally (bugs) or maliciously (spyware, random ware, etc.). The typical response from a HN thread might be “well if the user installs something that’s their problem,” but Apple probably actually cares about their customers’ satisfaction more than they care about assigning moral culpability.
Apple probably actually cares about their customers’ satisfaction more than they care about assigning moral culpability.
This is it right here. Power-users will blame the user for having their device compromised. Users, on the other hand, will blame Apple. Apple will do anything they can to avoid negative PR like that.
> They probably could easily make their iPhones support following instructions from some forum about how to install Fortnite hacks, but some of those hacks are going to cause problems for their customers, either accidentally (bugs) or maliciously (spyware, random ware, etc.).
I don't know what the state of the world is today, but I've installed custom OSes (mostly Linux) on every Mac I've owned (my most recent was a 2012 Retina which I really liked).
Installing a custom OS isn't easy and it's pretty obvious to everyone it means thinking "Yes, it's a good idea to lose support for almost every program I run". By "everyone", I really do mean that: I've never heard of an anecdote of someone who's mother wiped MacOS and threw Ubuntu on their box and encountered some bugs. Technical knowledge about security isn't out there, but we do get "Apple makes the system that is an iPhone, going away from Apple's product means abandoning my iPhone" seems to be there, even if they don't understand what it means for something to be an operating system.
The engineering effort is entirely surmountable; we already have a pretty decent solution in Chrome OS's Developer Mode.
"Security" has become the excuse big companies use for everything they foist on users. Better update to that new OS version that ruins the user interface -- it comes with security patches! Better make sure you can't play any games that aren't approved by Apple -- it's the only way to make iPhones secure! Better centralize the entire Internet so it all depends on four or five giant corporations to run -- they're the only ones who can be trusted to implement security!
I don’t know. Why can’t we have both? Why can’t we have devices that permit “mucking about” but also when configured appropriately allow us to ignore the low level details and muck about with higher level stuff? They don’t have to be mutually exclusive despite “bt whole home wifi app has detected this is a jailbroken device and for your safety will not run”. It’s my wifi, it’s my phone!
Right now, I have a nearly uncrackable walled-garden iphone on my desk. And a mac laptop running XCode (learning about Metal programming), and at the same time running an Amiga emulator (tinkering with 68k assembly), and a windows gaming laptop next to it, and a breadboard on the floor with a pile of resistors and capacitors and transistors.
For a communications device they will take into school, that they rely on for school work, communicating with parents and teachers, and with each other on social media and contains a lot of private information, that is probably the right choice. An open system with zero security and no guard rails is simply not appropriate for that use.
Games were in some way 99% of my use of the Apple IIc we had, which was my first computer. Original Bard's Tale in glorious green screen. Good times.
However, I also spent a lot of time painstakingly copying BASIC games, line by line from magazines, then figuring out how to expand upon them for additional features. Gaming was just the gateway drug.
Sure, but the possibility was there. I was given a ZX Spectrum clone and started coding, my brother only played games. I am not sure I would work in IT if that didn't happen.
We were pretty much poor by today's standards and probably could not afford another such device, never mind that we would not know what to buy (as nobody in my family had any IT experience and there was no IT shop in our small town).
Where are the parents? Who is giving kids phone instead of something else? Also, why should kids tinker with computers if they can explore art by painting or music by learning an instrument or literature by reading?
What makes it important for them to use Unix rather than something that works fine the way it is while maintaining some standard of UX?
If kids show an interest in computers, they can just install unix on some computer like a raspberry pi and tinker on that.
Kids might not even know they have an interest in engineering (which is not the same as "interest in computers"). Back in 90s, a lot of kids, myself included, found out that we like that stuff because we were inadvertently exposed to it while playing our video games, and, later on, surfing the early Web. My first programming language was MS-DOS batch files, simply because it was readily available.
> Where are the parents? Who is giving kids phone instead of something else?
The parents might not know better.
> Also, why should kids tinker with computers if they can explore art by painting or music by learning an instrument or literature by reading?
They should be given the chance to do so, as they should be given the chance to explore art or craft or a lot of other things.
> What makes it important for them to use Unix
I don't see how mentioning Unix is relevant here. They should be given the opportunity to play and tinker with the devices, not only the preplanned path with games on the devices, that is all.
But they DO have the chance. They can boot some VM with Ubuntu or get a raspberry pi or a nodemcu and tinker away. They don't have to be able to tinker on EVERY device.
When my kids reach the age that they need a phone, probably sooner than I want to admit right now, I'd rather have them use some restricted device with some level of security checks in place for apps, so an iPhone, than something that is totally open which would make them vulnerable to being phished or persuaded to install viruses, etc. "Best way to play fortnite 10, download here".
> What makes it important for them to use Unix rather than something that works fine the way it is while maintaining some standard of UX?
The concern is whether the device is a piece of paper or a television. A television can show much more complex images under the control of the average child, but it is purely for consumption. A piece of paper lets you display anything you can draw or you can turn it into a paper plane or do origami, but the realism of the resulting products is going to be much less, and they will be relatively static.
An iPhone is, by design, a television. Unix systems are pieces of paper.
Last time I used MacOS, it was a functional piece of paper and it worked as a television too, so there isn't really any dichotomy here. Any television could be built on top of a piece of paper and give you access to the base level too.
The concern is that the television is winning out: even though Android and iOS are built from pieces of paper, their maintainers only bless television-like interfaces. Frankly, I believe a major part of this is because they're built on top of Unix like interfaces, which is based certain assumptions that they don't want to maintain. So I certainly wouldn't say Unix-like is the solution.
The problem is that there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be able to disable your iPhone's security and mess around with it if that's what you want. Apple owns the device, not you.
If you open Chrome devtools on Facebook there’s a huge red warning saying “if someone told you to do this they are trying to scam you and steal your account!”
So there may be a good reason why Apple don’t want this to happen, given that essentially everything is on your phone these days.
> So there may be a good reason why Apple don’t want this to happen
Yes, this is why the phones are locked by default. This is not at all why the phones aren't unlockable, though. They can be unlockable and still be secure. Apple just doesn't want to give you the choice.
Yes there is. I don't want Facebook or Google to move all their apps to side loading or an alternate store with lax controls and opaque privacy disclosure. I need to use their apps, but I want them to have to satisfy Apple's app store policies. Side landing and alternate stores would cripple the effectiveness of those policies.
So the reasoning is "if you allow my phone to be unlocked, so many people will want alternate stores that Facebook and Google will unlist their apps from the App Store and use the alternative stores only, and then they won't be as rigorously reviewed"?
Like how you can't get Facebook on the Play Store because it's only available on F-droid on Android, for example?
Epic, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Spotify and a host of other companies are itching to get on to a rival 'Freedom' app store on iOS, with lax controls and weak privacy disclosure. Where they go, users would have to follow. It's not as though users are crying out for weaker privacy disclosure, but they'd go anyway.
Facebook is quite happy on the Play Store because it has weak privacy and disclosure policies, because Google has no interest in enforcing such things.
Nope, you're surreptitiously adding a righteous "the people will freely choose what suits them best" twist to the parent's post. That's a rich assumption, history proves that "the people" just want their shiny toy and will sheepishly accept whatever condition imposed by the manufacturer. Remember IE6?
Then people arguing this should stop being disingenuous that this is somehow about enabling user freedoms, and outright say "your phone should take away your choice because you can't be trusted with it" .
Hundreds of millions of people freely choose to delegate those details to Apple, and we don’t want people like you forcing loopholes in the system so other companies can do an end run around those controls. Arguing that this is all in our interests is what’s disingenuous.
Yes, I can't pwn this device which makes it incredibly hard for anyone else to pwn this device. Very convenient actually, in that my most critical and private communications flow through it and it goes everywhere I do.
Really secure data goes through a seperate device of which I have total control, but which I treat carefully (and less conveniently). It's a very comfortable trade-off.
It's not untrackable unless you opt out of "FindMy" services and disable bluetooth (disable, rather than disconnect).
Why can't I run Xcode on iOS or iPadOS devices? What's the technical limitation? These devices have the capability to render stuff on larger screens wirelessly, and one can connect keyboards to them. The limitation is purely artificial.
I guess it depends on who "you" are. A lot of kids get exactly one device. Some have to share it with their siblings as well. So I do think it matters whether our most widely used devices are completely locked down or not.
It doesn't just matter for kids either. It also matters for democracy how many people only own devices that governments have complete control over.
That said, I do think the problem can be exaggerated. People tend to find ways around restrictions. It can even be a motivation for looking more deeply into how things work.
And not all of those workarounds are terribly expensive. Ironically, the most expensive devices are also the most locked down.
> I guess it depends on who "you" are. A lot of kids get exactly one device. Some have to share it with their siblings as well. So I do think it matters whether our most widely used devices are completely locked down or not.
This is true, but RPi Zeros are so cheap and powerful that I think it's much easier for community organisations (schools, scouts, dedicated groups) to start hacking events. The kid who can't get a 10 USD computer and a phone and access to a shared laptop is the kid who couldn't access to shared desktop in the olden days. In those days entry level could be a month's salary for a professional.
For the households where every kid has their own laptop, a Pi is accessible.
And for those who only have access to single shared machine, the kid today has access to a VM. That means they have options the rest of us didn't have - I couldn't run Linux until I had a paper round, because installing Linux on the family computer was not going to happen.
Perhaps one clear advantage to the old world is that in the 1980s and early 1990s, anyone could write an operating system and eventually get something that could do everything their old computer could do. I mean the idea was tractable. It's not like today where even thinking about creating a web browser filled Microsoft and Opera with such dread they gave up.
To be clear: I don't think it's all rosy today. But I don't think it's all bleak either.
> It also matters for democracy how many people only own devices that governments have complete control over.
You are right that there's social implications here, but I think the social concerns are primary and not a consequence of the technical situation. We arrived at this situation because companies decided they own their customers when we have massive social problems mistrust and distrust. This has come on the back of a generation that learnt abominations like a company's only obligation is to its shareholders. If you want to build trustworthy business, you need to maintain the right culture.
I don't disagree, but I think we're talking about a couple different issues here.
One question is whether a low income but educated and dedicated parent can find a way to acquire some hackable device for a highly motivated kid. I think the answer is probably yes, with some exceptions in extremely poor countries.
But that's not the most likely scenario. A far more likely scenario is a kid that wants to modify the device they're actually using on a daily basis to make it do something slightly different. There are no parents involved, and it would be utterly pointless to hack some completely different device like a Raspberry Pi just because it's more hackable.
So I worry that widespread use of locked down devices and locked down distribution channels makes the path from consumer to power user to hacker to software engineer to entrepreneur far less smooth. Some people who could have been interested in being more than mere consumers are going to be left behind.
You are absolutely right that access to all sorts of devices is hugely easier and cheaper than back in the 70s, 80s and 90s. It's definitely not all bleak. It was a decidedly rich country upper/middle class affair at the time. But we're also having to live with restrictions that would've been unimaginable back then.
