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Comment by horsawlarway | Hacker News Reader

People chose to use Apple because it seems like a benevolent dictatorship.

And frankly, a benevolent dictatorship is basically the best government you can have, as long as you're part of the "in-group" who doesn't push boundaries, doesn't cause trouble, and supports the supreme ruler, Kim jon... cough* Apple.

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The problem is that no matter how good the dictatorship might be today, it will eventually bite you. You will either develop a need that isn't addressed, or they will change the rules so you are no longer able to satisfy an existing need.

We're seeing this now with Google - Their motto was literally "don't be evil" for a long time. And during that golden period their users loved them. But as Google has shifted from "don't be evil" to "Make lots of money" people are starting to shift away.

Apple is still in the golden phase, but I'm not really convinced they're going to be there much longer.

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Speaking as an ex-Google user and an ex-Apple customer (still tied to Apple Music and iCloud for family phones), I'd compare Google to Russia - not particularly benevolent, a bit chaotic/random, citizens tend to shrug and accept their lot. Apple is more like Singapore, slick, seemingly benevolent, citizens honestly question why the rest of the world isn't run the same way.

EDIT: I'd add another way in which Google is like Russia and Apple like Singapore. Everyone kinda knows that Russia's leaders are a bit/a lot evil. There's still a debate about whether Singapore's leaders are evil.

That's a perfect analogy.

I like that.

I think it makes Linux some sort of United States: users like the principles, but almost all use one of the 50 major implementations, which tend to have small differences. When defending any perceived shortcoming, they will point to a different implementation without the particular flaw, or argue that the feature is not only unnecessary but undesirable.

Many outsiders are uncomfortable with the unwavering commitment these users have for the principles. Others often talk about moving to the USA, or how they plan to, but few make the effort to do so.

[The last paragraph convinced me the analogy was better with the USA than the EU.]

More like their state fixed particular issue, some move a lot between states, some settled on their first place. Some live all life in a hotel, some build their own houses.

It looks scary for outsiders — how to choose state? Building own house requires so much energy and time, why would anyone do this? Just rent an apartment, maybe change wallpapers and door, bring appliances. Yes, sometimes owner moves switches, adds cameras, puts advertisement, forbids all but own groceries where he takes 30% cut, but apart from that life is good.

Linux is also like the United States in that you are in some sense free, but everything just barely works, sometimes things don't work at all, and there is no hope of many well-documented problems ever being fixed. If you have a problem, you are "free" to fix it yourself, on your own, without support.

Have you used Linux in the last few years? Seems like all standard use cases work seamlessly, such as web browsing, streaming, videos, text editing, creating artwork, presentations, installing any random Linux binary, programming, ...etc ; only problems I've run into are by doing something stupid or doing something really really off the wall.

And even when I've created a problem or chosen to do something way outside of standard usage, there has been a WEALTH of documentation, stack overflow discussions, and live Linux community support. I've never run into a problem that hasn't already been chewed over by the Linux community, solved, and the solution been posted in a clear, educational, and technically descriptive manner.

I've NEVER has that kind of support from Apple or Microsoft. From them, it's always some half baked, high level / middle management overview type of solution, usually outdated, that discusses why it's a problem, why fixing it is dependent on the system (their system, that I've paid for), and how I should contact my system administrator, who's going to go read through the same page, then spend the afternoon sipping Pepto and dreaming of having a more sane job. Using their OS's is like wading through mud.

I have — Linux was my daily driver for three years ending in 2018, and I tried to use it for everything from print design to video editing to software development. I was even using it on two different generations of the Dell XPS machines that officially support Linux. I still eventually gave up and went back to macOS. I want my tools to work, not to work on my tools.

I find Linux issues easier to debug than windows or Mac issues, but that’s as a technical user. It would be frustrating as a newbie. I hear elementary is good for new users

Which Linux distribution has the most guns? Asking for a friend, of course. :P

Lots of footguns in all of them. Arch probably has the most new and shiny ones, and Gentoo has accumulated a lot of work on footgun tuning.

Running Gentoo you learn a lot about how Linux works at a deep level. I'm glad I have that knowledge I gained running Gentoo and it's saved my bacon a few times over the years.

But after about the third time that upgrading my system made it unbootable because I had missed some crucial step buried in the changelog or release notes, I also developed a deep appreciation of all the things modern distros handle for you. I rarely fear a dist-upgrade the way I did an emerge world.

