I want to talk about this because of a conversation I had with a colleague on a lunch break a few days ago. I am a doctor, and I was talking to him about how angry I was (and still am) about the fact that the COVID vaccines, when they were first invented, were not made public, but instead were patented and sold. This basic fact made millions of people around the world suffer. I was rambling about how scientific information should always be free. How we should be able to use the internet as the greatest library our ancestors could have only dreamt of, instead of putting information behind paywalls. Even back in med school I was an avid user of sci-hub and I wasnāt ashamed of it one bit. I still use sci-hub to keep up with new researches so I can treat/inform my patients better. And I hate how some of my colleagues think that I am stealing othersā work.
Anyways, so I was rambling on and on. I sometimes do that. And my friend said something so strange and unrelated (in my eyes) to the conversation. He said āLook at you, defending open access to medical information for everyone, yet you only use Apple products.ā I was like, āWhat? What do you mean?ā He explained, āMan, all the things you use are made by Apple. Your laptop, tablet, phone, watch, earbuds or whatever, made by the company that is one of the main adversaries when it comes to right-to-repair and open source software.ā So you need to see here, Iām not a tech guy. Itās just not my field. My job only requires me to read textbooks and keep up with new researches in my field, which any device can do. So I was like, āIā¦ I donāt think I follow.ā So he briefly explained what open-source software is, and how itās related to my idea of free and open access to information for everyone, but this time itās not in our field but programmersā. And when I almost reflexively said āWell weāre not programmersā he said āI mean, when it comes to software, itās the programmersā and developersā thing. But free and open source is an idea. It applies to everything. And I think youāre supporting a company that opposes your views by buying their products.ā
We didnāt have much time left so that was the end of that conversation. And I have been thinking about it since. When buying tech products I mainly care about if they are integrated with each other or not. Like if I turn on Do not Disturb on my watch, I want my phone, tablet and laptop to go quiet as well. Or I like being able to answer a phone call on my laptop. And I love the aesthetics of Apple products, at least more than what other companies have to offer.
Every evening since that conversation Iāve been looking up stuff related to open source software. Linux, distros, the philosophy behind it all, Linus Torvalds, Steve Wozniak, Arch, āread the wikiā, terminal, GUI, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA my brain is filled with so many things at this point that I donāt understand anything at all.
So, TLDR; Iād love to hear your opinions about Apple. Most people (myself included) buy Apple devices because of the ecosystem, the design, privacy (?), consistent updates (especially on mobile), or for you might say, a lack of knowledge in the field of tech. Do you support Apple or are you against them, or are you indifferent? Do you think people who are not in the tech field as well should look into and use open source software? Leave your thoughts below! ^^
Dont feel too bad about not knowing everything from everywhere, as you said you arent a tech guy, but lets get to your questions
- Privacy thatsā¦depending on how you see it, supposedly they donāt sell to third partys but they do use it for you
- I will never support them, not only are their prices disgustingly high compared to their quality, their walled garden and fucking tooth and nail fight to keep it that way isnt helping helping
- While not required I do think they should at least look into all of it for a bit
Im the end, do whatever you wanna do
Personally, I strongly agree with your colleague. If you truly believe openness is a good thing (and it sounds like you do), Appleās ethos is just about the direct antithesis. They only collaborate with the wider tech industry when they absolutely have to. Otherwise, they are greedy, secretive, controlling, and vindictive - oftentimes openly hostile to anyone who dares choose a non-Apple device/platform.
The best example of this is the iMessage āgreen bubblesā phenomenon. Some background: Appleās default texting experience is iMessage. This service has a bunch of nice, modern chat features - except theyāre only available when texting another iPhone. These ābetterā messages are indicated by blue bubbles. People who donāt use iPhones (whether by choice or by necessity) are forced to use the ancient, insecure, feature-poor SMS protocol, reducing the privacy and security of everyone involved (including iPhone users). Itās also extremely obvious when this happens, since the chat app will switch to green bubbles.
In places where this service has caught on (such as the US), Apple uses this separation to deliberately make texting non-iPhone users a significantly worse experience. This causes social effects, especially among teenagers, where those who donāt use iPhone are bullied and shunned for being a āgreen bubbleā. The Wall Street Journal did a great expose into this phenomenon.
