The thing about root access is just objectively untrue. These are the steps to gain root access on macOS as provided by Apple. Meanwhile, I can find no official tutorial from Google, and more importantly, enabling developer mode wipes your Chromebook. I legitimately cannot imagine what on god’s green Earth you did to make the macOS process more painstaking than wiping your device.
Even if your premise weren’t demonstrably untrue, this isn’t a discussion about what you can theoretically do with a device; it’s about the kind of workflow the device would encourage for a typical student using it. In this regard, a Chromebook is massively dumbed down. Sure you might dip into the downloads folder, but Chrome OS by design encourages the use of web apps as much as humanly possible and severely restricts your ability and incentives to meaningfully interact with your OS outside of a browser.
Even assuming that the process of gaining root access mattered to this discussion (it categorically doesn’t), what you can and cannot do with that root access would matter far more, and in that unrelated discussion, macOS clearly still wins out (unless you’d want to argue that developer mode lets you install Linux, at which point this is no longer about Chrome OS).
Meanwhile, I can find no official tutorial from Google
This is such an unserious strawman of an argument, how do you not get embarrassed writing this?
There’s no official tutorial for most Android devices either, it doesn’t mean it’s harder to do than on Apple devices.
Even if your premise weren’t demonstrably untrue
Just saying something is so doesn’t make it so, to demonstrate my premise is untrue you have to actually demonstrate how it’s untrue, which you have not done.
it’s about the kind of workflow the device would encourage for a typical student using it
You mean like how Mac OS is locked to the Mac OS App Store by default only, featuring mainly proprietary payware unless you toggle an obscure bypass in the settings, while ChromeOS lets you run any unsigned code for ChromeOS, Linux and Android with minimal effort, all of which are either fully or partially open source and comes with a web browser equipped with a nice set of easily accessible Dev tools, which allows you to examine and learn how web applications are written, architectured and deployed - the largest by far aspect of computer science and software development most people come into contact with regularly?
Even if the conversation was about what you say, you would still be wrong. But it’s not about that, because in a school scenario both would be locked down with an MDM - in Apple’s case literally via serial numbers and network connectivity DRM you can’t realistically block.
And no, this conversation is actually not about that either. A user repairable device doesn’t become less repairable if it discourages your 12 year old from popping out and eating the battery.
severely restricts your ability and incentives to meaningfully interact with your OS outside of a browser.
Any examples on this one, chief? Or you just saying things like that will magically make them true again?
Even assuming that the process of gaining root access mattered to this discussion (it categorically doesn’t),
Of course it does. Really it’s the thing that matters the most.
Sorry but your bailey castle isn’t any more secure than your motte, because access to root is actual freedom over your device, anything less than actual unrestricted root access where I can say, replace the network stack or write and add my own kernel modules for hardware support I want to add or whatever reason I please is by definition not really software (and by extension hardware) I have control over. It’s just another blackbox walled garden.
what you can and cannot do with that root access would matter far more, and in that unrelated discussion, macOS clearly still wins out
Again, do you have any evidence at all to back that up?
And what’s with this weird caveat?
(unless you’d want to argue that developer mode lets you install Linux, at which point this is no longer about Chrome OS).
It’s some real specious reasoning to handwave the most core freedom of all - to simply replace/refuse the OS altogether and bring your own to your hardware, and highly convenient of course because Apple employs many anti-repair, anti-consumer, anti-modification practices from the very screws to their knock-off TPM (T2?) chip to hardware whitelists where everything is married down to the cables and each and every module for no reason other than to maintain control above all.
Please apply more intellectual rigor next time.
Fuck Google and fuck Apple, stop defending them, don’t die on this silly hill and go be free.
Have you even been reading this thread? This is about the level of tech literacy kids get from using an OS for school, not about what you’re theoretically capable of doing. Yes, you’re right, root access on both macOS and Chrome OS would be locked out in a school setting. That makes your braindead argument a non-starter for this discussion. Even if what you said about the rooting difficulty were true (again, showed it isn’t), it could not possibly matter less here. And yes, I am going to say that official, step-by-step documentation that takes a few minutes at most to follow is easier than following some third-party website and then resetting your entire OS.
Even in a situation where it’s not locked down, neckbeards like you and I are in the vanishingly small minority of users who ever touch root access; when we’re talking about generations of people being raised to be tech-illiterate, root access has fuck-all to do with that. Unless the OS is incentivizing average users to use root access enough that a sizable portion actually would (desktop Linux and nothing else), then a comparison of which OS gives easier root access couldn’t be less relevant when talking about an entire generation of kids.
