Free and Open Source Software

Apple products are great if you're already in the ecosystem. As someone who's only Apple product was an iPod nano, I never understood the hype. Yes, they make nice looking devices, but Apple products are all so... Locked. If you want to run Adobe Premier on your new M1 MacBook, great, it does it amazingly well. If you want to run a half dozen virtual machines on the same M1 (which has more than enough power to do it), then you're totally out of luck.

It's the "walled garden" approach that I don't like. Computers, and by extension, smartphones and smart watches, are capable of so much more than what we ask of them, but if we're not allowed to even try then why would I dig myself further into an ecosystem that says "here's what you're allowed to do" rather than "here's what you can do".

Apple has it's place; if you like it, great, but it's not for me.

In wise words of Commander Data: "I realized, it is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive to be more than we are, Lal. It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort yealds its own rewards"

You now understand the importance of free software just like you already knew the importance of free knowledge. You don't need to force yourself into shapes you don't fit, but you can help move us all into a better future for everybody.

Guy was just converted into a FOSS nerd. Give it a few months and he'll own a thinkpad with a custom i3 rice and be saying "I use arch btw".

Jokes aside, I think apple is a terrible company. Sure, their products are amazing but they're grossly overpriced and not FOSS or compatible with anything else.

The iphone 14 pro max costs $464 to make and retails for $2000. That's not innovation, that's grifting. Besides, the main difference between the Iphone 11 and 14 is the price (no, the camera is not that much better, i don't care what you say).

Apple also intentionally gatekeeps their products (Vender Lock-in) making the experience worse for everyone who doesn't own Apple products. They could adopt the open standard that all other phones use for texting (MMS I think it's called) but instead they use imessage to make your experience worse when texting people with Androids. This also makes it hard to switch to an Android even if it's better. And don't even get me started on the charger situation.

Also, they use privacy as a branding statement but we have no way to verify that claim. They could be selling all our data and be well within their rights. If they were open source we would be able to verify that claim.

I can't really talk though because I own a (refurbished) Iphone. I do this because a) the messaging system and b) my whole family is in the apple ecosystem (with no way out) so I get benefits of our family plan like tons of storage.

I'm a huge open source advocate and developer. I used Linux for many many years, but these days I'm Apple all the way. I'm too old to hack around with everything, I want my commodities to Just Work, so I can focus on the stuff I want to do with it. Also, Apple are the only big company I remotely trust on privacy.

I think Apple is as bad as Microsoft or even worse. Their products are not even remotely as good as their fans claim to be either.

I had to use a macbook for work once and it honestly sucked and I really tried to like it even contributed to major user space programs through out my 2 year adventure. It's a bad platform of blind leading the blind.

Having languished for years hoping for new updates of android and being hampered by carriers or phone makers, I greatly enjoy the long term support apple gives to its devices.

On then computer front I’m a huge fan of Linux distros. If I could I’d move on from windows.

You kind of hit on the major tradeoff while thinking through it. That tight product integration (phone, watch, tablet, laptop) is a selling point for a lot of people to buy into closed tech ecosystems. It's easy and it just works. In exchange for those seamless integrations, you kind of lock yourself in to that family of tech products. There's also the fact that the owner of said ecosystem will happily monitor and monetize all your activity on those integrated products. Open source solutions allow you to strip out that corporate telemetry to a greater or lesser extent. You can also achieve some similar levels of product integration, but it does demand a little more effort and technical savvy from the end-user. I wouldn't claim that one or the other choice is explicitly wrong or evil, as people have different tech needs and different amounts of skill/time to devote to this stuff. That said, I personally have tried to be more thoughtful about what I do and do not control with respect to my digital life.

I don't use Apple products myself, although I do have an old iPad. My main issue with them isn't a moral one though, it's that Apple seem to design their products to work as slickly as possible with their own ecosystem to the detriment of everything else.

If you use an iPhone, an iPad, an Apple Watch and a Mac then you're probably enjoying a great user experience. If you want to use an Apple device with anything else you're probably in for some amount of pain. I'm not against them, but they're not for me.

I do try and use FOSS software where I can, not least Lemmy and Mastodon, but my main devices are a Windows PC along with an Android phone and tablet. Windows is obviously closed source, and while Android itself is open source you can't say the same for all the vital Google stuff on top. I have a plan to get my hands on a high specced Raspberry Pi when they're finally back in stock and use it as my main home desktop for light use. If I had a laptop of my own I'd definitely be running Linux on it too.