Just imagine Microsoft in 1995 attempting to restrict what software people were allowed to install on their PCs. Imagine what regulators would have said if Microsoft had tried to charge 30% on all software and content loaded onto PCs. Or what if Microsoft had been able to issue no-recourse lifetime bans on using any of their software and platforms?
The objection that Microsoft was a monopolist isn't really convicing given that they were replaced by a hugely more powerful and ubiquitous oligopoly that now runs the actual economy, not some tiny niche called "The New Economy".
When I was a kid I would have killed to have had easy access to things like Raspberry Pi's, microcontrollers, SGI workstations (which is what the Mac is these days), and a zillion free programming languages.
Instead, while I had full access to the family's PC and could learn C and assembly language programming on it (btw I had to pay for those compilers), and learned all about interrupts and writing to VGA registers, I still couldn't do anything super low-level like muck around with the boot sector because my dad needed it for work, the phone system was so locked down that you'd go to jail for "exploring" it, and I had barely any idea how to get started playing around with logic chips because there was nothing like Sparkfun, Adafruit, Hackaday, etc, and Radio Shack in the mid-90s really wasn't much help.
There is still room for improvement - yes it would be nice if all the tech we used was both hackable and secure - but geeks who want to tinker are living in a land of plenty right now.
You can? There are tons of kits and circuit boards and parts and everything electronic imaginable available for quick delivery right now. Back in the day we had Radio Shack, but it couldn’t hold a candle to all the circuit boards and electronic components available today. It’s an embarrassment of riches.
This has to be the least charitable reading of Crazyontap's comment. Couldn't you have just inserted the implied:
> I was just talking to a friend the other day on how badly Apple and Google are trying their best to kill curiosity and creativity [with regard to the computer they're using].
Also:
> So please, enough with this narrative, it’s really outdated and based on such a limited world view.
You'll have to explain how it's a "limited world view" to suggest that we can have our cake and eat it too: that we can have open, hackable platforms that are also popular and easy to use.
It's called democratic discussion, but sure, go ahead, call me a troll. If that's your only argument, I think you've effectively helped in explaining what a limited world view is with a very practical example.
Creative professionals gained immensely through Apple's approach. If I'm a music producer, a film maker, a writer, a graphic designer, and so on, I gain immensely from a computer that just works 99% of the time. I don't need or want to spend time on thinking what's the best set of drivers I should install, or worrying about all the dependencies of this new open source program with no hint of UX-design I've just installed.
And yet, anything that isn't exactly that is often dismissed as lower class by people who have learned that over years and years, and don't seem to understand that there's an entire world of good people who just want to apply their curiosity at a different level.
That is, in my opinion, a limited world view. In my experience, it also does not happen both ways. People that can't do that (but maybe can master film coloring post-processing -- I invite you to give a stab at that, if you dare) have enormous respect of the low level tinkerers. The opposite is very often not through.
> I gain immensely from a computer that just works 99% of the time
Are you implying that Linux doesn't work 99% of the time? If so, you are mistaken. I'm running Linux for me and my relatives without issues for years. I'm not a programmer/hacker.
Just choose the hardware designed for it (exactly like in the case of Apple).
Ohh come on. I am not against linux but to say it works flawlessly is ridiculous. My last try with it a few years was the most ridiculous. If i plugged my bamboo stylus, the screen would just go all crazy, as soon as i unplugged it, back to normal. Stylus worked on windows and mac, but on linux (ubuntu lts) i couldn’t even plug it in (and took me a while to find out that was the problem as it installed everything fine, then after the reboot this happened, only when i decided to disconnect everything but the monitor and try plugging one by one did i find this out
And lets not even go over the ux disaster that is the mix and match of uis from various apps.
Here comes your problem (which I actually mentioned in my above post). Choose hardware designed for Linux if you want it to really work. Why don't you complain that your Windows installation does not work well on a Macbook?
If I plug a non supported device on my macbook, the screen doesn't go all scrambly.
And even so, how can you say it works 99% of the time if you have to go and research each piece of peripheral that you want to use? Normal users go to bestbuy or amazon or whatnot and buy a microphone, they don't want to go and see if it works on ubuntu or whatnot or have weird behaviours at home. you can blame manufacturs for not supporting linux while they support win/mac, but again, normal users experience just isn't that great.
You said you are running linux for you and your relatives. Who installed it on your relatives machines? Who checked the compatibility of each hardware and maybe even bought some replacement things to work on linux? I know most users/relative I know wouldn't go to websites to try to find out if this or that works well with this and that. They just want to go to a shop, buy a laptop+accessories and plug them in when they get home
Yes, the actual problem is the lack of preinstalled Linux on retail products. You can find that in online shops though. My laptop came with Linux preinstalled and I can’t recommend it enough.
They're replying to a comment arguing for open devices. Saying "I'm fine with a closed device" is at best irrelevant. "I'm fine with a locked-down computer" is no argument against "I want my computer to be more open", as, in the end, if you're fine with your locked-down computer, just keep it locked down.
> it also does not happen both ways. People that can't do that (but maybe can master film coloring post-processing -- I invite you to give a stab at that, if you dare) have enormous respect of the low level tinkerers. The opposite is very often not through.
This feels related to the saying that it’s easier to innovate down the stack than it is to innovate up the stack. It’s far easier for Apple to design and fabricate its own chips than it would be for Intel to make its own consumer OS.
I program DSP software, but I find DaVinci Resolve SUPER daunting. I completely agree (and am also a Mac user, for what that's worth)
There are so many domains where you can dive incredibly deeply into 'em. Some of them are computer augmented, and benefit from a stable, predictable computer host. There's been a lot of instances over the years where Macs served that role of 'creativity toaster' and did it well… now we've got the same thing, except for phones.
Anybody who's used to that situation doesn't find the status of iPhone ecology shocking. A bargain is being made. Or a service is being hired, from effectively a computer administrator.
Because we also need sophisticated, powerful internet communications devices that contain our personal data, private photos and video, social media information, etc, etc and that we also rely on for a huge range of creative tasks.
These are not the right tools to also have completely exposed with no security or guard rails, where we can easily open up or broadcast everything to the world.
You can have your cake and eat it too, there are devices available that work just how you want, but that doesn't mean every device has to work that way. It certainly doesn't mean that my device has to work that way, just because you want it to.
Why do you make the assumption that a device with freedom would be a device to worry about?
This is exactlty what the op is saying.
The Apple narrative of "we have full control over your device and your software for your own good" is horrible and worrying. I'm not gonna make a parallel about Apple source of inspiration but it doesn't scream creativity, freedom and certainly not democracy.
Apple’s approach is pragmatic. If they offered anyone the ability to jailbreak, you would see major app makers manipulating naive users into jailbreaking in order to bypass security, payment restrictions or similar. Even the limited options Apple provides are already abused, such as Facebook convincing users to install VPN profiles with their Ovano product and abusing it to spy on users.
Having the option defeats the fundamental advantages their approach offers.
There are a lot of problems with Apple’s approach from an antitrust perspective and fair competition should be regulated through legislation, but there are good reasons for closed ecosystems to exist and plenty of great alternatives for people who want something more open.
Until we leave in a capitalistic system?
Apple should be scrutinized, but I prefer a world in which a company with strong values polices the ethical limits of technology, to one where companies like Facebook (and Google, to a lesser extent) hypocritically push an open agenda just to exploit such technologies to milk our data.
> If they offered anyone the ability to jailbreak, you would see major app makers manipulating naive users into jailbreaking in order to bypass security
This is FUD. Linux works flawlessly despite giving all the freedoms. Typical users don't install anything outside the repositories. Apple has countless problems with security and privacy in their App Store.
Unfortunately you can't even find a Linux computer in shops anywhere, which could be the reason few people use it. It's actually harder to find malware there.
See also: Android is Linux used by the general public.
Funnily, you can find various somewhat-Linux devices in stores mostly, except they're called 'Chromebooks'. This is the same device series that uses Coreboot as a boot loader and usually had an internal screw to remove to disable firmware write protections and fully unlock the device, as well as other visually and auditory (they make a large beep on boot) tamper-evident 'developer unlock' modes. Nowadays instead of the 'unlock screw', there's a mandatory security chip that can be unlocked into a less visibly tamper-evident mode in which it is disabled via a special USB-C cable for sale on the open market with a reference schematic available as well, which is a much more fun solution to assert physical access. [1]
Many older models also would run mainline Linux fine, and the default Chrome OS install usually has a container and a Wayland to Chrome adapter behind a toggle.
> This is FUD. Linux works flawlessly despite giving all the freedoms.
eyebrows raise to the ceiling
> Typical users don't install anything outside the repositories.
head tilts nearly horizontal with the floor
"Flawlessly" is here being stretched beyond the breaking point, and anyone who is OK with only installing software from the official repos for any major Linux distro is not a "typical user", very obviously.
I've been using Linux exclusively since the mid 90s. I've run so many different variants. I was a attended the church of Slackware for a long time. There has never been a time in my many years of using Linux that anything has been "flawless" and I _definitely_ have to install things "outside the repositories" pretty regularly. Even if that's a broad statement meaning "any type of repository anywhere, including but not limited to git."
Right, I'm struggling to think of a user profile that would be OK with just software from major distro repos.
"Normal" users? They're going to want several proprietary programs, some of which will surely not be in even the non-free repos, unless they're an only-uses-the-browser type who'd be fine with a Chromebook (or, more realistically for that user profile, just their phone).
Power users? I have to assume my experience of often wanting or needing something outside official repos, or a newer version of something in official repos, is far from unusual. I'm not even that demanding a power user, and that's still a very common situation for me. What's worse is the more one chases system stability, the worse this problem becomes, since Linux distros mix the base system and user-facing applications all together (and the structure of x-window-system/wayland/drivers/GTK/QT makes it hard not to do this)
> Apple’s approach is pragmatic. If they offered anyone the ability to jailbreak, you would see major app makers manipulating naive users into jailbreaking in order to bypass security, payment restrictions or similar.
The problem is a social one and hasn't been properly solved by technical measures as you note. Instead of acting like the digital world is somehow separate from the rest of the world, we should have enough strong and effective laws and regulations that if a person steals from me, they can reasonably expect to spend a few years in prison.
The result of discovering a person has released a fraudulent product to the Google Play Store is currently that they get get their Google account shut down, maybe. The actual result should be that they find out what the inside of a prison cell is.
The result of discovering that a company tracks a user without effective permission through the use of dark patterns that meant a user pressed "I agree" under the misapprehension that this was the only way of using the app should have their shares acquired by the justice system at a penalty rate - or some other effective penalty so that companies don't balance the cost of obeying the law with the cost of the fine.
If Apple believes that their users want protection from digital thieves, Apple has a responsibility to lobby for better laws and regulations. They can't use halfmeasures as a pretense in the hope that some amorphous other will get laws that protect their users passed.
Democracy is about choice, including the right to make choices you disagree with. You can choose to use an iOS device, or you can chose not to. I choose to use one, and I like the way it works. You or others like you want to take that choice away from me.
I don't want my kids rooting their phones. Also I use facebook, but I dislike it and don't trust them, but I use it and Messenger occasionally to keep in touch with some friends. I also use WhatsApp fair bit.
