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https://hackaday.com/2025/10/22/what-happened-to-running-what-you-wanted-on-your-own-machine/
https://archive.ph/6i4vr
When the microcomputer first landed in homes some forty years ago, it came with a simple freedom—you could run whatever software you could get your hands on. Floppy disk from a friend? Pop it in. Shareware demo downloaded from a BBS? Go ahead! Dodgy code you wrote yourself at 2 AM? Absolutely. The computer you bought was yours. It would run whatever you told it to run, and ask no questions.
Today, that freedom is dying. What's worse, is it's happening so gradually that most people haven't noticed we're already halfway into the coffin.
The latest broadside fired in the war against platform freedom has been fired. Google recently announced new upcoming restrictions on APK installations. Starting in 2026, Google will tightening the screws on sideloading, making it increasingly difficult to install applications that haven't been blessed by the Play Store's approval process. It's being sold as a security measure, but it will make it far more difficult for users to run apps outside the official ecosystem. There is a security argument to be made, of course, because suspect code can cause all kinds of havoc on a device loaded with a user's personal data. At the same time, security concerns have a funny way of aligning perfectly with ulterior corporate motives.
[...] The walled garden concept didn't start with smartphones. Indeed, video game consoles were a bit of a trailblazer in this space, with manufacturers taking this approach decades ago. The moment gaming became genuinely profitable, console manufacturers realized they could control their entire ecosystem. Proprietary formats, region systems, and lockout chips were all valid ways to ensure companies could levy hefty licensing fees from developers. They locked down their hardware tighter than a bank vault, and they did it for one simple reason—money. As long as the manufacturer could ensure the console wouldn't run unapproved games, developers would have to give them a kickback for every unit sold.
[...] Then came the iPhone, and with it, the App Store. Apple took the locked-down model and applied it to a computer you carry in your pocket. The promise was that you'd only get apps that were approved by Apple, with the implicit guarantee of a certain level of quality and functionality.
[...] Apple sold the walled garden as a feature. It wasn't ashamed or hiding the fact—it was proud of it. It promised apps with no viruses and no risks; a place where everything was curated and safe. The iPhone's locked-down nature wasn't a restriction; it was a selling point.
But it also meant Apple controlled everything. Every app paid Apple's tax, and every update needed Apple's permission. You couldn't run software Apple didn't approve, full stop. You might have paid for the device in your pocket, but you had no right to run what you wanted on it. Someone in Cupertino had the final say over that, not you.
When Android arrived on the scene, it offered the complete opposite concept to Apple's control. It was open source, and based on Linux. You could load your own apps, install your own ROMs and even get root access to your device if you wanted. For a certain kind of user, that was appealing. Android would still offer an application catalogue of its own, curated by Google, but there was nothing stopping you just downloading other apps off the web, or running your own code.
Sadly, over the years, Android has been steadily walking back that openness. The justifications are always reasonable on their face. Security updates need to be mandatory because users are terrible at remembering to update. Sideloading apps need to come with warnings because users will absolutely install malware if you let them just click a button. Root access is too dangerous because it puts the security of the whole system and other apps at risk. But inch by inch, it gets harder to run what you want on the device you paid for.
[...] Microsoft hasn't pulled the trigger on fully locking down Windows. It's flirted with the idea, but has seen little success. Windows RT and Windows 10 S were both locked to only run software signed by Microsoft—each found few takers. Desktop Windows remains stubbornly open, capable of running whatever executable you throw at it, even if it throws up a few more dialog boxes and question marks with every installer you run these days.
[...] Here's what bothers me most: we're losing the idea that you can just try things with computers. That you can experiment. That you can learn by doing. That you can take a risk on some weird little program someone made in their spare time. All that goes away with the walled garden. Your neighbour can't just whip up some fun gadget and share it with you without signing up for an SDK and paying developer fees. Your obscure game community can't just write mods and share content because everything's locked down. So much creativity gets squashed before it even hits the drawing board because it's just not feasible to do it.
