Apple's Shifting Differentiation

Yes, they should break up Apple in a software and hardware company.

Same for NVidia.

It's the only way to actually own our hardware.

But I want their integrated ecosystem much more than I want to "own my hardware". If you take that away, I lose instead of gain.

I see no point to this when there’s a whole thriving ecosystem already available to those who want that.

I would argue that any company that sells hardware should be barred from also selling (aka “licensing”) media.

3 companies then: Hardware, software, and media

Another option would be to vertically integrate most companies and since that is anticompetitive the resulting company could become a public state owned enterprise.

I do prefer that alternative and if you take that away, I lose instead of gain.

How would that work in NVidia’s case? You buy a card that the company is not allowed to ship in a state where you can actually use it, and then buy a driver from the other company? I guess that’ll solve the Linux driver issue by tanking NVidia accross all platforms and giving AMD an opportunity to get ahead.

It would work the same as when you bought an IBM clone in the old days. You couldn't use the hardware without running software from another company (Microsoft's MS-DOS).

This idea of actually ‘owning’ hardware is a total red-herring.

If you buy hardware, you own it in the sense that you can do what you want with it assuming you have the technical expertise.

It doesn’t matter what software comes installed or how locked down it is.

Whether it is iOS, or PostmarketOS, we are dependent on thousands of other people making design decisions that support you in meeting our particular needs.

The only question is who serves your needs better.

I have to agree that the divison based on hardware/software doesn't solve all problems. See for example Google who licenses Android to phone manufacturers (which still is far from optimal).

But I do think this division is an essential step.

Yeah but the IBM clones were only produced after painstaking reverse engineering of the BIOS. So basically nouveau, which already exists, but with much more work put in due to there being a greater upside. Though I think this analogy is a bit strained, for the most part the drivers aren't running on the device you're buying, hence the Linux driver being an issue at all.

Why not buy a phone with software apples integrated ecosystem preinstalled? There are lots of solutions like that already, just that they all suck. If software apple existed then you would have more options for properly locked down phones without sucky software since now you could put it on hardware from other manufacturers than hardware apple.

If you think it’s essential, you are going to need to explain what you mean.

I mean, to actually own the hardware we buy, i.e. have hardware that works in our interest, not in the interest of some big company.

‘To actually own the hardware we buy’ doesn’t really mean anything without further explanation. We do actually own the hardware we buy even if we don’t know how to reprogram it.

My car has a digital speedometer that reads in kph only. I want it to read mph, but there is no software update available to do this, and nobody seems to know how to hack it. I still own the car.

Everything produced by a big company works in the interests of the big company. There are no exceptions to this, ever, unless the company is simply failing.

Any time we buy something, we do so because our interests are sufficiently aligned with the interests of those who made the product. The alignment is always partial.

If you don’t want hardware that works in the interest of a big company. The only way to achieve that is not to get it from a big company. The same is true for software.

I’m totally in support of this.

> Why not buy a phone with software apples integrated ecosystem preinstalled?

I can already do that. There's a company called Apple that makes exactly that hardware.

So why would splitting Apple up hurt you? Just buy hardware and software from the two Apple companies and you are set.

However I am pretty sure a lot of people with less money than you would like to buy a cheap phone and put Apples software on it.

I have an iPhone, and iPad, multiple Macs, and a watch. They all work together in a myriad of interesting ways as a seamless unit, and all I have to do is set up one device with my iCloud address.

This is made possible due to Apple being in control of the hardware and software. If there's a way to do this as easily with a mix of Linux, Windows, and Android devices, I haven't seen it.

Linux laptops can't even do something as seemingly simple as sleep and wake reliably because it's actually not simple, and the hardware and software people don't talk to each other to make it work.

This is the kind of stuff I don't want to lose.

There are Linux integrators who make plenty damn sure that suspend and other features work well. Instead of comparing against random mix-and-match scenarios, it would be fair to compare with products that are going for similar integration without curtailing user freedoms.

Now, you may not be a fan of their limited market power and subsequent inability to dictate everything else about the platform to the software ecosystem or adjacent devices. That would be a fair criticism. Apple's animosity towards open standards for accessing device functionality or cross-device communication does allow them to move faster. At the expense of the rest of the market.