I think everyone should absolutely look into FOSS hardware and software, although in reality I doubt most people would care. If anything it's just the "free" part they care about, but there's obviously a huge benefit in software and hardware being free for others to build on, fork and improve. I'd love nothing more than seeing everything work on this principle, but that's sadly not the world we live in.

Apple is the symbol for a walled garden that feeds it's inhabitants overpriced crap and they love it.

When buying tech products I mainly care about if they are integrated with each other or not.

A lot of people do. That's why apple made sure you can only use apple devices with other apple devices. Bluetooth allows users to share files between any two devices? Better make sure an iPhone can't connect to anything that doesn't have an i prefix in it's name. You like our earbuds, buy an iPhone if you want the buttons to work. Sure, you can play music over the radio from your phone while driving, oh you don't have an iPhone, get fucked.

And it's an effective strategy. You start off with a phone, add a watch and earbuds to it, and the next thing you know you're buying a $1k stand for a $5k monitor to work with your $7k cheese grater of a tower. Because what are you going to do, give up on connectivity, throw away all of your apple devices, or go all the way in on the apple koolaid?

Don't even get me started on the quality of their overpriced crap, or the fact that they've been fighting tooth and nail to keep making ewaste instead of allowing the users to repair and upgrade their devices. Watch any video on the topic from Louis Rossmann.

Tldr

Fuck apple

I tried explaining all of that to a friend and she said "well, you see, I like the a e s t h e t i c of Apple products, and then pulled out her iPhone which was covered in some kind of rubber condom making it impossible to see what the big deal was about the design.

I use a cheap Motorola with no protection at all and it has yet to break from being dropped on the floor several times. It looks like a rounded rectangle. So much for design.

I think your colleague used an excellent example. Just like COVID vaccination Patente can be considered not good for public interests, the same applies for the FOSS mentality regarding Apple ecosystem.

While I can understand, that Apple products interface very well with each other, it's also true, that it's not hard to get these things working without a walled garden. Just like ActivityPub is an essential standard for Lemmy/Kbin.social and the Fediverse as a whole, there are also standards for all kinds of connections between devices.

The problem is, that corporations like Microsoft and Apple can earn more by making it walled so that people have to decide between compatibility and comfort. Unfortunately, such a dichotomy is false and completely artificial. It only exists solely to optimise the profits of Apple.

I personally have never used an Apple product. When I see the price tag and what I get for it - and see, that I'm put into a small safety box, I don't feel attracted to it. I want things to be simple and under my control. I hate using windows as I feel, how less it's under my control. It's true, that some things like Cortana (Desktop AI on windows) aren't available on Linux, but for now I can well live without it.

At the same time, I also believe in FOSS and also think that it's huge, that anyone in the world can get s flexible versatile OS simply with an internet connection.

I may also be biased, as I'm a software engineer.

I think Apple as a company is in the business of selling an overpriced lie.

A glued unswappable battery is not a beautiful design. Pricing casually diving into the 4 digits is not equality. Locked down software and hardware enforce the idea that technology is magic and not something that can be known and judged in context.

The alternative is not FOSS or Linux. That's the diametrical opposite path and as dumbed down as the Apple offer is, you can't ask everybody to wrap their head around what the fuck a Kernel even is.

As far as I am concerned there's a very healthy middle-ground that's plain old "boring" Android and Windows.

My main problem with Apple is they really only care about what you've done for them lately.

They have a tendency to obsolete things and force devs to come along for the ride. They killed PowerPC, they killed flash and they're in the process of killing x86. I like when my applications continue to work.

I also wish they'd never inflicted smartphones upon the world, but I suppose that's a personal gripe.

The only Apple thing I ever enjoyed using was a ][e.

