Your Computer Isn't Yours | Hacker News Reader

Your Computer Isn't Yours

sneak.berlin

1,514 pointssneak741 comments

What we poor souls didn't understand all these years is that we're effectively helping other companies to steal from Apple by running software that isn't distributed via their app store [1].

I think now that Apple has learned from iOS how profitable a walled garden business model is they are trying to bring that model to the PC world as well. Shipping hardware with their own processors is an important step in that direction because it gives them control over the IP of arguably the most important component of the computer, which in turn makes it easier to control software distribution for their architecture as well.

The transition will be slower of course because people have to get used to seeing computers as closed-source devices with app stores, there are still too many of us who have the mindset that you can just install anything you want on a computer without asking Apple for permission and without paying tax to them.

At this point I really wonder how any serious "hacker" can work on such a device, it's becoming the antithesis of everything that the original Hacker culture stood for.

1: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/11/judge-dismisses-apple...

Good thing said hacker culture spent 15 years buying inflated laptops and desktops from them ultimately for convenience to give them the market presence to do this in the first place. Its the same thing with Windows.

People will preach all day that they won't make any personal sacrifices to try to avoid feeding literal cancers that are eating the software industry and are shocked when said all consuming voids take away their autonomy but they are so locked in to their ecosystems they are trapped.

These are for profit corporations, not your friends. Their bottom line dictates they maximally abuse copyright and their ability to sell and distribute proprietary software out of your control to maximum effect. Microsoft, Google, et al want you using devices you cannot control, because then they hold all the keys and can demand the greatest ransoms for you to do what you want. Its inevitable, and the persistent total arrogance and hubris on display in the tech hive mind in regards to any of these walled gardens is just... depressing.

Free software isn't going anywhere, especially with RISC-V now being an established failsafe if UEFI PC and ARM totally lock down, but it would just make the struggle a lot easier if the principle victims would stop martyring themselves for the corporate ecosystems they have no say, influence, or control over.

What's worse is the number of other posts with the top comments being vociferous defenses of these companies as if they needed these people to defend them or cared one iota for their welfare. It feels like it's Stockholm Syndrome on a mass scale.

I worry for Gen Z because they're tiny-mobile-device native. And the only usable tiny mobile devices are walled gardens. They scream outrage when they're not allowed their tiny little dance-jig operators provided courtesy of an abusive regime.

Sure, I reflect that I may be now nearing the curve of an obsolescent person attached to such silly outmoded principles like "ethics" but if we're all just selling ourselves out constantly to the angry god-machine of the id, is this really the future we want for our daughters and sons?

Next laptop for me is going to be from a company that explicitly supports linux. Probably dell or lenovo.

A lot of people like to rag on Ubuntu. I agree with some of the criticisms. But the one thing they have done right is broker partnerships with hardware vendors like dell and lenovo.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystem...

https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/lenovo-laun...

I remember people pretending to be "skaters" way back, "hacker culture" reminds me a lot of that.

And what do you expect us to do, install Linux and spend days configuring the touchpad?

Computers are a tool we use to do our work. Setting up the computer cannot become a job by itself.

Well said. The hacker culture is not immune to the trappings of luxury brands. You can’t show off your wealth using a no name brand running Linux.

It won't change anything switching to RISC-V, if those same hackers just build SaaS placed behind a server wall with a pretty Web interface implemented in WebAssembly talking over gRPC.

The one thing that gives me hope is the pendulum of open->closed->open has swung back and forth so many times now that even as depressing as current trends may be, I'm confident things will swing back again.

Not sure when, but I'm certain it will.

It is one of those strange things, the more closed things become, the greater the incentive is to open them back up again.

The hacker ethic is still out there, just this recent boom has dulled it a bit. A steady diet of locked down computing will fix that.

One of the major drivers is app developers. You can't build an iOS app without buying a mac, and if you're buying a mac.

It's kinda abusive how you need to pay the hardware tax, the yearly $100 USD rent, and 30% percent of your sales to have the privilege of developing for their platform.

I'm glad windows server lost to linux so we'll at least be able to run our own servers for the foreseeable future. But I see platform layers being the threat there (AWS, Azure, GCP).

> literal cancers that are eating the software industry

figurative cancers

What is your ideal solution? Linux seems to have largely won. Will it run on RISC-V?

I wish we had a completely open system of hardware and OS. Is librem making any progress in this space?

Like all subcultures when the hacker ethos went mainstream it's spirt died and all that was left was fashion. No one cares anymore if their consumer choices are a threat to freedom as long as they look cool. Outward appearances are now more important than principles. Prickly principles require sacrifice and why have character when you can have a disposable "personality".

The hacker ethos didn't go mainstream. People who don't deserve the moniker started self applying it.

I'm not a hacker, I'm a corporate shill because I work for my own profit within a system that's set up to ensure its own continuity. I'd like to be a hacker, but I have a family to support and am too weak or addicted to lifestyle or scared or realistically-minded to actually commit to what's required to earn the title of hacker. Same with anyone working towards advertising, marketing, consumer data collection. Doesn't matter how intelligently you solve a problem in those fields, ain't no starry eyed kids ever wanted to grow up to make the world a better place by more accurately identifying and individuals preferences on the internet.

Fuck fake hackers. The best thing I've done with my life is being a good husband to a teacher.

Real Hacker who has concern about her/his privacy wouldn't touch this kind of product with a 10 foot pole!

And yet, Apple still has a reputation of being really privacy- and security- conscious. Windows' telemetry has had all the alarms raised for years now, and how does e.g. Canonical earn money?

Same on mobile, Android phones - especially in the cheaper ranges - are dodgy as fuck when it comes to privacy and security.

Real hackers don't need secure boot and code signing either. :) Real hackers have backups, plan for failure, and are not afraid of consequences.

As a wise man once said: "haha, pwnd!"

The PC world only happened due to singularity point that IBM was unable to prevent, even though they tried it.

Everyone else was vertically integrated, if anything Apple is the survivor of those kind of systems, and now everyone (OEMs) else wants that model back.

> people have to get used to seeing computers as closed-source devices with app stores

Consider all of the school age kids using chromebooks, many of them their 1st computer.

Will they care in 10 years as adults that their Mac doesn't allow programs to be installed from "untrusted sources"? Unfortunately, this transition probably won't phase them.

They won't be able to build a disruptive startup or a modest lifestyle business anymore without having to pay upfront and play by the rules of big tech. But nobody will be so they won't feel that something was taken away from them.

Ironically, Chromebooks are the "freest" hardware you can get. They all support full-featured coreboot, including measured boot and verified boot.

https://www.coreboot.org/

it's becoming the antithesis of everything that the original Hacker culture stood for.

A hacker in the “Hacker News” sense is more than likely working on an ad-supported web app and dreams of working at a FAANG. The old hacker dream is dead, sadly.

You're not looking hard enough, which is also part of the problem.

Back in the "golden years" you'd have to put effort in to finding and participating in the community. The real hackers are still somewhat underground simply because they're anti establishment; actively seeking out the high effort, loss making niches that attract fringe thinkers and the unique characters required for true innovation.

Crypto parties, maker faires, get to one. If nothing exists locally, build it and they will come. (And admittedly I need to take my own advice).

Long gone. The last time I had a conversation here about what a "hacker" is, there was a sizeable contingent who defined it as "someone who knows how to write computer programs".

If that hacker ethic lives, it's not in people labelled "hackers" anymore.

Fortunately Apple has like 3% market share in the desktop market globally[1] , so it doesn't really matter what they do.

[1] browsing data shows around 10% market share but it is based mostly on English websites which are minority (and English-speaking countries have significantly higher apple users percentage than the rest of the world).

Even English speaking countries don’t have that high Macbook usage, because the premium sticker price is extremely high; unlike in phones, where an iPhone is comparable or in some cases less expensive than equivalent Android flagships, Macs tend to be several hundred dollars more than even their flagship laptop or PC counterparts, and from my personal experience a computer running Win10 is not that flaky compared to some Androids I’ve used.

But also Windows phones home.m and Linux desktop is still a shitshow (pardon the French) arguing over and over again about the same melange of disputes that should have been settled a decade ago...

Not sure if it’s a sign of aging, but I’m losing hope and interest in most of these pantomimes /s

Linux desktop. I just use what's presented and get on with my work. I don't have a particularly complicated setup, but I found something that works and I've been using it happily enough for over a year having migrated from Windows.

I don't know what disputes are being argued over, so I bothers me not in the slightest. Would it help if you just ignored the detail and just worked with what's presented?

Windows is also a shit show. Windows updates have bricked systems for decades.

People, outside of HN, don't care about operating systems. They are all good enough and have been for a long time. What people care about are applications. If you want to play games, you are probably going to buy a Windows computer. If you want to run Logic, you're going to buy a Mac. If all you really need is a browser and email, you are going to choose by other criteria like price or beauty.

Microsoft tried this with Windows RT. It didn’t go down well at all. The slow burn might be what’s needed, but if they do this, it could damage why people still buy macs vs just buying iPads. Lets see, time will tell here.

I don't think Apple would object to everyone dropping Macs and buying just iPads.

"What we poor souls didn't understand all these years is that" computing and information processing started out as tactical and then strategic components of military, intelligence, and industry. The central computing infrastructure ("the Cloud") and attendant closed/dumb psuedo-terminals (closed systems, walled gardens) is precisely the vision outlined in the 60s if not the 50s.

Two unexpected events in information processing technology threw monkey wrenches in the industrial and geopolitical policies of the strategic thinkers dreaming in DARPA, SRI, and elsewhere:

1 - Personal Computing was an unexpected event. It has taken all of 4 decades to put that genie back in the bottle. The topic of this thread.

2 - AI. This mainly threw a big wrench in the planned integration of Communist China into the Western system. AI enabled CCP to maintain control of the Chinese society, which was completely unexpected.

Having advanced general purpose, user programmable, computing machines networked globally in the hands of peasants is simply unacceptable to the folks who gifted humanity with these tools.

True, but I think people who gifted these tools are the first who got them taken away again.

> 2 - AI. This mainly threw a big wrench in the planned integration of Communist China into the Western system. AI enabled CCP to maintain control of the Chinese society, which was completely unexpected.

Could you expand on this or better yet, point to some reading on the subject? This sounds like a very interesting topic.

There is always a war on when property is not democratized. In the Anglophone world, the easiest example to think of is enclosure[1] which was a war between the mercantile class on one side and the lazier half of the lords and the little people on the other.

If any company, be they Google, be they Apple, should experience total "victory" in the war on intellectual property they would find everyone who is not

  * An investor
  * In management
  * An employee
  * A temp/contractor, or
  * A happy customer

Set against them and they would fall. Imagine there was a neural network or network of neural networks that could arrange bits into entertaining movies. It would print money and it would not be strategic for whatever company had the resources to do that to hoard the benefits, they would have no customers if they did (I suppose if they had enough compute and memory resources to succeed in such a task they might already have a monopoly on money).

I used to understand the CEO's job as cheerleader, for the investors, for the employees. I still think that is how they operate tactically, but strategically, I think the goal of a CEO in a Obama-era neo-liberal is to put the whole world in one of those categories above I suppose, with the acceptable additions of

  * Vendor/supplier
  * Companies in partnership
  * Competitors who participate in a trade association together in a reasonably civil manner, or
  * Members of government who are lobbied to advocate for your firm or industry or a strategic need that you hold in common with the broader public

In the long run the alternative is to perish. Utopia I think may have been inevitable by the 50s/60s when people started to believe that some companies really would last forever. On a long enough time scale, it is best to do everything in everyone's best interest considered in toto.