I like the fact that Facebook can't pull their apps from the store, put them on a rival store with lax standards, or otherwise circumvent the app store controls. These controls clear benefits for me, but side loading and alternate stores would cripple their effectiveness. In fact crippling the effectiveness of these controls is the purpose of side loading and alternate stores.
If you want a phone you can root, buy one. There are options out there. Why do you want to take my choice away from me?
You keep repeating this disingenuous argument. If you don't want to root your phone, don't root it. If you don't want your kids to be able to root their phones, don't pretend like you aren't taking away their choice.
If you don't want rival stores with lax standards, don't install them. Just don't keep telling people who want to be given a choice that they're somehow "taking your choice away from you".
If you want to be in prison, go ahead, but don't pretend that having the option to leave is somehow "taking your choice away".
This is unrealistic. If it were easy to root an iPhone, then we would reach a situation where app developers would stop releasing necessary apps in the App Store because they want to bypass all the ethical behavior it requires. It would effectively force everyone to the lowest common denominator.
If it were possible to root an iPhone, Facebook would have never agreed to give users the option to stop tracking them across apps; they would have instead said “please watch this video and do what it says to continue using Facebook/Instagram!” and guide naive users into rooting their phones.
Closed ecosystems have many advantages (and disadvantages) over open ones. However, a closed ecosystem with a gaping hole in the wall is no longer a closed ecosystem; you can’t have it both ways.
I don't know what to tell you if you believe that, while conversions drop off a cliff if the "signup" button isn't prominent, asking users to unlock their bootloader and install a third party app store just to get Facebook working on their phone is a thing that would get a nonzero amount of users.
Epic literally did this with Fortnite on Android, one of the largest mobile games in existence - they taught users how to download the APK and sideload the app to avoid the Google Play store.
It's directly relevant. It's an example of a large company forcing its users to learn how to implement a somewhat complicated bypass to an app store to avoid having to follow its rules, something that no one tries on Apple because of how tightly Apple controls its ecosystem.
It wouldn't just be facebook though, it would be all facebook's apps (Messenger, WhatsApp, etc), plus all Google's apps, Amazon, Fortnite, Spotify, etc, etc. A single 'Freedom' store with all that on it would have huge pull and would completely undermine the effectiveness of the App Store's privacy policies. No thanks.
This doesn't happen on Android because Google has no interest in enforcing strict privacy policies on the Play Store.
So you agree that iPhones should be used in whatever way the user wants, including using a different app store? I mean, it is a choice that you disagree with but for some reason it should be taken away. Why?
It's not about you. It's about the direction that technology has been taking where a big chunk is controlled by very few companies that are more powerful than a lot of countries.
I want to be able to chose a device I control, with software I control because I have strong concerns on privacy, freedom to create and waste management. My choices are quite limited and things are hardly moving in the right direction.
Do your concept of democracy being all about your own choices and seeing anybody with different point of view as your enemy kinda reinforce my point. This is not about your specific choices and personal freedom. This is about everybody choices and freedom.
Yes, authoritarianism as a business freaks me out, seeing people embracing it and embracing the fake sentiment of safety it provides is freaking me out. And yes, I do think it's time the Apple and Google duopoly is broken down and people are actually given choice.
No. It's not just that individuals can't tinker with hardware. It's also startups having this problem. Apple is integrating the entire supply chain. What we need is better "modularization" of the market where everybody has access to important components.
> Another peak self-absorbed Hacker News comment, in which we learn that curiosity only means tinkering with devices, learning how they work to the bits, plus some random Linux thrown in.
I think you are mixing up "not having to worry about how it works" with "having the freedom to tinker". We should demand both. One reason is for our curiosity. The other is to have checks and balances on the big companies.
We should. What I'm saying is that we still have that, and more. The suggestion is mostly the opposite, from comments like yours. That we should have less things like the Apple ecosystem, which has been fundamental in creating an entire generation of creative tinkerers, exactly because of its opinionated and broadly simplified nature.
The big companies have all the technical resources, and profoundly strong motivation, to apply their own malware and harm the user.
You do NOT check and/or balance big companies by allowing them the freedom to tinker alongside the little guy. They will wrest the machines to their purposes every time, and they are Not Happy about obstacles in their path.
Having checks and balances on big companies is a very good argument but it points the opposite direction from how you're seeing it…
It's about having choice: Microsoft used to be quite good at making stuff usable but the underlying geekery was still there and could allow control to the max if you wanted it.
It worked for mom & pops and techs alike but corporations new attitude of "We'll decide what's best and remove other options" is a bloody pain in the arse now.
A particularly bad one is this insistence on not allowing me to permanently say "no" to something. It's always "maybe later" or "remind me in 24 hrs" or similar... even Firefox does it now when you set it up - I think it was to do with sending FF to my mobile or something - but the message was "do it now" or "do it later"... I don't want it EVER!
So, no! I don't want anyone else's opinion for stuff like this - let me decide what's best for me and allow me to tinker if I want!
> If anyone knows where the "I'm happy to control things myself" setting is in Teams, please share.
It's the X button in the top right corner.
In the olden days we had individual developers who would work out the internal API these applications used to work. I wonder if that's still theoretically possible. Surely it must be? Even if the client app needs a signed certificate, since it runs in an unsigned environment (i.e. Linux) it should be possible to grab the certificate and present that when you need it.
> Microsoft used to be quite good at making stuff usable but the underlying geekery was still there and could allow control to the max if you wanted it.
Windows 10 is the best Windows ever for the vast majority of people who use Windows. Same with Office. But you can still install whatever software you want on your Windows machine. Explain to me again how this is worse than what we used to have; where Microsoft have gone wrong in how they build software? Is it perfect? Of course not - no-one could even agree on what that means. But let’s be realistic about how much progress has actually happened: it’s a lot.
Also, almost every patch has issues these days: that hardly ever used to happen. Their quality has taken a dive.
I am not saying that is isn't the perfect tool for many people: it has been for many years. The issue is that when I wanted to change things and leave them changed, I used to be able to do that. Now, they are doing their best to remove that ability! That makes no sense! Let me break it if I want! I have no warranty anyway!
Disable Windows update and it comes back on due to the Windows Update Medic Service. Ok, disable that then! Oops, you're not allowed. Ok, I can circumvent this by changing permissions on the dll and then deleting it. I'll then run updates later at a time of my choosing. Now I run updates. Oops, it's back again! Microsoft knows best.
By all means make it easy for the "typical" user. But I wish they'd stop taking away the underlying power-user stuff because they think they know best!
Update disabling is still there - gated behind more expensive editions and enterprise policy settings, because Microsoft likely had gotten a bad reputation in the past for systems with updates disabled becoming botnet nodes due to vulnerabilities.
In a way, the restrictions which used to be exclusive to Home are now part of Pro, the more expensive Pro for Workstations is what Pro used to be and Enterprise (also available through a per-user subscription model instead of a per-machine model, cheaper in a way for individuals with 5 PCs nobody else uses) also has some extra toggles not removed.
I think the subscription versions also include an Intune license which is the only supported way (other than installing third-party AV) to disable Windows Defender permanently, as well.
Now, MDM-managed Apple phones still come with a number of core restrictions, though I believe there's more loose side loading on there - however you have to register Apple hardware into MDM at purchase time as only authorized resellers can grant this access to a serial number.
Question, how does an individual go about acquiring an Enterprise license? For the exact reasons you mentioned (features, per-user licensing) I’ve tried in the past to get setup with a license and not had any luck.
These days there's a self-service panel on the Microsoft 365 sign-up/admin page once you've set up a tenant. I've not been asked for any formal business registration numbers via that process, but the old days of needing to acquire these licenses via a partner seem to be somewhat gone.
Yes, because it's based on a PC. A quite standard and open specification where you can buy motherboards, CPU, RAM, disk, IO peripherals etc from many different manufacturers and build and install what software you want. However, on a Mac, you cannot install or change the hardware as you like, you cannot install what software you want.
If Linus Torvalds was a teen today and there was no open PC standard, only a Mac, then it would not have been possible to create Linux the way it is today.
Imagine if also Microsoft starts to make their own processors and then sell their own computers with Windows and all locked down, and don't allow anyone else to make computers with Windows or their processors.
Sure Dell, HP and others could still make PC's, based on Intel or AMD CPU's or some ARM processor and then run Linux (or develop their own OS), but it's a hard sell.
The PC's sold to the mainstream thanks to Windows/Word/Excel maybe, but then people who wanted could tinker as much as they wanted and where free so make and sell their software (windows based or whatever) or their HW peripherals.
Now you are at best stuck within an app store if you create something.
> If Linus Torvalds was a teen today and there was no open PC standard, only a Mac, then it would not have been possible to create Linux the way it is today.
Torvalds didn't create Linux as a teen in his bedroom hacking on what he had. He created it at university studying operating systems. He would have created it on Raspberry Pi or some other platform.
Linux is widely deployed on x86 because x86 is available and open enough. It replaced Unix operating systems on dedicated architectures, like Solaris on SPARC.
> Sure Dell, HP and others could still make PC's, based on Intel or AMD CPU's or some ARM processor and then run Linux (or develop their own OS), but it's a hard sell
GNU/Linux was a hard sell in the beginning too. In the olden days, if you put Linux on a laptop you lost special features and you had very limited software support. Web pages were designed to work with IE only and you could only run Mozilla. Your major option for producing printable documents was special purpose programming languages like TeX or using Mozilla Composer. And good luck getting your winmodem/winprinter to do anything!
Today enough exists that you can buy hardware from companies that expect you to put Linux on them and then run them with full features and great intercompatibility. Your phone will be crap but it'll be good enough, and in ten years time it'll have a lot better features. Till then, if you want a great lowlight camera, buy a great lowlight camera.
The inversion of trust is a frustrating aspect of modern business, and it creates many social problems. But it isn't a technical barrier to oldschool hacking about.
Back in ~1997/8 I was working at a software manufacturing company - we burned and printed and shipped all the Solaris Software for SUN....
We would receive EDI data from sun to burn to CDs then do the fullfillment shipping - so If you went to SUN.com and ordered Solaris, it was made and shipped by us...
We needed a better way to receive the files from SUN, and so we had a few FTP servers... We hired a group of dudes who knew linux and had them setup our FTP machines, chrooting users and various security measures...
So I, the IT manager, sat down with one of the consultants that we had hired and I told him "You know, If I were you - I would setup a Linux Support company and offer Linux support as a service"
A few weeks later Dave Sifry came back to me and said "Guess what we started, LinuxCare... to offer Linux support as a service"
He was later valued at ~$100 million and LinuxCare was a ~$1 Billion company...
Chris DiBona of google fame was on the team, and I can't recall the two other guys' names...
But yeah - that was when support for Linux was basically non-existent...
Oh yeah - I forgot; SUN wanted us to learn this new thing that they were using to create the EDI files... XML. So we had to accomodate XML when the only people that knew XML at the time were SUN employees...
