Buy a more open phone if you want one, but stop trying to use legal means to force the software on my phone to be worse for my use-case just because you want to have your cake and eat it too.
If the USG decides to pass a law saying you can only buy iPhones, then we will have more to talk about w.r.t. liberty.
Nothing actually prevents you from modifying your iPhone however you see fit, btw. If you are incapable of breaking Apple's security without bricking the phone, that's a "you" problem.
Is what the US government does the only concern to you? This feels like a very semantic argument that tries to define the government as the sole arbiter of what's expected in our society. Majority consensus has an equal if not greater reach in telling us what we can and can't do. Case in point: the only two types of smartphones you can reasonably use nowadays are iOS devices and Android devices (and that is Google-sanctioned Android devices, custom ROMs are being rooted out as we speak). Sure, you can technically buy a random dumbphone, and just accept losing access to most of society, including services where using specific apps on specific platforms is mandatory. Is that liberty to you? Everyone telling you that you must pick from one of these options, but you're not forced to at gunpoint, so it's fine?
> Nothing actually prevents you from modifying your iPhone however you see fit, btw. If you are incapable of breaking Apple's security without bricking the phone, that's a "you" problem.
I would agree if we were still in the 2000s, when people could actually plug their phones in and flash whatever firmware they desired on them. Current-day phones, iPhones especially, are black boxes that are designed to be impenetrable by anyone by Apple, under the guise of 'security'. Everything is cross-checked to ensure that you can't as much as screw your phone open without consequences. The threat vectors they're supposedly addressing are utterly ludicrous. It's gotta be stuff like "Oh, what if a malicious actor steals grandma's iPhone, opens it, installs a battery that wasn't blessed by Apple, and explodes it after giving it back to her?".
Everyone knows they're doing this because they want every facet their devices to be in their tight grip, so that you just obtain temporary permission to do some things with it under their watchful eye, as long as you stay in your lane. Best of all, they can just incessantly scream something about "safety", "security" or "integrity" and that will be good enough justification.
And 99% of people don't even have the capacity to care about any of this, they'll just pick "security" and cheer on for any new "secure" update that tightens corporate control over you and what you can do. The 1% is too small of a market to care about, they will just reluctantly use the socially acceptable option because what choice do they have?
No you can't. The apple batteries have a chip in them with a code that tells the phone they're authentic - only authentic apple components are allowed.
Its not a conspiracy theory. Apple is just a piece of shit company.
If you think being a piece of shit has to be a conspiracy, you're just naive.
Maybe you got lucky or the manufacturer cheated and copied Apples chip. Probably the latter.
Which, good for the manufacturer, but kind of goes your whole ethos, doesn't it?
Regardless, none of this is really a secret. You can look it up. Its not a conspiracy - again, companies don't need a conspiracy to be pieces of shit. They can just be pieces of shit. You don't need to go bat for them buddy, I promise they don't care about you.
Again, this is documented, it's not really up for debate. Your denial of it or your strange religious relationship with Apple doesn't change any of that.
And I haven't gotten any sort of response other than "uhh I know a guy!!" I mean, really? Can we at least pretend to try?
Your claims are entirely up for debate, as they are wrong. The chip in the battery (for power management) is not cryptographically signed with an Apple private key, unlike other parts of the device related to security (e.g. TouchID, FaceID camera, etc). You don't seem to know or understand this, which I think is required for a constructive conversation about Apple's behavior vis-a-vis security and user freedom. If Apple really did want to prevent any non-authentic parts from being used, they could apply this same process (the Secure Enclave refusing to interface with any component not signed by Apple). But they do not. If you have some evidence that this is the case, please link it. You are the one making the positive claim, so it is on you to demonstrate it.