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Comment by jakeva | Hacker News Reader

I assume you're taking a shot at Apple the company. Not sure what the basis for making the comparison to a cult is and having escaped from an actual cult myself I find the comparison disingenuous and insulting. Apple sells products many people are happy to pay for. Cults sell a lifestyle usually built on lies and manipulation, generally taking much more from their buyers than just the sticker price.

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Nowadays Apple does take more than the sticker price: they take control of your machine. It has become nearly impossible to refuse a software upgrade, and actually impossible to downgrade. They sell this as a "feature", but actual cults also sell taking control of your life as a feature. And people actually find this attractive because it relieves them of the burden of having to think or take responsibility for their actions. There's a reason that both Apple and "real" cults thrive in the marketplace. True, Apple is not as bad as a "real" cult but the analogy is apt, and becoming more so over time.

This is true of Windows, any web app that you use, and more and more of any hardware that you buy (Nest, Tesla, etc.).

You're just describing the general state of the industry (which I also lament).

> This is true of Windows, any web app that you use, and more and more of any hardware that you buy (Nest, Tesla, etc.).

But not, notably, of Linux.

True, on Android/Linux you're likely to not get any updates at all

That's not true for linux distros and community supported android (i.e. cyanogenmod).

That's weird, I thought apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade was upgrading my system. I must have been imagining it.

Ever heard of XDA?

Ironically, as a non-default choice for most of the computing world, Linux developers have far more motivation to actually care about their users' preferences. It's a stark contrast these days to the big players where they essentially hold their own product to ransom until you accept their control of it.

So you say Apple users had no choice? How about making the choice to buy, say, a Mac, so you can focus on what you do ON you computer, not on what you do TO your computer?

never heard of vendor lock in?

It is a feature for the majority of non-HN users out in the real world. Anecdata being everyone's parents and grandparents, non-techie teens, etc. And even we would consider this a feature in other aspects of our lives - roads, power grids, telecom and infrastructure in general all auto-update in a manner of speaking. Personal property might not, but if first generation device owners grow up with auto-update they might not care. How many people on HN still complain about Chrome auto updating, btw?

The difference is: when Chrome updates, it doesn't force me to update everything else on my system. Apple uses a "version ratchet" to force you to update everything whether you want to or not.

Please don't turn off your computer while updates are being installed is the single most cited reason in my environment for ditching a particular OS.

I don't particularly subscribe to the narrative, there are these billions 'non-techie' users needing handholding by BigCo.

I'd also like to point out that the comparison between Apple and a cult has existed since at least 2004. [1]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cult_of_Mac_(book)

Errr... just to point out, some people perceive similarities in Apple's approach to what you just described re: "Cults sell ...".

> some people perceive similarities in Apple's approach to what you just described re: "Cults sell [a lifestyle usually based on lies and manipulation]"

Marketing involves manipulation. Despite being good at marketing, I don't see evidence that Apple resorts to lying more than other companies. More often, the "cult of Apple" label is directed at avid customers who are particularly enthusiastic about Apple's products, and its used pejoratively by people who don't share or understand their enthusiasm.

But it's metaphor, and it doesn't mean Apple or its fans are an actual cult.

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