And finally, I think that SUN had the best logo ever made. And the shittiest firewall, Checkpoint sucked. (sorry Checkpoint team - your lead developers on Checkpoint were friends of mine... but I hated that firewall)
> Windows 10 is the best Windows ever for the vast majority of people who use Windows
Meanwhile I'm setting here just now, wasting hours hand-holding Windows10 because it's unable to install one of its own big feature updates, without any idea what was going wrong or where to start fixing the problem (because everything is so "user friendly").
You can learn about design, arts, literature, drawing et al without having to sacrifice the freedom to own your device. Apple devices deliver great UX despite their walled garden. They can have their ecosystem without locking people out of running their own software or making it difficult to repair it. Don't create a false dichotomy.
Ah well, you are basically replying to a limited world view by another limited one.
Notice how you say "Curiosity *can be* about design, ..." but then the tone of your comment reads like you mean "Curiosity *should only be* about design, ...". Please don't do that.
Curiosity can be about anything, lets just leave it at that.
These are sad times when someone who wants to "hack" and learn and disassemble and reassemble and just "understand" gets shit on "hacker news". "Limited world view"? Really? They are the one with the "Limited world view"?
The notion that computing devices that aren't wide-open are "kill[ing] curiosity and creativity" in anything other than a very restricted sense is a limited world view, yes. That such devices being available as an option at all rankles people so and drives them to insult anyone who likes them as mindless consumers (very common in discussions like this, on this site) is downright parochial.
Unnecessarily inflamatory - perhaps an ad-hominem attack, or appeal to emotion.
> in which we learn that curiosity only means tinkering with devices
Strawman argument - this is a blatant misrepresentation of GP's point.
> This comment is ignoring that a device that does all that without you having to worry about how it works is a tool way more powerful than one in which you need to at least know how to build everything from scratch with an enormous learning curve
False dichotomy (there's no reason you can't have an opinionated device that works flawlessly OOTB while also being extremely hackable) and another strawman (OP never advocated for you having to do everything yourself, only have the ability to tinker).
> So please, enough with this narrative, it’s really outdated and based on such a limited world view.
Another appeal to emotion.
I encourage you to take a class on logical argument, because this ain't it.
Unless you want a rootkit installed when you charge your phone with a public charger, it needs to be locked down. These restrictions are made for security and stability. If the average user doesn't need them, then don't enable them. Simple logic.
Your case of curiosity is a very very specific one, and while most people are curious in different ways, for those who are curious in the same way as you, anyone with an Apple device and an Apple computer can sit down and start tinkering with code and running stuff on their own iOS devices, it’s fun and pretty easy to get started. If I was just a child or a teenager today, I think I’d have just as much fun, probably a whole lot more, playing around with iOS and learning how it works and building really interesting applications using its extraordinary range of technologies, things that were never possible in the old days of tinkering.
I understand your point and yes, low-level hacking has become increasingly difficult due to both locking down and increased complexity.
There's still many ways to be creative though and I think there's also more potential than before due to increased resources for developing other kinds of applications.
Using "security" in air quotes diminishes the significant effort Apple and others put into making devices secure, and this does have fundamental trade-offs for the end-user. Some of us actually care a great deal about security, and appreciate the trade-offs and effort put in to making that happen.
I sympathize with the tinkerer mindset, but this mindset exposes serious lack of empathy in exposing REAL risk to REAL people by allowing anybody to hack devices simply to satisfy 0.01% of users who want to run a custom bootloader. This is not a valid engineering trade-off for a "trillion dollar company". The world doesn't revolve around you. There are other products on the market for tinkerers that don't involve exposing everyone from your grandma to politicians to serious security and privacy breaches.
Sometimes one in that 0.01% end up creating a world changing operating system like Linux.
I shudder to think what the world would have be if Andrew Tanenbaum/Linus/Wall/etc had to wait for a week long review after creating their software and got rejected every time because Apple support told them.. "Are you out of your freaking mind!? You possibly can't think we will let you do anything remotely like that on our hardware. P.S. Also your account is now permanently banned."
I keep reading this. What alternative do we have today that is as open to tinker and invent on as x86 hardware that is also widespread enough that it actually makes any difference at all?
> What alternative do we have today that is as open to tinker and invent on as x86 hardware that is also widespread enough that it actually makes any difference at all?
That is a disingenuous comparison though. Compare X86 market share when Linus started coding Linux and Librem/Pinephone market share today. The difference is that to have a snowball's chance in hell to grow and spread you need to be able to thinker and invent on the hardware most people use.
I'm not suggesting that we don't need more freedom for hardware most people use. I just say that if you want to support freedom, consider abandoning Apple and choosing other phones.
Linux became as popular as it is because it could run on the most widespread desktop hardware: IBM PC compatibles. And that was possible because it was an open ecosystem.
Both can coexist, they are not for the same usage. When I want to do something creative (i.e. create music), I don't want to tinker with a computer, I just want an appliance that works. I spent decades toying with computers, but there are others creative endeavors in life for me now. Apple (at least Jobs) was always about the idea that the general purpose computer was a mean not an end. An iPhone is not locked down if you see it for the appliance that it is. I'm glad that Linux exists and use it everyday at work though, it's just not the same thing.
>I mean when I first got my 286 the machine was just full of possibilities.
When I got my first 286 very little was available to me because it all had a cost. Want to learn C then get your wallet out to buy a C compiler. Want to learn Pascal then get your wallet out for Turbo Pascal . Want to learn UNIX, well hard lines, that stuff is only available in ivory towers.
The 286 was a little before my time, although I did spend a lot of time in the early 90's hacking on a 8086. It is always amazing to me that even in the 80's, Unix used to be considered an astoundingly heavy handed OS. Now with it legacy mostly living on via Linux, it is considered the light weight alternative. Funny the path these things take.
“Actually, I have never even checked 386BSD out; when I started on Linux it wast available (although Bill Jolitz series on it in Dr. Dobbs Journal had started and were interesting), and when 386BSD finally came out, Linux was already in a state where it was so usable that I never really thought about switching. If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened.“
If Linux hadn’t been created, 386BSD and its derivatives would be correspondingly more popular. Or Hurd would have happened. Or both. Maybe BeOS would be a contender amongst commercial OSes.
If Linux hadn’t been created things wouldn’t be that different in all likelihood.
And yet you can get a raspberry pi (which is way faster than your 286) for less than the price of a mediocre restaurant meal and learn all this stuff. Or an Arduino microcontroller to go even deeper low level.
There are so many ways to tinker with electronics right now - but my main computer and phone are not "games", they are tools that I expect to work in a secure way.
This comment fails to see the real reason that Apple, Google, and Microsoft lock down their hardware and software, ease of use.
A vast, vast majority of the population could care less about learning about interrupts, tinkering with BIOS settings, etc. They want a device that is easy to use, and as simple as possible. So companies therefore abstract away 90% of the "creativity-inducing" components because a computer is a lot less intimidating when the user clearly knows what they can and can't do with it.
Apple and Google are not sitting in a meeting room pitching the best ways to stifle creativity. They are selling a product to a population that wants their highly complex device to be as simple as possible.
> They want a device that is easy to use, and as simple as possible.
I'd add "reliable" or maybe more accurately "repeatable".
When my mother runs into technical problems, she will literally get frustrated to the point of tears. She doesn't give a single fuck whether she can change the OS or install unapproved software to tinker, she just wants the stuff that was working yesterday to still be working today.
When she wakes up and an OS update has broken some app she uses, she's never gone "Let me dig into why this happened, maybe I can fix it." and she never will. That's simply just something that has gone wrong in her life and ruined her day and now she needs to find a new way to do the thing that she wants to do.
But you're wasting your breath. A very vocal segment of HN are effectively fundamentalists about this. The fact that there exists a market segment best served by devices which do not conform to their fundamental ideals because they have different priorities is simply unacceptable regardless of any other consideration.
I remember back in my DOS days as a kid tinkering with autoexec.bat, himem and all that just to get an addition 10Kb or memory to run a game.
Now, with Windows in particular, they're slowly removing my ability to dick about and do what I want.
The defaults are all pretty much set to "we know best" and you have to jump through more and more hoops to disable stuff (Windows update, I'm looking at you!).
I'm moving to Linux (again) at the end of the month (got uni exams coming up... want to get them out the way). Had issues with it in the past but I will try and live with them this time as I want my freedom back.
This is why I ended up moving over to Linux many years back. I had run it on an off since about 1998 but about 5 years back there, I had blown away my install of Windows and for reason in particular I simply never reinstalled it.
It is just one of those things were very rarely I realize that I am running (by ratio) a fairly rare OS as just a daily desktop. To that, don't try and force your self onto Linux, eventually you may just sit with it and never go back to Windows. If you do, that's fine if that works for you. If you stay on Linux, cool power to you.
The lovely old 286 did not have a human's bank/card details and neither did it had any "sensitive" photographs. Devices nowadays have a lot of private information about their user and most of the people do not know how it keep it safe and secure.. to top it all, several bad actors are consistently after this private information.. hence the lockdown.
Your comment entirely misses the point of the article, and your frustration is completely backwards.
The current situation is that Facebook is not limited in their use of patterns that increase your engagement. The author of the comment is proposing some extensions to iOS that mean that Facebook is able to use patterns that increase your engagement, but you're also able to turn it off.
From your perspective of wanting more control over your devices, isn't this a win? It isn't injecting javascript into a running webapp with an extension that monkeypatches it. But you gave that up by using a native app on iOS. It gets you back a huge amount of control. If you want more, there's LineageOS (self compile it with patched source code by using robotnix) and PinePhone. The jump from trusted to trustless is a big one now but it's not insurmountable.
I doubt it. Every single time I have to do something more complicated on one of these GUI only devices, I get to appreciate how GNU/Linux ecosystem allows me to actually combine the power of multiple tools to achieve what I want quickly and my way.
Combining simple apps together like lego building blocks to build something, is where it shines.
There's no "my specific way". And people prefer to defer some things to me, because I can usually find some way to do tings in batches, rather than them doing those same things individually using common tools.
Exactly, I don't want to be at the mercy of a tech corporation to decide what's "healthy" for me or what exact degree of privacy I deserve.
Allow real browser extensions, I just want to be able to use uBlock origin. Not some overengineered "system extension" that can only check the network.
What a weird take. It completely ignores the massive impact that addictive apps have on people, how incapable governments are at regulating malicious/predatory behavior by companies like Facebook and others, and those tradeoffs.
This article is actually genius, and I truly believe they're good recommendations. Apple in these mockups wouldn't be forcing you to turn off addictive behaviors - it's just letting you know they exist, and giving YOU the power to help control it.
The jist of your post is that you want the freedom to smoke cigarettes without the oppressive government health warnings on the packages.
You're looking at the past through rose tinted glasses. I remember those times also. I remember when there was no internet, so your only source of information were these thick technical manuals, which often you had to pay a lot for. Developing software was also gated by expensive commercial compilers. Nowadays you get access to the wealth of documentation online and compilers for all major languages are available for free.
How about just making network access for apps opt-in rather than opt-out, and further more also making background network access a permission request, and something that can be monitored.
