You're equivocating on the word "vendor". You know full well that in this context, the vendor means the manufacturer of the computer, for example, Apple, and not the retail store selling the computer, which may not be Apple but rather Best Buy, for example. Likewise, in my analogy, vendor lockdown of a cigarrete would mean lockdown from the manufacturer of the cigarette, for example, Philip Morris, and not the retail store selling the cigarette.

> This is a much more serious restriction of consumer freedoms than if anyone can buy and use, but can't smoke when drunk and in bed (fire safety) due to some other lockdown mechanism built into the cigarette itself. More people are affected

This is actually false, because the only restriction on the sale of cigarettes is that you can't buy them if you're under age 18. Anyone age 18 or older is free to buy and smoke as many cigarettes as they want. Adults have full, unrestricted freedom. And that's what they should have for computers too. For better or worse, children have a huge number of legal restrictions on them.

Computer vendor lockdown affects all adults, no matter how old. Indeed, some people claim that the point is to protect your grandma, yadda yadda.

This is actually my point about being "dangerous". That is, we seem to consider computers as the most dangerous product for fully grown adults who have no age-related restrictions on purchasing things, because nobody is proposing or defending manufacturer lockdowns on other products for fully grown adults. We think that fully grown adults get to decided whether to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, eat junk food, etc., but for some reason fully grown adults can't decide to install software on their own computer.

> So here is your mistake when you only accept something almost literally identical to computer lockdown (same with your fridge example), but brushing off more serious usage "lockdowns" that don't exist with computers

I wasn't "brushing off" legal restrictions. I was merely distinguishing them from restrictions that come from the manufacturer.

The difference, of course, is that computer vendor lockdown is not legally mandated, and thus they don't have to lock down the devices. They're doing it totally voluntarily, and I believe the reason is increased profit rather than increased security.

> Yes, this exists and is common in complex mechanical things, e.g., you lose warranty if you use unapproved parts, or for some parts there is actually not even an alternative, so manufacture is the only one getting a cut

And this malicious practice is being challenged by "right to repair" laws.

> So again, there is nothing unique or "most dangerous" about computers in either reality or people's prescriptions

You're missing the entire point here. There are a lot of people who defend computer vendor software lockdown, in the name of "security", but there aren't nearly as many people who defend the warranty practices you just mentioned.

I find the limitations of your analogy artifical and thus irrelevant. Other people thinking about the trade-offs aren't bound by whether you decide that in the whole supply chain only the manufacturer's limits should be considered. So while you're free to arbitrarily limit your thinking, that won't help you answer questions like "Why do computers get this special treatment of vendor lockdown, but not any other product?"

> reason is increased profit rather than increased security.

That's fine, but we shouldn't rely on vendor motivation anyway, so the validity of your assessment doesn't help us decide when the increased security is worth it

> You're missing the entire point here

You've cut your quote off to make it seem so. I've explicitly mentioned the perception in the very next sentence

> but there aren't nearly as many people who defend the warranty practices you just mentioned.

That would depend entirely on the specific tech involved and other factors. Are you sure people defending software vendor lockdowns would not defend some limits for parts for nuclear plants? For guns? Also why did you skip the "for some parts there is actually not even an alternative" practice? Would fewer people defend the right of a manufacturer to also manufature parts for sale (forcing some kind of divestment so that the "vendor" doesn't get an extra "fee" from the parts business)?