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I think with PCs it will be harder to lock them down and not disgruntle consumers too much in the process. I'm also hopeful that over time right to repair will be the standard, so they have to allow for third party repair. So all these restrictions like chipped components and software only from our store will be phased out by incremental legislation. The EU is not perfect but it's on this path. Even in the US people are thinking antitrust more often now. There is hope, however small.
You can run whatever you like in your Android phones. Jailbreaking iPhones is also possible. All these devices are just computers that can run anything within their hardware specs. Hacking some of these things may be against the Ts and Cs or even illegal. But technically possible. The restrictions are mote political, not technical.
Chromebooks are not the way to the future. They fill a niche in education for cheap hardware in connection with limited capabilities. They are not technical limitations, they are designed to limit users in what damage they can do. AFAIK you could technically wipe a chromebook and put Linux on it. It may violate the Ts and Cs and we're right back at political. Google would like to develop future customers at an early age. They don't care about the education so much as about their bottom line.
unless it verifies itself and refuses to boot a modified system. the logic for that can be in actual read only memory.
but wait a minute. something like that is already happening with google safetynet! baking apps and more are literally refusing to work on non-google approved systems, including any single rom that is even just a little bit privacy oriented
But that's not all phones, is it. If you buy your phone directly from Google, you made a mistake. Like buying one from Apple. If Google want to continue to claim Android is open source, they have to allow for devices that forego any of this crap and boot vanilla non-Google-Services Android. And if you're privacy oriented enough, you will give up on apps that are not.
And given enough time somebody is going to work out how you fool a modified system into booting. The problem is legal. Depending on where you are circumventing any digital locks can mean jail time at worst. We have to address the legal situation at the same time.
do they want it? what's the benefit for them?
Sorry but that has nothing to do with what restrictions an app imposes on the user. Currently they allow, and bunch of important apps still refuse to work.
as I said above, there are apps that you cannot refuse in this world in certain life situations. most of these apps are not about convenience.
as in: in half a decade somebody will reverse engineer the bootloader of a single phone model, so that other tech savvy people can have some privacy.
Google has a vested interest in keeping Android open source. Because the moment they turn away from that more antitrust action is going to hit them like a ton of bricks.
What's an "important app" to you here?
the app of my bank. it refuses to work if the operating system is not original. they charge you money for each login code and transaction approval code SMS they send, but if I had the app, scanning their QR code would impose no charge.
they also recently ended the support of the new web interface for mobile browsers, to "protect against hackers". WTH! and this is the biggest bank in the country by far according to statistics. the old site shuts down soon.
the new webapp can still be used in a mobile browser if you enable desktop mode. but for how long? and it'll be fine for me, I would use that anyway because I don't want to install their app for other reasons. but lots of people don't want to deal with a website that's been designed for desktop PCs, on a small touch screen,because it's hard to use, it's hard to read, and if your thumbs are big maybe it's not even possible to use it.
for banking apps this is almost expected nowadays.
then another friend of mine has the worked related apl I said above. it does the same: refuses to let you use it because the opersting system is not the original one, unmodified. and mind you that does not only mean that you can't root it or can't replace the ROM, that also means you cannot even uninstall a bunch of apps that do whatever in the background!
I bet there is much more of these, but if I can I avoid installing anything new from the play store at all, so I don't come across these apps. I live different technological lifestyle than most around me. most of my friends' phones cannot be liberated or they are not interested in it because of the dangers, and honestly me neither in supporting an installation that may be unstable as is not rarely the case with lineage, so I rarely offer it. but sometimes I do and they like the idea, accepting that things like this may happen, and then it happens with yet another app I did not know about beforehand.
So, as I said, we need to look at the legal situation at the same time. The assholery of the bank is possible due to the assholery of these OS restrictions and the duopoly of mobile OSs. Everybody wants to have a walled garden. Outlaw or at least restrict walled gardens.
One thing politicians like to say is that they want to protect consumers. Forcing consumers into walled, privacy-invading gardens for essential services such as banking should be a change item on their agenda.
So looking at the status quo you're correct. I'm just hopeful we can change that. I'm also looking at these mobile compute devices in our pockets as universal ones. They can run any instruction set that doesn't burn their hardware. All of these restrictions - chipped components, unaltered OSs, software only from one place - are man-made/big corp imposed. With a view to a walled garden. That's where the law needs to intervene so you can bank safely from where you want.