people buy apple products precisely because of how integrated they are. this idealism and desire to force companies to support everything (as much as i want gaming on mac/linux and drivers for things supported) is the single most dangerous idea that would completely ruin the user experience for millions.
I'm sorry, where did I proposed we do that? As far as I am aware my proposal would only force Apples to split itself in 2: a hardware company that sells top notch hardware (so top notch in fact that even the hardware interfaces are as clean and slick as an iPad's case), and a software company that sells a top-notch integrated software suite on whatever hardware they chose to support (and no other hardware).
This idea that Apple's hardware is somehow better because they don't publish their spec sounds incoherent to be honest. As is the idea that their software is better because it runs on company hardware. If there's still a company selling good hardware, one can still write good software for that particular hardware.
So… forcing hardware companies to support all software? Nope, though publishing their spec does automatically provide some level of support for arbitrary software. Forcing software companies to support all hardware? No more than they do now, possibly even less: hardware vendors will be incentivised to harmonise their respective interfaces to appeal to a maximum number of software vendors, so software vendors will be incentivised to support a relatively limited set of interfaces.
What I'm hoping to accomplish with this is: reduced or eliminated vendor lock-in, harmonisation and simplification of ISAs, the ability to support any hardware in any OS, and maybe even the the ability to actually write new OSes and see some real competition in this space.
Note one important component I haven't mentioned: ISA patents should be rendered null and void. Anyone should be allowed to design, make, and sell an ARM or x86 CPU without asking anyone's permission. Or a GPU clone, or a network card clone, etc. Without that we'll just strengthen monopolies, or maybe allow new ones to arise.
> I'm not proposing that we split companies.
Also you, only a couple comments up:
> As far as I am aware my proposal would only force Apples to split itself in 2: a hardware company that sells top notch hardware (so top notch in fact that even the hardware interfaces are as clean and slick as an iPad's case), and a software company that sells a top-notch integrated software suite on whatever hardware they chose to support (and no other hardware).
Which is it, split companies or don't split companies? You can't have it both ways. If you aren't proposing that we split companies then you can't propose we split Apple unless you want to be a pedantic twit and point out that that's just one company and not companies.
The law as I propose it would not legally force Apple to split. They would have 3 alternatives: stop selling software, stop selling hardware, or split. They could fire half the company, but we all know what they would actually do. Same deals with banks: enforcing the separation between deposit and investment wouldn't force the banks to split, but we all know that in practice they would.
Understand here that splitting Apple is not my goal. My goal is to separate the activities, in the hope of fostering more competition and personal freedom.
The second is an interoperability mandate: reproducing the functionality of existing hardware (a CPU ISA, a GPU clone…) must be authorized, and all relevant copyright and patents ignored.
This doesn’t mean that we would end all partnerships. The hardware company can still send prototypes to the software company, so driver development can begin before the hardware gets production-ready. That kind of workflow is common today.
People used to buy cocaine toothache drops and give them to children to get them to shut up. People used to send babies by post. Just because people like something doesn't mean it doesn't have terrible effects. [1]
> single most dangerous idea
I mean, sure after guns, drugs, superbugs, global nuclear war, climate change, super-plague produced by synthetic biology...
1 - https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/coca...
comparing apple’s integrated approach to cocaine drops for kids tells me all i need to know about your bias; consumers like apple products, they are privacy focused more then any commercial competitor and their chips and OS are better than anything else precisely because of their integration.
and people want those devices.