Now, to be clear, this is a totally artificial problem - Apple could fix this overnight if they wanted. For years, the wider tech industry has been working on replacing SMS with a much more modern standard called RCS. Every single other party in the mobile industry has moved on. Apple, however, is the lone holdout. They see kids bullying other kids into buying an iPhone as a good thing - more iPhone sales! In fact, Apple openly encouraged that narrative: when a journalist asked the (very reasonable) question of āhow can I make texting with my Android-user mom better?ā, Apple CEO Tim Cook responded with ābuy your mom an iPhone.ā
Thereās plenty more examples of this antagonistic behavior I could talk about, but this one is the most telling.
Of course, if you do choose to go all in with them, you wonāt see that side of Apple at all. They are frighteningly good at cultivating their image as the āgood guysā among Big Tech, and, honestly, itās not unwarranted. They are good at what they do, and they do take care of their users. Their tech is great.
Ultimately, my take is that if you prefer using Appleās stuff over more open alternatives, donāt change what you like! Just remember that they have a dark side. It is good to be aware of the wider tech ecosystem, and to make open technology choices where you can. By being active on the Fediverse, youāre already doing your part š
Commenting to agree. The green bubble is very literally a deliberate choice on the side of Apple. The infrastructure is already in place to merge with every other phone manufacturer.
Addendum: Apple products as status symbols has been their project from the start. āSent from my iPhoneā as default on emails, being the most emminent example.
Sent from my fairphone3
As a follow up for those interested, hereās the exception that proves the rule: Appleās adoption and support of the Matter smart home standard.
For those who donāt follow the smart home, the basic backstory is that there are several competing ācontrollerā platforms for the smart home, including: Amazon Alexa, Google/Nest Home, Apple Home, and Samsung SmartThings.
Each of these platforms can control smart home gadgets like smart switches, lights, and thermostats, and they all do so in a slightly different way. However, this diversity in platforms posed an issue for gadget manufacturers (think Philips Hue): in order for their gadgets to work with each platform, they had to write integrations to talk with each service. This added a ton of extra cost and complexity to something that should be a commodity, meaning that only the larger players could afford to make gadgets that worked with every platform. Smaller vendors didnāt have that ability, so theyād focus their attention to just one or two platforms - often the largest ones.
This market setup was (fortunately) a disaster for Apple. As it turns out, people arenāt willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a nice speaker and Siri when you could get the vastly more capable Google Assistant/Alexa for literally a tenth of the price and blanket your home with them. Appleās arrogance and hubris had landed it in an unfamiliar position: they were, by far, the smallest player in the smart home market, and accessory makers werenāt building for Apple Home as a result.
Faced with abject failure, Apple pulled a very un-Apple move: they joined an industry standard! They open-sourced parts of their HomeKit framework and helped the next-generation Matter protocol come to market, in collaboration with all the other big players (Google, Amazon, Samsung). Matter is great because it provides a single protocol for accessory makers to build for: as long as it supports Matter, it will work with any of the big smart home controllers, including Apple. Now that this standard is out in the world, itās great: most newly-released smart home gadgets will work with whichever platform you prefer, including Apple!
So: why did Apple suddenly become collaborative in the smart home space? Because they were going to fail otherwise. Their backs were literally against the wall; their hand was forced. You can bet your lifeās savings that if HomeKit had been even moderately successful, they would never, ever have supported the Matter protocol. They would have preferred the lock-in to their dystopian walled garden.
Of course, if you do choose to go all in with them, you wonāt see that side of Apple at all. They are frighteningly good at cultivating their image as the āgood guysā among Big Tech, and, honestly, itās not unwarranted. They are good at what they do, and they do take care of their users. Their tech is great.
This paragraph perfectly describes me. Way back, I was a blind Apple fanboy. In my eyes, they could do no wrong. Plus, I enjoyed rooting for the underdog, because back then people were constantly publishing stories about how Apple was doomed to go bankrupt any minute.
Later, I learned how terrible they are in many waysā¦ but I still use their stuff. I first learned how to use computers on a Mac, so any other OS is weird and unintuitive to me. Besides, it just works, literally right out of the box. Yeah, Apple is still overpriced, but itās not as bad as it seems. If you enjoy spending hours to get something to work, and you think your time is worth nothing, then okay. If youāre like me, part of what youāre paying for is quality design and convenience.
you think your time is worth nothing, then okay.
What exactly do you mean by this? Do you really think that people who use or try to use open source software do not value their time?
Apple doesnt even need to support rcs to fix the issues with imesage. They just need to open the chat API for third party support or just release an imessage for other platforms like every other chat app does.
