Hacker News Reader

Comment by simplecomplex | Hacker News Reader

The author says he switched because of “Then came 2018, with its stunning revelations and outrages by Facebook, Apple, Google, and others. With privacy and free speech—in short, digital autonomy—deeply under threat”

Comparing Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple is apples to oranges. What did Apple do that threatens customer privacy and free speech?

You don’t need to switch to Linux to stop using Facebook and Twitter...

View on HN

> What did Apple do that threatens customer privacy and free speech

Apple affects many things negatively by being extremely pro lock-in and patent aggressive. So I'd say it's a good thing when someone stops using Apple's products and switches to Linux instead.

You can't have GPL apps on iOS, you can't put them in the Store and you are not allowed to side load apps, this is one reason I dislike Apple, others include the fact you have to replace the battery, motherboard or some body part (I can't remember for sure) and the entire keyboard if one of your keys breaks. This is why personally dislike them and why I will not use their products but I understand that people value different things then me.

It’s not a good thing if you like seeing software devs get paid :)

The company doesn't need to be a nasty anti-competitive jerk to pay developers.

What’s anti competitive?

It's when instead of competing on merit, companies focus on controlling the market through monopolization techniques. I.e. simply banning competition.

Lock-in (i.e. refusal to support interoperability), patent aggression, forbidding competing technologies in their store and so on and so forth.

Having all software distribution for their embedded devices go through a centralized authority?

It's possible that he means "revelations... by... Apple" -- like the fact that they received all that attention from the feds.

Apple wants to store your data in iCloud--I don't wanna. I don't trust them.

Apple is happy to learn a lot about you. Hence the feds can learn a lot about you through them.

But most important to me is this wretched speech by Tim Cook: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/12/03/tim-cook-adl-keynote-sp...

What a censorious tool. Soured me on Apple for, probably, ever.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com