You are so brainwashed by app stores' talking points that you don't realize you are describing computers.
Just let users install whatever they want. Maybe add a verification process (a-la app verification for Mac) if users want to be restricted to verified apps. Show a "this is from an unverified developer" messages if the app comes from an unverified developer (is not signed).
There's no need to draw lines. Leave that to painters and architects.
I don't get your point. This article is about control of the high level software running on your phone, not the firmware controlling your phone's radios. Even if an app store allowed any software without filter, this would not allow anyone to transmit "arbitrary radio signals". The much lower level firmware ensures that the radio communicates at proper power and protocol.
The phone hardware is not capable of arbitrary radio signals anyway. People can buy software defined radios off the shelf, but people generally don't abuse this because a) there really isn't any motivation for them to and b) they would quickly land in really hot water with the FCC.
1. A world where every human's smartphone is an open-field install-anything no-controls-beyond-antivirus device similar to your desktop PC would be a functionally and utilitarian-ly worse world than the one we live in today where these devices for most people exhibit strong, centralized, corporatist control.
2. There are use-cases these devices are now being adopted for that open-field install-anything desktop PCs have never, even to this day, adopted. You cannot install your drivers license and passport into your desktop PC, nor can you tap-to-pay. Its likely many of these use-cases needed the level of hyper-security Apple and Google are pushing toward in order to digitize these use-cases, validly or not.
3. Apple's extreme of restricting the installation of anything outside of the App Store (and, for that matter, even severely restricting the things you can distribute through the app store for no reason, such as until recently alternate payment providers) is a step too far. As you say, the opposite extreme is bad, but that doesn't mean Apple's extreme is good.
4. There's a middleground we need to find, and by the way, I don't think Android strikes the middleground very well today. A couple examples of things that would move in a more positive direction toward this middleground: (a.) I think phones should be able to be purchased from the factory immutably with the quality of requiring binaries to be signed by Apple/Google. Google should sell Pixels that are hyper-locked down similar to the iPhone and that characteristic can never change about them; its etched into the security coprocessor itself. Conversely, maybe if I have an Apple developer account, I should be able to buy an iPhone that allows me to install binaries from any source. (b.) Apple should have an "App Store Extended" backend capability where developers still distribute their apps through the App Store, all the same security scanning happens, but the developer has to handle their own marketing via the web; the app never appears in the App Store App itself. In exchange, their distribution rules are more relaxed (alternate payment processors, applets, sensitive content, etc).
> Apple's extreme of restricting the installation of anything outside of the App Store... is a step too far.
This is the key for me right here. I think it's fine to offer preferred services and distribution platforms on a piece of hardware. But actively preventing other software from running on that hardware is silly. The user really doesn't own the thing at that point.
Contrast Apple's treatment of iPhones and iPads with Valve's position on the upcoming Steam Machine:
>Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
Yes, that's the point of freedom. People can carry devices that do things. If they break the law, that's another question, but everyone should be allowed to have computers that communicate that they can control
I don’t want someone to walk around, I don’t know, forcing all the phones around them in a 10m radius to blow up their batteries and hurt people.
Handheld radios, like my wireless tx/rx for lavaliers have to have their spectrums cleared by the FCC. As do most transmitting devices. There are baseline requirements before they can be sold/used.
I get often with these things if you give an inch they take a mile, but there have to be some foundational guardrails here IMO. You can’t just have a bunch of laws punishing people for behavior and no attempts at preventing it in the first place.
The ability to just transmit anything indiscriminately is just a dicey proposition to me. Like how we used to just allow a free for all with drones.
Can you show an example of a phone blowing up its battery with the potential to hurt people because of a harmful radio signal?
This seems like something the phone should be able to handle. People already have root access on devices with radio transmitters, they're called laptops. I don't recall many incidents of a malicious actor with a laptop forcing all the laptops around them to blow up and hurt their owners. If that were a reasonable possibility then they certainly wouldn't be allowed on planes.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding but the prior comment seemed to say “people should be able to transmit whatever they want, however they want, with whatever device they want.”
I imagine it’s not insanely difficult to get a phone to crank up voltage or something until the battery starts melting down. Maybe I’m letting sci-fi/thrillers pollute my sense of reality though
My point is that transmitting whatever you want doesn't mean the devices around you will "blow up", devices also have controls on how they receive radio transmissions.
A malicious transmitter could likely jam signals, but this is already illegal and that comment said "If they break the law, that's another question"
Your hypothetical doesn't make sense. People can already hack around with radios and transmit whatever they want, doing so doesn't result in devices around them blowing up or hurting people.
Malicious transmitters are illegal. There is liability for the person operating the malicious transmitter along with the sale, marketing, and manufacturing of the transmitter.
If the maker of a phone allowed a user to break the law by having the phone become a malicious transmitter and the phone maker didn't try everything in their capacity to prevent it, they'd be in trouble too.
Yes, you can hack your own. You can get a CB radio and boost its power by replacing parts of it. That's on you. If you were able to get a phone from a company that knowingly allowed you to install some software or do this "one silly trick" that allowed the phone to broadcast at 10x the power, you'd be in trouble - but so would the company that made the phone.
Sure, but we already have consumer devices with root access that have radio transmitters. Is this a common problem with laptops? Why would it be a larger problem with smartphones?
The amount of integration between the system and the wifi modem, the frequencies that it can broadcast on, and the regulations for that part of the spectrum.
You'd be quite challenged to make your wifi modem connect to an access point a few miles away. Phones do it all the time. A phone may be broadcasting with as low as a milliwatt when near a transmitter to a few watts when further away ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_device_radiation_and_... ). Wifi has a much smaller range of acceptable broadcast power available (and at the most powerful end of acceptable is less than a phone).
That's called a weapon (EMP discharge), and there's quite a lot of people in the US that are ready to defend even such devices. There's even a Constitutional article about it IIRC.
Why not? As we get pushed more into a corner on this obviously self evident logic chain. Many of us WILL NOT EVER comply with this absurd oppressive tyrannical control of computing and communication and information. We might as well embrace the same non arguments of the over the top second amendment people.
It's literally the silly meme. You will take my gun/GNU from my cold dead hands lol
If you're going to use the "ooh freedom is scary and dangerous" card then I'm allowed to play the "some freedoms are necessary to maintain a free society" card. If that was not your argument, feel free to clarify your position rather than dodge the question.
The risk is if you have unfettered control then it's easy to get tricked into installing malicious apps, and now my device is getting zero-day attacks over bluetooth or wifi from state actors using your phone.
> a free for all where millions of idiots are carrying devices where they can install and run anything on a device where arbitrary radio signals can be transmitted and received at will under software control