So all of that to say that I expect one day, maybe 40 years from now, maybe 80, that IP as it operates today will be transformed into an index of ideas that everyone can take and implement who might put them to use beneficially for the citizenry and other residents. It will be nice after all of that work to have a primary key for the ideas that have been created so far, so I don't think we the people will burn down the USPTO or the LOC or anything like that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts

I hate walled in gardens and in Microsoft land it did get a lot of flack which I am thankful for. I doubt many Apple users have the foresight of a Stallman to see where their environment is headed.

There is money in creating apps for Apple systems, but you are giving up a lot in exchange.

Some developers use it for convenience but I would not say it is widespread and most are fundamentally opposed to use a mac.

Our advertising department is the only one with macs. Sadly, we still support Apple because every sales rep gets the whole suite. iPhones and iPad Pros (because the others are too small and you cannot work with them... what a new revelation...), that is a few thousand bucks for every employee that Apple gets. They even get the ridiculously priced pen (120$?) and keyboard (300$+). And our sales people still complain about not have notebooks, because they are superior devices. There is just the presentation argument.

Probably 90% of developers I've worked with in the past 5 years used a Mac, and really wanted to do so. I know a handful that left Linux to do it, and have told me they can't imagine going back. I'm not sure that your'e right about developers.

I do know that my next machine will be Linux. I'm probably going to put together a desktop for my office, and I'll buy a System76 laptop or whatever for those times when I want to work from the porch.

Yet despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth - both in the article and in the comments here in the various threads - people are still making excuses for continuing to use Apple/Google/Microsoft/et al products because the alternatives are a bit rough round the edges.

These companies have repeatedly shown that they don't respect people's privacy and people have resoundingly responded that neither do they.

I would suggest that the users here are probably some of the best suited in the world to help smooth those rough edges and even surpass the features and usability in the privacy respecting alternatives I just hope we collectively notice this before it's too late.

I'm not. Since the last few iterations of Apple hardware and OS software, I've decided to switch to something else. I'm also advicing all friends and collegues to do the same. There is simply no reason to stay with Apple anymore as a professional. It used to be stability and ease of use, but Windows has since closed that gap, and Linux is a close second (and a must for programming).

Most likely that means I'll run a Linux laptop for programming, and have a partition for Windows on a gaming computer, cuz I love me some games. I know Steam is gradually approaching Linux, but most AAA games still run best under Win. Plus it's an easy platform (outside OS X) to run multimedia production tools. Sorry, I just don't think Gimp or other Linux tools for multimedia production are good enough yet, but the hope remains that they will someday compete with giants like Adobe. For real. And not just as free but woefully inadequate alternatives. Please correct me if I'm wrong here, though. I'd love to be surprised, if you are able!

I haven't used Windows in long time, but it feels like "the gap" was closed by Apple, by letting their system degrade. The high end 2019 MacBookPro is in many regards less reliable for music production than my old 2012 MacBookAir, which is really, really sad. Unless Apple gets their act together my next music production setup will be Windows-based (or maybe I'll even try Bitwig on Linux).

Gravit designer, Blender and Bitwig studio would come to mind as tools for multimedia production that are as good as anything on the other platforms.

I don't even bother dual-boot anymore and just use WSL. Windows has basically become what OS X used to be except better because it's actually Windows and actually Linux. It just goes back to Apple not caring one iota about developers. Focusing on developers used to be Microsoft's strong suit and they've positioned themselves well for that again.

You pointed out a core problem here, and a common blindspot with the HN crowd:

> continuing to use Apple/Google/Microsoft

That is probably 98%+ of devices that most typical people use for everyday computing, across phone, laptop, and desktop. Whether it is an android device, an iPhone, a Dell laptop or a new M1 macbook you are beholden to a corporation that doesn't care about privacy. I would argue that Apple cares a bit more, and I really hope they respond to the most recent shit show with some changes, but I'm not holding my breath.

And before "have you tried this *nix distro??" comments appear, they are still too hard to setup and nowhere near as user-friendly for most people on an everyday basis. And hell, if you setup Chrome and Gsuite as your default tools of choice, as many do (or are forced to because their job) how much are you really breaking free anyways?

I don't know the solution, but its clear that in the war between privacy and convenience and usability that privacy is on the ropes and its the last round of the fight.

You are totally right that Linux is only a single digit percentage in user share if you look at all computers deployed world-wide.

However, in the developer sphere, GNU/Linux is way more represented. In the Stack Overflow 2020 survey, 26% of people said they were using a Linux based OS [0]. This number has been gradually increasing over the years so further growth is expectable. It's less than one percent less than the Mac OS share of 27%, but I'm not sure how much noise there is.

So Linux is usable enough for a growing community of developers, and many laptop/computer vendors targeting the developer market offer GNU/Linux as a preinstalled option.

As a result, at least for software people, Linux is a real privacy preserving alternative on the Desktop. HN is a software forum, and the blog post was also made with people educated about software as the recipients. So I think the post you are replying to should be understood not in a global context but in a context of the IT crowd.

Of course, it's not beautiful that Linux is less of an alternative to people who need to use complicated niche ISV software, but generally any industry can make the move if there is a subset of users pushing towards GNU/Linux.

[0]: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-de...

> And before "have you tried this *nix distro??" comments appear, they are still too hard to setup and nowhere near as user-friendly for most people on an everyday basis.

Uh, no.

There are many reasons why people don't use Linux. The easy of setup and use lines are pure nonsense. Many Linux distributions have been easier to setup and use since at least the introduction of Ubuntu, and perhaps earlier. Just pop in the live installation media, try it out for a bit to ensure your hardware is compatible, then run an installation program that asks questions that make sense to people rather than marketers. Getting the applications you need installed has involved using a store-like interface for longer than software stores have existed on commercial desktop operating systems.

So why is it perceived as harder? One reason: users typically have to install their operating system, while end users rarely see the process on commercial operating systems. Second reason: those who do install their own OS typically dedicate their system to commercial operating systems, yet use dual-boot for Linux (which will add technical steps). Third reason: those making the transition may try to install commercial applications via a VM or WINE due to compatibility, familiarity, or (periodically) the lack of an open source alternative. In other words, it is perceived as harder because people make it harder.

As someone who has been using Linux for decades, I find the setup and user friendliness of something like Windows far inferior to to Linux. Yes, part of that is due to familiarity. On the other hand, some of it is inherent due to there being fewer restrictions with open source software.

> And before "have you tried this *nix distro??" comments appear, they are still too hard to setup and nowhere near as user-friendly for most people on an everyday basis.

This isn't true. This perception continues to hurt the Linux community along with others. Use a properly supported -buntu distro and you are good.

Setting up Ubuntu was easy enough. But the file manager locks up regularly, switching between multiple windows of the same app with alt+tab doesn't work reliably, and I actually had to Google how to create a new folder. The stock picture viewer is lacking information such as ICC profile and when I installed the recommended Gimp, it was a mess of windows and the save dialog was horrible.

I suffer through all of it because I need docker with gpu support, but it's honestly a lot worse than what I expected.

I’ve worked out that breaking free from this is just not for the average person. If you have the power then stand outside and look in but there’s absolutely nothing you can do about the churn other than watch it burn. I’ll carry on educating people but even suggesting this might be an issue is drowned out by the marketing machines of the large vendors and downvoted into oblivion even here. That is unless there is some large story that something fishy is going on. But a big story is made of a thousand small ones which people don’t care about.

Look where fighting Facebook and political influence got us. Nowhere.

>>> And before "have you tried this *nix distro??" comments appear, they are still too hard to setup

I think why Apple, Android, Windows has the advantage is none of those 3 OSes require installation by most people. Why treat Linux differently?

>>> and nowhere near as user-friendly for most people on an everyday basis

User-Friendliness, I think, is more on day to day interaction. It will be interesting if there is a study in an area with low computer/smartphone interaction. Split them into 4 groups. Each group has their own OS. Later on they will be tested with some tasks.

> I would argue that Apple cares a bit more

Have you read the article?

Spoiler: They don't.

> And before "have you tried this *nix distro??" comments appear

Your style of comment is also quite the meme at this point, though.

I always reply with: if my dad, mom, grandfather and other 10+ members of my family can use Mint and I have to do minimal maintenance for them, much less frequently than with Windows, then so can you.

> Whether it is an android device, an iPhone, a Dell laptop or a new M1 macbook you are beholden to a corporation that doesn't care about privacy.

Yet Dell and Lenovo offer computers with Linux pre-installed, but so many technical people ignore them because Apple is shiny and fast.

If this trend continues then Linux and other open source OS will eventually exist only as a virtualized guest inside a locked-down proprietary system.

There is genuine choice in the market now, but in ten years there won't be if people keep chasing baubles.

A number of user stopping using these products wont change the slightest thing. We all encouraged our friends and family to ditch IE for chrome, and look where that got us.

Legislation and regulation are the only fixes for these practices. The EC have a lot of kettles in the fire here - on multiple fronts. I trust that, although it will take time, "fairness" will prevail.

> We all encouraged our friends and family to ditch IE for chrome, and look where that got us.

I didn't. I encouraged friends and family to ditch IE for Firefox and nowadays I encourage them to ditch Chrome for Firefox. I never cared that Chrome was a little faster for some time.

One person that only uses the (very old and underpowered computer) for mail and printing documents I helped install Linux (not Ubuntu ;)) and since then they are much happier, because it doesn't get slower with each security update and needs less maintenance help than with Windows.

> We all encouraged our friends and family to ditch IE for chrome, and look where that got us.

Antitrust entities bashed microsoft for shipping IE and look where that got us.

If anything, it's worth keeping in mind that volumes of regulations written for big corps may indeed force them to behave, but are an impediment for tiny companies to enter.

Corps like microsoft do call for regulations and copyright laws all the time, the have an army of lobbyists, they know that even without regulatory capture these extinguish competition.

Actually if those users go to alternatives and offer they money and feature requests there, alternatives would improve.

Legislation doesn’t solve software problems.

> "...people are still making excuses for continuing to use Apple/Google/Microsoft/et al products because the alternatives are a bit rough round the edges."

I found myself being one of those people, so I made a commitment to no more Microsoft or Apple for my personal devices[1]. I'm eagerly awaiting PostmarketOS to reach full functionality on the PinePhone and I'll give up my Android phone at that point, taking Google out of the equation as well.

I'm even considering trying to learn C so I can contribute to OpenBSD for my hardware that is "rough around the edges".

[1] My wife's PC with Windows 10 is exempt for now; she's not a techie person at all and I don't want to force her into something alien. She tends to borrow my Thinkpad with Linux every now and then and is getting more used to it, so we'll see how that goes.

Don't hold your breath. Majority of people would trade security and openness for convenience and profit.

I think we are handing over the future of tech to these few tech giant megacorps.

Unless I missed something, we can still build custom computers right?

Apple has NOT being the same after steve is gone. It is MS 2.0 now!

With better design and products of course, none the less the business practices are the same. Much this is enforced by the current economic and political system.

Yep, Steve Blank wrote an article analysing the situation in 2016: https://www.inc.com/steve-blank/tim-cook-steve-ballmer-visio...

Not MS. MS today is much less into the anti-user, anti-privacy, rentseeking game, compared to Apple or Google. Apple today is M$ 2.0, as much as people here hate that trope.

> "I would suggest that the users here are probably some of the best suited in the world to help smooth those rough edges"

How would you get around the problem that many vocal Linux users think easy-to-use software is for weak losers, and consider difficult software a sign of manliness and an identity, even a religion? This is like saying Buddhists would be the best suited people to disarm gun-lovers, without considering that said gun-lovers don't want to be disarmed, and see pacifists as weak and unmanly.

The alternatives are still completely unusable by most people.

Not anymore. Consumer usage nowadays is very browser centered, which is something one can experience with a Linux distro on pretty much any machine.

I agree that it's not as much as a polished experience, but that's the point as indicated - trading off polish for ownership.

