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Comment by dewey | Hacker News Reader

Running local offline applications made a lot more sense before we had multiple devices (phones, tables) home computer, work computer.

If I want to use a bookmarking tool I want to use the same tool to store entries in during my work day. I'd also want to check something if I'm outside with a friend and want to show them something I bookmarked a week ago.

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For those of us who don't like to be on our smart phones all the time, who keep work and personal strictly separate, who don't travel often (and when we do we leave our tech at home because a vacation is to get away), who prefer to keep their data local and outside the hands of 3rd parties, it has really sucked over the last 10 - 15 years to see the entire industry go all in on SaaS everything.

I use Linux and FOSS mostly. I always have anyway, but it's nice to be able to still be in control of things while the Apple and Microsoft worlds keep pushing Cloud and SaaS on their customers (last time I installed Windows on a dual boot I needed a Microsoft account just to log in to MY computer ... WTF?!?!?!). And for work I need an Apple ID to use my MacBook... at all. WHY?!

> And for work I need an Apple ID to use my MacBook... at all

Why? You can use the computer perfectly fine without an Apple ID.

Unfortunately (and this was my experience a couple of days ago, I could be wrong), when I wanted to download XCode to develop a native app, the site made me log in with an apple ID and accept terms and conditions. So, if writing software for Mac counts as using the Mac, you do need an Apple ID

To download Xcode you'll need an Apple ID. Developing for macOS / iOS without a free Apple ID doesn't make much sense though as you need it to sign the software and deploy it to test devices anyway.

That doesn't seem like an unreasonable requirement that you need an account with the platform vendor for that.

> Developing for macOS / iOS without a free Apple ID doesn't make much sense though as you need it to sign the software and deploy it to test devices anyway.

I'm a node / javascript developer. I make web applications. I remember having to install XCode for some dependencies. I don't make native Mac / iOS software, so it's a faulty assumption to assume that devs using Macs will be doing native dev. Even if I did, when working for a large-ish organization individual devs are not going to be the ones signing or publishing releases.

> I remember having to install XCode for some dependencies.

If you really don't want to create a free developer account to download the Xcode command line tools (That's probably what your dependency refers to, as the full Xcode is usually not necessary) you could just install or build the dependencies from another source?

You could also just download them via curl (There's direct links to the latest version out there) or `xcode-select --install` which both don't need an Apple ID.

Yeah while it is genuinely the substance of nightmares with Windows 10+ with its insistence upon using a remote account. But Mac OS will ask once and it's perfectly skippable.

Of course, if you wish to access iCloud or the App Store, it's required. But in fairness to Apple they don't push it in the same sneaky way as MS.

Have you ever inspected Mac traffic? As of Catalina (last I checked), even if you do not connect to iCloud, you have ~10 opaque connections/hour back to Apple - and about ~40 (slightly less opaque) connection if you are logged in to iCloud.

Most of the connections are from the nsurlsessiond demon, for which I have been unable to figure out the actual request url contents. Some of them have to do with update checks, some with notarization checks, who knows what else.

I wonder how it ranks against Windows.

But yeah, I accept that's still an issue. While I'll concede that I'd rather have the ability to choose zero, I think iCloud connections are expected if you're actually making use of its services.

Perhaps the best compromise is Apple hardware with Linux software. I've considered that if I ever lose patience with Mac OS.

Different use cases for different people. When I do real web surfing, its usually on the computer. When I'm on my phone, its light surfing (finding a restaurant address, etc). Also, if you really want it sync between two computers, you can use Syncthing or Dropbox.

You can do sync via e2e and protect it from service providers, or let users provide their own sync (which they can self host or use a paid service).

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