> "And as for the principle of being able, even to your own harm, to freely install the software you choose on your device, infants and the sick may need walls to keep them safe from winter, but if we build walls so high that those who would hunt cannot pass outside, and so strong that when spring comes we cannot tear them down, we shall all perish."
Oh pulleeease, you're a superior "hunter" to the "infants" who use vendor curated app stores? Can you hear yourself regurgitating this embarassing Alpha Male/Ayn Randian drivel? It's software not manliness gym-bro posturing world. The experience of picking quality software from the large volume of total software isn't "powerful hunter" it's panning for gold - sifting a ton of river silt for hopefully a few flecks of gold, or being a filtration feeding sea creature, swallowing litres of seawater for a few morsels of sustainance.
You have freedom with Android, Chromebook, PinePhone, Windows, Linux. You covet iPhone and macOS because they're so obviously better people will spend two, three, four times the money to avoid the alternatives but then you want to break them and make them as bad as the alternatives? What about the principle of being able to, even to your own harm, choose to buy and use a restricted, limited device? The freedom to avoid having to be a human spam-filter, the freedom to make and sell restricted devices that people can opt-in to buying?
Ayn Rand? LOL, play your comic book political fantasies to another crowd, there is no marketplace here. There are two companies that have behaved monopolistically, using illegal means to crush all competition, and now lay flat on their backs and shriek bloody murder when weak Western regulators even sniff at reminding them of what they need to do to at least maintain the illusion of a "fair" marketplace. And for the sake of.... what in your estimation is high quality curation? (TikTok, Candy Crush, Fruit Ninja) In what sense is having the same 5 timewasting apps on the homepage for over a decade curation? Don't you imagine that a 'curator' would promote a diverse array of the high quality content and tools that are available on their platform?
You seem incapable of conceiving of a way of life outside of that of the consumer, sitting around waiting for a bit of gold to fall into your hands. Others are out there trying to build things, some of which are interesting, and most of which are miserable failures. And in the world that I want to live in, and in the world that Western democracies have built empires on the promise of, individuals and collectives ought to be able to attempt to do so without having to crash into the infinite fields of iron gates erected by the ~12 megacorporations that collectively have a stranglehold on >90% of every market for >90% of goods.
I am not interested in whatever male fantasies of individual struggle that you are seeing projected onto the foreheads of others, we should not deny a generation their collective and individual rights to self-determination by failing to see that we've created a world where digital life is a prerequisite for living, and our governments have protected a small number of aristocrats set on binding the digital lives of human beings to enrich themselves.
Oh pulleeease, you're a superior "hunter" to the "infants" who use vendor curated app stores? Can you hear yourself regurgitating this embarassing Alpha Male/Ayn Randian drivel? It's software not manliness gym-bro posturing world. The experience of picking quality software from the large volume of total software isn't "powerful hunter" it's panning for gold - sifting a ton of river silt for hopefully a few flecks of gold, or being a filtration feeding sea creature, swallowing litres of seawater for a few morsels of sustainance.
You have freedom with Android, Chromebook, PinePhone, Windows, Linux. You covet iPhone and macOS because they're so obviously better people will spend two, three, four times the money to avoid the alternatives but then you want to break them and make them as bad as the alternatives? What about the principle of being able to, even to your own harm, choose to buy and use a restricted, limited device? The freedom to avoid having to be a human spam-filter, the freedom to make and sell restricted devices that people can opt-in to buying?