However since then I’ve become much more skeptical. Apple is no less evil or different; okay, I take that back, they are slightly better but I’m no longer a fanboy.
I don’t think the Apple of today, who carefully monitor what everybody does on their macs and make it difficult / annoying to bypass the Mac App Store, cares about privacy or the consumer as much as they lead us to believe. Steve Jobs cared a lot about privacy, from what I have read, but the current group, whilst highly intelligent and producing great innovative products like the M1, are very much driven by profit and not vision.
Examples include not providing basic accessories with their expensive iPhone products (seriously I spent 1,000 for an iPhone 12 Pro Max for my Girlfriend and there is no wall plug? Give me a break with their environment saving reasons, they could easily donate a lot more money if they really cared about the environment and not try to trick consumers that they are do-gooders).
The more nefarious example is how Apple is pushing paid apps and subscriptions so much on their App Store, since they take a cut. It’s a core part of their services strategy. I don’t see too much ethical differences between selling users privacy for ads and aggressively taking advantage of the average consumer and trying to lure them more and more into more paid subscriptions (many which they don’t need and also are overpriced, but since it’s a monthly charge it is harder to tell).
I am not comfortable with Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon being so large and controlling the tech landscape.
I’ve used MacBooks for the past 10 years, my next computer will 100% be a Linux.