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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

> Why do you feel the need to pick on Apple

I, a person with a modest net worth, am picking on trillion dollar Apple? That's so backwards it's funny.

This is a company that erodes computing freedom and ownership. They've co-opted the commons, and they built it all on the back of open source. And I'm picking on them?

Apple fans will say that Apple created billions of dollars of commerce opportunity. But it would have happened anyway without Apple.

We'd be in a better world if we had an open app standard that worked cross-device and consumers had choice in distribution channels.

We don't need to be "protected" by a company or big brother. Especially if such protection is just a cover story for controlling commerce.

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> and they built it all on the back of open source.

That is exactly the point of permissive open source licenses. Freelancers and commercial companies can build stuff on top of it that makes them money and brings real benefits to paying users.

Windows, MacOS, and iOS/Android would all be stinking piles of hot garbage if it weren't for open source, but then again Linux or the *BSD operating systems wouldn't be where they are today without contributions from companies acting to make a profit.

Free software licenses permit this, too: you can build stuff on top of it that makes you money and brings real benefits to paying users. You just can't restrict their ability to do exactly what you did.

The Linux and *BSD communities wouldn't be where they are today without those contributions, no. But they would be somewhere else. Not as far down the road, but down a different road; who's to say that would've been worse?

> Windows, MacOS, and iOS/Android would all be stinking piles of hot garbage if it weren't for open source, but then again Linux or the *BSD operating systems wouldn't be where they are today without contributions from companies acting to make a profit.

The open source part doesn't change anything. Windows has so many hooks that 1984 (the book, not the year) is now a reality in 2020 with DLP software watching employees. Apple's walled garden is not there to encourage growth inside the walls but to extract profit from those that flourish inside of it. And linux is so fragmented because everyone has a great new idea which requires a new X where X is a UI, library, window manager, etc.

Interesting that back in 1980's the Apple II line was frankly pretty darn well open. Sure Apple had copyrights on the assembly, but if you looked at the magazines at the time there were lots of articles giving annotated disassembly of Apple's object code. And yet, Apple sold a bunch of computers anyway. Wow. Fucking genius.

Sure Apple is fighting the Good Fight with privacy (and I've yet to see that it's anything different than pure marketing). But I ask why should Apple need to market "privacy first" when they can just open up their software and show us directly? Let's start by open sourcing any telemetry they send back to the mothership. Is that reasonable perhaps?

I don't know why you list the only major internally developed OS as if it is the same as the ones that were transformed from open source offerings.

Sure DOS was akin to open source and formed the basis of Windows way back when but the decades of development have left little left (except what exists to support backwards compatability)

Hold on mate... yes... you're picking on them :) I'm not saying you're crushing them with your righteous anger and to please have mercy on them, just that it's a tad odd to single out one particular trillion dollar company that is at least trying to do something in all the areas the original poster was complaining about.

And I do feel that we should focus on the biggest offenders (i.e. Google and Facebook) first, because if there's a precedent the others will get the message quite fast.

> we should focus on the biggest offenders

Apple is the worst of the lot, by far the most culpable, as they're directly attacking the notion of ownership and computing freedom. They're their own government that has somehow snuck under the radar of the DOJ. They behave like the mafia and offer "protection".

Google is next for the harm they've done to the web. I think we can agree how bad they've bloodied it up.

How can you put Facebook ahead of Apple? They're creepy and invasive, but they're not redefining what we can and cannot do, and they're the easiest to remove from our daily lives and industry.

I want to distribute software and I still have to pay the Apple tax and jump through their hoops, and I'm left without a relationship with my customers. On the other side of the coin, as an owner I can't repair my device or run my own software. Facebook has little impact on my life, meanwhile Apple is a gravitational distortion in our industry.

Because I'm looking at real harm, not "what if..." harm. Google & Facebook have implemented the largest mass surveillance apparatus in the history of mankind. Not even in their wildest dreams could the STASI or KGB expect to be able to access the intimate thoughts, pictures and communication of pretty much everyone on the planet.

You complaining about paying 99 bucks per year and comparing it with the above is seriously mind-bending. No wonder our privacy's so fucked...

If you think Apple isn't tracking your every move and handing that information over to the government, then you're choosing your facts to support your favorite company.

Apple is just as evil in tracking and even more evil in taking freedom away.

I didn't say Google was blameless. Google is horrifically evil. You're just mad I'm also implicating Apple.

You love Apple. And you love it enough to overlook the incredible harm they're doing.

Stop loving a company that doesn't give a shit about anything but profit. The feelings and pleasure you derive is just Apple fitting to the gradient slopes of profit maximization within the market they've carved out. It's engineered, and you're falling for it.

Use your device for what it is, and be happy in the capabilities it gives you, but be a good citizen to your fellow persons. Not a company. Don't overlook their grievances. Hope for a better, more equitable tomorrow so that everyone in our industry can thrive and can do so without being extractive.

Edit: Downvotes from Apple fans making it further in the thread than those that overwhelmingly agree with my parent comments.

Downvotes from those that disagree with "Hope for a better, more equitable tomorrow so that everyone in our industry can thrive and can do so without being extractive."

Astonishing.

No down vote from me.

This reads like something on /. fifteen years ago. The anti Apple crowd always was louder than the mythical Apple fanboys.

The argument is not “did Apple create a walled garden and rule it like the actual Chinese Communist Party” because yes it did. The question is, are they alone in doing it, or just successful?

I think the latter, you think the former it seems.

I've been carefully observing how privacy was worn down piece by piece for more than 10 years now and you come of as a bit clueless if you're putting Apple in the same bucket as Google. They're not saints, but they're playing in a different league. I don't have time to correct all your misconceptions: read about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism if you truly want to understand this topic.

Also don't pretend to know what people feel just because they buy products from a company. It's ridiculous how you're claiming what I love when you don't even know me.

I would put Microsoft before Google, some of us remember the 90's and 00's and even the early 10's and all of the crap they pulled, they may not be pushing the authoritarian envelope now but they pioneered all of these methods apple google and Facebook and others have now perfected.

It took the DOJ hammer to reform Microsoft. It clearly worked. They're not a force for evil, and they're still worth a trillion dollars.

We should do the same to Apple, Google, and the others. It clearly doesn't erode stock value.

Wait, what do you mean? The latest Windows is worse than previous versions with its telemetry, Cortana, updates reverting your preferences and so forth. I do not think Microsoft is reformed at all. I think they are just as bad as the rest of the companies mentioned. Why do you seem to be giving them a free pass or calling them reformed? You seem to behave similarly to the Apple guy you dislike for his views on Apple. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook... I would even include Canonical here (Ubuntu), just take a look at everything they touched, and take a really close look at Snap.

Based on their statements about Microsoft, I think OP's very eager to fix things, but rather clueless about what needs fixing and how to do it :-)

> as an owner I can't repair my device or run my own software

I wish people stopped buying phones with non-removable battery. I sure as hell will not buy a phone if I cannot replace its battery. On the other hand, I think it makes the device thinner, and weighs less, so some people prefers that over being able to replace the battery. Not sure what to do here than to accept their preference.

meh if replacing a battery is a once every two year operation that you can pay a shop $2-40 + $10 of battery cost to do it in 30 minutes depending on the cost of labor where you are, is it really that big of a deal?

Key word is repairability here, not necessarily user swapable. You can go buy chunky construction worker edition if you want all the swapabillity if you want to.

> Apple is the worst of the lot, by far the most culpable, as they're directly attacking the notion of ownership and computing freedom.

How are they worse than Microsoft?

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