Phones have always been locked down, all the way back to when you could only use a phone that AT&T sold you attached to a landline.
Basic cell phones were generally very locked down, or at least there was no documentation on how anything worked. I do remember using a photo and contact syncing tool that had the protocols for a bunch of “feature” phones reverse engineered. IIRC the dev gave up because he kept getting sued because the phone manufacturers and carriers made money off of charging for that.
When smartphones came around, Android was actually very open. My first Droid was completely open, no need to even unlock anything. Applications could be installed and run from anywhere, including the SD card. Custom ROMs were common and easy to install.
But the carriers were not happy, due to the proliferation of malware running on their networks and a general fear of hackers. Plus the “Hey, we want to charge for that like we do on the feature phones!” Back then, the carriers were all powerful because they could and would kick out any device they wanted. Users were also pretty unhappy due to the lack of security and malware. So they started by adding a boot loader lock and eventually locked down more and more.
The iPhone was locked down from the beginning. It was seen as more of an iPod or other accessory device by most people, so no one really cared.
And, that’s basically been it.
Really, the fact that PCs are as open as they are is pretty amazing and mostly due to different companies reverse engineering each other and a lot of court decisions. I’m sure looking back that IBM really wishes that their cases had gone differently.
Phones have always been locked down, all the way back to when you could only use a phone that AT&T sold you attached to a landline.
Basic cell phones were generally very locked down, or at least there was no documentation on how anything worked. I do remember using a photo and contact syncing tool that had the protocols for a bunch of “feature” phones reverse engineered. IIRC the dev gave up because he kept getting sued because the phone manufacturers and carriers made money off of charging for that.
When smartphones came around, Android was actually very open. My first Droid was completely open, no need to even unlock anything. Applications could be installed and run from anywhere, including the SD card. Custom ROMs were common and easy to install.
But the carriers were not happy, due to the proliferation of malware running on their networks and a general fear of hackers. Plus the “Hey, we want to charge for that like we do on the feature phones!” Back then, the carriers were all powerful because they could and would kick out any device they wanted. Users were also pretty unhappy due to the lack of security and malware. So they started by adding a boot loader lock and eventually locked down more and more.
The iPhone was locked down from the beginning. It was seen as more of an iPod or other accessory device by most people, so no one really cared.
And, that’s basically been it.
Really, the fact that PCs are as open as they are is pretty amazing and mostly due to different companies reverse engineering each other and a lot of court decisions. I’m sure looking back that IBM really wishes that their cases had gone differently.