The current system they have essentially tricks less savvy users into thinking that iPhone is just better at texting and other services are bad, when the issue is that apple stealthily enrolled you all into a restrictive IM program that cant communicate with anything other than apple products. Itās actually quite devious. If imessage and itext were two separate apps from the start then it would be more apparent that you are texting the green bubble and using a limited chat app with iphone users and more people would probably just use one of the many chat alternatives that exist. Because they are able to still communicate with nonapple users in their chat program and even add them to groupchats and stuff it gives this weird appearance from the inside that the green chats are the problem.
I like to think that the initial goal of imessage being this way wasnt locking but as a way to seemlessly push grandma who would never go out of her way to download a chat app, into an IM client. The lockin side effect just wound up being a happy accident.
I 100% agree with your colleague, though I donāt agree with his purity test. Youāre allowed to feel the way you do about medicine and still use whatever products you want. But, yeah, I donāt own or use and Apple products, though I would like to own and restore an Apple IIe.
I spent many years trying to be as FOSS as I could. I tried many different Linux distros, hunted for open source operating systems for my phone (at the time, none did even the basic things I needed it to do) until one day I decided I was sick to death of having to spend hours researching and trying multiple arcane cli commands to get even simple things to work (like WiFi). I realised that I was wasting an enormous amount of time being all-things-open-source.
My next purchase as a macbook as it was based on a *nix and Iāve come to realise that while Apple is a walled garden and in some ways is āevilā, itās less evil than Google is now, or Microsoft was back in the day.
I also like the way that the various Apple devices work really well together. But I hate the fact that itās harder to hack things to be the way that I want. Donāt get me wrong, I still love open source software, but I have too few years left to waste them on modifying config.org files, or whatever they do now, so Iām much more selective with what I use. I tend to use FOSS applications on MacOS where the software works well enough.
Not trying to bash FOSS, just my 2 cents.
@Bluetreefrog
@IronTwo
Iāve got to say, Linux and FOSS in general has really come a long way just these few last years. For me it has gone from tedious and problem-ridden to mostly frictionless. But the times that I do stumble unto an issue, it still takes a while to figure out a solution š So, not perfect yet, but a looot more user friendly these days! šOP probably got really unlucky with their wifi chip and this is still an issue today with certain brands
itās that awful that most linux user just buy a 20ā¬ intel wifi card, open their laptop and than replace it but not anybody wants to do that so it isnāt a foolproof solution either
As someone who went from FOSS -> Apple -> FOSS, I fully understand the love people have for the Apple ecosystem. In terms of proprietary hardware and software, they have a sheen and an inter-operation between their products that is genuinely unmatched.
That said, what ultimately pushed me out and back to Good Ole FOSSā¢ was the lack of any control, and the lack of any transparency. The idea of trusting a for-profit company with anything beyond my email address and sometimes phone number is just something I dislike doing. Appleās processes are extremely opaque, and the last thing they want to give users is any control over their products, itās an antithesis of what I desire from digital electronics.
As for if non-technical people should look into FOSS. I think FOSS can really give people a fundamental baseline of digital computing, and in the modern world such a baseline is extremely valuable. If they decide afterwards they prefer their proprietary ecosystems, Apple or otherwise, thatās their prerogative and thereās absolutely nothing wrong with that.
To get the point since as youāve stated your brain is filled.
Hereās how I view Apple:
- anti consumer
- anti developer
- anti privacy
- anti right to repair
How does anti-privacy fit in there, and what mainstream alternatives are better?
As far as anti-privacy hereās an example https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-analytics-tracking-even-when-off-app-store-1849757558
And in regards to mainstream alternatives:
- Calyx OS
- Graphene OS
- Lineage OS
While Apple claims to be private there really isnāt any proof since all their software is proprietary. On top of that, on my home network where I have a ton of devices and my wife has one iPhone, Apple sure gets a LOT of calls back to home base. So Iād say they collect a ton of data. Not private. But they do not sell it as much. Since you can look at how they make their money is primarily through hardware. That being said it still isnāt the only way.
You might want to check what those calls are, specifically. Out of the box they use the iCloud Private Relay to hide network traffic, essentially a VPN. If you go onto the wifi settings of her phone and turn off the āLimit IP Address Trackingā it will likely be a lot less chatty. Otherwise there is iCloud stuff, but overall they do not collect all that much data at all (they allow you to request a copy of what they do collect on their privacy page). You might also help her review the privacy settings on her phone, there are many things that can be disabled.
Right but this all completely neglects my first point, you donāt know if they are telling the truth.