What's even worse is when you start to compare your phone with the operating system of your laptop.
Then you'll realize how much of our lifes are in the hands of a few designers from Silicon Valley. Sure, you can "disable notifications" for an app: But how about I can just "close" this app like I can on my computer?
It's a sad state of things when we on _hacker_ news discuss an open letter to a proprietary software vendor asking to implement pagination in what was supposed to be a web page.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 349 ms ] threadDid they make any API changes in iOS 15 announced yesterday?
We have permission settings for things like camera, microphone, and file system access. Why not go an extra step and add permissions on how apps take up our time.
In the Facebook app. Click the hamburger menu > Settings & Privacy > Mobile data usage > Tick 'Never Autoplay videos'
Yes, that applies to wifi too.
That said, this quote made me laugh out loud
> For example if you're struggling to use Tinder responsibly, you could create a condition that you can only use the app while FaceTiming with a friend.
In the words of John Lennon: “war is over (if you want it)”
But the rest of the post feels so off. Constantly nagging yourself to close social media? Reminding yourself that social media is a waste of time by asking whether the time is “well spent”? No thanks. These are just dark patterns but flipped to the other side. I want control over what I do, not a random program deciding what I should do.
I also have never found Screen Time restrictions to be effective; either I unlock the restrictions by myself, or I just find other ways to waste the time. The reason people waste so much time with social media, I think, is because they simply don’t have anything else to do, or they’re not motivated enough to do what they should do.
Infinite scroll just gives people more of what they want. Turns out, most people, most of the time, want the gorbage.
Infinite scroll is a dark pattern in the way it gives you something your addicted brain wants, and therefore you think you might want, but it's actually just a way for them to get more money.
Personal anecdote: I hardly read more than the front page on HN, even though I consider HN one of the least 'time wasted' sites I use, because I usually learn a lot because of it. On Reddit I just keep scrolling even though I often consider it wasted time in hindsight. I don't want HN to get infinite scroll and I deleted the Reddit app from my phone.
Dark patterns are particular UI patterns that are of a certain objective type regardless of whether or not the user is an addict.
Infinite scroll is not in the list.
Slot machines are addictive and are designed to get people to play as much and as long as possible, but they assiduously avoid dark patterns because people will avoid machines that pull that sort of bullshit and choose ones that don't.
The line between enjoyment and addiction is certainly not clear, or the same for everyone. But anything strongly designed to repeatedly pull you into repetitive behavior that you reliably find wasteful or harmful afterwards, is dark.
I you want a discussion of semantics then...
Wikipedia defines dark patterns as: "A dark pattern is a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things". Infinite scroll in many cases obviously fits this category as it tricks people into spending more time in an app. Fast company actually calls it the most prevalent dark pattern in this article:
https://www.fastcompany.com/90369183/deceptive-design-tricks...
Also, implying that slot machines don't apply dark patterns is incredibly naive. I'm pretty sure they do everything to make it seem like they don't. But even using a plastic card in stead of cash can be considered a dark pattern, because it disconnects you from the intrinsic form and it just because a number on a screen, causing it to lose its value while playing.
If it took them to a different view, or made a purchase, or caused some negative side effect that the user then has to engage with to cancel, then it would be subterfuge.
Giving the user more of what they explicitly desired (and provided user input to request in the form of a swipe up) is the opposite of a dark pattern.
A good example of a dark pattern is when cancel/confirm buttons swap places from their usual locations on the sale screen, to trick a user into clicking buy when they meant cancel. When a user gives the gesture for "more content" and they get more content, that's simply an app that works well.
It's not the UI that makes social interaction addictive. Second landlines for teenagers "addicted" to social networking was a thing long before Instagram.
I actually added a source that says that infinite scroll can be considered a prevalent dark pattern. I think this will become a useless discussion because there's no clearly defined definition of what is and isn't a dark pattern and I think that in the end it's how the user experiences it. To me it's a dark pattern, because I don't want to scroll infinitely, but I do it anyway. To you it isn't because it gives you precisely what you want. The only solution seems to agree to disagree.
Well, yes - normally you are scrolling to the bottom of the page. And when you reach the bottom, you stop, or you need to explicitly click "Next". But with infinite scroll, there is no bottom. You never reach a final or semi-final point. It's designed to maximize your time spent on the website/app, not for your well-being or helping you achieve your original aim - which was to absorb a limited set of information, not scrolling mindlessly forever.
Likewise, I swear Google was playing with infinite scroll in their search results recently, where I didn't have to hit next to see the next page of results. Same result for me - it was convenient and I didn't find myself spending more time looking for/at search results.
But when the context is addictive content, infinite scroll is always there to spoon feed you one more helping.
More often than not, infinite scroll isn't actually the UX pattern you're looking for. But on occasion, it does make sense. However, when combined with insidious content, a dark pattern it does become.
This comment doesn't deserve to be downvoted. I came to this thread holding this exact view. The ensuing discussion changed my mind. It's honestly asked and respectfully answered, the stuff this community is made of.
So ask the user once if they want to be reminded? You might not feel like social media is a toxic influence over your life but many people do.
The question for me comes down to, is there such a thing as social media without the addiction, where the financial incentives to the company aren’t tied to and engagement and behaviour. I’d like to think that’s possible.
I think the application should be judged, not the method necessarily.
Example : I have added/used extensions built to allow certain websites (google search, for example) to use infinite scrolling.
I never voluntarily added other 'dark patterns' to my interfaces, thus I think the way such a mechanism is applied is a major factor as to whether or not it's abusive.
I had never even considered it as a self-care system - but now that I do think about it, I agree with you.
I have my Mac announce the time every hour, which is very useful to make sure I don’t lose track of time - no matter what it is I’m doing
It's a business opportunity for Apple to be able to judge what gets graded as good, bad or a waste of time. That's what this is about in my opinion.
However, I'm not a fan of my device analyzing my behavior and bombarding me with notifications and questions every 15 minutes. To me, that's distracting and way too much noise. I like the way Screen Time already works. Leave the consequences to me, but give me an opportunity to check them.
Instead of hooking in to Facebook and adding content settings, to me it seems that in this case the "we should increase data/platform interop" line of thought offers a better solution than hoping the Apple ship can steer in this direction.
For that matter, do we know how many people use screenttime tracking/mitigating features anyway?
“When you schedule downtime in Settings, only phone calls and apps that you choose to allow are available. Downtime applies to all of your Screen Time-enabled devices, and you get a reminder five minutes before it starts“
Personally I ended up with a bit different solution, I wanted to do something similar, but needed it to work on my phone also so I ended up using nextdns to block part of the Internet (reddit and Facebook) after 10. Works reasonably well as trigger to stop my worst doomscrolling offenders.
I wrote up a short post on how to do it https://blog.nyman.re/2021/01/10/reduce-doomscrolling-with.h...
Unlike Apple's attack on privacy which makes them a differentiator in the marketplace, only at the expense of others, I don't see what's in it for Apple to do this?
Apple intentionally making that group of users bigger could be very bad for revenue
Furthemore, if people are using smartphones less maybe they'll realise they don't need an expensive smartphone to check whatsapp...
Plus Apple’s revenue isn’t based on app engagement; it’s hardware and services primarily. Using some apps less doesn’t impact the big picture of subscriptions (Music, iCloud+, News*, etc.) or hardware purchases like a new iPhone, AirPods, etc.
They’re probably using more apps from more authors, each app being built to do one thing well.
I was quite anti-Apple for a long time on the basis of it being a luxury brand that restricts the freedom of its users.
But it recent years as phone performance has become less of an issue meaning Apple's older phone models are basically just as good as mid-tier current year Android, the luxury label is not as extreme.
Additionally the M1 launch which basically transformed their 'real' computer laptop from being overpriced and literally hot garbage - to the best* dollar for dollar mobile machines.
So basically Apple has the hardware and software polished and at a great value but they have a very integrated ecosystem which means a single flaw breaks the whole cohesion.
Primarily, E2E encryption is broken by design because iCloud backup are not E2E and you can't know if any message recipient has iCloud enabled. Sure you could just use Signal/Matrix/etc but it breaks the cohesion - does your Apple watch get Matrix notification with the same polish as iMessage?
Also iMessage is also still iOS only right? Which is just insane. For a time Blackberry messenger was the best thing but it didn't last partly because it was vendor locked.
Whild I can ignore limits of phone OS's for the sake of security; MacOS is sort of anti-user to the point that third party projects like Homebrew work day & night to fix the ecosystem. Luckily now Nix(OS) on Darwin is an option for a more complete ecosystem but it is still other people fixing Apple's mistakes for free which is just unbearable.
Considering Microsoft runs Github which I believe Hombebrew and NisOS still both use extensively and I believe they do so for free or very cheaply(?) In any case, Apple seems like a poor steward of open source compared to other FAANGM(?) companies... maybe I am wrong but the G, M, & F seem more active than the Apple. Apple did just kill/abandon CUPs etc.
Again, I would just like to be wrong. Maybe you can already use Linux with Apple devices very well and maybe turning off iMessage and iCloud solves the E2E problem. But it just seems like Apple is 90% of the way there but refuses to do the last 10%.
I guess what I mean to say is Apple has some real problems to fix of its own before it should critize other apps even more. For instance, does iMessage come with a warning about broken/nerfed E2E? Or that mobile Safari has an anti-user and anti-standards implementation of PWAs (again last I check)?
yes, actually. Element iOS has dedicated Watch support and provides parity to iMessage (ability to react and reply etc to msgs). There’s also native Apple Watch Matrix clients so you don’t need to be tethered to your phone.
> but Linux sucks, it's ugly, it's broken, it doesn't work, blah blah blah!
The amount of time people spend complaining about the evil shit their monopolist is doing to them would be better spent learning how to use Linux. It's not that hard.
A farmer isn't going to make changes to their business model because the cattle is complaining. Microsoft is going to keep doing what they're doing until the government steps in (which is unlikely to happen any time soon). Same goes for Apple, Amazon, Google, and all these companies that are immune to competitive forces.
Google has become the epitome of bad ux and user-hostile design.
Tongue-in-cheek LotR reference, but, it was pretty clear that Microsoft changed tactics after releasing Windows 10, turning it into an auto-updating evergreen OS without paid updates. They're earning money elsewhere now - Office365 and Azure are their big cash cows, I believe. But other departments are pressured to make money too.
I've used my phone's parental features to limit usage of social apps to one hour. It's protected by a somewhat randomly chosen PIN that I don't memorize but store in my password manager. If I want to override the time limit, I have to go and look up the PIN. Most of the time... too hard, move on to something more productive.
I have no real reason to check it, as there is not really anything posted, but I can hop on once or twice a week to see what is coming up.
Unfortunately, that's the best way I've found to know what goes on in the village vs not actually wanting to participate in Facebook
I think I should just get rid of my smart phone, but that's easier said than done.
Can you be the one single weird person in a group of 50 that says "I'd rather not have pictures of this event with my face on them posted on Insta, please"?
