That the request in the first place is immoral? That being tracked outside your job is a infringment on a normal wish for privacy? That you are having to jump through hoops (basically, lie) to keep your employer happy? What do you think will happen when they learn of your faraday bag and decide to adjust their expectations accordingly? (ie expecting that out of signal = you have switched off the phone) You'll be in exactly the same position, you've only 'bought' yourself a few months of freedom, at most.

The reason we have laws is to protect the weaker party from stronger parties. Employers are usually in a stronger position (there are always other employees, the employees have a pressing urge to eat) so agreeing to something does not just make it OK. If you are strongarmed, it's hardly a fair exchange.

You know, it really doesn't. Companies don't feel the need to track every pencil that goes out of their office, the only reason they're tracking the phone is because it's easy and has a person attached to it. If you can't trust your employee to take care of a company asset then you can't trust your employee for much at all.

OK, you may have got around the problem for you, but other people are still being screwed, and management are still having silly expectations. Having some balls and switching the thing off on your own time is better for everyone.

why in the world would that be scary? There aren't rolling releases. OSX simply became the brand/platform name, same as "Windows" is. If you want to be technical, SunOS 5.0 came out in 1992, and we're still now on 5.11 23 years later. OSX currently has 4 supported versions - 10.7 - 10.11. 10.6 was supported still until a couple months ago, which meant they had 5 versions at that point.

Responsible software should have a released branch that has only bug fixes, and then other versions for new features. Otherwise, how the fark can one use your software for certified products? How can someone do a risk analysis on something as a platform, when it might change daily? Feature changes should not be casually thrown in. Yes, mozilla stupidly did this - but most software does not, and should not. Fortunately in the case of Firefox, it's not used as a /platform/, it's used as a client, so as long as the previous features still work the same it's not as big of a deal. Something as core as the OS itself though? Do you really want device manufacturers to stop using your product? Yes we get it - hire the cheapest (h1b) workers you can, and reduce down to having a single branch - since what made you a massive company seems to not be something you want to do anymore, and you'd prefer to act like a tiny hole in the wall shop.

Do you have any sources for this "breaking it down on age, education, grades, jobs, actual experience (part-time vs full-time, overtime, time on leave) you find that most these differences disappear"?

Do none of these folks care about certifications? It's already hard enough to get Windows reasonably secure yet still have software work on it. When you get X certified, you certify it to work in Y situation. The stupid rolling release crap makes that impossible. "Fast" versus "slow?" How about "give me security updates to product X which is certified" versus "give me features and major backend changes in the same stream as the security updates." Yes, it makes it cheaper for the company to wrap everything up together - means they only maintain a single branch. Yay Mozilla for unleashing that laziness upon the world.

What I particularly love about the recent use of the phrase "social justice" is that the people using it seem to think it's a negative one. How the hell can you be against social justice? Are you campaigning for social injustice?

I know... I probably shouldn't be here...

*Re-reads my original comment*

Oh, right, yes.

Are you not sort of expected to leave if you ask if you're free to go? I don't want to leave, I want to continue doing the legal thing that I'm doing.

Can't speak for conspiracy. Can speak for several friends with different models of iPhone that have seen this exact effect. There doesn't have to be a deliberate conspiracy for it still to happen.

I love the regularity of this type of article, and the complete lack of justification why suddenly *now* it's necessary whereas demonstrably before now it has not been required.

It's not perfect, but the Apple model of effectively forcing old hardware into uselessness (ie becoming so slow with the latest OS) isn't exactly perfect either.

And I have seen every generation of iPhone eventually be upgraded into uselessness because the hardware is too slow to run the operating system. What's worse, because the majority do get upgraded, app developers quickly stop supporting old OS versions and those people who don't upgrade *still* end up with a useless smartphone because the apps stop working. It's not all bread and roses in the iOS model either.