It is with high confidence and with a straight face that I can state my opinion that Microsoft is a better partner of open source software than Apple. Microsoft contributes back, Apple pretty much doesnāt. Theyāre better than AWS, but thatās more a matter of damning with faint praise.
Appleās built up a vertically integrated market of disposable widgets which cannot be repaired or upgraded. Their sole positive is theyāre better than the other guys at keeping older software updated, but Iām sure they did the math on having their customers not getting hacked at the time.
Iām my opinion theyāre worth looking at for anti-trust.
A good recent example of Microsoft supporting the open source community is Orca. Itās a LLM that was basically taught by ChatGPT (GPT3.5) and GPT4 instead of training on its own dataset by having the chatbot explain its reasoning step by step, ELI5, etc. And itās about to go open source.
Microsoft email address were collectively top contributers to Linux kernel patches for a few years, particularly as they were building out Azure and Hyper-V support. Theyāre contributed a service mesh to kubernetes. Visual Studio Code is open source. Theyāre backing GitHub. They developed typescript. Their developers are all over various GitHub repos.
@IronTwo
Appleās ecosystem works well for itās users, but it screws over anyone else not completely consumed in their ecosystem.I agree. This is not only limited to the users, but also intentionally makes life difficult for those trying to develop multiplatform products and services.
Locking down the publishing routes and development tools for apple platforms is not such a big issue for parties that develop solely for apple products, but that is often not the case. Instead apple users often make up a minority of users, but maintaining and testing applications, websites and services so that they also work on apple devices can take up a disproportionately large amount of development time and effort.
For all of their faults I admire Appleās commitment to product design a lot. They really seem to center the human use case and mold the technology around that. This kind of focus on design (not just aesthetics!) brings the benefits of technology to people that might not have been able to access them otherwise due to knowledge, time constraints, etc.
How does this relate to FOSS? Well to be blunt the UX on a lot of FOSS technology is bad. It conveys freedom and privacy to technologically inclined people like us who can make sense of it, but it does very little to liberate people who donāt find this stuff easy or canāt devote enough free time to it. Ease of use is not a weakness to be mocked. It can be an extremely powerful force if done correctly. Personally I would love to see more UX designers getting into FOSS development, but unfortunately I canāt really help myself on that front.
Iām a UX product designer and a major issue Iāve encountered within FOSS is extremely opinionated developers, who regularly sacrifice usability for features and configurability, which is instantly off-putting to a general audience.
Iām painting a very broad picture there, and Iām not criticising - Iām a staunch advocate for Linux and FOSS in general, the technical execution and intent is usually brilliant.
Apple is extremely opinionated in their design by limiting options and complexity, thatās one way they achieve a solid foundation, by offering few options (both in terms of software and hardware). They donāt make their users think too hard.
Thereās plenty of low hanging fruit that could be addressed (use of plain language, clear actions, other tried and tested design principles) but thatās not enough, and it often relies on strong UI dev skills, which the team doesnāt necessarily have.
Iāve seen some appetite for making FOSS projects easier for a general audience, but things fall flat when it comes to making hard decisions (stripping out or hiding complexity, making decisions to promote simplicity, spending considerable effort on UI instead of features).
Iād love to be more involved in it, and maybe Iām being unfair, but it can be demoralising work for a designer.
Yeah, thatās the main thing keeping me personally from using more FOSS.
I tried using Linux for example, but itās just so incredibly tedious compared to Windows that I didnāt even last a week before I got frustrated and switched back.
Though I did switch to Aurora store on my Android, because using the Play Store is actually becoming harder and harder. There are so many ads on it now, browsing it is starting to get difficult.
Iāve gone through a lot of periods in my life where Iāve chided myself for not using more FOSS, but what you said is one of the reasons why I donāt think itās as black and white in my mind recently.
Iāve been doing iOS development for work, and I have to say that their emphasis on building accessibility features into apps from the beginning is something I really love to see. Iād love to be proven wrong on this because this is very anecdotal, but accessibility is something I donāt see mentioned too often in FOSS spaces.
That and languages. Iām a long-time learner of Japanese, and Iāve noticed language support in FOSS apps is inconsistent. There was a time when I was looking at a more privacy-focused Android OS to run, but there arenāt any Japanese keyboards on F-droid (the only strictly Japanese offering was unmaintained and incompatible with my phone, and the multi-lingual keyboards that I found didnāt support Japanese). Not being able to interact the way I need to made those OSās into non-starters for me, sadly.