I'm excluding from the discussion professional documents editing - compatibility with Libreoffice is mediocre (at best) in my experience, but having very good compatibility is not a consumer requirement IMO.

Well the alternative can't rely on unpaid workforce while Apple/Microsoft and co spend billions on their software, GUI and user experience. It is simple economics. Open source needs financing, not just free Github repositories that MS/Apple and co can then exploit for free because the code is licensed as MIT.

I think this is something we need to fix with education. We spent so long meeting the user that it developed an expectation. For any piece of technology its peak function is always reached when the human meets it half way and makes a concerted effort.

Whenever someone says “I don’t get computers” or gets angry at their smartphone they’re just leveraging that expectation and conning themselves out of a gain they could make. Same problem - laziness and expectation. At the end of that path is a life of a sharecropper and a cow to milk.

I disagree. It's a matter if taking a couple of minutes to educate people. You don't have to be a CS major to be able to use a modern Linux OS. "Most people" don't do anyhting on their Windows or Mac computer that they couldn't do on Linux. IMO it's a combination of fear of the unknown, and a lack of general availability.

Macs are shiny and their marketing department is fantastic. Windows has a monopoly with OEM preinstalls. Those are the main reasons why macos and Windows are so popular.

I've tried using Windows, it's "completely unusable" to me. I couldn't even figure out how to install it without creating a Microsoft account nor could I figure out how to turn off "telemetry".

Android handles this reasonably well. I can use F-Droid reproducible builds where possible and fall back to Play Store (or Amazon App Store) apps for apps I don't care that Google (or Amazon) knows I'm running. I get to choose where I want to make the trade-off between privacy and convenience. If I want convenience, it lets me go further than any Apple product, and if I want privacy, it also lets me go further than any Apple product in that direction also.

Keep in mind that some of the user friendliest machines today are chromebooks. Simple, not many knobs to turn, relatively secure, and of course browser centric. ChromeOS is of course running the linux kernel and the chrome web browser. The experience is very similar to installing ubuntu, google chrome, and dragging the other icons off the launcher.

Bollocks. I've installed Linux for non-technical people any number of times and, provided I make sure everything (network, printers) is working for them, generally never hear from them again. At least not for computer help.

Most people are using their (personal) computers for browsing, maybe an email client if they're not using one of those web-email abominations, the odd bit of word-processing and watching movies/listening to music. Linux works just fine out of the box and the install is substantially simpler than anything I've ever seen over in the MS world.

> These companies have repeatedly shown that they don't respect people's privacy

I mean, this is just plainly not true.

Apple has done many things, things they did not at all need to do, in order to protect user's privacy. They have shown, repeatedly, that they do in fact care.

I need XCode to build software for iOS and OSX, and there isn't to my knowledge any other feasible, performant and off-line capable way to do that beside running OSX on a Mac.

This is the only reason I had to move away from (arch) linux and it saddens me every day.

>Yet despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth - both in the article and in the comments here in the various threads - people are still making excuses for continuing to use Apple/Google/Microsoft/et al products because the alternatives are a bit rough round the edges.

Or we like what Apple/Google/Microsoft are putting out, including the "walled" nature of the iOS/macOS. People's homes are also "walled" for a reason.

Your concerns are not everybody's concerns.

That said, I don't like the telemetry and information leak as described in the article, and would want Apple to stop it and allow disabling it.

But I also don't care for using another OS just because "it's actually yours and you can do anything you want with it". That's also true for TempleOS, but I would't want to use it (to use an extreme example of an alternative), and simililarly, I prefer macOS and the app ecosystem to any Linux distribution I've seen (and I've used UNIX when there were still UNIX wars and SunOS workstations with black and white monitors, and Linux for close to 25 years).

It's super infuriating reading posts from developers who are like "Well I would love to use Linux, but I can't because the touchpad drivers don't behave exactly the way they do under MacOS..."

It was super frustrating until I got used to the Linux way of handling, and then the other system was the weird one. Companies don't mind this effect at all I think, it increases their retention.

I kinda pity them, I have a track-point.

My main workstation is Linux for a couple of years now. I have dedicated PC for Ableton and I disabled all known telemetry calls. I got rid of all Apple products except iPad 2.

Reminds me of Eben Moglen's "Freedom in the Cloud" talk.

The alternatives are not "a bit rough round the edges". They are much, much worse.

How much worse are they? Can you explain your experience?

I was looking into various differences among demographics which use and prefer apple products. Nobody rated any of the problems often thrown in here as a priority.

Majority of iPhone users are women and HN/reddit are primarily men dominated. It should be no surprise that apple caters to aesthetics over thermals and you see people complaining about that on these platforms.

Apple customers put status and prestige when deciding to purchase something above cost. They are rich. They care about environment that's why apple "care" about environment. They care about privacy which is why apple "care" about privacy.

So for them, it's reasonable to change the device than allow it to be repaired at some shady shop. It's consistent with their image. They can't compromise on privacy or safety because that's why they bought into apple ecosystem.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/26/apple-doe...

>Majority of iPhone users are women

I sold iPhones for years and never noticed this trend. I highly doubt it is true in any significant way. I would also challenge the assumption that women want aesthetics over some other factor. In this day and age, that's an incredibly 'old fashioned' statement to make.

From what I could tell. People bought iPhones because they were:

a)Cool and of good quality. (Your everyman can just go buy an iPhone and KNOW it won't be junk. They don't know the other brands and researching stuff is a pain in the ass)

b)They were used to using them and didn't want to use android/didn't like using android phones

c)They had shit experiences with other platforms and just wanted something 'that would just work'

d)The iPhone really was the first good smartphone on the scene. They have inertia associated with points a->c above.

To be fair, if this was truly a big deal, it would be a political issue with bipartisan support and taken care of short order.

In times of strife, at least there's one thing you can always count on: Democracy. It never fails. If you can just remember that one thing, you should be able to sleep soundly at night. (It works for me at least, I used to be a constant worrywart until I learned this trick from my therapist, and I've been golden ever since.)

> To be fair, if this was truly a big deal, it would be a political issue with bipartisan support and taken care of short order.

Are you serious? Since you're using the term bipartisan, I'm going to assume you're also from the US. Have you been following the news/current events recently (and by recently, really I mean any time at all over the course of the past forty or fifty years)? Almost nothing actually gets "bipartisan" support these days. Our government is in a constant state of gridlock and it is next to impossible to get anything done.

> In times of strife, at least there's one thing you can always count on: Democracy. It never fails. If you can just remember that one thing, you should be able to sleep soundly at night. (It works for me at least, I used to be a constant worrywart until I learned this trick from my therapist, and I've been golden ever since.)

I'm really having a hard time telling if this comment is sarcastic. I'm not trying to cause you to lose sleep or anything, and honestly, I commend your optimism if you're serious, but the fact is that democracy is an abstract concept that is almost never put into practice perfectly. Even if democracy's promise of "most people being happy" meaning 51 people are happy while 49 people are not is actually sufficient, even that idealized version is very far from our actually political system in the United States.

I think one thing most Americans actually would agree with is that the way we do things here, right now, in terms of government, doesn't work so well. I think there is a lot of disagreement about what should change, and how, but it seems like very few people are satisfied with the current state of affairs. The more I think about it, the more I think this comment just has to be sarcastic, so this reply is probably a waste of everyone's time, but in any case, wow. I wish what you were saying here were actually true. That would be a nicer world to live in than this one (although, frustrating as it might be at times, this one is also not so bad).

I'm not going to comment on the linked article, other than say I think it contains serious mistakes in describing what OCSP is for and errors in other statements.

In the background there is a war going on, but it isn't what you think. It is a war between malware creators and OS creators.

From my perspective it goes like this:

To "identify" malware you need signatures. Signatures need valid certificates. Signing keys get lost (or worse stolen), bad actors need to get identified and their identity revoked.

If you don't have signatures you will end up with polymorphic malware. (Brew, pip, ruby gems, npm make me uneasy with how much external trust they require!)

To stop persistence you need some system immutability and secure startup / boot.

If you don't have secure startup / boot you will allow persistence in ways it may be impossible to remove.

If you don't have an encrypted disk protected by a passphrase, a lost device means your personal data is now potentially now "public". If you don't also have the other above protections having a passphrase at this point may be meaningless.

I use an iPhone because it boots from ROM and a DFU Restore wipes all mutable firmware. The flash, where my data is stored is encrypted. When I can, I will also use an Apple Silicon Mac because it works the same way.

Hardware products and operating systems from other vendors and sources do not have these protections. Some attempt to, but the implementations are very flawed or poor - I choose not to use them with my personal information.

For me, Apple products really are designed to protect my personal information.

I think this is complete FUD to be honest. There is a war on the market due to economic incentives. There are some criminals, but they don't target your workstation specifically.

Previously a hacker might have gotten access to your computer and maybe you had a keylogger, which could compromise you to a great deal. Today you have so much of your info not on your local device that you have countless additional attack vectors. Where do peoples info get leaked? In cloud services mostly.

edit: And of course your info is not safe. The programs you run get send to Apple. That is nothing else as a data leak.

You're absolutely right, and I use a Pixelbook and an iPad Pro for much the same reason. The cryptographic protections are great. (They'd be even more great if I could blow my own bootrom CA into the fuses.)

The phone-home is the issue, however. I've long understood the issue with certificate validity periods and the tradeoffs between short notAfter/frequent reissue and revocation check intervals.

The side effect is that it functions as telemetry, regardless of what the original intent of OCSP is or was. Additionally, even though the OCSP responses are signed, it's borderline negligent that the OCSP requests themselves aren't encrypted, allowing anyone on the network to see what apps you're launching and when.

Many things function as telemetry, even when not originally intended as so. The intelligence services that spy on everyone they can take advantage of this when and where it occurs, regardless of intent.

It's not worth putting everyone in a society under surveillance to defeat, for example, violent terrorism, and it's not worth putting everyone on a platform under the same surveillance to defeat malware. You throw out the baby with the bathwater when, in your effort to produce a secure platform, you produce a platform that is inherently insecure due to a lack of privacy.

PS: The platforms, even with all of their cryptography, aren't nearly as secure as you'd like them to be: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/10/new-report-on...

>In the background there is a war going on, but it isn't what you think. It is a war between malware creators and OS creators.

No, this is _exactly_ the war we think. It is a war between Apple and malware over control of _my_ personal(!) computer.

At this point both malware and Apple leak personal data from _my_ personal computer. So from the perspective of controlling MY personal computer they are both malware and differences are neglectable if I do not even have a choice to install my own OS.

Secure boot is secure if I(!) can secure it, not Apple or any other external authority.

>For me, Apple products really are designed to protect my personal information.

Apple products designed to get _control_ of your personal information from you and thus to control you and your behavior.

Computer is no longer a "Personal Computer" with all of these developments. It's simply a termianal of some big machine where your 'personal' space isn't even really your personal.

Probably it is a good idea to recall what "Personal Computer" meant and what it should mean.

For me it is My control over My computer and My data if I wish to, and this a minimum for My privacy.

And privacy is a minimum for society respecting freedom and rights of a person.

All of this is really like R. Stallman predicted.

So what? There are risks everywhere in life. You buy a new car and you decide to go on a road trip and there is a dangerous road ahead. The car company should stop your car remotely?

This all sounds well and good. But why not just use signed binaries? Have a user editable keystore that includes the accepted signatures. The default would be apple, installing chrome would require accepting the Google signature, photoshop would require the adobe key. Then users could add their own for brew, firefox, or whatever community software they would use.

This would give good protection against hackers, and not require uploading a signature for every binary run.

In other words: "The computer isn't yours it belongs to either the OS creator or the malware creators - choose your poison".

Myself I still have some hopes and use QubesOS - I hope they find a business model for it.

>For me, Apple products really are designed to protect my personal information.

