Comment by gorgoiler | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gorgoiler | Hacker News Reader

I like the “wasn’t inevitable” list. The fact that two US corporations control 99% of phones is another one that feels about as comfortable as a rock in my boot and I hope this too is not inevitable, in the long run.

Imagine if the 80s and 90s had been PC vs Mac but you had to go to IBM for one or more critical pieces of software or software distribution infrastructure. The Cambrian explosion IBM-PC compatability didn’t happen overnight of course. I don’t think it will be (or ought to be) inevitable that phones remain opaque and locked down forever, but the day when freedom finally comes doesn’t really feel like it’s just around the corner.

Posted, alas for now, from my iPhone

> The Cambrian explosion IBM-PC compatability didn’t happen overnight of course.

It happened because IBM by mistake allowed it to happen. Big tech companies nowadays are very proficient at not repeating those mistakes.

> The Cambrian explosion IBM-PC compatability didn’t happen overnight of course.

There's a recording of an interview with Bill Gates floating around where he pretty much takes credit for that. He claims (paraphrasing because I listened to it almost 20 years ago) that he suggested a lot of the hardware to IBM because he knew he could repurpose DOS for it.

I also phrased this badly. Cambrian explosions by definition happen in very short time frames (“overnight”), but the conditions required to set off the explosion take a long time to brew and are few and far between.

We’re two decades into the smartphone era and my hope is that we’re still in the DEC / VAX / S370 stage, with the “IBM-PC” stage just around the corner still to come.

Also imagine that basic interactions were mediated by those monopolies: you had to print your bus ticket personally with software only available on your IBM.

In particular it is very regrettable if we look at how Apple has treated the mobile safari browser.

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