I hate to complain like this because itās no oneās fault necessarily; there are only so many people working on FOSS, those people only have so much time and energy, and there might not be enough demand for certain features. When I build something I try to do what I can to live up to my own expectations, but as someone that doesnāt really have the necessary skills (in tech or in Japanese, in this case), or the time to create and maintain my own alternatives, then those issues put up some heavy barriers. Iād love to use more FOSS but right now Iām sort of stuck straddling the two sides.
Ah my favourite topic to rant about lol
https://aus.social/users/ajsadauskas/statuses/110483562412884529 I saw this post the other day about apple and I left this comment https://sopuli.xyz/comment/137641
Wow, thanks for sharing, I didnāt realise Apple has been doing this for so long
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/07/apple-geep-iphone-recycle-shred/
They sued a recycling company for reselling old iPhones instead of destroying them and now they force recycling companies to shred the phones so that they canāt be reused.
Apple has fantastic marketing on a surface level they manage to convince their users that they are a green company but when you push a little bit and ask for more info they just shut you down.
Louis Rossman has shown how anti repair Apple is by not providing basic replacement parts for their Macs and how secretive they are about their clearly subpar repair program
Hugh Jeffreys has shown how anti repair Apple is by locking components like the screen and camera of new Apple devices to their motherboard so that even if you repair and iPhone screen, they take away features like true tone or certain camera modes for no reason.
Apple is trying its best to kill 3rd party repair of its products and at the same time try to convince people that they are pro repair by offering screen replacements for nearly the same price as a new iPhone.
Also if a user sells on their old iPhone but doesnāt unlink the device from their Apple account, the new user wonāt be able to use the phone.
The only positive thing Apple has done for consumers is offer software updates for years longer than any Android OEM offers.
Android OEMs really lacks in software support but at least with some phones, less in more recent years, users have the option to install custom ROMs to prolong the life of their devices. Projects like LineageOS, GrapheneOS and DivestOS are so important from delaying phones from becoming ewaste.
Unfortunately, Apple pushes the limit of what they can get away with in the name of the environment and other companies follow suit.
Bare minimum after market support is the name of the game and every company in the industry is happy to play.
Imagine how different the consumer electronic market could be if Apple had grown their relationship with Bob and extended that to people like him all over the world. We could have had a much better ecosystem.
But like I always say, you canāt become a trillion dollar company without exploiting everything and everyone you possibly can in the name of profit
When it comes to privacy, Apple has attempted to block other companies like Facebook from tracking iPhone users, they say its because they care about their users privacy but really all Apple cares about is controlling their users data and monopolizing on it.
They also have wanted to implement scanning software to scan their users files for CSAM, again marketing it as protecting their users and children but Iām sure theyāll figure how to monopolize that too.
Apple has been trying to prevent 3rd party app stores and side loading of apps on iOS for years, they say its because its a security risk, but in reality theyāre just calling their users stupid while attempting to keep complete control over the software you can use on the device you paid way too much money for. Recently the EU has forced Apples hand on this and they can no longer prevent users from doing it, or at least when the law comes into place.
Apple is also being forced to switch to type-C chargers, I think next year, by the EU because it is more consumer friendly and helps to prevent e-waste, which is something Appleās marketing loves to claim they are by removing chargers from phone boxes and forcing its customers to buy over priced chargers that come in more packagingā¦
I always say this, You canāt become a trillion dollar company without exploiting everything and everyone you possibly can in the name of profit.
Apple doesnāt care about you or its workers or the environment, the only thing Apple cares about is profit. It does everything it can to lock down its products, force its users into its ecosystem and block any other companies from even attempting to function and profit within its ecosystem, Apple is ruthless and will not stop until they have squeeze as much money out of everything they possible can.
Apple is the epitome of capitalism and parasite on society, it offers nothing of value for a premium price.
Like you, I agree the internet should be open and the wealth of knowledge that humans have accumulated shouldnāt be locked behind paywalls.
A lot of scientific research is publically funded but then its locked behind a paywall so the public has to pay again. For people that think you are stealing others work by using sci-hub, tell them to email one of the authors of the papers and ask them if they can get a copy. The majority of authors would be happy to send them one.
Donāt think you can get much more thorough than this write up and is right in line with how I feel.
Well, there are many things to consider here. First off, let me say I really appreciate your ābattleā for open science: I think thatās what we should fight for, and I totally support that (Iām a PhD in computer science, but done with research). I donāt think that the fact that you donāt use FOSS makes your battle for open science any less legitimate, that is still super valid and you shouldnāt feel hypocrite. That said, it is true that Apple does not support or contribute to open source at all (I believe CUPS is one of the few open source things Apple did, correct me if Iām wrong here).