Which unfortunately isn't mutually exclusive with granting full access to your stuff to state-level actors.

But I guess there's always a category of people who actually like the idea of big brother.

> For me, Apple products really are designed to protect my personal information.

For me, the cost of "protecting my personal information" is too high.

They aren't, since they are proprietary software. And taking into account Apple's history, and "proprietary software in a relative position of power", such as the ones we have keeping tabs on our entire lives, chances are quite against users at best.

And the government is designed to protect you but it can also come after you.

If you are not going to allow "malware" on your computer, you're giving the power to Apple to label anything they don't want you to run as "malware".

They already have a walled garden on the phones and tablets, which has greatly benefited them. They can deny anyone access to publish software and they have exhibited everything that is obviously anti-competitive.

Now, they're bringing it to laptops.

Honestly, I don't see anything happening to Apple anytime soon. They're way too well off and they have very important government officials in their pockets. The best thing that may happen will probably come from the outside... like the EU antitrust investigation that is going on. Even so, it's not going to stop, not anytime soon anyway.

For most people, if there computer was ‘theirs’, it would be that way for about 10 minutes until it was pwned by a bad actor.

The general issue of other people (I.e. Apple et al) having a lot of control over your computer, is entirely valid even if some of the points in the piece are exaggerations.

The problem is that people want it that way.

They are in fact correct that computers are scary and too complex for them to manage, and they want someone they can trust to do it for them.

Stallman may have predicted the issue, but he really didn’t do much to solve the real problems.

The presence of open software isn’t enough without a way for people to know what is trustworthy without being experts.

Until we provide that, this situation cannot change.

> The presence of open software isn’t enough without a way for people to know what is trustworthy without being experts.

As Apple has demonstrated, neither has the presence of closed software. Between Apple and Microsoft, they're nearly 100% likely to get software that is not trustworthy, and cannot be made so.

This would be less worrisome if the state did not compel these organizations to provide their data to the military on demand without a warrant, but due to the vertical integration of big tech companies and US military spying, this becomes a major threat to our society and the basic exercise of civic participation.

It's hard to do things like, for example, investigative reporting against corrupt government officials if the government officials know every time you open Premiere, and where you do it, because they forced your chip/OS manufacturer to tell them.

Firstly - this is a false equivalence.

Sure a government agency may be forcing Apple or MS to help them spy on you, just as they could have compromised whatever else you are using.

But when you download software from at least the Apple App Store, you are in fact protected from many kinds of harmful software.

Let’s not lie and pretend that isn’t a real benefit to many people, even though there are serious downsides to it.

But even if you were right about the equivalence - what’s the point in the handwringing?

There is no way out unless we build our way out.

Shaking your fist at the man just isn’t going to do anything.

The reason there is no alternative is that we haven’t solved the problems yet. People are in fact trying.

Nothing you can say about Microsoft or Apple will make an alternative appear.

"Stallman [...] really didn’t do much to solve the real problems" - I beg your pardon but when was he appointed with this responsibility?

Besides, he actually did A LOT. The problem is, the general sheep won't listen to him anyway.

"The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better." -- George Orwell, 1984

> For most people, if there computer was ‘theirs’, it would be that way for about 10 minutes until it was pwned by a bad actor.

I own a company which manufactures and sells showerheads. Since "most" people are prone to a fall while taking a shower, my company also mandatorily installs a camera alongside, so that we can monitor for accidents, given our deep concern for our customers.

"Some" customers have raised concerns about their privacy, but this is for the greater good. My company is very ethical in its practices, and really values each customer's privacy (pinky promise).

The footage of you and your loved ones showering is completely safe with us, although you can choose not to be recorded while showering by not purchasing our products.

Oh by the way, our showerheads are sleeker and more convenient than anything else in the market.

Feudal lords protected their serfs too.

> For most people, if there computer was ‘theirs’, it would be that way for about 10 minutes until it was pwned by a bad actor.

I remember very well the times where when you’d connect a fresh Windows XP SP2 to the internet without a router or firewall it immediately showed malicious popups and eventually a BSOD.

> The problem is that people want it that way.

No, the real story here is that Corporations in the USA, and other Global North countries, have both 1) benefited from state/taxpayer-funded subsidies, grants, and research, and 2) are now locking up and monopolizing these discoveries using the international TRIPS system, 'claiming' Patents and Copyrights, 'kicking away the ladder':

"How did the rich countries really become rich? In this provocative study, Ha-Joon Chang examines the great pressure on developing countries from the developed world to adopt certain 'good policies' and 'good institutions', seen today as necessary for economic development. Adopting a historical approach, Dr Chang finds that the economic evolution of now-developed countries differed dramatically from the procedures that they now recommend to poorer nations. His conclusions are compelling and disturbing: that developed countries are attempting to 'kick away the ladder' with which they have climbed to the top, thereby preventing developing counties from adopting policies and institutions that they themselves have used."

“Rich countries have ‘kicked away the ladder’ by forcing free-market, free-trade policies on poor countries. Already established countries do not want more competitors emerging through the nationalistic policies they themselves successfully used in the past.” [1]

Professor Yash Tandon adds:

“During the 1980s and 1990s I worked in many countries in eastern and southern Africa, and then for four years at the South Centre—2005–09. I can say from my experience that the industrialised countries of the North have been trying systematically to block all efforts by the countries of the South to industrialise. Their mega-corporations have tried—and, alas, succeeded—in privatising knowledge, and using it to promote corporate profits over the lives of people."

[...]

“It is the seeds and pharmaceutical companies of the West that have pirated the knowledge of seeds and medicinal products from the South. But whereas in the South this knowledge was shared as a public asset, the Western companies, having learnt from the South, proceeded to claim it as their private property. They are guilty—morally guilty—for the avoidable deaths of millions of people in the South who cannot afford their ‘patented’ medicines against, for example, AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other killer diseases. It is a sordid story. But it is not all doom and gloom. Those who control the system (the global corporations and the international organisations that the West controls) do not get their own way entirely. Wars do not always end in the victory of the militarily or ‘intellectually’ powerful.” [2]

All of this then comes together through Tech's Great-Man theory, that has us idolizing those monopolizers:

"In the movie Steve Jobs, a character asks, “So how come 10 times in a day I read ‘Steve Jobs is a genius?’” The great man reputation that envelops Jobs is just part of a larger mythology of the role that Silicon Valley, and indeed the entire U.S. private sector, has played in technology innovation. We idolize tech entrepreneurs like Jobs, and credit them for most of the growth in our economy. But University of Sussex economist Mariana Mazzucato, who has just published a new U.S. edition of her book, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, makes a timely argument that it is the government, not venture capitalists and tech visionaries, that have been heroic.

“Every major technological change in recent years traces most of its funding back to the state,” says Mazzucato. Even “early stage” private-sector VCs come in much later, after the big breakthroughs have been made. For example, she notes, “The National Institutes of Health have spent almost a trillion dollars since their founding on the research that created both the pharmaceutical and the biotech sectors–with venture capitalists only entering biotech once the red carpet was laid down in the 1980s. We pretend that the government was at best just in the background creating the basic conditions (skills, infrastructure, basic science). But the truth is that the involvement required massive risk taking along the entire innovation chain: basic research, applied research and early stage financing of companies themselves.” The Silicon Valley VC model, which has typically dictated that financiers exit within 5 years or so, simply isn’t patient enough to create game changing innovation." [3]

[1] https://anthempress.com/kicking-away-the-ladder-pb

[2] https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/trade-war-yash-tandon-2nd-ed...

[3] https://time.com/4089171/mariana-mazzucato/

This is the same sort of logic that some people have that people shouldn't be allowed to make choices in life because they "might get it wrong". People should be allowed to make their own choices in what they believe to be their best interests and they should be allowed to get things wrong.

> For most people, if there computer was ‘theirs’, it would be that way for about 10 minutes until it was pwned by a bad actor.

This may have been true back in the early 2000s when people first had good broadband. However all the major operating systems have pretty decent security out of the box mainly due to the embarassment of events like MS Blaster Worm.

> The general issue of other people (I.e. Apple et al) having a lot of control over your computer, is entirely valid even if some of the points in the piece are exaggerations.

The problem is that if you buy a general purpose computing device. You should be able to run whatever you like on it.

They should just have a button somewhere in whatever the equivalent of the BIOS on these machines is that says "I am an adult and I accept the risks of turning off these protections" and then let you install Temple OS if you so choose to.

This is something that needs to be enforced by legal means IMO, something similar to right to repair.

> The problem is that people want it that way.

I don't know about that. They frequently get irritated by it and are just resigned to it IME.

However the popularity of single board computers such as the Raspberry Pi, People building their own gaming rigs and people tinkering with gadgets goes someway in refuting this notion. There will be of course many people that just won't care and will use "iDevice" and that is fine, however there is a large spectrum between "I only run stuff from the app store" to "I run custom Arch Install with optimised kernel with tk kernel patches".

> The presence of open software isn’t enough without a way for people to know what is trustworthy without being experts.

I agree. This is a failing of the open source community. I've actually written a draft manifesto called "better than freedom". This may actually push me to at least have it critiqued by my friends.

> Until we provide that, this situation cannot change.

Something has to change. We are sliding back into the 1980s where all the computer hardware was incomptable with one another.

> This is the same sort of logic that some people have that people shouldn't be allowed to make choices in life because they "might get it wrong".

No, it's not at all the same sort of logic. We are talking about technology here, not overall life experience. Everyone starts out life on the same footing, with zero experience, and has the innate potential to learn how to live it. But computers are a very specific, highly specialized machinery that the vast parts of the population will never be able to directly understand or fix. I can drive a car but I don't know the first thing about fixing it.

You could claim that no one should own technology if they don't understand it intimately, but that is a different kind of logic and argument. It's silly to conflate the two.

> People should be allowed to make their own choices in what they believe to be their best interests

> You should be able to run whatever you like on it.

You are contradicting yourself. People are explicitly choosing iphone, a walled garden. Then you say that that's a wrong choice because you believe it's a general purpose computing device and should work differently.

If people buy it then, well, they are fine with it.

“This is the same sort of logic that some people have that people shouldn't be allowed to make choices in life because they "might get it wrong". People should be allowed to make their own choices in what they believe to be their best interests and they should be allowed to get things wrong.“

I am not making any argument that can be construed as this. You are misreading me if you think I am. I agree that people should be allowed to make their own choices which is why I strongly oppose government regulation of software distribution. It’s also why I support people’s right to choose platforms like iOS.

“Something has to change. We are sliding back into the 1980s where all the computer hardware was incompatible with one another.”

I’m not sure freedom and compatibility always go hand in hand, but I agree that something has to change.

As to the tinkerers and people building their own rigs - the idea that there is a large spectrum. I potentially agree.

Serving those people well is a hugely untapped potential. I used to believe that Apple would see this, but I no longer do. I suspect that Jobs would have done.

I would like to think the open source community and commercial ecosystem outside of Apple and Microsoft can seize the opportunity.

We won’t if we spend our time feeling victimized by corporations doing what corporations do.

This is hardly about choices and more about shared resources and interaction. You can do whatever you want, but you can't do it to whatever/whoever you want.

All your recent comments are dead. Don't bother. It's unfortunate that contrarian opinions are silenced but this is the result of another walled garden

> They are in fact correct that [insert anything] are scary and too complex for them to manage, and they want someone they can trust to do it for them

Is this an argument for forced autonomous cars or stopping selling of knives because they are scary and you can cut yourself while cooking?

Why would you think that?

I vehemently oppose government regulation of software distribution, precisely because otherwise we won’t be able to develop a true alternative.

I don’t want people to be prevented from using dangerous tools such as sharp knives, or manual vehicles.

But neither do I want them to be forced to take risks they don’t want to take.

Forced autonomous cars: Yes, once they are good enough. We make people wear seat-belts. Same thing.