It's hard to know how to fight this battle. So much ground has been lost already, and big companies are reluctant to listen to the esoteric wishers of the hackers and makers that actually care about the freedom to squirt whatever through their own CPUs. Ultimately, though, you can still vote with your wallet. Don't let Personal Computing become Consumer Computing, where you're only allowed to run code that paid the corporate toll. Make sure the computers you're paying for are doing what you want, not just what the executives approved of for their own gain. It's your computer, it should run what you want it to!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Thursday November 06, @12:58PM (2 children)
My computer still runs what I want. Otherwise it wouldn't be my computer.
Perhaps I just don't consider my phone, or tablet if I had one, to be a computer. But still yes it's shit that I can't do what I want with something I bought. But at the same time isn't that what they want? They don't want you to own anything anymore. You are just renting or borrowing thing since everything requires a subscription of some kind to work. The rights for you to enjoy something can be voided at a whim. When was the last time a computer bought came with a big phat manual? They don't want people to tinker around with the hardware. They want you to enjoy it the way they want you to enjoy it. Apparently consumers are fine with that now. So they won't miss it until it's gone. If they even notice it.
Written by someone that wasn't around at the time. The walled garden concept with video games is a bit dishonest. You knew in advance. You paid to get that Nintendo home entertainment system, or whatever. You knew it would run all approved cartridges. You where not surprised when it didn't run Atari cartridges or Spectravideo or whatever. Just as I wasn't surprised that my friends Sinclair Spectrum software would not run on my Commodore 64. But neither machine refused to run things made for it.
Also they didn't lock down their hardware tighter then a bank vault. The lockdown back then was so basic you could break it easily with a soldering iron and some wires. It was just that most people at the time didn't know how and that knowledge was kept tight or in a circle and slowly trickled around to other enthusiasts.
For the NES you cut a leg (4) on a chip, lets not mention which one since Nintendo after all are bitchy about all things. Done. Protection defeated. If you wanted to be fancy, and safe, you bent the leg up a bit and soldered a wire between said leg and ground so it wasn't left floating. But it was extra. Software protection in general wasn't better. Was this bank vault levels of security? No. Or I hope not, I have never broken into any banks. But they didn't have hardware resources to spend on such things. Also there wasn't as mentioned any free sharing of information. Nerds that knew about these things wasn't a treat to their business model.
We are not losing anything. People chose this. The normal customers are ok with this, or just don't know any better or care more. They just want to run their little app and that is all they want. They don't care beyond that. They get what they want. The walled garden in that regard is a feature for them. They don't want to compile any code, they don't want to have options. To tinker around or make changes. They just want shit to work at the fewest clicks possible. So they are not losing anything, you and I are not losing anything either cause we won't put up with that shit and it will and can be defeated. You do know you don't have to run the latest and greatest crap they spew out right? You have options. You can say no I don't want the latest Apple iGauge Pro21 or whatever they'll call it. You'll be fine without.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Thursday November 06, @03:31PM (1 child)
I'm not even sure it's fair to call the early gaming systems closed. The Atari 2600 would happily attempt to run any cartridge you put in it. It's just that most people didn't know how to develop a new game and stick it on a cartridge. But if you did, it didn't do anything in particular to stop you. Though, IIRC, Atari had bit of a freak-out when Activision came on the scene.
The game genie didn't have to do anything special to defeat security.
The C64 had cartridges too. There was an auto-run mechanism there, but if you taped over a single pin, it came up in BASIC and you could bank switch the cart into memory and dump it. I don't think the intent of the auto-run was to prevent dumping, that was just a side effect of auto-running.
There were plenty of copy prevention schemes out there in software for the early home computers, but the computer itself didn't do anything to facilitate them and was perfectly happy to obey it's owners commands to help in patching out the offending code.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday November 06, @04:54PM
If you knew how to make a cartridge back then, or how to burn an eprom it wasn't an issue. For most home computers and such, as the C64. It was mostly annoying cause you only had one cartridge port and if you wanted to use multiple cartridges it was a bit of a pain or you had to get one of them that allowed you to chain cartridges.
Nintendo didn't like that tho. So they region encoded their cartridges, which is what was defeated by clipping or de-soldering that pin. For them the protection was in the cartridge, hence the legal battle they had with Atari/Tengen. Which figured out how to make unlicensed cartridges. The legal battles going on long after the NES was the cream of the console crop.