Nonetheless, I totally understand the coziness of having such an integrated environment between all your devices: this is not gonna happen on Linux, or at least not at that level. I do believe that the Linux desktop experience has become much more user friendly (imo much more than Windows for instance), and there are also cool integration options such as KDE connect, but thatās probably not as good and cool as Apple integration.
Committing to open source can be a time-consuming decision, and most people that advocates for FOSS still use or give their data to non-FOSS software (such as Google, Facebook etc.). So, my advice would be to embrace as much as you want of the open philosophy: youāre already āfightingā for open science, maybe you can start using some open source software (maybe your email client? your pdf reader?). Little by little youāll judge by yourself what and how much you want to commit to the FOSS philosophy :)
Finding the right compromise can be hard. If youāre a really hard-core FOSS advocate, life can be very difficult in a modern society. I would love to live in a world where all of my mobile devices would run 100% FOSS and I would use only the kinds of services that respect my privacy. Sadly, getting there seems to take a while.
After having tried a bunch of different options, Iāve finally settled on a very disappointing compromise (apple). Itās far from being acceptable, let alone ideal, but the other options are much worse IMO. These are not absolute things, because everyone values different things and everyone needs to figure out where they draw the line.
While itās true that Apple doesnāt contribute anything to being open thereās always a cost-benefit trade off. āBad guys ā¢ļøā made chemo, but we still use it. If youāre such a big proponent of openness and you use Apple - donate some cash (as able) to an open source project. It doesnāt have to be all or none.
Your friend is right. Listen to them, read and understand. Donāt feel obligated to necessarily change your habits. If you get the time and desire to make a change, that understanding and knowledge will inform your actions. āŗļø
You should look in to openstreetmap.org . Itās open and free map data. Having a single giant company (Google) control all the maps is not good for the commons.
Iām so glad Wikipedia exists as a non-profit organizations. Imagine if Facebook or Google owned The Encyclopedia
Speaking of, there is something called the https://creativecommons.org/ mostly known for the Creative Commons family of non-comercial Licences. Itās used by creators to licence and freely share their work, similar to how programers use FOSS software licenses
There are a number of ongoing FOSS projects that will hopefully culminate in an ecosystem experience comparable to Apple. There are already some laptops being sold with Linux pre-installed, guaranteeing hardware compatibility (HP, Dell, System76, Slimbook, Tuxedo, Starlabs). KDE Connect integrates your phone and computer. Nextcloud can do much of what iCloud can do. Various phone projects are making the Linux phone possible, like Librem Purism, Pinephone, FOSH, KDE Plasma Mobile. And degoogled Androids like /e/ project / LineageOS and GrapheneOS. Thereās the PineTime smart watch.
Things often move slower in the FOSS world compared to literal TRILLION dollar companies. But when FOSS solutions get a foothold thereās no going back. FOSS projects are also virtually immune to enshitification
While the Apple ecosystem is nice, itās also the epitome of Vendor Lock-In. They deliberately make their products hard to integrate with other products (charging cables, green text bubles etc). As well as everything else people have mentioned here about right-to-repair, planned obsolescence, factory worker conditions
So yeah perfectly understandable to use all Apple-stuff today , but Iām optimistic for a future where more people are free from the big tech giants
I dislike Apple due to their user-hostile business practices. They donāt let you install alternate browsers or keyboards (TRULY alternate and not just re-skins of Safari and the iOS keyboard). They donāt let you sideload (officially). They donāt want you to interface with other phone manufacturers in an equitable way (see the whole blue bubble/green bubble drama). They donāt want you to have the freedom to repair your own devices (see the whole right to repair movement).
And so on and so forth. They are nice products and do what they are supposed to with minimal friction. I just cannot support a company that is so blatantly user-hostile.
And this is the main reason I like Google phones. I think their phones are the most anti Google phones (if you know how to do that). Its so much easier to de-Google a Google phone than it is any other phone. I wish Apple were more like that. Hardware is great but its the fact I cant sideload (officially) apps and install FOSS.
It is interesting that a Google phone of all things is the phone that best supports making it anti Google as you said. So many other manufacturers donāt even allow it by locking down the bootloader in certain countries or punishing users for unlocking it like Samsung does with Knox.
Yeah it is pretty interesting. Im thinking of buying a pixel just so I can install one of the more privacy based ROMs. Right now im using an Xperia and ive installed FOSS wherever I can.