Several years ago I got tired for Facebook and quit it. My parents, in-laws, and siblings have an Apple shared photo album for "general" content and we occasionally set up albums for the same group of folks when there's a big event/trip/etc.
We occasionally Facetime or use chat via Messages. Email's are in the mix as well.
I feel that it works reasonably well.
Part of the fix is having something else to do. If I'm waiting on a code review, I might slip into HN or Reddit. I guess a solution would be having very flexible, productive tasks to do. Duolingo seems like a good one, but I personally don't have too much of a want to learn a new language.
I was just talking to a friend the other day on how badly Apple and Google are trying their best to kill curiosity and creativity. I mean when I first got my 286 the machine was just full of possibilities. I think learning the ins and outs of it was more fun than doing anything productive.
I used to hack away at it all day and night. Learning about interrupts, tinkering with the BIOS settings, hacking the serial port, irq, etc. Now everything is just locked down. In my latest phone I can't even run `fastboot` as that too has been locked down permanently because "security".
Thank god we have Linux created before all this Bullshit started happening. If Apple, Google and Microsoft was in charge of things as they are now, we wouldn't even have any hardware to run anything else than Windows and iOS.
Every year there's a new pitch from a modular laptop or a hackable smartphone. Never met anyone who uses one though.
Where does one draw the line though? ESG[1] is becoming increasingly important to investors and I already see financial institutions instituting controls in their apps around gambling [2].
When should large companies with sufficient reach implement opportunities to address social harms?
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/environmental-social-an... [2] https://monzo.com/blog/2018/06/19/gambling-block-self-exclus...
there are options for everyone, if you want to hack it, good, there's android for that. there are even phones that you can customize. if you want a stable black box, there's ios, this is well known before you buy it. there are options for every one of us...
i think you guys forget that this is an echo chamber and the real users out there are not tech savy. i
Why is it not possible, exactly?
being hackable means exactly the opposite of stability: you can change low level features and break things. if there is a chance to do it, people can be tricked to do it. of course, i'm excluding here people who have knowledge, as i continue to belive that they are a minority.
Any computer with preinstalled Linux will "just work". Typical users will only install apps from the repositories, and those are more secure and private than App Store.
Yes. On my laptop, Linux is extremely stable, and yet extremely hackable. What, Linux doesn't work for you flawlessly? 99% chance it's drivers, which has nothing to do with stability and everything to do with the limited amount of effort that people have poured into drivers on that particular platform.
> being hackable means exactly the opposite of stability
False. "Stability" implicitly means "without modifications". There's no product or (human-made) system in existence that remains stable once you start making arbitrary modifications to it.
> if there is a chance to do it, people can be tricked to do it
Yes, and "freedom" (which is a core tenet of the United States Constitution, where most HN commenters are based) includes the ability to do things that will hurt yourself. "We know what's better for you than you do" leads to tyranny the majority of the time (as it does here, where Apple has full control of their devices and regularly makes decisions that hurt their users).
Moreover, it's relatively easy to design a system that prevents the vast majority of users from shooting themselves in the foot (by making root(-adjacent) access difficult to acquire by accident and fairly difficult to be tricked into doing), and coupled with actual education would keep the levels of this particular kind of computer fraud (where someone convinces you to bypass your computer's security features) well below the rates of other computer fraud (such as falling prey to scam emails).
ChromeOS is a similar story - even more so, actually, given that it can run a full fledged Linux distro within the system.
That is a loss for everyone, even if tinkering with computers is not your hobby.
I wonder what they stand to gain from this, since they wouldn't bother if there wasn't a benefit.
Android I can possibly understand, what with Google being an ad-company and expecting to track users. But Apple doesn't seem to be doing that all that much anymore.
For the tractor situation, John Deere & friends expect to capture the business of independent repair shops, so there's a gain in their locking down the devices.
If I buy an iPhone to run myOS on it, how's this a loss to Apple? Especially since they don't charge for IOS updates, and they also support their phones for a long time, so if I don't buy a new iPhone every year it's not because I'm running some custom OS. My iPhone 7 still has all the latest updates and I haven't paid Apple one cent ever since I bought it used more than four years ago.
A future with only one or two computing monopolies is a desired end state for history to BigTech.
What you are suggesting is to allow 3rd party to join in the ecosystem.
If IBM had been smarter and launched PC as a closed platform it would have been a 10/100 trillion dollar enterprise.
Not necessarily. They could still continue to charge for every download, just as I can, and already do, listen to music on my iPhone without an Apple Music subscription and without purchasing from the iTunes store.
If I want the whole Apple experience, I will continue using macOS / IOS. Hell, that's the reason why I started buying MacBooks when I could afford them: the "apple experience".
But I also run Linux on my work PC, because for that I don't care about the Apple experience. But I hate my HP laptop, for comfort reasons. If I could buy a MacBook and have Linux run on it as well as it does on the hp, I would (because I love the hardware) and that would be a net gain for Apple, wouldn't it?
I get the whole point of the "experience" and "ecosystem", etc. Up until a few years ago I absolutely loved it. Still love my iphone and wouldn't switch to android.
But now I can't stand macOS anymore for my work needs. I'm looking to buy a new laptop to use Linux on it. The offers from Lenovo / HP / Dell don't look all that great to me. I would absolutely buy an MBP if I knew Linux worked perfectly on it, but I know it doesn't, so Apple doesn't get to make a sale.
The point is: If I want to tinker with an iPhone and would not buy one if I couldn't, why is it a loss for Apple to sell an extra phone, even if the buyer won't consume their other digital products? The seller wouldn't have consumed them anyway, especially without buying the iPhone.
Yes, there's the support side of things, but again, they could have some sort of warranty voiding system in place.
This is not at all what we are looking for.
Maybe display a big, scary "unofficial OS, you're on your own, don't bother us if your iPhone becomes unusable". Maybe have one jump through some hoops, like getting an "approval" code by signing some mile-long EULA on the iCloud account stating you forego any software-related warranty / support.
This should be enough to deter "regular users" from messing with their phones, and Apple wouldn't have to go to any length to guarantee that a "restored" device isn't compromised. Kind of like the KNOX thing on Samsung phones used to work.
And this actually seems to be possible, since people are having success with running Linux, a non-apple sanctioned OS, on the M1 Macs, which have the secure enclave, etc. My understanding is that whatever issues they are experiencing are related to hardware support.
This is it right here. Power-users will blame the user for having their device compromised. Users, on the other hand, will blame Apple. Apple will do anything they can to avoid negative PR like that.
I don't know what the state of the world is today, but I've installed custom OSes (mostly Linux) on every Mac I've owned (my most recent was a 2012 Retina which I really liked).
Installing a custom OS isn't easy and it's pretty obvious to everyone it means thinking "Yes, it's a good idea to lose support for almost every program I run". By "everyone", I really do mean that: I've never heard of an anecdote of someone who's mother wiped MacOS and threw Ubuntu on their box and encountered some bugs. Technical knowledge about security isn't out there, but we do get "Apple makes the system that is an iPhone, going away from Apple's product means abandoning my iPhone" seems to be there, even if they don't understand what it means for something to be an operating system.
"Security" has become the excuse big companies use for everything they foist on users. Better update to that new OS version that ruins the user interface -- it comes with security patches! Better make sure you can't play any games that aren't approved by Apple -- it's the only way to make iPhones secure! Better centralize the entire Internet so it all depends on four or five giant corporations to run -- they're the only ones who can be trusted to implement security!
Right now, I have a nearly uncrackable walled-garden iphone on my desk. And a mac laptop running XCode (learning about Metal programming), and at the same time running an Amiga emulator (tinkering with 68k assembly), and a windows gaming laptop next to it, and a breadboard on the floor with a pile of resistors and capacitors and transistors.
So what's the problem again?
It's not either/or. Parents can be the guardians of their children's phone, enabling all the security Apple pretends to enable with a password.
The power of Apples marketing is astonishing.
However, I also spent a lot of time painstakingly copying BASIC games, line by line from magazines, then figuring out how to expand upon them for additional features. Gaming was just the gateway drug.
What makes it important for them to use Unix rather than something that works fine the way it is while maintaining some standard of UX?
If kids show an interest in computers, they can just install unix on some computer like a raspberry pi and tinker on that.
The parents might not know better.
> Also, why should kids tinker with computers if they can explore art by painting or music by learning an instrument or literature by reading?
They should be given the chance to do so, as they should be given the chance to explore art or craft or a lot of other things.
> What makes it important for them to use Unix
I don't see how mentioning Unix is relevant here. They should be given the opportunity to play and tinker with the devices, not only the preplanned path with games on the devices, that is all.
When my kids reach the age that they need a phone, probably sooner than I want to admit right now, I'd rather have them use some restricted device with some level of security checks in place for apps, so an iPhone, than something that is totally open which would make them vulnerable to being phished or persuaded to install viruses, etc. "Best way to play fortnite 10, download here".
The concern is whether the device is a piece of paper or a television. A television can show much more complex images under the control of the average child, but it is purely for consumption. A piece of paper lets you display anything you can draw or you can turn it into a paper plane or do origami, but the realism of the resulting products is going to be much less, and they will be relatively static.
An iPhone is, by design, a television. Unix systems are pieces of paper.
Last time I used MacOS, it was a functional piece of paper and it worked as a television too, so there isn't really any dichotomy here. Any television could be built on top of a piece of paper and give you access to the base level too.
The concern is that the television is winning out: even though Android and iOS are built from pieces of paper, their maintainers only bless television-like interfaces. Frankly, I believe a major part of this is because they're built on top of Unix like interfaces, which is based certain assumptions that they don't want to maintain. So I certainly wouldn't say Unix-like is the solution.
So there may be a good reason why Apple don’t want this to happen, given that essentially everything is on your phone these days.
There’s still Android
Yes, this is why the phones are locked by default. This is not at all why the phones aren't unlockable, though. They can be unlockable and still be secure. Apple just doesn't want to give you the choice.
Like how you can't get Facebook on the Play Store because it's only available on F-droid on Android, for example?
That's certainly... interesting.
Facebook is quite happy on the Play Store because it has weak privacy and disclosure policies, because Google has no interest in enforcing such things.
Really secure data goes through a seperate device of which I have total control, but which I treat carefully (and less conveniently). It's a very comfortable trade-off.
Why can't I run Xcode on iOS or iPadOS devices? What's the technical limitation? These devices have the capability to render stuff on larger screens wirelessly, and one can connect keyboards to them. The limitation is purely artificial.
I guess it depends on who "you" are. A lot of kids get exactly one device. Some have to share it with their siblings as well. So I do think it matters whether our most widely used devices are completely locked down or not.
It doesn't just matter for kids either. It also matters for democracy how many people only own devices that governments have complete control over.
That said, I do think the problem can be exaggerated. People tend to find ways around restrictions. It can even be a motivation for looking more deeply into how things work.
And not all of those workarounds are terribly expensive. Ironically, the most expensive devices are also the most locked down.
This is true, but RPi Zeros are so cheap and powerful that I think it's much easier for community organisations (schools, scouts, dedicated groups) to start hacking events. The kid who can't get a 10 USD computer and a phone and access to a shared laptop is the kid who couldn't access to shared desktop in the olden days. In those days entry level could be a month's salary for a professional.