Stopping selling of knives: Yes, once we have a safer way of cutting things. Though the real problem is probably people cutting each other on purpose, rather than themselves by accident.

I'm so glad I sticked to Arch Linux since early days. It felt wild in the beginning but now, after 10 years, I'm glad I took the risk. Yes, I have had a few sleepless nights trying to solve problems (90% of time caused by myself, remaining 10% caused by not reading wiki/docs/forum before doing stuff). And yes, Arch is not as polished and pretty as MacOS is but... I don't care, I do backend so I can survive without frontend niceness. In the same time I feel sorry for people who rely on tools from apple... it won't be as easy for them to switch.

Or you could ditch Arch and go with a workstation specific Linux distribution like Fedora or Pop_OS that works out of the box with a lot of hardware. Gnome is more polished than the MacOS UI imho.

Been using Fedora for a few months now and I haven't had a sleepless night yet. Everything just works.

The Linux desktop experience is sufficiently hardware-dependent to make single-sample distro comparisons useless.

As a counter-example, I recently installed Manjaro (Arch-based) over Pop OS because Pop was slow and buggy on my relatively high-end system.

Aggregate data can at least give a sense of how likely a given distro is to provide a smooth experience:

https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity

I always loved arch for its minimalistic approach. Well, maybe this is not entirely true since when we was pretty much forced to switch to systemd :) but it is still my favourite distro, even after those sleepless nights. I am maybe a weirdo but I don't regret a minute spent fixing my installation :)

> These machines are the first general purpose computers ever where you have to make an exclusive choice: you can have a fast and efficient machine, or you can have a private one.

Most of the components inside my PC are over 10 years old. I do video editing. I do music production with many VSTs open and running. And of course web browsing with a million tabs opened at once. For any of those tasks I can't see what would be the point of having a faster machine. Everything happens at once.

Also, having a modular machine lets you replace individual parts when they fail (which they almost never do anyway).

What are people doing with their computers that need so much computing power? Is it gaming?

It's a new software. Take the note editor inside Evernote for example. It just slightly more sophisticated than a common notepad.exe, but it lags and freezes like it computes the Moon flyby trajectory by numeric simulation once every few seconds. Or the new fancy autocompletion module for Spyder python IDE. some stupid autocompletion requires TensorFlow running and therefore I just can't use it, because my 6 core PhenomII ( which is enough for most of what I'm working with) doesn't have AVX-instruction set. MSVC had a decent autocompletion for ages, VisualAssist raised the bar even higher... But now I'm kinda forced to upgrade my PC to get a simply decent code autocompletion... What next? Quad-GPU rig to run notepad?

I tried Evernote on Windows, it was so much buggier and slower than the browser web app, it was really unusable.

> What are people doing with their computers that need so much computing power?

Running and developing web apps and microservices in proprietary languages and using oh-so-great modern environments and IDEs only there to lock you into a vertical garden

It's about battery life and size/weight.

The faster a chip is, per watt, the fewer watts it needs to draw for the same amount of performance.

I agree. My machine is a new modular one. You can have both with no compromises. It’s not even hard. And it works with open source operating systems! I doubt it will last 10 years though because it is modular. It will evolve.

How it is on portability /tdp front?

Not even gaming, since a 2015 windows machine runs games better than the newest Mac available.

I'd strongly advocate fellow hackers/technical users to move out of the Mac ecosystem and get yourself a Thinkpad. My Thinkpad X1 Carbon that I got a few months ago runs Fedora as seamless as the Macbook runs MacOS. I haven't had a single hardware compatibility issue to date.

I don't even miss the Apple Trackpad since I've gotten used to the Thinkpad Trackpoint which is an order of magnitude better as an input device than any trackpad, with the only caveat that it'd take you a week or two to get a hang of it.

Hey thanks for mentioning this. My current dread is having to switch to a linux laptop because I hate the yak shaving inherent with linux systems and driver issues. However, I won't be getting big sur or any other future osx systems until they fix their api and allow firewalls to actually work with their software.

So starting to scope out what options I have and this helps.

Glad to hear it was of help.

Lenovo has started to offer a few Thinkpad models with Fedora pre-installed afaik. I believe you can select the OS on Lenovo's website while placing an order. So you can hit the ground running with Linux.

Alternatively Dell XPS offers Ubuntu out of the box as well. But I prefer Thinkpads since XPS has only USB-C ports like the Macbook, requiring you to carry a dongle around.

> My Thinkpad X1 Carbon

Are they easy to repair? And is 8/16GB enough? Looking to buy something similar too.

I'm so glad I caught onto RMS and Eben Moglen when I did. I saw this coming a long way off, and have spent a lot of my time completely gpl'ing my daily use stack. There are a few rare exceptions (steam being the largest one)... but I'm happy I put in the effort.

What we are headed for is a world where a certain subset of people with the technical knowledge have computing freedom, and that vast majority giving up all kinds of rights and data for convienience. A techno-caste system underneath the neo-feudal system that is incoming.

"a world where a certain subset of people with the technical knowledge have computing freedom"

Even that is optimistic.

Well said, we’ve come to the point where if you want the latest silicon, a very good build quality and the most hyped technology, you’ll have to give away some of your privacy. Extra points for mentioning Cory Doctorow, who is providing most of his (prophetic I dare say) books for free over at https://craphound.com (you can also buy them and support him ;-) )

Quote: "These machines are the first general purpose computers ever where you have to make an exclusive choice: you can have a fast and efficient machine, or you can have a private one."

I call BS on Apple having the fastest machine, even at current moment, not to mention in the future. I can make a gaming rig with latest Ryzen CPU that will run whatever I want and be both faster and cheaper than Apple's expensive crap.

If you know of any other 8 core, 64 bit, 220+ ppi, >=13", 18 hour battery life machines with a great keyboard that weigh less than 1300g, please do let me know. Bonus points for metal enclosure.

If you find such a beast, I will buy it instantly, and I will happily ignore the fact that the MBAir will still have a better trackpad and speakers.

I am not looking to buy a "rig", but a laptop.

> I can make a gaming rig with latest Ryzen CPU that will run whatever I want and be both faster and cheaper than Apple's expensive crap.

No you can not. The M1 chip has the fastest single-core performance of any consumer chip available today, beating every chip in AMD’s brand-new Zen 3 lineup. You can get faster multi-core performance (5950X) but definitely not foe the same price as Apple’s new computers - not to mention the massive power draw and much worse thermals in comparison.

You may find something that runs faster. But it will use a lot more power. These are Apple's low power offerings. There's more to come.

How about efficient? A Mac Mini is extremely efficient.

It is (too) expensive, but crap is certainly not.

In every case, the greatest return on investment for any surveillance system comes from extortion. Extortion takes many, many forms. Some forms are favored by the FBI and prosecutors. Others are favored by spooks. Criminals have many of their own. In every case, they involve coercion.

A key fact about extortion is that the person being coerced is often not the person surveilled. It may be, instead, a judge, or a prosecutor, a purchasing agent, an admissions director, a night watchman. Each has parents, children, spouses, bosses, friends they would not want to suffer. The person surveilled need not even know they were used; the coercion is often more effective when they don't.

For each time you have heard of a defendant who pled guilty to a false charge, a judge who ruled in obvious contradiction to settled law, a legislator who voted against contituents' interests or resigned for "personal reasons", a manager who embezzled, or a contract awarded to the weaker proposal, consider whether it really was just on a whim.

This is the world of pervasive surveillance we are plunging into. This is the world that only consistent encryption and anonymity can have any chance of protecting against. But it is your family and friends who need the encryption and anonymity, not just you.

You make an interesting point about judges. I wonder how prevalent behind the door blackmailing is given we probably wouldn't heard about them if the person complied.

This is really bad , apple touts itself as a privacy company but it seems like a fox in disguise and meddling with VPN is just completely immoral. Now google and Microsoft seem better to me as they at least tell you we are getting your telemetry data and don’t modify vpn traffic.

I am running wireguard on my router, let them try to bypass that

I have found it curious how this has gotten zero traction in the press. Earlier today, I was naïvely sure this would cast a pall over the product launches.

This can't be linked enough: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

> I have found it curious how this has gotten zero traction in the press.

???

https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/12/21563092/apple-mac-apps-...

Apple PR....is very well funded I would assume.

Yeah, phoning home to Apple (or Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc.) for everything you run sucks and needs to die a horrible death.

Apple really doesn't need to do this, and it subverts their own privacy policies and features, including their commitment to on-device processing:

https://www.apple.com/privacy/features/

The title should be "Your apple computer isn't yours".

I might be mistaken, but wasn't Windows well ahead of Apple on this one?

First it sneaked Windows 8 and 10 updates onto people's computers, then used every dark pattern imaginable to get them to consent to tracking, then slowly included ads in their operating system.

For the last 2-3 years, I thought "at least Apple isn't doing that", but that is changing.

Thanks for summarizing a bunch of changes that make me depressed about modern computing. Now Android, 'privacy apple' macOS, iOS & Windows all act in similar way. The only thing left is bad user experience linux.

I've opted to purchase the new MBAir, and will only use it in conjunction with a travel router, on which I have root, and can default-deny all network traffic from the laptop except for the stuff I explicitly permit. Dual-Wi-Fi, small travel routers will run for quite some time on a USB battery pack.

I've been meaning to do this for some time anyway, due to the pervasive spyware that's embedded in most iOS apps, which Apple explicitly permits in the App Store. One travel router device should serve me for phone+tablet+laptop. I'll probably have it just do LTE+WireGuard back to a server I run, and then do all of the filtering/monitoring on the VPN server.

It sucks that it's come to this. Hopefully Apple can find their way back. I have a machine running KDE Plasma, which is worlds better than it was in years past, but still has enough rough edges compared to macOS's mirror sheen that it's annoying to use. I'm keeping my intel rMBP 16" I just got as it's likely the last machine of this quality level that will be able to run such a system.

I disagree with that, user experience in Linux is and in foreseeable future will be the most flexible of all and hence allows users to make it look exactly the way they like.

For comparison I would say Linux is like bootstrap that you can customize to make it look the way you want. iOS is like a paid theme you have bought over Themeforest with near to zero flexibility.

If you want a predefined good looking desktop, you can look at Manjaro ( that I am currently using and am pretty happy , my decent 16gb RAM with SSD system boots faster than my Macbook Pro 2019 and opens applications faster on cold boot as compared to Mac )

Somehow I prefer the user experience in Linux. If something breaks, it's most likely due to my own doing.

Why call linux a bad user experience when you are depressed at the state of what you can do on mac/windows?

Doesn't user experience account for what you can do on your device and with how much ease?

> The only thing left is bad user experience linux.

I occasionally have to use a Macbook for work. The last thing I want when I'm trying to get work done is: an unsolicited notification that OS updates are available, with no direct option to decline to update and dismiss the notification. I'd much rather update my system by issuing "pacman -Syu" on my own terms, and I consider Linux distros to offer a superior user experience in this regard.

"The only thing left is bad user experience linux."

I'm not so sure Linux is that bad of a user experience anymore. I just switched back to Kubuntu from MacOS and Windows 10. The only app I really need that I can't run on Linux is Xcode for building iOS apps. I can't really think of one hardware feature that doesn't work better under Kubuntu than Windows or MacOS: printer works, bluetooth works way better, multiple displays work, sleep/suspend works, sound works better, USB works better (Linux will mount and connect to stuff that Windows and MacOS won't) and that's before we even talk battery. The biggest surprise is that I'm getting 4-5 hours of battery with Kubuntu out of a Dell XPS-15 (i7 w/ Radeon graphics and 4k display) when Windows would kill the rather large battery in about 35 minutes. Honestly, I've been pleasantly surprised, and I have to go do command line config stuff about as often as I did on the Mac.

