It's a sign of the times that Uxn users on Lines have been putting in a lot of effort to figure out whether they are permitted by Apple to run a lightweight 8-bit VM without network access or piracy applications on hardware they own.

It is possible to have devices which are safe for most users to operate and yet can run software not approved by the manufacturer. Apple is simply choosing not to allow the latter for business reasons.

In some ways, it is true that this is because it's what "users want" - but at the same time, the two options right now are "cohesive ecosystem with a good image and lots of marketing about security, but low freedom" and, well, Android.

Of course most people will choose what they see as secure but limited over what they see as insecure and low-class. Apple has cultivated and image and ideology that puts them on top no matter what they do.

See, for example, the _very recent_ Twitter megathread about "blue bubble/green bubble", which included many people saying, without irony, that they would intentionally exclude non-iOS users from their social circles.

And, to be clear, I'm not saying that people are wrong for choosing iOS over Android or vice versa. People choose the tools they need to solve their problems and we must, as an axiom, be committed to not shaming them for that. In OS, in hardware platform, in software of choice.

I say this, by the way, because there is a persistent meme in the Fediverse memeplex that says "if you use FOSS made by bad people, you are a bad person". We all use proprietary stuff made by bad people; this is an unfortunate double standard.

@kensanata @tindall It's unclear to me how it's good for activism to toss out public shaming as a means to improve behavior.

@resist1984 @kensanata it's not good activism to be angry at people who can't change anything, especially over things that have a minimal impact. I don't care if you use a Macbook to make posters for your community organizing and I don't care if you use Pleroma to get a bunch of your friends together to protest the pipeline.

@resist1984 @kensanata I think we should be very clear about what the problems are with our software and our hardware, as much as we are with other systems we participate in, but for many people the option is "use the tools you're used to or spend a year rebuilding all your skills". That's certainly true for me; if I had to move on from Vim or Ubuntu for some reason I'd be useless for months. That happened when I was learning Mac OS for my dayjob.

@tindall @kensanata When you talk about communication tools, choices *do* have impact. Digital tools are inherently political. Some people are being marginalized by bad tools. I am non-stop shaming politicians for using #Twitter to microblog exclusively, in a way that denies a voice to those who can't or won't supply a mobile phone number to twitter.