Kali linux certainly has the pointiest sticks.

Maybe suicide linux? https://qntm.org/suicide

> Apple is more like Singapore, slick, seemingly benevolent, citizens honestly question why the rest of the world isn't run the same way.

Apple is more like a Vatican and Google is like Saudi Arabia. Both corrupt in different ways.

> Apple is still in the golden phase, but I'm not really convinced they're going to be there much longer.

The honeymoon is already over. A post like yours would have got several downvotes up to less than two years ago. I noticed that honest critics to Apple are tolerated now, since at least about one year ago.

I actually agree with you (and as someone who's been complaining about Apple for a looong time, I have the posts with the downvotes to show you're probably right), but I don't think HN is representative of the general populace.

I also still consider Apple's PR game to be top notch. Which is why so many folks are talking about loving the Apple app store in the thread about the recent Epic case that also popped up today. Although I'll note it's interesting that originally those threads seemed about evenly divided on the topic, and currently the pro-apple, pro-dictatorship voices seem to be getting mostly downvoted.

Regardless - I'd strongly recommend everyone out there to consider free and open software, on devices that you own (and you don't own a device if you don't have root access). Open source just keeps getting better - We happily re-implement the ideas and products generated by these companies, but we care about you - not the bottom line -because we are you.

I remember there was a bug on the App Store that cause some issue on certain games. I posted on the thread "Why not buy this game on Steam instead. It costs the same, doesn't have this issue, and you benefit from the game working on Windows/Mac/Linux at no extra charge. You also get proper trophy support, cross platform multiplayer etc..

I got a bunch of 'Why on earth would I do that. I love the app store and will only ever have Macs.'

Steam has its own set of issues where they control what you get to play, and when.

I feel like I've "bought" a ton of games through Steam, and now that my kids are a bit older, they want to play some of them. Unfortunately they can't play different games at the same time - even with Steam's family sharing. When one person plays a game, it locks the whole game library.

GOG all the way.

> When one person plays a game, it locks the whole game library.

You can get around this by running steam in offline mode.

Life changed. My kids will thank you :)

This could be revoked at any point, so GOG is probably the way to go unless you actually really want certain features of steam.

Technology has become a bit like politics, most people tend to choose the least worst option now.

I think the difference between the Google and Apple dictatorships is the business model.

Google's customers are not the users, they are the advertisers who rely on the data harvested by Google. The incentive to be evil is directly baked into the business model, and most users end up tolerating it because it is "FREE", and often the only viable option.

Apple's customers are the users. If Apple rocks the boat too much, their users might not feel so good about paying the premium prices Apple demands for its products. Making users upset is a direct threat to their business model.

> Making users upset is a direct threat to their business model

You can't really compare Google to Apple. You can switch to a different company if you don't like pixel phones and get almost the same experience. You can switch between manufacturers and use windows/Linux as well. The same isn't true about Mac os or iOS.

While you may think customers still have a choice, the reality is that they are locked in through their school, work or relationships (can't use imessage to talk to your spouse?). Apple makes it difficult to use third-party hardware and software it competes with so you will buy more and more Apple over time. People are prone to sunk cost fallacy and consistency. It's sales manual 101. I really can't recommend reading a good sales manual enough.

> You can't really compare Google to Apple. You can switch to a different company if you don't like pixel phones and get almost the same experience. You can switch between manufacturers and use windows/Linux as well. The same isn't true about Mac os or iOS.

This doesn't really make much sense to me. Unless you are going with a niche privacy-oriented fork of AOSP, any non-iOS smartphone you move to will still be controlled by Google. And if you do move to one of those forks, you are essentially migrating to an entirely new ecosystem anyways. It's no easier to leave Google's Android ecosystem than it is to leave iOS or macOS.

There is not just iOS and Android - Sailfish OS has been a thing since 2013 and while unforutnately not fully open source, it's perfectly usable (and on my primary smartphone): https://sailfishos.org/

Also, thanks to PinePhone finally providing open yet easily available hardware, there is now a new crop of fully open source mobile Linux distros being developed: https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PinePhone_Software_Release...

Sire, not everything might work yet & PinePhone is not at the same level as the latest Android flagship phone (well, you can hardly expect that for $150) but there are multiple people communities of people building new mobile operating systems, right now! Ones that are not controlled by a control freak (Apple) or spymaster dropping services left and right (Google).

