That's a misstatement of the principle here. I bought a thing. It's my thing, not someone else's thing. Things don't have "terms". I signed no contract. Let me use my thing.
I mean, yes, we shouldn't buy iOS devices. But we should accept that things have ad hoc vendor-controlled "rules" just because someone baked them into the things, either.
> what Apple allows you to run on your own device is actually a different story, not related to this news
How so? It's not like Facebook and Google were hacking their way in here. They asked users "please run this software" and users had the option to do so. Seriously how is that any different than "please run my great jailbreak environment" or "here's a new OS for your iPhone"?
It was the behavior and marketing of these spyware things that we shouldn't like, not their mechanism.
> Facebook and Google did sign it and distributed their software based on it.
I think we're talking past each other here. I'm not talking about how Facebook and Google's spy kits were licensed to the end users or about their compliance with Apple's own vendor license.
I was pointing out that the principle here is that I (and Facebook and Google) should have the ability to write and distribute software for you (and me, and Facebook and Google and even Apple) to use on your iPhone. And that the fact we don't have that ability is bad.
And more to the point the fact that Apple's control over their platform was used to benefit the public by disallowing spy kits still does not make that control a good thing.
Free speech doesn’t allow libel and slander. Free assembly doesn’t allow riots. Without a framework for meaningful justice, the high minded principle is just a race to the bottom.
I should be able to have the freedom to choose a platform where I have some protection against the various bad actors out there. Without Apple, the only options we have is non-participation, believing the lies, and arbritration.
> you entered in a contract with the app developer
... wat? No, I didn't. It's easy to imagine I "must have", but in fact there's no signature, no negotiation nor in many cases any consideration.
Ah, but you say: I must have signed a contract to use the app store that I downloaded the app from, and that must constrain me to honor the terms of the app that I downloaded, which is constrained by Apple's contract with the developer.
Except, no, I didn't do that either. The whole thing is a house of cards. There is absolutely no principle behind this regime, it's just something we've all come to accept because it's technically possible and because "usually" the power granted to hardware vendors hasn't been abused.
But it has bad side effects too, and it's really important that we as a community not lose sight of the fact that locked down devices are really, really bad.
>Ah, but you say: I must have signed a contract to use the app store... Except, no, I didn't do that either.
Do you have an Apple ID? You need an Apple ID to download apps from the App Store, and when you create the Apple ID, you accept their ToS. So, yeah, I think you did.
Though that ToS has absolutely nothing to do with anything we're discussing -- the ToS that matters here is the one between Apple and Google/Facebook.
> ...and that must constrain me to honor the terms of the app that I downloaded...
I don't think Apple's ToS with you constrains you to honors the terms of the app you downloaded. That seems strangely indirect. I think the app may or may not have their own ToS that they make you agree to at some point before permitting you to use their services.
Technically correct. But software running on "things" has terms. It's called a license. When you buy a movie, you don't own the film. You own the right to use that film in accordance with the license.
You're conflating things. Your example is about copyright, not licenses. Copyright doesn't constrain use, it constrains distribution (though there's a parallel argument there about DRM and things like DVD region codes, etc...).
The question you're sidestepping is whether a license can say "you can't run your own software on your own thing". Obviously it can be implemented to do so given the way computers work, but it's not at all clear why that should be so.
IBM has had contracts for decades that govern use of your software on the hardware you bought from them. You buy CPU hours or the right to use a certain amount of the computer for a specific timeframe. One place I worked at had a mainframe that they could not use for production workloads unless a disaster declaration was made.
Copyright can constrain use (although the actual extent varies a lot between jurisdictions). Most licenses (which are basically a way to manage copyrights) don't make use that, but some do (like a license that Apple uses for their SDKs, which disallows running it on non-Apple hardware).
BTW. I ignore that and even many large, respectable companies ignore that, but it's there ;)
Sure they do. You want a gun? That comes with certain restrictions on what you can do with it. You want a car? There are certain restrictions on what you can do with it. Jet? Restrictions. Schedule 1 drugs? Restrictions. Knives? Restrictions. Fireworks? Restrictions. Cameras? Restrictions. Hell, even when it comes to a 2x4, there are rules about what you can and can't do with it -- you can't hit someone with it, or you'll suffer consequences.
According to the story, Apple have stopped Google employees running Google's "Gbus app for transportation". So yes, it's about what Apple allows people to run on their own devices.
They can still run that app by signing it themselves with a developer account, although that's not a very convenient option. And no, this is still about what Google allows its employers to run on their corporate devices (and Apple now taking this right away from them), as users wouldn't be able to sign that app with enterprise certificate by themselves.
XX% of Google employees don't use Mac as their laptop platform
XX% of Google employees have a locked-down Mac that isn't allowed to run XCode or locally-compiled binaries because their job role isn't in Engineering
You can only sideload up to a certain number of apps (3 IIRC), only for seven days at a time, and only using certain APIs (cannot for example use notifications), all of which would pose serious limitations.
It's as central an example of mansplaining as I've ever seen; Mansplaining just means "I'm too stupid to understand your point, so I'm going to throw in a non sequitur gendered insult".
At least as I understand it, it more means explaining things to the person you're talking to as if they don't know anything about the conversation topic, even though you have no particular reason to do so.
It doesn't necessarily have to be done by a man or directed at a woman. That's just how it tends to go. And obvs is a bit more fraught when it is going that way.
Leaving aside whether that's something to reasonably get upset about (how are people supposed to know exactly which facts are known to every single reader of their comment?), the way you're describing it seems pretty identical to the now-mostly-anachronistic expression of being "jewed" out of some money. The fact that the target of the slur doesn't have to be Jewish doesn't make it better; in fact, it kind of makes it worse. Hell, at least my example has its roots in a time when casual racism/sexism were accepted _pro forma_, and the term is slowly dying out. It seems to me your example is even less excusable.
Meh, those aren't as well-defined as you think they are. Variously, market-dominant minorities have been labelled as "oppressors" throughout history, and "we can be as immoral as we want as long as the victims deserve it" has been cover for all sorts of horrible shit. You can do whatever you want under the aegis of "fighting the power" if you just define "the power" as the people you wanted to be vicious to anyway. It takes a pretty simple-minded view of the world to think that a one-dimensional oppressors/oppressed view of the world is anywhere close to reality, instead of just being convenient cover that can be targeted at pretty much anyone, so shitty people can be regressive and sexist and racist while sitting on their high horse.
(also, what Apple allows you to run on your own device is actually a different story, not related to this news)