Comment by nutjob2
> This was pretty funny. “You can do anything, and you should be able to do anything, nothing will break”, then in the same paragraph “but don’t do this specific thing”.
I think you're being a bit pedantic. There is no contradiction.
You can indeed delete System Preferences and nothing will break, ditto for utilities, it just makes life difficult if you do. For a locked down system for say a child though it might make sense. Also reversing the problem isn't hard, you can just copy in the apps from elsewhere.
macOS isn't perfect, but it does have a nice, clean, logical implementation in many ways.
One huge demonstration of that is the way it runs on commodity hardware so well (ie Hackintoshes). Apple could have easily baked in very hardware specific support in the OS, but instead they mostly implemented a general system that follows PC standards. Security lock downs are orthogonal to that.
> There is no contradiction.
Neither have I claimed there is one. I understood the point perfectly, I simply found it humorous. Things can be funny without being contradictions, my point was about the tradeoffs inherent to different types of OS lockdown.
> You can indeed delete System Preferences and nothing will break, ditto for utilities, it just makes life difficult if you do.
And—surprise!—most people don’t want to make their own lives difficult.
> Also reversing the problem isn't hard, you can just copy in the apps from elsewhere.
It is hard for most people. Most of us don’t just have something else at hand to copy from at all times, including the younger OP.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44973333
> For a locked down system for say a child though it might make sense.
I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing, but most of the time I see a variation on that comment it is attached to a fair bit of condescension. Like with calling something a “toy OS” when it’s used by millions of adults worldwide for productive work. Locked down systems don’t just make sense for children. On the contrary, children might benefit the most from operating systems which are not locked down, because they have the free time and willingness to experiment and won’t yet have a lot of important data. Or maybe you have kids who don’t really enjoy computers and just want to play an occasional game or need to write a school report. That’s OK too.
Both can also be true of your elderly relative, or your partner, or your cousin, or your friend who doesn’t want to fiddle with the damn machine, they just want to get their shit done without having to worry about screwing up anything. Your other friend will want the freedom to do everything and ask you for help.
There is no right approach for everyone, and there is no age at which one approach is definitely superior to another.