> Android, 'privacy apple' macOS, iOS & Windows all act in similar way.

Source?

> The only thing left is bad user experience linux.

And the BSD's plus a couple others.

There are more options, the question is just are you willing to make the tradeoffs to take them.

Regarding the state of computing - there are so many cheap critiques but so little construction.

For years now, cutting edge OS research has just been reimplementing unix with $new_security_feature.

So many lines of code are written but so little changes in terms of what we are supposed to expect out of our computers, and if it ever does, it's always in the direction of walled garden phone-ification of the personal computer. It feels like our CPUs and RAM have grown, but our ambition has atrophied.

What we need is a new synthesis.

A personal computing platform that picks up in 2020 from where the lisp machines left off in the 80's. Something built from scratch to be interactive, dynamic, and hackable.

It will never actually happen, for "worse is better" reasons, of course. But it's nice to dream about.

If anyone out there is working on something like this, even on a conceptual level, I would love to hear your thoughts :)

My phone isn't mine, even though I payed over $1k for it, I'm not able to screenshot certain apps with no way to bypass...

I’m surprised more has not been made of the claim that all this information is being sent unencrypted.

If that’s really true, how can anyone take the claim being made by one of the largest and most privacy-touting companies seriously?

If they send, in real-time, location and which program is being run unencrypted over the Internet for anyone to read, this should get a lot more traction. Especially because of it being Apple, making this a huge double standard.

There’s a rather strong counter to this is:

I, and the vast majority of computer users, don’t want to manage every nitty-gritty detail of the security and privacy of my computer. I have better things to do. In fact, doing it fully competently is more than a full time job.

So farming this out to a third-party is a necessity, for me and many, many others.

Of course, it’s not perfect. How much can I trust the third party? How well can they prevent, fix, or remediate bugs, breaches, and other threats? How much do they even want to?

It’s not perfect, that’s for sure. We see bugs. We see potential tracking opportunities. We see difficult to work-around limitation...

But no one is offering a better solution. Not for me, that is, nor the vast majority of computer users.

If your response to this is “Look at the sheeple defending Apple!” you aren’t getting it.

Oh c'mon, that is the oldest argument in the tool-box of Apple/MS "sheeple", as you put it. Most Linux distros don't require you to "manage every nitty-gritty detail" of anything. In fact, some of them make it easier for you to choose your privacy settings once and only during installation.

> I have better things to do.

Oh, mr. I'm-so-important, if ignoring your privacy and the rights to use your own machine is low on your priority list, you gotta respect those people who see it as something important, as well as their demand for something better. If you are fine with Apple/MS, great, use it. But don't try to take away the rights of others to look for something that better addresses their needs, and, especially, their right to try to tell others that it could work for them too.

A prison with golden walls is definitely safer and more convenient than freedom in the wilderness. The day the jail guards decide they don’t like you for some reason, you may start rethinking your lifestyle.

I’m 100% apple hardware atm, my first mac was the macintosh plus with 128kb ram, and i’m an iOS professional developer. Let me tell you that moving away from apple is not going to be easy for me, but with the recent trend in government behaviors (always in the name of Good and Security) i feel that i have no choice.

While I disagree that this is a strong counter, it does explain how this has happened.

People are lazy. They want their computer to show them pictures on Facebook, funny videos online and run some numbers for them. People don't want to care about stuff like privacy, because thinking gets in the way of fun and ease.

Malware has already bypassed Apple's signature mechanism and has been vetted to run by Apple as a result. The security and trust argument only works if Apple's security mechanisms work.

The vetting Apple is doing here is a solution looking for a problem. People have been installing third party applications forever, the ability to do so is a feature, not a bug. Instead of fixing the lacking antivirus software built into macOS, Apple is branding third party code as dangerous and untrustworthy.

I don't know anybody who cares about the problem this is solving, because it's a theoretical problem only tech literate people care about; the same tech literate people are also the people who run into this stuff the most. The reason that no one is offering a better solution is that there isn't a real problem that this solution is solving.

What I want is a council of wizards I can pay a monthly fee to and in return they will vet all the software updates I get on my computer. I want Bruce Schnier to be on that counsel, and ideally get all the major committers on major projects to review each others work. Do it transparently. I'd pay $100/mo for this service, maybe even more, since it is insurance on critical infrastructure. Could be a nice chunk of change for some deserving folk, too.

I own a company which manufactures and sells showerheads. Since the "vast majority" of people are prone to a fall while taking a shower, and since it is difficult to come up with a fool-proof solution against slipping and falling (who wants to get into the nitty-gritty of that?), my company also mandatorily installs a camera alongside, so that we can monitor for accidents.

Of course, it's not perfect. Some customers have raised concerns about their privacy, but this is for the greater good. My company is very ethical in its practices, and really values each customer's privacy (pinky promise). This is the best solution for everyone.

The footage of you and your loved ones showering is completely safe with us, although you can choose not to be recorded while showering by not purchasing our products.

Oh by the way, our showerheads are sleeker and more convenient than anything else in the market.

We get it. We want you to accept a "worse" experience and contribute to making it competitive. We don't "deserve" Apple, we chose it long ago (edit: many of us, because of problems with MS that Apple is now emulating) and it has changed to take advantage.

Computers are tools to do work.

Evangelists do nothing but attach a higher value to computers in an effort to convince others that they are not doing "work" and that their way is the right way.

You would be hard pressed to find a better tool to do your work than a Mac/iPad/iPhone in 2020.

>don’t want to manage every nitty-gritty detail of the security and privacy of my computer.

Good Linux distros have sane defaults managed by volunteers for you, so on OSes that respect your freedom you still don't have to do this.

I remember that third-party being anti-virus softwares. Then given enough time they basically became malware themselves, and we got rid of them for the most part.

Now that third-party is the computer vendor itself. Will we be able to get rid of them when they all start going down that path ?

I read here a lot of nostalgia of the 80's and 90's computers that were open to users' curiosity and changes, helping teenagers and young adults to develop computer and programming skills... It is true but it is only a part of the story.

For me, the real issue today is not much the disappearance of opportunities to practice and to learn: some of you noted the availability of open source, single board computers, cheap hardware, free software... and even the presence of a free JavaScript engine on all devices.

No, the real issue when you have a computer flavor (PC, phone, tablet...) in hands is that there are too many distractions. In the past, you could get bored in front of your computer and look for new challenges: trying new stuff, trying some programmation, changing files... Now, you can switch from an unlimited stock of games, to an unlimited volume of press, to an unlimited volume of video, to an unlimited volume of discussions, to an unlimited volume of films and series...

There is no place to get bored and look for new challenges. It even takes a strong will to refuse to engage with these stocks and keep programming and experimenting.

I see it everyday with my teenager: I have a hard time stopping the brainwashing of day-long poor social discussions, shopping, video and series on a small phone screen. They are consumers instead of being actors. And when the phone is off, they are just lost, unable to engage in anything.

To come back to the article, these machines are not only technical jails, they are also little mind-jails.

Fellow Gen Z-er here. I recall reading Stallman's writings some time during high school (a few years ago), at first taking them seriously, using free software as a much as possible (even installed and used Trisquel at one point) but then gradually due to peer/environment, even school-related pressure I became more complicit in using non-free software. I began to dismiss Stallman's predictions as unrealistic or overreactive, but as the years passed, as many have noted, these predictions have been realized on a massive scale.

Opting out of this stuff is hard, and in many causes would involve changes at educational institutions and companies. IMO it's the normalization and following-by-example of adults that lead children to sacrifice their freedom and privacy. Things such as

- creating G-Suite accounts for users joining an institution

- school-provided MacBook Pros/Chromebooks

- making use of a proprietary program (when free alternative exist) mandatory in a course

- strong one here, peer pressure from the network effect of services such as iMessage, social networks, or even AirDrop

If anyone is in a position of influence for the next generation of society, please think about these points and at the very least make it possible to use FOSS alternatives and make users aware of the issues surrounding digital privacy and freedom.

Yet another reason not to use Apple products. I'm mainly on Linux currently but considering OpenBSD for one of my laptops.

All OSes are chatty in some way or another. It's a small price to pay for having your system 'just work' without going down the Arch Linux road and having ultra control over every component of the OS. Even Ubuntu constantly phones home to `snapcraft.io` and `canonical.com` but needs to do that to check for updates and do things like sync the clock with NTP. Do I care that Canonical now knows when my box goes online? Hardly. It's a small price to pay for having a pretty solid OS that has good hardware compatibility and I have no issues with my printer, and it's plug-and-play. If I need to use Windows to open a .DOCX file (for work) I use Virtualbox where I have a Windows VM to do Windows things. I don't see the fuss really in using Linux as my daily driver. Others are so biased and fanboi-ish towards MacOS it's disturbing to witness.

1. Disconnect Internet (if possible)

2. Open Terminal

3. Run `sudo vi /etc/hosts`

4. Type `G$` (go to end of file)

5. Type `i`, left arrow, enter

6. Type `127.0.0.1 oscp.apple.com`

7. Press esc then type `:x` then press enter

8. Restart

https://gist.github.com/nathanhleung/2ceeda4c743f2a1cf3d670c...

Some updated procedure.

I’m finding it kind of funny that the conversation about this Apple issue bounces between “you don’t own your computer” and “you can fix this problem by editing your hosts file to block the OCSP calls.”

Doesn’t the success of the latter kind of undercut the former?

You're assuming that the ocsp process looks at /etc/hosts. I would not be surprised if it did it's own DNS lookup to a hardcoded DNS nameserver for the ocsp.apple.com lookup.

Couldn’t they have used `tee -a` rather than providing an impromptu vim tutorial? Haha.

It's “ocsp” (Online Certificate Status Protocol), not “oscp”.

So after this procedure I can once against boot my own bootloader that I wrote on the Mac that I own? No.

Open Terminal run

sudo echo 127.0.0.1 oscp.apple.com >> /etc/hosts

restart

sidenote: `G$i<Right><Enter>` is completely unnecessary. Just press `Go` (end of file, open new line below) and start typing.

> 5. Type `i`, left arrow, enter

I think it should be right arrow.

Maybe your Mac isen't Yours is a more appropriate title? Though I'm cetain it's only a matter of time before we can no longer run Linux on new hardware :(

Well, I do hope for this, because there is market for Linux so somebody will pick this up :)

If you're agreeing with the article, then get a computer/laptop that supports linux or even better, buy one that supports companies that support opensource.

https://linuxpreloaded.com/ has a nice list of shops that sell devices with linux preloaded. Purism, System76 and others also contribute code to the OS ecosystem which means purchasing from them helps the community at large.

You can also run Linux on your Mac and reduce e-waste. Check https://linux-hardware.org/index.php?view=search_computer&co... to see how well it is supported.

“In other news, Apple has quietly backdoored the end-to-end cryptography of iMessage.”

Is this substantiated somewhere? It seems like a big deal if there is any truth to it.

It's explained right there in the text: it's via iCloud Backup, which Apple makes no secrets about:

- backing up your iMessages: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207428

- not being end to end encrypted: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

It's listed as being "encrypted in storage" and "encrypted in transit", which is a fancy way of saying "we use encrypted disks and TLS, all of which we have the keys for".

Further down on the page, they have a list of things that are end-to-end encrypted. iCloud Backups are not in that list.

It's not a secret.

Apple has had a backdoor for iMessage since the very beginning. Apple controls the key servers, and the clients trust the keys provided by them.

https://www.wired.com/2015/09/apple-fighting-privacy-imessag...

This makes me very happy to have gone filled time Linux in the past year. I really want Linux to succeed on the desktop, and I think one very important step is to be able to get all the software (or clones) that people use running on Linux.

So far, LibreOffice covers the majority of cases for MS Office and the average person can get by. Firefox and Chrome are covered, video players are covered, and honestly, I don't know what the average non-technical user uses besides those. Getting Adobe products to really work well would also be a huge win.