Here, Chrome OS is meaningfully much worse than OS X for teaching kids tech literacy on the grounds that the average user experience is dumbed down to hell. Meanwhile:
Fuck Google and fuck Apple, stop defending them
Literally where? I’ve done nothing but lambast Chrome OS this entire thread except to correctly point out that it has user-facing folders which you do often interact with. Apple? By correctly pointing out that the Apple desktop ecosystem is massively less dumbed-down than Chrome OS, I’m defending them? Dude, I use Linux and Android (the latter begrudgingly; locked bootloader) and would never purchase an Apple product again for the foreseeable future; next time, save your sweaty, mouth-foaming screed about Apple bad for when you actually find someone who likes and supports Apple.
This is such an unserious strawman of an argument, how do you not get embarrassed writing this?
There’s no official tutorial for most Android devices either, it doesn’t mean it’s harder to do than on Apple devices.
Just saying something is so doesn’t make it so, to demonstrate my premise is untrue you have to actually demonstrate how it’s untrue, which you have not done.
You mean like how Mac OS is locked to the Mac OS App Store by default only, featuring mainly proprietary payware unless you toggle an obscure bypass in the settings, while ChromeOS lets you run any unsigned code for ChromeOS, Linux and Android with minimal effort, all of which are either fully or partially open source and comes with a web browser equipped with a nice set of easily accessible Dev tools, which allows you to examine and learn how web applications are written, architectured and deployed - the largest by far aspect of computer science and software development most people come into contact with regularly?
Even if the conversation was about what you say, you would still be wrong. But it’s not about that, because in a school scenario both would be locked down with an MDM - in Apple’s case literally via serial numbers and network connectivity DRM you can’t realistically block.
And no, this conversation is actually not about that either. A user repairable device doesn’t become less repairable if it discourages your 12 year old from popping out and eating the battery.
Any examples on this one, chief? Or you just saying things like that will magically make them true again?
Of course it does. Really it’s the thing that matters the most.
Sorry but your bailey castle isn’t any more secure than your motte, because access to root is actual freedom over your device, anything less than actual unrestricted root access where I can say, replace the network stack or write and add my own kernel modules for hardware support I want to add or whatever reason I please is by definition not really software (and by extension hardware) I have control over. It’s just another blackbox walled garden.
Again, do you have any evidence at all to back that up?
And what’s with this weird caveat?
It’s some real specious reasoning to handwave the most core freedom of all - to simply replace/refuse the OS altogether and bring your own to your hardware, and highly convenient of course because Apple employs many anti-repair, anti-consumer, anti-modification practices from the very screws to their knock-off TPM (T2?) chip to hardware whitelists where everything is married down to the cables and each and every module for no reason other than to maintain control above all.
Please apply more intellectual rigor next time.
Fuck Google and fuck Apple, stop defending them, don’t die on this silly hill and go be free.
Have you even been reading this thread? This is about the level of tech literacy kids get from using an OS for school, not about what you’re theoretically capable of doing. Yes, you’re right, root access on both macOS and Chrome OS would be locked out in a school setting. That makes your braindead argument a non-starter for this discussion. Even if what you said about the rooting difficulty were true (again, showed it isn’t), it could not possibly matter less here. And yes, I am going to say that official, step-by-step documentation that takes a few minutes at most to follow is easier than following some third-party website and then resetting your entire OS.
Even in a situation where it’s not locked down, neckbeards like you and I are in the vanishingly small minority of users who ever touch root access; when we’re talking about generations of people being raised to be tech-illiterate, root access has fuck-all to do with that. Unless the OS is incentivizing average users to use root access enough that a sizable portion actually would (desktop Linux and nothing else), then a comparison of which OS gives easier root access couldn’t be less relevant when talking about an entire generation of kids.
Here, Chrome OS is meaningfully much worse than OS X for teaching kids tech literacy on the grounds that the average user experience is dumbed down to hell. Meanwhile:
Literally where? I’ve done nothing but lambast Chrome OS this entire thread except to correctly point out that it has user-facing folders which you do often interact with. Apple? By correctly pointing out that the Apple desktop ecosystem is massively less dumbed-down than Chrome OS, I’m defending them? Dude, I use Linux and Android (the latter begrudgingly; locked bootloader) and would never purchase an Apple product again for the foreseeable future; next time, save your sweaty, mouth-foaming screed about Apple bad for when you actually find someone who likes and supports Apple.