I hate the current state of Apple with a burning passion. At some point I had tried using their devices. They treat me like I am retarded. But if you like their interface, the interconnectivity and the workflow, more power to you. I myself have bought windows keys from shady websites for like 10% of the price (I am a gamer and linux wasn't ready for gaming at the time). I have stripped the OS of all the tracking bullshit, used third party tools to disable everything I don't like, uninstalled Edge (painful), installed tools to disable licensing checks in programs (sketchy), etc. I have never bought an iPhone. When I switch phones, I root the old one for shits and giggles. I use only open-source software and everything I publish (files for 3d printing) are openly accessible too and never paywalled. But not everyone can live like me. I have, at one point in my life, spent 18 hours at my PC screwing around with the registry in windows, to disable some slimy POS tracker. I do not have a problem with anyone choosing convenience over cheapness or open-sourceness. But I hope more people make the leap. Because your coworker is right. The problem is absolutely the same. I hope open-source gets more convenient to use. For example gaming on Linux is finally possible. You can't change the whole world, you can only change yourself. And you won't do it overnight, you have to wake up in the morning and make a conscious effort of making a change in your routine. I convinced my SO to at least try an Android phone after she was done with her iPhone. Now she can never go back. Now she has a Laptop with Windows on it. A custom PC, which she wouldn't trade for a top of the line MacBook. In any case, OP: if you want to make a change, do it one step at a time. Don't overload yourself. I was introduced to linux by my dad, where he helped me follow a tutorial on how to make a bootable usb drive for Ubuntu. It was fun and not complicated at all. Once you have that USB, try booting off of it, play around in Linux. Have some fun. It is closer to MacOS than Windows. It just doesn't stop you from being dumb and doing dumb things :). And after that, if you like it, do some more research, try some more things. Be the change you want to see in the world.

I'm an Apple user, and have been since 2007 when I bought my first MacBook. I have an iPhone, a Watch, a bunch of Macs, and Apple TV. I have an iPad too, but the screen's broken, I can't afford to repair it, and honestly, I don't really have much use for an iPad these days.

While I like how much these devices sync with each other, and I love how well they're built, with every year that passes it sits less well with me how, if you can't afford the latest and greatest, you'll experience some level of OS-rot.

I mean, my iPad is new enough to support iPadOS 16, but too old to support Stage Manager. That I'm not really bothered by, but it's indicative of a problem. If the device is capable of running an OS, it should get all of the OS that its hardware will allow. Even more fundamentally though, say iOS 17 has some new additions to Notes.app that will also work in Sonoma, but your Mac isn't recent enough to go beyond Monterey; does that mean you can't view notes made on your iPhone on your Mac?

And yeah, that doesn't sit right with me.

I'm going to give a different and possibly controversial opinion to the others in here. To get started, I admit that I am a daily mac and ios user so there's definitely some bias there. That being said, I think there is a clear difference between the vaccine and information resources and using a mac or iphone. I think there is an incredible need for there to be a free and open source option that exists for everything (especially for public health and information), but not everything needs to be free and open source if a free version exists elsewhere (or even multiple viable free options). Just because I like going to libraries doesn't mean I dislike book stores. As a video editor, I very much disagree with my professional industry basically mandating ProRes, which forces Mac use (or at least it did for a long time), which institutes a costly and sometimes impossible barrier to entry for many people, which is lame because more editing friends in post is always better.

Maybe there's something I'm missing in the argument, but it seems like if a programmer or end user wanted to use open source software, nothing is stopping them, but if a government wanted to implement "open source" vaccines, that wasn't possible because of the patents. Sure, cross-integration would be super nice (airpods on an android, ipad on windows, imessage on everything, etc), but I don't know if it should be an expectation, just like cross-play in video games would be super nice, but shouldn't be an expectation.

I do like tinkering with things though, and that's really my main personal qualm with apple (I know they're a huge megacorporation, but they don't generally make my personal life worse for the most part). I was running a pretty beefy hackintosh for 7+ years before that computer decided to give up. Now I use that hardware for a home media server. I also love tinkering with little linux distributions on my raspberry pi. Apple really doesn't scratch any of these itches for me, but that's why I do both. I have the reliable mac for work and general computing use and I have my other devices for everything else.

I have an iPhone, use a MacBook for work (only options are windows and Mac), but use Linux at home. I was an android user years ago, but one of the things that pushed me away is google treating android users as a data source. There were ‘bugs’ which caused the google services to run constantly in the background. In my opinion, Apple cares about users privacy lot more than google does. Use whatever tool suits you best.

Just had a lunch conversation today as well and a colleague's iPhone got stolen. I mentioned how the problem of being able to do everything on the phone makes it a single point of failure (back in the day when I traveled I needed internet cafés to login into my brokerage account to sell off some stock. Now I just do it with my phone.). We discussed a bit more how he was stuck and frustrated as all things are done with the phone now (Uber, 2-factor authentication etc.).

