Yes and they get viruses, malware, and ransomware from doing so.

My mom searched for a printer driver and ended up installing some third party crap wars on her computer

And malware has never existed in the Google Play store, right?

The point is that if you are the owner of the device you get to choose what to do with it, not Google. If the trade off for that freedom is an increased risk of malware then so be it. The people that want to only use the Google Play store as their source of software are free to do so, that's the beauty of your device being /your/ device.

And this is why people on HN make horrible product designers

I assume by being on HN you work in the tech industry. Assuming so, you owe your career and livelihood to the openness of the systems that came before you and the people that built them. Locking everything down in the name of safety and convenience is also a great way to prevent innovation and competition.

Yes I have had computers since 1986 that I programmed and could because of their oneness. I’ve also had none open devices - my first being the Atari 5200.

I’ve also known since then that if I wanted an open device, I bought one and not complained about a device that I knew going in that I couldn’t program.

Please point me to the smartphone that I can freely do whatever I want with. For all Apple devices, it's non-existent. For Android there's only a few limited options left that ship with a bootloader that can be unlocked.

The point is that this isn't 1986 anymore and when everyone's devices are locked down it prevents competition because there's no distribution method for homebrew software. If there was no ability to install custom OSs on IBM and IBM-compatible machines we wouldn't have Linux. And if Microsoft was the gatekeeper of what websites could be displayed on IE in the 90s we wouldn't have the web in the form we know it today. So sure, you personally may be able to buy development boards specifically but when you can't get your software to the average person's device, what does that mean for adding competition to the market?

I'd much rather live in a world where being more open means there might be some malware lurking as opposed to one where everything is so locked down that I am at the mercy of what these large corporations deem acceptable for me to do on hardware that I "own" in the name of safety and security.

You said there are a “few” choices. Then you with your own free will are perfectly capable of buying one of those few devices are you not?

There is very much a choice of homebrew applications - buy one of the “few” devices you admitted existed and develop for it.

You could even buy one of the Linux phones.

> So sure, you personally may be able to buy development boards specifically but when you can't get your software to the average person's device, what does that mean for adding competition to the market?

The “average” person decided that they didn’t care about obtaining homebrew applications enough to buy such a device.

> I'd much rather live in a world where being more open means there might be some malware lurking as opposed to one where everything is so locked down that I am at the mercy of what these large corporations deem acceptable for me to do on hardware that I "own" in the name of safety and security.

And you are free to make that trade off and buy such a device.

You are completely missing the point that this is not just about an individual's ability to buy hardware that they can do what they want with, but rather two corporations (Apple and Google) locking out all competition on their respective platforms they have a duopoly on.

Your view seems to be that the free market will solve all ills then and that if this was really something so important then the average consumer would care about it and change the situation. However, 100+ years of anti-trust laws would disagree with this position. It should be fairly obvious that building a new mobile ecosystem would require an insane amount of investment to the point that it's essentially impossible now. As such, the conclusion that "everyone who cares can just buy a Linux phone" is not a viable solution as it's not feasible for a competitor trying to do that to survive long enough in the industry before being run into the ground due to the anti-competitive behavior of Apple and Google locking everyone else out of access to their operating system's users outside of their formal, approved channels.

If we relied on the average person to act in the interest of ensuring viable competition can enter a market we'd be living in the world of the early 1900s with completely vertically and horizontally integrated Standard Oil type corporations controlling every industry. Not that we're too far off from that currently unfortunately, but your view of letting the free market control who has adequate access to potential marketshare in a given industry is incredibly naive and illustrates the exact reason why we need anti-trust laws in the first place and enforcement of those laws. That's all I have to say on the matter.

Then Mom needs more training on how to differentiate between legitimate sites and non-legitimate ones.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, as many times as people need to hear it: There is no such thing as, "I'm just not a computer person!" We're over and done with that era of human history. Just like we're over and done with, "I just can't read and write!" Too bad. You live in a world were reading and writing is required just to exist. It's been that way for about 100 years, give or take depending on who you ask.

Now you need to have basic understanding of computers and the Internet. That's the world we're living in now.

And how has that worked for the last 40 years?

Well for the first couple of hundred thousand years of our existence as modern humans, we didn't teach everyone to read and write. It's been essentially the past 400 years, give or take some decades. And as it happens, it's turned out beautifully, in my estimation.

Yes we should force everyone to “learn to code” so they can disassemble the code of all of their software before they run it.

It worked pretty well.

Should we ban cars since there are people who cannot drive?

Have you really been paying attention to everything going on with the typical PC?