For the households where every kid has their own laptop, a Pi is accessible.
And for those who only have access to single shared machine, the kid today has access to a VM. That means they have options the rest of us didn't have - I couldn't run Linux until I had a paper round, because installing Linux on the family computer was not going to happen.
Perhaps one clear advantage to the old world is that in the 1980s and early 1990s, anyone could write an operating system and eventually get something that could do everything their old computer could do. I mean the idea was tractable. It's not like today where even thinking about creating a web browser filled Microsoft and Opera with such dread they gave up.
To be clear: I don't think it's all rosy today. But I don't think it's all bleak either.
> It also matters for democracy how many people only own devices that governments have complete control over.
You are right that there's social implications here, but I think the social concerns are primary and not a consequence of the technical situation. We arrived at this situation because companies decided they own their customers when we have massive social problems mistrust and distrust. This has come on the back of a generation that learnt abominations like a company's only obligation is to its shareholders. If you want to build trustworthy business, you need to maintain the right culture.
One question is whether a low income but educated and dedicated parent can find a way to acquire some hackable device for a highly motivated kid. I think the answer is probably yes, with some exceptions in extremely poor countries.
But that's not the most likely scenario. A far more likely scenario is a kid that wants to modify the device they're actually using on a daily basis to make it do something slightly different. There are no parents involved, and it would be utterly pointless to hack some completely different device like a Raspberry Pi just because it's more hackable.
So I worry that widespread use of locked down devices and locked down distribution channels makes the path from consumer to power user to hacker to software engineer to entrepreneur far less smooth. Some people who could have been interested in being more than mere consumers are going to be left behind.
You are absolutely right that access to all sorts of devices is hugely easier and cheaper than back in the 70s, 80s and 90s. It's definitely not all bleak. It was a decidedly rich country upper/middle class affair at the time. But we're also having to live with restrictions that would've been unimaginable back then.
Just imagine Microsoft in 1995 attempting to restrict what software people were allowed to install on their PCs. Imagine what regulators would have said if Microsoft had tried to charge 30% on all software and content loaded onto PCs. Or what if Microsoft had been able to issue no-recourse lifetime bans on using any of their software and platforms?
The objection that Microsoft was a monopolist isn't really convicing given that they were replaced by a hugely more powerful and ubiquitous oligopoly that now runs the actual economy, not some tiny niche called "The New Economy".
Seriously.
When I was a kid I would have killed to have had easy access to things like Raspberry Pi's, microcontrollers, SGI workstations (which is what the Mac is these days), and a zillion free programming languages.
Instead, while I had full access to the family's PC and could learn C and assembly language programming on it (btw I had to pay for those compilers), and learned all about interrupts and writing to VGA registers, I still couldn't do anything super low-level like muck around with the boot sector because my dad needed it for work, the phone system was so locked down that you'd go to jail for "exploring" it, and I had barely any idea how to get started playing around with logic chips because there was nothing like Sparkfun, Adafruit, Hackaday, etc, and Radio Shack in the mid-90s really wasn't much help.
There is still room for improvement - yes it would be nice if all the tech we used was both hackable and secure - but geeks who want to tinker are living in a land of plenty right now.
> I was just talking to a friend the other day on how badly Apple and Google are trying their best to kill curiosity and creativity [with regard to the computer they're using].
Also:
> So please, enough with this narrative, it’s really outdated and based on such a limited world view.
You'll have to explain how it's a "limited world view" to suggest that we can have our cake and eat it too: that we can have open, hackable platforms that are also popular and easy to use.
Are you implying that Linux doesn't work 99% of the time? If so, you are mistaken. I'm running Linux for me and my relatives without issues for years. I'm not a programmer/hacker.
Just choose the hardware designed for it (exactly like in the case of Apple).
And lets not even go over the ux disaster that is the mix and match of uis from various apps.
Here comes your problem (which I actually mentioned in my above post). Choose hardware designed for Linux if you want it to really work. Why don't you complain that your Windows installation does not work well on a Macbook?
And even so, how can you say it works 99% of the time if you have to go and research each piece of peripheral that you want to use? Normal users go to bestbuy or amazon or whatnot and buy a microphone, they don't want to go and see if it works on ubuntu or whatnot or have weird behaviours at home. you can blame manufacturs for not supporting linux while they support win/mac, but again, normal users experience just isn't that great.
You said you are running linux for you and your relatives. Who installed it on your relatives machines? Who checked the compatibility of each hardware and maybe even bought some replacement things to work on linux? I know most users/relative I know wouldn't go to websites to try to find out if this or that works well with this and that. They just want to go to a shop, buy a laptop+accessories and plug them in when they get home
This feels related to the saying that it’s easier to innovate down the stack than it is to innovate up the stack. It’s far easier for Apple to design and fabricate its own chips than it would be for Intel to make its own consumer OS.
There are so many domains where you can dive incredibly deeply into 'em. Some of them are computer augmented, and benefit from a stable, predictable computer host. There's been a lot of instances over the years where Macs served that role of 'creativity toaster' and did it well… now we've got the same thing, except for phones.
Anybody who's used to that situation doesn't find the status of iPhone ecology shocking. A bargain is being made. Or a service is being hired, from effectively a computer administrator.
These are not the right tools to also have completely exposed with no security or guard rails, where we can easily open up or broadcast everything to the world.
You can have your cake and eat it too, there are devices available that work just how you want, but that doesn't mean every device has to work that way. It certainly doesn't mean that my device has to work that way, just because you want it to.
Having the option defeats the fundamental advantages their approach offers.
There are a lot of problems with Apple’s approach from an antitrust perspective and fair competition should be regulated through legislation, but there are good reasons for closed ecosystems to exist and plenty of great alternatives for people who want something more open.
This is FUD. Linux works flawlessly despite giving all the freedoms. Typical users don't install anything outside the repositories. Apple has countless problems with security and privacy in their App Store.
See also: Android is Linux used by the general public.
Many older models also would run mainline Linux fine, and the default Chrome OS install usually has a container and a Wayland to Chrome adapter behind a toggle.
[1]: https://unrelenting.technology/articles/FreeBSD-and-custom-f...
eyebrows raise to the ceiling
> Typical users don't install anything outside the repositories.
head tilts nearly horizontal with the floor
"Flawlessly" is here being stretched beyond the breaking point, and anyone who is OK with only installing software from the official repos for any major Linux distro is not a "typical user", very obviously.
"Normal" users? They're going to want several proprietary programs, some of which will surely not be in even the non-free repos, unless they're an only-uses-the-browser type who'd be fine with a Chromebook (or, more realistically for that user profile, just their phone).
Power users? I have to assume my experience of often wanting or needing something outside official repos, or a newer version of something in official repos, is far from unusual. I'm not even that demanding a power user, and that's still a very common situation for me. What's worse is the more one chases system stability, the worse this problem becomes, since Linux distros mix the base system and user-facing applications all together (and the structure of x-window-system/wayland/drivers/GTK/QT makes it hard not to do this)
The problem is a social one and hasn't been properly solved by technical measures as you note. Instead of acting like the digital world is somehow separate from the rest of the world, we should have enough strong and effective laws and regulations that if a person steals from me, they can reasonably expect to spend a few years in prison.
The result of discovering a person has released a fraudulent product to the Google Play Store is currently that they get get their Google account shut down, maybe. The actual result should be that they find out what the inside of a prison cell is.
The result of discovering that a company tracks a user without effective permission through the use of dark patterns that meant a user pressed "I agree" under the misapprehension that this was the only way of using the app should have their shares acquired by the justice system at a penalty rate - or some other effective penalty so that companies don't balance the cost of obeying the law with the cost of the fine.
If Apple believes that their users want protection from digital thieves, Apple has a responsibility to lobby for better laws and regulations. They can't use halfmeasures as a pretense in the hope that some amorphous other will get laws that protect their users passed.
I like the fact that Facebook can't pull their apps from the store, put them on a rival store with lax standards, or otherwise circumvent the app store controls. These controls clear benefits for me, but side loading and alternate stores would cripple their effectiveness. In fact crippling the effectiveness of these controls is the purpose of side loading and alternate stores.
If you want a phone you can root, buy one. There are options out there. Why do you want to take my choice away from me?
You keep repeating this disingenuous argument. If you don't want to root your phone, don't root it. If you don't want your kids to be able to root their phones, don't pretend like you aren't taking away their choice.
If you don't want rival stores with lax standards, don't install them. Just don't keep telling people who want to be given a choice that they're somehow "taking your choice away from you".
If you want to be in prison, go ahead, but don't pretend that having the option to leave is somehow "taking your choice away".
If it were possible to root an iPhone, Facebook would have never agreed to give users the option to stop tracking them across apps; they would have instead said “please watch this video and do what it says to continue using Facebook/Instagram!” and guide naive users into rooting their phones.
Closed ecosystems have many advantages (and disadvantages) over open ones. However, a closed ecosystem with a gaping hole in the wall is no longer a closed ecosystem; you can’t have it both ways.
This doesn't happen on Android because Google has no interest in enforcing strict privacy policies on the Play Store.
I want to be able to chose a device I control, with software I control because I have strong concerns on privacy, freedom to create and waste management. My choices are quite limited and things are hardly moving in the right direction.
Do your concept of democracy being all about your own choices and seeing anybody with different point of view as your enemy kinda reinforce my point. This is not about your specific choices and personal freedom. This is about everybody choices and freedom.
Yes, authoritarianism as a business freaks me out, seeing people embracing it and embracing the fake sentiment of safety it provides is freaking me out. And yes, I do think it's time the Apple and Google duopoly is broken down and people are actually given choice.
> Another peak self-absorbed Hacker News comment, in which we learn that curiosity only means tinkering with devices, learning how they work to the bits, plus some random Linux thrown in.
Totally unnecessary generalization.
You do NOT check and/or balance big companies by allowing them the freedom to tinker alongside the little guy. They will wrest the machines to their purposes every time, and they are Not Happy about obstacles in their path.
Having checks and balances on big companies is a very good argument but it points the opposite direction from how you're seeing it…
It worked for mom & pops and techs alike but corporations new attitude of "We'll decide what's best and remove other options" is a bloody pain in the arse now.
A particularly bad one is this insistence on not allowing me to permanently say "no" to something. It's always "maybe later" or "remind me in 24 hrs" or similar... even Firefox does it now when you set it up - I think it was to do with sending FF to my mobile or something - but the message was "do it now" or "do it later"... I don't want it EVER!
So, no! I don't want anyone else's opinion for stuff like this - let me decide what's best for me and allow me to tinker if I want!
I'm really tired of it deciding when I should be on mute, or when it should warn me that I am muted. Just let me do it.
It's the X button in the top right corner.
In the olden days we had individual developers who would work out the internal API these applications used to work. I wonder if that's still theoretically possible. Surely it must be? Even if the client app needs a signed certificate, since it runs in an unsigned environment (i.e. Linux) it should be possible to grab the certificate and present that when you need it.