But, it was an iPhone, so Apple allowed him to completely shut down and erase his old phone together with all payment info and all other personal info. And then just enter his Apple ID on his new phone (paid by the insurance) and he was back in the game.

If I had my Fairphone stolen, I'd have to somehow recover some parts of my data from my personal backup and the installation process of any new device would take some time. Also, who knows what the thief could've done with my phone?

So yeah, I'm completely opposed to my device being controlled by a corporation to the point they can lock, erase and move all data (including app data) somewhere else, but I do see the advantages.

These are probably more related than you think. I believe we were on track to work together in a global Open Science initiative until Bill Gates stepped up to bankroll most of the biggest initiatives under the agreement that the results were proprietary.

Apple historically was the first company to sue for software copyright infringement. As many other have posted in this thread, they haven't gotten better over time.

Apple is the worst... and they make it really hard to break out of their walled garden once you made the mistake to enter it. But don't throw away everything, just don't give them any additional money and try to somehow escape from that prison over time. But it will be hard as Apple intentionally breaks interoperability with things that are not Apple.

I like your scientific way of looking at things i am a software developer and i know few people who are using apple laptops and phones and they are defending everything that company make or say or do even it is a very anti-consumer decition like their implementation of right to repair so i am glad that not every apple user is also in their cult

i dont like apple, but i understand why people do. the ecosystem seems convenient, the promises of privacy, etc. but as a techy person i dont like to use them, it feels too constricting and overpriced. and they havent innovated in a long time (with the exception of vision pro, which although i find ridiculous, at least they finally did something innovative)

I'm a software engineer who uses a lot of open source software and I use Apple devices whenever possible. Electronic devices cost a lot of money, so I want my money to count. With that said, every Apple device I've owned has lasted me for a very long time and are still working today; The longest one being a 2012 Macbook Air which is still alive and kicking today after 2 battery replacements.

Every iPhone I've ever owned have received major iOS updates for 5-6 years. Meanwhile, every Android flagship phone (which costs similarly to the latest and greatest iPhones) I've owned have stopped getting major Android updates after 2-3 years. People criticize Apple for planned obsolescence, but other brands have it worse.

Even if you do listen to your friend's advice and decide to go for another brand, which one actually advocates for the ideals your friend has shared with you? The direct alternatives to Apple products aren't better in any philosophical way. The ones that do either offer a completely difference experience or an inferior product.

Don't feel bad about what your friend is saying. He doesn't pay for your stuff.

Apple is just about the worst offender out there in terms of desire to maintain a closed ecosystem.

• They only adopt open hardware standards when forced to by law

• They scrupulously enforce price controls on their resellers, ensuring that you can't usually purchase prior generations at a discount

• They intentionally degrade performance on older generations of devices through malicious software updates to force users to upgrade

• They aggressively combat open source and cross platform integration. E.g., Apple TV can't be cast to a Google device, etc.

I use windows, Apple products and Linux. I prefer FOSS products and will go out of my way to use Ubuntu or arch on my desktop and laptops (going on 15 years) even if it’s harder to get working in certain situations (e.g., gaming). I have to use windows at work. I use apple products (iPhone, iPad, headphones, watch) for the same reasons OP stated, they just work. I need a reliable phone and don’t trust google or the other android manufactures so I see apple as the lesser evil.

Use whatever is best for your situation.

(Note that I'm not much of a tech wiz myself, so I only roughly understand the issue with the lack of privacy.)

When it comes to weighing the pros and cons between security versus convenience, it's hard for me to say that one tops the other. We live in a fast-paced world. At the same time, I hate the idea of people profiting off my data and trying to snoop. A lot of companies like Apple have an iffy reputation when it comes to data security, even though they say they protect your data and privacy. At the same time, many companies provide services which have become an integrated part in people's lives.

I have an Android because I love dabbling with FOSS apps. I never want to have a phone from Apple. However, I also have an iPad— and I'm planning on getting a MacBook. The iPad is good for taking notes and making digital art, while the MacBook helps me deal with industry standards in my future career field.

So for me, I'm not indifferent but... I guess a better way to word it is that I'm wary. On a day-to-day basis I prefer efficiency, but in the long-term I think it might bite me in the ass. Somehow. If it didn't already. (Probably did.)