zlacker

>>akyuu+(OP)
Why was it that in the early PC days, IBM was unable to keep a lid on 'IBM compatible', allowing for the PC interoperability explosion, yet today, almost every phone has closed drivers, closed and locked bootloaders, and almost complete corporate control over our devices? Why are there not yet a plethora of phones on the market that allow anyone to install their OS of choice?

>>Subicu+hn
Other companies saw that IBM effectively lost control over their platform (and thus lost a large revenue stream), and are determined to not make the same mistake.

That's a long running effort, going all the way from lobbying (DMCA and their ilk), to all kinds of hardware root-of-trust, encrypted and signed firmware, OS kernels and drivers etc etc. And yes, today we have the transistor budgets to spend on things like this, which wasn't an option back when the PC architecture was devised.