I think the Linux desktop is mostly ready, there just needs to be a need for it at this point. Hopefully this is part of that need.

Well reading the terms and conditions (example: Catalina) it's not so far fetched that this is being done and it didn't happen suddenly but it was rather a long way coming. The outrage wouldn't have any legal ground. It seems that the issue is rather that the oscp service was down and thus was an annoyance (putting it mildly) instead of functionning as intended. Nothing is ever going to be yours if you don't put enough effort for it to be: in this case it would be an informed decision about what you want and need compared to what's available.

I feel it never was mine anyway anyway: - The proprietary firmware blob to make gpu/video work - Whatever happen on wifi/modem module that i cant control/know - The Embedded Controller that i cant control or inspect either - That code that allows the cpu to boot and initialize

That list could easily keep going.

At the end for me its about having alternatives what matters so i can pick what to trust and what to control fully, probably thats part the Freedom that software can give to a material/physical world that isn't ours anyway.

20-year-old, Slashdot-weaned me would have been outraged at this. 43-year-old me shrugs his shoulders and says "so?"

You own the hardware -- a hunk of very expensive sand. But much of the stuff on the computer, whether software or content, you don't own. The OS belongs to Apple. The apps belong to ISVs and the books, games, movies, and music you download or stream belong to the publishers of those things. So you really have no right to any more functionality in the device than is advertised and provided; and not only that, but the various rightsholders are entitled to the protection of their rights.

To the creative class, there are few evils greater than piracy, and to allow for devices that can perform arbitrary computation without restrictions that protect their interests is to give free rein to Satan himself. Such devices are to authors, as the saying goes, like the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone. And most end users don't care how locked down or DRM'd their devices are. So this is the new reality.

In fact, it is not preposterous to imagine a world in which general-purpose computers are flat out ruled illegal by a court. The only thing that saved the VCR in the Betamax case was the fact that it could be used for time-shifting which, under very limited circumstances, could be considered fair use. A court may decide that in an environment where most users' computing needs are met by locked-down devices, those who sell devices that are not locked down are committing contributory infringement.

I have personally seen many examples that make me agree with this.

Really, if someone wants to get off the Microsoft/Apple financial/technology/control/they-own-your-technology-and-you-cant-always-make-your-own-decisions treadmill, I think you have to decide that slightly less inconvenience (if that) is worth having greatly increased trust and local control. And Debian (or maybe Devuan) Linux (then installing something like LXDE or XFCE) isn't perfect, but it is very easy to install and manage, IMO, and they have a great track record of stability (compared to others anyway), due to how to they manage security, freedom, and overall stability (for example, what you learn is likely to last a long time w/o having to relearn, relatively few bad surprises, excellent documentation, etc. I like OpenBSD, but if I couldn't, next would probably be Debian or Devuan for more reasons I have posted on HN at other times. Further opinions/links on these at my web site...)

Edit: I installed Debian for my wife and a number of other locals. It was easy. I recommend adding the package that installs automatic updates (as root: aptitude install unattended-upgrades), and setting "umask 0007" in the default profile, and learning a little, can recommend some other things. BUT: my wife (a public school special ed teacher) doesn't know about those things and doesn't have to. People can use it without "learning linux" or having more than 5 min or general orientation, just like they used Windows XP, to do all their browsing, whatever, thousands of free apps available, and then one can grow from there, at one's own pace! :)

But, full disclosure: printing and some peripherals or specialized apps might require additional setup. Like, with OpenBSD I don't have (or need) bluetooth support. But a person can probably find someone, online or in person, to help if/when needed. I have done such, at times.

Seems like Windows 10 already does this - here's a screenshot from Settings -> Privacy [0]. In text:

"Let Windows track app launches to improve Start and search results". Defaults to on.

Its not clear whether that tracking is happening locally or being sent to MS, but given the utter lack of detailed information on what exactly this setting entails, I have to assume the worst.

[0] https://ibb.co/gR7GRQ0

Great article.

The remarkable thing to me is that Apple is working so hard to distinguish itself from other competitors about how much they value privacy. Tim Cook famously said, "privacy, to us, is a human right [1]." I wonder how (or even if) they'll acknowledge this one and walk it back. Hopefully more articles like this will ring even more loudly.

Sending all this stuff via plaintext is just plain scary. I've never worked at Apple, but from my experience at other big tech companies, this would never pass a rudimentary security/privacy review (which surely this had, given the scale that this feature is operating at), which leads me to believe it's intentional.

On the other hand, given how badly it crippled people's computers, perhaps it was just really poorly engineered. I think Apple's response (or lack thereof) could be really significant. I don't own any Apple hardware, but am still keen to follow this story.

1. https://medium.com/@profgalloway/no-mercy-no-malice-apples-c...

if trustd really cannot be blocked by any vpn, i am wondering how's large corporates will react for this new macbook, e.g. whether to continue allowing employees to use this new macbook as working machine.

The tech corporate response may be one of the best avenues to actually apply any leverage against apple with this current situation. I've already heard of friends at big-tech companies where network admins are applying corporate wide VPN policies to block apple's ocsp.apple.com requests after the outage that happened yesterday and basically nuked productivity for hours. In some cases it meant engineers _could not_ deploy code due to an apple outage because `terraform whatever` wouldn't work, which is pretty outrageous.

All this debate in here about software platforms is moot as it all runs on closed-source hardware.

I'm a Linux guy, but I certainly don't feel like I "own" my computer, what with my CPU and other hardware components being a black box.

This is why debate over cryptographic software is likewise moot, seeing as those algorithms are run on opaque hardware manufactured by major corporations.

By this logic we should just throw up our hands and forget about security and privacy altogether.

Even worse once you consider the implications of TPM, and not just the code signing/hash sending of Apple telemetry.

Just "how" hard is it to break into a computer, sure the hard disk may be encrypted. How strong is the encryption? When Truecrypt when dark, that was a a sad day in the community.

But this just goes to show the sheer scale of Apple, and how much reach they have, that, even they, with all of their resources, talent, intelligence could not have foreseen their systems breaking up like this, over hash checking and providing a OSX update.

It really makes the whole scale of iphones, ipads and other apple devices out there really, scary.

It also highlights what you/I don't know about apple and the hardware I run.

Scary times in the world of tech, each advance we make, it seems ten steps backwards. All this discussion about human rights, but no discussion about keeping, securing and ensuring privacy.

Makes me wonder if it's all a distraction.

Solutions like "switch to ___ manufacturer and run Linux" are great and relatively accessible for folks in the tech/IT crowd.

1. What do we do for family members embedded in the Apple, Google, Microsoft ecosystems? 2. How do we help move our companies and non-tech colleagues off of Windows and the Microsoft cloud behemoth?

Buy the kids a raspberry pi.

Things like this are why I continue to use old hardware and software, and my laptop runs Coreboot.

People will try to spin that as "insecure" or worse, but how is a system with no open ports and zero unsolicited outbound network activity any more insecure than the invasively user-hostile spyware-ridden software today? It's because they are trying to "protect" users from themselves, which so conveniently means taking control away from them.

Many will argue they don't need or want that control --- but that also has consequences for those who do, as the minority slowly gets squeezed out; and when users realise how much they can't do anymore because of these restrictions, it will already be too late. That classic Franklin quote has gained a new meaning in these times.

Just run Linux. Works for me.

I'm running Linux on a 2015 MBP and it works great.

However good luck getting decent Linux hardware support for any Mac >= 2016 and there is very little (probably zero...) chance of anything other than OSX running on an M1

>Just run Linux. Works for me.

Same here, but TBH, I am also starting to worry for large linux distros (eg ubuntu).

And there's of course the black box hardware it runs on.

This doesn't apply to Ubuntu,right? As in Canonical isn't doing something like this, right??

With how canonical is behaving with things like snap and such, I wouldn't be surprised if you find similar things. They just don't have the power of their own superior hardware platform to leverage it further.

Ubuntu hasn't done anything nearly this bad, although the amazon fiasco was pretty rough.

I would still recommend getting comfortable enough with at least one or two other distro's that you can jump ship to if necessary.

It applies precisely to Ubuntu as well: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for...

In a world where Snap is ubiquitous, Canonical is in charge of software running on your devices, not you.

Ubuntu doesn't run on the fastest/most efficient laptops that were announced this week.

>> using a program called Little Snitch (really, the only thing keeping me using macOS at this point)

I cannot believe the incredible the feats of mental gymnastics that some people will perform in order to ensure that evil corporations stay in control.

How can someone who knows so much about illicit data collection still be using macOS instead of Linux for example? I wouldn't be surprised if the author also owns Apple (AAPL) shares by now.

People these days will support evil while claiming that they're merely hedging against it...

Be careful because you might tear a few neurons if you keep twisting your brain like that.

I'm hoping we can get a RISC-V machine sometime in the near future.

How would that change anything?

Windows is just as bad if not worse. None of this behavior will change until consumers demand that it changes and start not buying things because of it.

Linux is still yours of course, but the if I value my labor at $100/hour (which is low) then a Linux machine will cost me in excess of $500/month to operate since I will probably spend at least 5 hours dinking around with little edge cases, driver issues, etc. That's really expensive compared to a Mac or a good Windows laptop when you average it out.

> On modern versions of macOS, you simply can’t power on your computer, launch a text editor or eBook reader, and write or read, without a log of your activity being transmitted and stored.

Oh, well. Apple is one of the worst lock-in minded companies with draconian policies. I'm surprised anyone expects anything else from them.

If you worry about having a computer that's yours, macOS should be the last thing to consider running on it. Starting with Linux could help.

Ok Twitter says the PatrickWardle thing isn't available to me, so I don't understand this part:

>@patrickwardle lets us know that trustd, the daemon responsible for these requests, is in the new ContentFilterExclusionList in macOS 11, which means it can’t be blocked by any user-controlled firewall or VPN.

How does that work? I mean the not blocked by ANY user-controlled firewall or VPN? - is the phrase "ANY user-controlled" just modifying firewall or also VPN?

Host based firewalls are fantastic for improving security, and allow rapid blocking of malware. Excluding an Apple service from firewall rules is just begging for disaster.

It's rubbish decisions like this (and app telemetry like the OCSP borking), the similar (ad driven) madness on android and the extreme telemetry on Windows, that makes Linux so important. It's the only platform which doesn't actively seek to control how you use your own computer.

The title of this article really captures the feeling I had when I decided to ditch my iPhone. My mobile device was the last piece of tech that I owned that did not truly feel like I owned it. I've recently switched to an original Pixel running LineageOS. There are only a handful of pain points for me that make the switch difficult, most notably navigation. The feeling of actually having control of my device seems to be worth it so far.

This puts Apple's 1984 commercial completely in a different light.

As they roll over to their own silicon, it is going to evolve from being a closed system to being a really really closed system.

Twenty three years ago, Apple briefly flirted with a completely different future with the PowerPC/CHRP architecture. Briefly. At that time, I did not see them heading off in the direction that they have.

I'll try my heavily downvoted comment from another thread again (I do regret the wording "wake up, people", it sounds too much like conspiracy nutjobs, but whatever):

Wake up, people. Free software is the last line of defense we have left before technological tools are completely taken away from us, and we all have to live our digital lives at the behest of Giant Megacorps.

What if you have two Mac-Chip PC’s each screening each other’s network requests per your definition?

Is that a work around? Maybe there is a simple device that could route a mac’s own ethernet connection back to itself through USB and then you can set up a filter that exports through the ethernet.

If someone could make such an easy to attach/setup device, it might a good business opportunity.

> It turns out that in the current version of the macOS, the OS sends to Apple a hash (unique identifier) of each and every program you run, when you run it.