I definitely think there's some truth to this, but there are more network connections involved here than a simple Seller->buyer relationship.

In my opinion, right now Apple is rocking the boat for 3rd party developers. Historically, that hasn't worked out that well for platforms, but we also don't have a ton of data to work with. It's conceivable that Apple becomes the "Company store" on Apple hardware, and their users only use Apple software.

But if that happens, I think they'll suffer more regulation and governmental interference (and rightfully so, imo).

> Apple's customers are the users.

This doesn't mean, however, that Apple's incentives are aligned with the user's incentives. It's important to see that Apple's devices are also a sales channel for Apple. For example, an iPhone is essentially a vending machine for entertainment. And Apple will exert its power to use that sales channel (using the same techniques as advertising companies, like user tracking), whether the user likes it or not.

> Apple rocks the boat too much, their users might not feel so good about paying

Just today I heard a colleague say how tough it would be to move away from Apple because of their iCloud. Then you have all the apps and content (iOS and macOS) you already paid for.

The difference in business model between G, Apple (or other tech behemoths) are very superficial. Yes, to google and apple operations they are very different, but to a consumer: it's the same. Both try to become essential, all encompassing locking you in and increasing the cost of switching. All brands try to do this. But it's much easier for me to pick a new brand toothpaste after I'm done with previous one than for me to move app ecosystems, specially when those apps ecosystems are all locked down as all non-libre app ecosystems are.

You may "feel" like you're an Apple product because you think you can just buy less Apple products or not at all. That's until you consider the consequences of losing access to third-party content/products you purchase.

You are a product for any private company, they are just different kinds of evil. It is in Apple interests to limit users freedom to run another OS on their hardware, to funnel applications through App Store.

Users en masse would not switch, not from Apple, not from Microsoft. Their price is not that high in dollars, it is high in freedom. And most users do not value that.

Making users upset is also a direct threat to Google's business model. It doesn't really matter whether you're paying them $20 directly, or whether you're generating $20 of ad revenue - either way, you're worth $20 to them.

Of course, you are quite right to point out that Google's business model does incentivize behavior that isn't what their users would want. But the same is true of Apple - their business model strongly incentivizes them to create lock-in to the platform. Whether this bothers you more or less than Google's need to mine your data is I guess a matter of personal preference.

> Apple's customers are the users.

As are a crack dealer's.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil

> "Don't be evil" is a phrase used in Google's corporate code of conduct, which it also formerly preceded as a motto.

> Following Google's corporate restructuring under the conglomerate Alphabet Inc. in October 2015, Alphabet took "Do the right thing" as its motto, also forming the opening of its corporate code of conduct.[1][2][3][4][5] The original motto was retained in Google's code of conduct, now a subsidiary of Alphabet. In April 2018, the motto was removed from the code of conduct's preface and retained in its last sentence.[6]

I know saying Google removed Don't Be Evil is something of a trope, but the truth is a little more complicated. And, of course, the presence or absence of this phrase has no necessary bearing on the degree to which they are perceived as evil or not!

Right, but it's funny how these things tend to correlate. For example, the US Department of War became the US Department of Defense in 1949, arguably around the time when its primary business switched from Defense to War.

Not uncoincidentally this was the year 1984 was published, and Newspeak is the official language of Oceania, so..

"Hilariously", thirty years later, the company that would go on to put a camera in everyone's living room and pocket ran this commercial: https://vimeo.com/312710573

spot on .. I'm afraid

Evil is frequently caught masquerading as “do the right thing”.

“Don’t be evil” is nearly the opposite guidance.

> benevolent dictatorship

Have you seen Louis Rossmann's videos on Apple hardware repair?

Think about Apple's policies regarding IAPs. You're not allowed to tell your customers in your app that they can do the purchases on your webserver etc.

The benevolent days of Apple ended when they removed the expansion slots from their computers, if not earlier.

In defense of Google, they really like having a lot of money.

Let P = "Don't be evil" and Q = "make lots of money".

Q was nothing new. They always wanted Q. But Google made a fundamental breakthrough in business logic, discovering that P -> ¬Q.

It should be noted that ¬P -> Q is not automatically implied. Plenty of companies are ¬P ∧ ¬Q. Perhaps they are not ¬P enough? Perhaps they are too much ¬P? But very few manage to be purely P ∧ Q.

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