Stop parroting the corporate propaganda that put us into this stupid situation in the first place. Having root access on devices you own should be a fundamental right, as otherwise it's not ownership.
Isn’t this just a second device? How can you hold a manufacturer liable if the user was given unsupervised time as root?
PCs had root access by default, so why wasn't it a significant problem for them? Banking is possible on a PC without a banking app.
As Noam Chomsky has said, as in politics, manufacturers and OS vendors such as Google and Microsoft have been deliberately "manufacturing concent" — a widespread belief in the population of users that benefits them to the disadvantage of many of said users.
They weren't networked. They were notoriously buggy. And most importantly, they weren't warrantied [1].
Root should always be an option. But once you root, it's fair for the warranty to be voided.
> OS vendors such as Google and Microsoft have been deliberately "manufacturing concent"
Nitpick, the propaganda model [2] attempts to describe traditional mass media. Two of its five pillars (ownership and sourcing) fall apart in a world with smartphones and social media.
[1] https://www.studocu.com/ph/document/university-of-rizal-syst...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model#Criticism
Where on earth did you get that notion from? Just because some vendor [your links] has conned the unfortunate client into an unacceptable contract doesn't mean it's commonplace or ever was.
Literally cited the source.
> My PCs and corporate PCs I've been responsible for were networked including the internet
These came later, in the mid 90s. If you have a source for any PC having been "warranted with no conditions about what software was run on them," I'd love to see it. Practically every warranty for PCs voided if you e.g. overclocked the CPU. And almost all PC warranties were limited warranties, not the no-questions-asked up-to accidental-damage common today.
User software is another matter altogether. Users could always install whatever they wanted.
It seems you are not old enough to remember that the PC was originally designed to be modular and flexible and that applied to both the hardware and software.
The whole raison d'être from the S-100 bus of the 1970s and the IBM PC† of the '80 was to provide users with a computer system that was flexible and that users could adjust and alter to suit their needs. This meant that users were actually required to alter the configurations of their PCs. No one would have questioned such action, it was considered completely normal.
Moreover, warranties took this into account and it was a normal procedure to add RAM, disk drives and video cards etc. without voiding the warranty. What's more, one could even upgrade the CPU (and if necessary its clock speed) and the rest of the hardware would still remain in warranty—that's why CPUs until recently were 'socketed' and not soldered into place. Of course, the third-party CPU wouldn't be warranted—not on the PC's warranty anyway.
What you are referring to is a sleight-of-hand by some sleazy ratbag manufacturers to change the PC from an open system and make it proprietary. Any system administrator or corporate buyer (at least until recently) would have objected to any clauses in the warranty that would have forbidden modifying equipment as mentioned. I know, I was head of a government IT department for years and contacts that included such punitive warranties would never have been awarded—they would never have passed my desk. Not that I ever saw any mind you. (BTW, there some were warranty claims, altering the equipment was a non issue.)
What we are seeing now (and this whole discussion) is about reclaiming the open nature of the PC—and our computing equipment in general, our phones, etc.
Fortunately, the Right to Repair movement and the Right of Ownership—people like Louis Rossmann and iFixit—are beginning to make inroads into keeping these sleazy carpetbaggers in check. As we've seen Right to Repair laws are getting enacted.
† The original IBM PCs had full service manuals that included electronic circuit diagrams and even the BIOS source code! To suggest we weren't meant to alter things is sheer nonsense. (I still have my copies of these manuals.)
Again, very limited warranties that only covered manufacturing defects. Not the warranties integrated products have today. In most cases, a manufacturing-defect warranty is not voided by rooting your device. (It may become more difficult to prove it’s a manufacturing defect, however. The law varies state to state.)
What fundamentally changed is warranties expanded as products became more integrated and the market expanded beyond power users. You cannot provide accidental-damage insurance for a user adjusting their BIOS.
Rightly so because adjusting the BIOS won't cause harm!
PS: if you are referring to damage caused by oveclocking (if perchance it's available in the BIOS), then this is a user-accessible feature. As such, it'd be covered under warranty.
If a manufacturer played hardball and tried to dishonor the warranty then they wouldn't stand a chance against most consumer legislation in most parts of the world. They'd be toast where I am, not only would they have to honor the warranty but they'd be fined in the process.
Perhaps you're in a part of the US where consumer legislation is essentially nonexistent then things might be different. (The US is known worldwide for having the worst consumer legislation in the Western world.)