Hang on, this only happens on first run of the binary, right? It caches the hash afterwards? This statement is incorrect unless Apple are sending logs to the server (i.e. of every cache hit). Can somebody confirm?

That's what I've observed, but the cache does expire (I think daily). It doesn't send a request for a cache hit.

I want to mention that such a feature CAN be implemented in a privacy preserving way using the K-anonymity model (it is currently being used by haveibeenpwned.com). In short you can sent the first 3 bytes of the hash to the server and the server would reply with all the full hashes that match at which point you just do a lookup in the response.

Before declaring the end of the world, is there any official or even unofficial Apple information that can confirm all the explanations here correct and this was intended behavior? Or explain their position on it?

Discussions here seem to have had several thousand comments without obtaining this basic info. It would be good to know, I would think?

So knowing this, how is it that HN remains so interested in the new "Apple silicon" or the latest "updates" to macOS. Why in God's name do people agree to participate in so-called "telemetry" and submit to whatever changes Apple wants to make in the OS, without question, in the form of "updates". Trying to control what programs users can run via "AppStores" and "developer certificates", and making them pay Apple for the "privilege" (what should be a "right").

If what the author says is true, I cannot see how anyone can take Apple's claims of "privacy as a human right" seriously. Purchasers have no right to privacy that can be asserted against Apple, who apparently needs to know how, when and where each customer is using the computer he/she bought. The company should be held to task for making such claims.

I still have an old Mac G4 with OS9. It is not connected to the internet. Safe to say no one at Apple cares how, when or where I am using it, and that's how it should be. It is astonishing how overzealous this company has gotten. As Nancy Reagan once said, "Just say No."

> Why in God's name do people agree to participate in so-called "telemetry" and submit to whatever changes Apple wants to make in the OS, without question, in the form of "updates".

I have automatic updates enabled because I trust the vendor who makes my distro to act broadly in my interests. If I discover they've done something I don't like, I can switch to a different vendor and get mostly the same software from them instead.

The answer to your question is that these people trust Apple. I don't understand why.

I frightens me, that people buy and use things when they look nice. I'm glad to use free and open software - not bug free, but at least free and trustworthy.

Had a lot of trouble with Gatekeeper, signing, notarization and stapling it in the past. I'm so sick of it.

I like my Linux. It has it glitches but it seems to like me also.

It's not just the hardware which is not yours. This also destroys the idea of the "stored program" introduced by Von Neumann. Which I would argue is a bigger loss.

It's not that the piano is not really mine it's that the sheet music is no longer really mine which is a travesty.

What I've been thinking about is doing the virtual machine route and being able to be on the same computer from dumb terminals around the house.

In this case, you could many 3rd party OS vendors supplying the host machines. Dumb terminals could get competitive.

This is why alternative operating systems like AROS, HaikuOS, ReactOS, OSFree and others need more support and third party apps like modern Internet apps. They don't track you and are open source and easier to use and configure than Linux.

> These machines are the first general purpose computers ever where you have to make an exclusive choice: you can have a fast and efficient machine, or you can have a private one

as a many-years linux laptop user I have had this choice for many years

But macs are not Computers...they are platforms, and they belong to the platform owner.

A solution to this walled garden paradox is to participate both in the Apple ecosystem and the open ones. Whenever you buy a new Apple device, invest the same amount in stock, and eventually you will have financed all of it.

OK who here wants to start the next consumer computer company to address this with a Linux distro and a focus on consumer privacy?

I'm not your huckleberry, but I'll certainly buy from you. Any margin in the hardware these days?

Purism is what you are looking for.

Very good writing, I started to use linux for all my computing because of these kinds of reasons.

I will never go back and I won't take a job where I am forced to use a mac or windows computer unless I have to economically.

being a devils advocate- isn't this a beta still for the very reason? I'm not sure Apple itself wants to be a developer unfriendly and everyone monitoring company + unencrypted traffic looks like something quick and dirty (analytics about beta users and issues?)

Maybe let's get an Apple's response first on these issues? It's not these issues and implications are small, but shouting from very beginning is not a good way to start a reasonable discussion whether this is a beta feature or something apple now will include permanently and why.

ps. all OSX developers unite? :D

This is the last straw for me. Can anyone recommend a PC laptop which has screen quality somewhere near my 2013 15" Macbook Pro? My next computers will be running a desktop Linux distro.

This is sad. But the solution is not to use Signal. Resistance if futile that way. I believe the only solution is top-down: voting governments that can change this once and for all.

It can be both things. Use signal if you are sending messages that are security sensitive, or if you want to prefer secure messaging by default. But of course vote and talk to elected officials and agitate for policy changes as well.

Speaking of Little Snitch, I suggest you look at 'iodé', an android phone with similar features built-in the OS.As far as I know this is the only true firewall on android

iodéOS [0] does not appear to be open source at all [1]. And only supports a handful of devices.

Shamless plug, my ROM DivestOS [2] is available and takes source seriously with most scripts being GPLv3 [3].

Furthermore it appears that they are mixing incompatible license HOSTS sources for their blocker. And according to their FAQ the are shipping devices with the bootloader left unlocked, just like /e/.

How awful.

And to your last point, NetGuard is available [4].

[0] https://iode.tech/en/iode-solution/ [1] https://gitlab.com/iode/ota [2] https://divestos.org/ [3] https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile [4] https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard

Another option is to set the DNS of your Android phone to use one provided by https://nextdns.io/

Then you can allow or deny domains or apply blocklists.

I am SO glad I permanently moved from Apple to Linux several years ago. On top of that, I have a Pi-hole running on my network to block traffic for undesirables.

Ask the farmers that "own" John Deere tractors.

Can you block this stuff with a hardware firewall?

Hahaha:

> I’ve one on order, and I will investigate and report on this blog.

This computer is an outrage! I've rushed to give the manufacturer a lot of money!

If I understand that correctly, this violates the GPDR. So it should be possible to sue them - at least in Europe.

>Your Computer Isn't Yours

Thus saith DMCA. The battle was lost when it become possible for arbitrary things on your computer to be declared a "copyright protection" and thus to be made off-limit to you under the harsh penalty of the law. This is what created walled gardens, locked down devices, etc. and made Apple and Google probably the biggest beneficiaries of DMCA and really made them into those large monsters.

I use Arch btw.

> we are finally here.

we've been here for a very long time!!!

the only computer that is "yours" is a raptor talos II.

It won't be long before logging into the root account on your Mac is flagged as suspicious.

Flagged? It won't be long before `sudo` is removed from macOS.

Why? For security, of course, and you'd get a million people defending it.

Cert revocation is critical to avoid malware. This shows why CRLs are still better than OCSP.

Is there secure boot mechanism that prevents installing ununtu on newest arm apple hardware?

Windows has been sending lots of data to and from my desktop as well, anecdotally.

Please increase the size of this article for mobile, looking forward to reading it

You now pay a premium price for beautifully designed spyware.

Why other countries tolerate this spying on their citizens? Why Apple, Google, and Microsoft products are still allowed say in Europe?

Do European politicians understand that they and their descendants are owned by another country?

Damn, and I thought Apple might be the only one left.

Question is.. can they get your bitcoin?

This is true for any non E2E encrypted solution. Even using something like NextCloud, without E2E encryption enabled, on a small VPS provider would meet the same fate, except that Apple can afford resisting unreasonable requests and is far less likely to be cracked, the small VPS provider would likely have to shut down if they didn't comply and you would probably be completely unaware of them being cracked until the effects of the attack are evident.

Plus the fact that these things happen with such popular products increases the problem's visibility (look at the score of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25073010 and this) and is the most likely way to drive some change in the long run.

I find the idea of telling people, even technically capable ones, to "just start using Linux" laughable.

First of all because to reach the same level of popularity, usability and availability of "good" 3rd party apps would require a company to start selling "good" prebuilt hardware with a "good", polished distribution preinstalled. Once such company becomes big enough it would still have to give in to requests from authorities such as the FBI. And if this company happened to be non American there would probably be a ban on importing these devices. So unless you want people to seriously purchase "libre" laptops and install a "libre" distro without ever coming into contact with any popular cloud service providers, you're out of luck.

Second because I was an Ubuntu and Debian user and advocate for years during and a bit after college. Then I had the chance to work with a MacBook and there is absolutely no freaking way I'm going back to that mess. Just recently I had a colleague upgrade Debian and have an unusable paperweight because something broke with the bootloader or whatever. Had to flash a brand new image on a USB stick for him, on my Macbook...I buy my devices because I want to work with them, not on them.

There might be some hope with companies such as Purism (https://puri.sm) but there is really no reason to think they wouldn't end up just like Apple (or worse) should they ever start offering cloud storage services. Because the problem here is not technical, it's social and political. Even here in the EU we now have folks pushing for ending E2E encryption or placing backdoors. If that becomes reality any privacy friendly software will be outlawed. In short: this isn't a problem that individual for profit companies can or should solve. But it helps when a behemoth like Apple is involved.

EDIT: looks like the EU is simply setting up a sort of "task force" to discuss options when it comes to lawful access of supposedly encrypted data. The outcome might very well be that they conclude there is no way to support both strong encryption (which is one of the pillars of the document btw) and backdoors. Probably just to show they are doing "something".

Maybe retitle this "Your Mac Isnt Yours"?

i wish i didn't read this

Agreed

Is this not flat out illegal under GDPR?

Of curiosity, what is the GDPR position on this? IP addresses are personal information under the GDPR, I think?

"The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them" --Einstein (b. 1879)

clickbait. lame.

I always laugh when people claim their Apple computers are secure and privacy friendly compared to Windows 10. They are certainly not.

The only viable OS at this point is Linux and even then you have to carefully select your distribution.

Why so much of the privacy-scare activism is coming from Berlin? It is starting to feel like a bubble syndrome, rather than organic.

Maybe because Germans have a history with state surveillance?

I am pretty sure much of the genre from Berlin is from this specific person.

C'mon HN, the past few days have been pegged with stories about Apple where the comments just turn out to be dozens of rants about their closed garden. Can we move on? Install linux and let it go.

“A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.” ― Winston S. Churchill

I thought this was going to be about the Intel Management Engine or something. Well, I don't use a Mac. I never have and never will. I run a general-purpose x86-64 computer with Gentoo GNU/Linux on it. It's mine. I know other people don't own their computers. I've known that for years. Other people don't own their cars or houses either.

I don't really understand the tone here. Do people really believe there is "evil" motivations in Apple? How about Tesla and its control over your vehicle? Windows also phones home frequently and has advertising built-in.

I get that many in the hacker crowd don't like this, so the obvious solution is, don't buy those products.

But for everyone else, it's not this big downer of a problem. This is the only time this has happened to me personally, and probably to most, and the way it affected the machines has been pointed out by many to be a bug that will likely get patched. Will it still phone home to Apple? Probably. But if there is an outage, it will not likely cause problems like this in the future. And personally I don't care if my machine phones home to Apple. Life is too short and I get too many other benefits from using a mac to care about this.

People are confusing their own individual preferences for the technology they wish to own with the larger motivations of the masses.

> Do people really believe there is "evil" motivations in Apple?

I prefer them not to give them a chance to be evil, rather than trust them not to be.

You're right, life is too short to be upset about it, but at the same time, it's not something you should feel comfortable with.

> People are confusing their own individual preferences [...] with the larger motivations of the masses.

No, I don't think we are. We're lamenting the motivations of the masses.

Most people want something that 1) looks pretty, and 2) "just works". The advantages of something objectively better (let's assume there's a metric we can agree on) would have to be exponentially greater than the effort to make it work in order to make most people bother with the switch.

On top of that, it's a psychological defense mechanism to simply ignore bad things. Certainly if the effort to fix them is great.

And that gets us to "I don't care if I'm spied on."

It's the hypocrisy of Apple using privacy in their marketing and then turning around and doing this.

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