I'm glad they're doing this, but it's sad that it's news. We ought to be able to take for granted the freedom to run whatever software we want on the computers we buy. (Don't tell me a cellphone running Android isn't a computer. You know better.)
You know it's a computer, and I know it's a computer, but to the "average person," it's an appliance. It's kind of like the electric motor. Someone (sorry, I don't recall who) recently posted an analogy here on HN between electric motors and any other technology.
At first, factories would install a single giant motor with belts running everywhere, and Sears sold a general-purpose home motor. Eventually, motors were miniaturized and specialized into all kinds of devices. Now nobody thinks about using a motor; they think about using a lathe, blender, or sewing machine.
The same trend is happening with computers. Initially, people had generic computers (ignoring the anomaly of the standalone word processor). Increasingly powerful computers are gradually getting built into everything. You and I see computers everywhere, but everyone else just sees smarter devices.
Of course, and I think that's a pretty good trend in both cases. The thing is, though, bad motors can cause electrical fires, which are dangerous. If the trend toward smaller motors were accompanied by a trend toward higher risk of burning your house down, I'd say we need to work on that.
Here's how I explained the bootloader issue to some people yesterday who I think were average:
The bootloader is the software that runs on your phone when you turn it on. It starts up the rest of the software on the phone, and if it's "locked", it will only start up software that the phone's maker has approved to run. This enables your cell phone company to cheat you by, for example, charging you a dollar for a ringtone that the musician released for free, or to charge you rates a hundred times as high for text messages as for other data transfer.
There are worse things they could do, too, like making your phone never turn on again if they have a contract dispute with you, or activating the camera or microphone without you noticing upon a request from law enforcement or because some guy in their law enforcement service center wants to see you get undressed. They haven't been caught doing those things yet, but when they do, people with unlocked bootloaders will be able to stop them, and other people won't.
Yes, I wanted to point out the critical difference that software makes, but my post was already getting long enough. The average person doesn't (yet) seem to understand that difference though.
"Consumer", "customer", "user". What is in a name?
Personally, I like to put myself in terms of the second two. The first carries connotations of more passivity. The second has that old "... is always right" adage on its side. The last takes the money out of the discussion and bridges nicely back to other movements toward user freedom in the realm of computers.
