(there was a lot of bugs in the kiosk, for instance, no bounds checking on most inputs)
So, to answer you question, I did 10 years locked up without conviction. No trial yet. Maybe one day?
Guided Access controls are in the Accessibility settings. Apple has marketed the feature as one of convenience.
And I think a hard reboot, at least this used to be true, will also exit the mode. (Hold power and home button or power and volume button combo.)
Reboot "exit" to the passcode entry screen is less bad than the unlocked phone in this escape.
1) I wonder if the exploit here works with passcode lock on? I suspect it does not, because there’s no mention of passcode entry in the steps.
2) My rebuttal was going to be ‘but most kiosk devices don’t allow access to the power button’ - but this exploit requires that too.
I’ve broken out of it by the extremely complex protocol of swiping up by accident, although not recently. Maybe it’s been fixed.
Guided Access is buggy crap. I’ve seen children break out of Guided Access. I also regularly need to completely reboot an iPad to get Guided Access to work at all.
A MacBook, as good as it is for Office work, simply is not suitable on the construction site. If macOS was, say, licensed to Panasonic for their Toughbook line and it was only available to commercial customers, that would be a better arrangement.
Or, another example: iOS is fantastic, but trying to reconfigure an iPad might not be as good as just building a customized PoS system with iOS embedded. As long as these customized devices are for commercial sale only (and thus don't damage Apple's customer reputation)... why not?
Heck, if I'm really dreaming... a stripped-down iOS specifically for IoT devices could be a huge, huge market. Even if Apple only sold chips 5 generations out of date (like the A12), it would be more than enough to provide a smooth, fast, easily updatable, easy to develop for, theoretically low cost platform for smart devices.
Coming from Wintel, the vertical integration of Apple is a dream by comparison. Never had a single hour of downtime, compared to all the reformats and driver reinstalls and registry hacks and display glitches and such that I've experienced with Windows machines, even top end Razers, Lenovos, Asus, and Alienware/Dell.
Android was similarly terrible until the Nexus/Pixel lines, which again have first party control. Even the Play Edition and Motorola phones had issues not worth dealing with.
There's plenty of generic chips out there, and no name manufacturers making commodity garbage. Apple doesn't need to play in that market.
Performance? The benchmarks say the Mac is in another class. There are plenty of use-cases that can leverage it. I can't; Windows is absolutely higher performance for my use-cases. Maybe its the animations. Maybe its Rosetta, as great as it is? Its definitely Counter-Strike 2 removing Mac support; its definitely Nvidia hardware acceleration in CAD applications. People use their computers in different ways; not everyone is viewing 8 streams of 4K RAW footage in their video editor.
The biggest differentiators for me are performance/watt + battery life. The Mac can keep going for a whole day while the others, even the underpowered Thinkpad with a tiny matte screen and a U-series processor and an extended battery, would die after 2-4 hours. This has consistently been my experience with every Windows laptop I've ever owned in the last 20 years. Even my Intel Macbook had better battery life, and the M1/M2 blows that out of the water. As you said, in another universe. Even while plugged in, the power efficiency means a cool and quiet machine. In two years of using one for work (web dev), I've never heard the fan come on once. Meanwhile my Windows laptops sound like jet engines as soon as the IDE opens, and while building projects, I can't even hear myself think. It's super distracting.
Other issues are screen quality (the ThinkPad matte screens were so, so bad, but I think they do have nicer Dolby Vision ones too), DPI issues (Windows took forever to properly scale the UI up, and once in a while I still run into legacy apps that need manual configuration), sound (the Macbook sounds like proper speakers, not tinny laptop ones), charging (the Surface Book couldn't maintain a charge while gaming, it would just gradually lose power even while plugged in), keyboards (the 17" Alienware was a beast but had an awful keyboard while being nearly 10 lbs), heat (the Razer was straight up dangerous to touch), issues switching between discrete & integrated graphics, etc. Bluetooth and Wifi are totally hit or miss depending on the chipsets. And driver and BIOS and power savings and standby issues all the freaking time. No manufacturer seems to care enough to vertically test their setup after release, so new updates always break something or another. I heard Microsoft recently started manufacturing some of their own chips for their ARM Surfaces; maybe that can help? I dunno, I gave up on them after a series of bad experiences with the Surface line.
I'm not really an Apple fanboy, much as it might sound like it. I use a Google Android phone, a SteelSeries mouse, a Microsoft keyboard, a Monopriced monitor, and Linux at work. I think macOS is pretty annoying sometimes, like its refusal to support the simple keyboard shortcuts for menus that every other OS has. But the Macbook is just so far ahead of any other laptop I've ever used (LAPTOP, not desktop... I still think the Apple desktops are overpriced ripoffs).
Really the only thing I miss about the Wintel world is gaming. These days I have to use GeForce Now or Game Porting Toolkit + Whisky (a GUI), but some games won't work on either. (Edit: Oh, and the glorious ThinkPad keyboards too! Those are still far and away the best, IMO.) Other than that, I feel like my life has gotten so much simpler after the switch, and going to the cafe with a laptop is a joyous experience, not a race to the outlets and hoping to find a table so I don't burn my lap.
I don't video edit either. The only demanding application in my life now is gaming, which is where GFN comes in. But I don't think the M-series is particularly known for raw performance, but rather performance/watt, especially at the medium-end where the computer can keep working for nearly a full day, with no fan and no heat. Hell, I wish they'd make Chromebooks (or Safari kiosk modes) out of these chips, without the macOS bloat. That'd be the perfect travel laptop.
You weren't around in the 1990s...
Why? You could still buy the real thing. This would not detract anything from your user experience.
The world is overflowing with cheap, crappy electronics and fake reviews. It's nice to have a curated selection sometimes.
Apple is a hardware company, the OS is what makes it possible to use the hardware. One without the other does not make sense given that model. It's like saying "I wish Nintendo would license switch hardware and OS out to other people".
> Heck, if I'm really dreaming... a stripped-down iOS specifically for IoT devices could be a huge, huge market.
That’s effectively what runs the HomePods and AppleTV.
Have you seen Zephyr? [0]
They don't even let the owners of their iphones run their own software without asking permission.
I don't think they're suggesting go full on wintel with every major computer manufacturer having a free for all making a same but slightly different styling and slightly different quality.
I hope Apple doesn't license out their stuff and dilute their brand though. Didn't they already try that with Apple compatible OS 7 PCs back in the day? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone?wprov=sfla1
