Your Phone Is Not Your Computer

Well, this statement is, depending on where you view it from, either trivially true, trivially false, or... at least mildly interesting.

Is a phone a computer, even? Whose computer is it?

Well, as of 1980, phones were rather obviously not computers at all: they were mostly mechanical devices, with a dial, a speaker and a microphone, with the vast majority of the intelligence being provided by the phone network. This didn't change a whole lot for landline phones; for mobile, later in the 90s, you did in fact needed some compute, so... if we were to nitpick, they were computers in some sense. Very far from general purpose computers though.

Were 90s PCs computers? Most definitely yes. Even laptops, with terrible TFT displays and disappointing battery life, were computers: you could use them to create spreadsheets, play games, edit text, write programs, ... well, I think most readers of this blog have seen a computer at some point.

At some point... phones ended up being increasingly smarter. You could, at first, buy ringtones. Then... J2ME games ended up being a thing. Finally, "smart" phones happened; what this even means should probably be more blurry than it is generally perceived to be (is a Blackberry a smartphone? why wasn't my Sony-Ericsson k700i? it did have internet!), but... "it can passably function as a computer-replacement for internet usage purposes" is a pretty OK definition. Having apps that can reasonably operate in the background in some form is another.

Given how they can run apps, have a browser, a screen, etc, ... well, they're surely some form of computer at some point. Apple's MacBook Neo and the iPhone 16 Pro has literally the same chip powering them. There are... similarities.

Their evolution has some path dependence though.

Computers, at least the personal kind, started off with no network connections whatsoever. You bought yourself one, you obtained or wrote programs to run on it; the extent of interaction with various companies was like... the companies sending you floppy disks in the mail.

Phones, on the other hand, were a tentacle of the phone system before even being computers. In fact, for a long time, the phone company literally owned the phone in your house; there was, at some point, an actual lawsuit about whether you're allowed to sell a passive, bakelite funnel that attached to your handset for better voice quality. Some of is made some sense back in the 60s: the phone network consisted of not very intelligent relays & plugging in the wrong wires did have the potential for bringing down more than your own phone line.

In the meantime, computers grew outwards. Eventually, The Internet happened. You could get The Internet via, well, your phone company. In the meantime, we did convince phone companies that it's OK for people to actually buy and wire up landline phones, so modems no longer needed to look like this:

Phones also grew... and turned into computers, somewhat. The "phone company" culture didn't change though; while you could buy actual mobile handsets, ... who did you buy them from? the phone companies! to a varying extent, ranging from "they give you subsidies" (Europe) to "they literally added phone company branding" (US). As such, these devices were generally treated as their turf where they can sell services to you (voice calls! texts! ringtones! games!).

Eventually, The Internet happened. Network operators (their fancy name for "mobile phone service provider", like AT&T, Verizon etc.) had major issues with "over the top" services, as they'd call them (who pays for overpriced international calls if internet bandwidth is orders of magnitude cheaper and it doesn't care about whether this is a hour of voice or a minute of video?), trying to sell specialized corporate video conferencing services even in 2010-ish (Skype was definitely a thing already). Eventually, they did end up becoming "dumb pipes", mostly.

Meanwhile... another thing happened too: Apple. Coming from the world of computers, they built something that people actually wanted: a fancy touchscreen phone with internet access! They also mostly refused to play the role of a docile cell phone OEM, supplying equipment to network operators. Apple wanted control. (So similar to said network operators!) They wanted to make phone software look the way they wanted. They pushed though phone plans with reasonable amounts of internet. They could send out software updates whenever they wanted. They ended up running their app store not via phone bill payments. It appeared that the Computer World is slowly defeating the Phone Network Company world, and all will be well.

Except...

This is not what happened.

To begin with, the operators never relinquished control entirely. The iPhone was an AT&T exclusive first; also, operators are still requiring mandatory testing of parts of phone software that has nothing to do with mobile network disruptions. (Imagine your cable provider mandating Microsoft to send them Windows updates for inspection. It sounds... very stupid, unless it's mobile phones.)

But also! The control Apple wrestled away from phone carriers, over what gets to run on your phone: well, they kept that to themselves, thank you very much.

Dealing with Apple, originally a computer company, is generally nicer, as a user, than dealing with a phone carrier. On the other hand, the essence of the business did not change, just moved over to another owner.

As in... if you want to put your software on an iPhone, you will need Apple's permission. As such, they will pocket 30% of the price. Including subscription fees for digital services. They can do this since they control the phone, wielding the same power as ringtone-selling carriers.

If you, as an app developer, were to try telling users to subscribe on your website instead, well, that's not allowed, they'll just not let users install your software until said software starts saying things about Apple that Apple likes.

As for the users... sadly, they don't care. They mostly don't care because they never had any control over their phones; most people think of them as a kind of thing separate from "computers". In fact, you do get to install your software on Android phones; Google still gets to charge the same 30% extra somehow.

Which... leads us to... our conclusion. Namely: phones are computers! They're obviously computers. They're also phones.

However, "this is my phone" is a very different set of expectations, compared to "this is my computer".

To own a phone is to have some company endpoint where I can participate in communications and other services; it also functions as a digital camera and a bunch of other gadgets, mostly as a black box. If I buy an iPhone, I own a phone now.

To own a computer is to have a computing device that I can use for various purposes. Want to install adblock? go for it! The "interacting with services" part is my choice. On the other hand, Lenovo definitely doesn't get part of my Netflix subscription fee. Not even Apple gets part of my Netflix subscription fee, provided I'm using one of their computers, not phones! Also, if you can't install Starcraft on your laptop because corporate IT rules don't allow this, ... well, that's fine, it's not actually your laptop.

As such... iPhones are your phone but definitely not your computer.