Windows 10 is the best Windows ever for the vast majority of people who use Windows. Same with Office. But you can still install whatever software you want on your Windows machine. Explain to me again how this is worse than what we used to have; where Microsoft have gone wrong in how they build software? Is it perfect? Of course not - no-one could even agree on what that means. But let’s be realistic about how much progress has actually happened: it’s a lot.
Also, almost every patch has issues these days: that hardly ever used to happen. Their quality has taken a dive.
I am not saying that is isn't the perfect tool for many people: it has been for many years. The issue is that when I wanted to change things and leave them changed, I used to be able to do that. Now, they are doing their best to remove that ability! That makes no sense! Let me break it if I want! I have no warranty anyway!
Disable Windows update and it comes back on due to the Windows Update Medic Service. Ok, disable that then! Oops, you're not allowed. Ok, I can circumvent this by changing permissions on the dll and then deleting it. I'll then run updates later at a time of my choosing. Now I run updates. Oops, it's back again! Microsoft knows best.
By all means make it easy for the "typical" user. But I wish they'd stop taking away the underlying power-user stuff because they think they know best!
In a way, the restrictions which used to be exclusive to Home are now part of Pro, the more expensive Pro for Workstations is what Pro used to be and Enterprise (also available through a per-user subscription model instead of a per-machine model, cheaper in a way for individuals with 5 PCs nobody else uses) also has some extra toggles not removed.
I think the subscription versions also include an Intune license which is the only supported way (other than installing third-party AV) to disable Windows Defender permanently, as well.
Now, MDM-managed Apple phones still come with a number of core restrictions, though I believe there's more loose side loading on there - however you have to register Apple hardware into MDM at purchase time as only authorized resellers can grant this access to a serial number.
If Linus Torvalds was a teen today and there was no open PC standard, only a Mac, then it would not have been possible to create Linux the way it is today.
Imagine if also Microsoft starts to make their own processors and then sell their own computers with Windows and all locked down, and don't allow anyone else to make computers with Windows or their processors.
Sure Dell, HP and others could still make PC's, based on Intel or AMD CPU's or some ARM processor and then run Linux (or develop their own OS), but it's a hard sell.
The PC's sold to the mainstream thanks to Windows/Word/Excel maybe, but then people who wanted could tinker as much as they wanted and where free so make and sell their software (windows based or whatever) or their HW peripherals.
Now you are at best stuck within an app store if you create something.
Torvalds didn't create Linux as a teen in his bedroom hacking on what he had. He created it at university studying operating systems. He would have created it on Raspberry Pi or some other platform.
Linux is widely deployed on x86 because x86 is available and open enough. It replaced Unix operating systems on dedicated architectures, like Solaris on SPARC.
> Sure Dell, HP and others could still make PC's, based on Intel or AMD CPU's or some ARM processor and then run Linux (or develop their own OS), but it's a hard sell
GNU/Linux was a hard sell in the beginning too. In the olden days, if you put Linux on a laptop you lost special features and you had very limited software support. Web pages were designed to work with IE only and you could only run Mozilla. Your major option for producing printable documents was special purpose programming languages like TeX or using Mozilla Composer. And good luck getting your winmodem/winprinter to do anything!
Today enough exists that you can buy hardware from companies that expect you to put Linux on them and then run them with full features and great intercompatibility. Your phone will be crap but it'll be good enough, and in ten years time it'll have a lot better features. Till then, if you want a great lowlight camera, buy a great lowlight camera.
The inversion of trust is a frustrating aspect of modern business, and it creates many social problems. But it isn't a technical barrier to oldschool hacking about.
Back in ~1997/8 I was working at a software manufacturing company - we burned and printed and shipped all the Solaris Software for SUN....
We would receive EDI data from sun to burn to CDs then do the fullfillment shipping - so If you went to SUN.com and ordered Solaris, it was made and shipped by us...
We needed a better way to receive the files from SUN, and so we had a few FTP servers... We hired a group of dudes who knew linux and had them setup our FTP machines, chrooting users and various security measures...
So I, the IT manager, sat down with one of the consultants that we had hired and I told him "You know, If I were you - I would setup a Linux Support company and offer Linux support as a service"
A few weeks later Dave Sifry came back to me and said "Guess what we started, LinuxCare... to offer Linux support as a service"
He was later valued at ~$100 million and LinuxCare was a ~$1 Billion company...
Chris DiBona of google fame was on the team, and I can't recall the two other guys' names...
But yeah - that was when support for Linux was basically non-existent...
Oh yeah - I forgot; SUN wanted us to learn this new thing that they were using to create the EDI files... XML. So we had to accomodate XML when the only people that knew XML at the time were SUN employees...
And finally, I think that SUN had the best logo ever made. And the shittiest firewall, Checkpoint sucked. (sorry Checkpoint team - your lead developers on Checkpoint were friends of mine... but I hated that firewall)
Raspberry Pi would be unable without Linux.
What? Of course I can. Gatekeeper exists but can be disabled
Meanwhile I'm setting here just now, wasting hours hand-holding Windows10 because it's unable to install one of its own big feature updates, without any idea what was going wrong or where to start fixing the problem (because everything is so "user friendly").
Notice how you say "Curiosity *can be* about design, ..." but then the tone of your comment reads like you mean "Curiosity *should only be* about design, ...". Please don't do that.
Curiosity can be about anything, lets just leave it at that.
> Another peak self-absorbed Hacker News comment
Unnecessarily inflamatory - perhaps an ad-hominem attack, or appeal to emotion.
> in which we learn that curiosity only means tinkering with devices
Strawman argument - this is a blatant misrepresentation of GP's point.
> This comment is ignoring that a device that does all that without you having to worry about how it works is a tool way more powerful than one in which you need to at least know how to build everything from scratch with an enormous learning curve
False dichotomy (there's no reason you can't have an opinionated device that works flawlessly OOTB while also being extremely hackable) and another strawman (OP never advocated for you having to do everything yourself, only have the ability to tinker).
> So please, enough with this narrative, it’s really outdated and based on such a limited world view.
Another appeal to emotion.
I encourage you to take a class on logical argument, because this ain't it.
Exactly.
Unless you want a rootkit installed when you charge your phone with a public charger, it needs to be locked down. These restrictions are made for security and stability. If the average user doesn't need them, then don't enable them. Simple logic.
There's still many ways to be creative though and I think there's also more potential than before due to increased resources for developing other kinds of applications.
It's not all bad.
I sympathize with the tinkerer mindset, but this mindset exposes serious lack of empathy in exposing REAL risk to REAL people by allowing anybody to hack devices simply to satisfy 0.01% of users who want to run a custom bootloader. This is not a valid engineering trade-off for a "trillion dollar company". The world doesn't revolve around you. There are other products on the market for tinkerers that don't involve exposing everyone from your grandma to politicians to serious security and privacy breaches.
I shudder to think what the world would have be if Andrew Tanenbaum/Linus/Wall/etc had to wait for a week long review after creating their software and got rejected every time because Apple support told them.. "Are you out of your freaking mind!? You possibly can't think we will let you do anything remotely like that on our hardware. P.S. Also your account is now permanently banned."
x86 hardware.
In the mobile world, Android allows tinkering, but also achieves much worse privacy and security guarantees
When I got my first 286 very little was available to me because it all had a cost. Want to learn C then get your wallet out to buy a C compiler. Want to learn Pascal then get your wallet out for Turbo Pascal . Want to learn UNIX, well hard lines, that stuff is only available in ivory towers.
Linus Torvalds, 1993
https://gondwanaland.com/meta/history/interview.html
If Linux hadn’t been created, 386BSD and its derivatives would be correspondingly more popular. Or Hurd would have happened. Or both. Maybe BeOS would be a contender amongst commercial OSes.
If Linux hadn’t been created things wouldn’t be that different in all likelihood.
A vast, vast majority of the population could care less about learning about interrupts, tinkering with BIOS settings, etc. They want a device that is easy to use, and as simple as possible. So companies therefore abstract away 90% of the "creativity-inducing" components because a computer is a lot less intimidating when the user clearly knows what they can and can't do with it.
Apple and Google are not sitting in a meeting room pitching the best ways to stifle creativity. They are selling a product to a population that wants their highly complex device to be as simple as possible.
I'd add "reliable" or maybe more accurately "repeatable".
When my mother runs into technical problems, she will literally get frustrated to the point of tears. She doesn't give a single fuck whether she can change the OS or install unapproved software to tinker, she just wants the stuff that was working yesterday to still be working today.
When she wakes up and an OS update has broken some app she uses, she's never gone "Let me dig into why this happened, maybe I can fix it." and she never will. That's simply just something that has gone wrong in her life and ruined her day and now she needs to find a new way to do the thing that she wants to do.
But you're wasting your breath. A very vocal segment of HN are effectively fundamentalists about this. The fact that there exists a market segment best served by devices which do not conform to their fundamental ideals because they have different priorities is simply unacceptable regardless of any other consideration.
I remember back in my DOS days as a kid tinkering with autoexec.bat, himem and all that just to get an addition 10Kb or memory to run a game.
Now, with Windows in particular, they're slowly removing my ability to dick about and do what I want.
The defaults are all pretty much set to "we know best" and you have to jump through more and more hoops to disable stuff (Windows update, I'm looking at you!).
I'm moving to Linux (again) at the end of the month (got uni exams coming up... want to get them out the way). Had issues with it in the past but I will try and live with them this time as I want my freedom back.
It is just one of those things were very rarely I realize that I am running (by ratio) a fairly rare OS as just a daily desktop. To that, don't try and force your self onto Linux, eventually you may just sit with it and never go back to Windows. If you do, that's fine if that works for you. If you stay on Linux, cool power to you.
Happy hacking!
The current situation is that Facebook is not limited in their use of patterns that increase your engagement. The author of the comment is proposing some extensions to iOS that mean that Facebook is able to use patterns that increase your engagement, but you're also able to turn it off.
From your perspective of wanting more control over your devices, isn't this a win? It isn't injecting javascript into a running webapp with an extension that monkeypatches it. But you gave that up by using a native app on iOS. It gets you back a huge amount of control. If you want more, there's LineageOS (self compile it with patched source code by using robotnix) and PinePhone. The jump from trusted to trustless is a big one now but it's not insurmountable.
"Creativity" doesn't mean "tinkering with kernel settings".
Combining simple apps together like lego building blocks to build something, is where it shines.
Not sure how this does not apply.
Allow real browser extensions, I just want to be able to use uBlock origin. Not some overengineered "system extension" that can only check the network.
I don’t think it is
This article is actually genius, and I truly believe they're good recommendations. Apple in these mockups wouldn't be forcing you to turn off addictive behaviors - it's just letting you know they exist, and giving YOU the power to help control it.
The jist of your post is that you want the freedom to smoke cigarettes without the oppressive government health warnings on the packages.
Then you'll realize how much of our lifes are in the hands of a few designers from Silicon Valley. Sure, you can "disable notifications" for an app: But how about I can just "close" this app like I can on my computer?
And Android is not much better in practice.