You want to limit what current and future generations of people can do with their computers because of something a computer illiterate grandma may have done in the 90s?
You badly overestimate both the ability and interest of average people in learning to administrate their computers. They just want to get shit done and go do something else. Computers are a tool at best, and more often a super-annoying thing they have to deal with but hate every second of it.
If they actually like any of the computers around them, it's probably the most locked-down ones: their phones and video game consoles.
[EDIT] That is, you're way off in thinking it's only a bunch of soon-to-be-dead grandmas who have trouble operating computers that don't prevent them from fucking things up too badly. The "digital native" generations are barely better.
You can have a locked down mode. You can even sell it turned on by default. But to exclusively prevent everyone from using their computers as they see fit because you think some people are too stupid to handle it? I don't believe you actually want that. I believe that's an excuse to ensure Apple gets a cut of everything that happens on their soon to be landfill machines.
I have almost zero interest in haxoring my phone, and just want it to always work and not let 3rd parties steal my info, automatically.
And I'm a life-long computer geek who's done professional mobile development. Most people care even less than I do. They just want it to work, because computers aren't their life, they just use them to get stuff done, or when someone else tells them they have to. Would it be sort of nice to have the option to unlock it? Yes, exclusively so I could run pirated games in emulators more easily, which is the only thing non-programmers I know with unlocked Android phones use all that freedom of theirs for. For most people, they'd not pay even a couple dollars to have the unlock option. It's worth basically nothing to them, because they do not have any actual use for it. But sure, it'd be nice. It's just not a big deal.
> If yes, man that's really dangerous thinking.
The NES had a DRM chip—a bad one, but still.
Some computers have been appliances, and some have been programmers' machines, for a long time, and the sky hasn't fallen. The former have just eaten some of the use cases for the latter, where a fully-capable general-purpose computer was at least as much of a liability as a boon.
Even Apple still makes normal-ass computers for people who need them. If your reaction to that statement is "pft, yeah, but they're clearly trying to get rid of those", well, people have been saying that for more than a decade, and it still hasn't happened and doesn't seem to be any closer, so... I'll believe it when I see it.
For one, being able to use your computer/phone like a computer isn't 'haxoring'. Jesus. And second, Apple _lets you_ now (mostly anyways), because people with sense still raise a stink. So, basically, you're welcome. Stop screwing it up for the rest of us.
What's getting screwed up? It's cheaper and easier than ever to acquire a wide-open computer platform. There are also more of them than ever. There's just also a couple new categories of computing appliance—which is nowhere near being a new thing—that weren't around before.
Yeah, I'm counting phones and tablets as two categories. But I'm also being really generous on how old something can be and still be "new" (15 years is quite a while, in tech) and not counting those as just an iteration (admittedly, a big one) on PalmOS devices and such. They're also much closer to being general-purpose devices than most other appliance-type machines (consoles, dedicated set-top boxes, et c.), occupying more of a middle ground between the two.
I suppose you could add smart watches and make it three. Set-top boxes are at least 23 years old (TiVo), so stretch even generous definitions of "new", and we had closed-source non-user-modifiable DVD players well before that.
Phones and tablets are just locked down computers, not appliances. Do you want your laptop to be like that? Why not? Why is that any different than your tablet? Spoiler: It's not.
Some people only have access to tablets and phones. Let them have the freedom we had to create something. With that freedom, maybe one of them grows up and creates the next Apple, only without the cruelty and greed.
Again: it is cheaper and easier than ever to get a "real" computer. They're at thrift stores for like $50-100, with peripherals. Raspberry Pi alone has sold over thirty million units. If a bright kid with a good idea asked for one on HN I bet a dozen people would ship their extras to them for free. Computers are given away for free pretty regularly on Craigslist and Facebook and such. Old but functional laptops can be had for tens of dollars on Ebay. It is wildly easier and cheaper to get into personal computing now than it was in the 80s, 90s, or even 00s. You can literally afford it by collecting loose change for a little while. A month of half-decent Internet service may well cost more than your entire computer set-up. This has been the consistent trend and it shows no sign of reversing, even after 15 years of iPhoneOS/iOS.
> the next Apple, only without the cruelty and greed.
But why is it necessary? It's not. We can have more if we work together, instead of against each other. The only thing locking phones down does is make everything worse _just_ for Apples sole profit.
Consoles play games and media, off course people like them. Did the PS3 having the Other OS feature mean people enjoyed gaming on it less? I don't think so. Piracy as the given reason to take the feature away is a poor one, they could've better isolated the gaming partition. Apple designs their products to be more user friendly than most, it shouldn't stop users from doing what they want. They don't on the Mac, but they do on the iPhone.
That didn't go away because people learned. And it never would have.