verdare

Modern PCs can trace their lineage all the way back to the IBM PC Compatibles. Multiple vendors across the industry consolidated on a set of standards (because IBM basically had a monopoly at one point), and consumers came to expect that these standards would be followed.

When smartphones came on the scene, there was no expectation for them to follow desktop standards. It was the Wild West, and every manufacturer ended up doing things at least a little differently—much like the early PC market, actually. The customer base was the general public, not the hobbyists and tinkerers who bought into the early PC market, and there was no regulatory pressure to adopt open standards. In addition, I don’t think people anticipated the extent to which they would become the dominant form of computing for much of the globe.

From our perspective, they’re in the wrong. From the perspective of people who are “tough on crime,” they’re in the right.