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Comment by jayofdoom | Hacker News Reader

No, it's not similar.

There are two OS platforms for desktop/laptop usage: MacOS Windows

These both contain ways to run arbitrary compiled code from an arbitrary source -- like a computer should. Losing this feature of our smartphones should have everyone concerned.

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> These both contain ways to run arbitrary compiled code from an arbitrary source

And they're both working towards taking that away.

For now we have Linux as a 3rd option, but that only exists so long as there's hardware available that'll let you run it. Can easily imagine a near-future where you can only get 'Windows hardware' or 'Apple hardware' and nothing modern that'll boot a 3rd-party OS.

Is that really realistic? Apple very specifically allowed booting unsigned, and even non macOS, operating systems on their ARM devices. Sure - they don’t document the hardware, but making it possible was intentional.

Yes, making it possible was intentional. But it just goes to show easy it would be for them to remove that option. While they are currently specifically choosing not do that for their own hardware, they could change their mind tomorrow.

For precedent, Microsoft locked down their own ARM hardware to Windows.

do you think arm boards are going away?

Right. The OP's point was that just having 2 major OSes is the problem but it's clearly not because we had that situation with desktops/laptops and they both allow arbitrary code.

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