Comment by system16 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by system16 | Hacker News Reader

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Similar story here. 20 years ago I was a Windows user. I had no love for Windows, but I put up with it. I had never even considered buying a Mac because to me they were just overpriced dumbed down PCs for people who were not technical. I didn't know anything about them.

Then I bought an iPod with click wheel.

I fell in love with it from the minute I opened the packaging. It just felt like a device that a lot of care was put into. I loved holding it and it was a pleasure to use. It made me rethink Apple.

When it was time to buy a new laptop, I bought the 2006 black MacBook. I felt the same thing all over again, but now for my primary computing device. I loved OS X.

Fast forward to today and I also have a house full of Apple products. Just in my line of sight I have several Mac laptops, Magic Keyboard/touchpad, a few iPhones, an iPad, AirPods... over the years I've purchased dozens of Apple products. Not to mention my subscriptions to Apple TV+, iCloud Storage, Apple Music...

But Apple is increasingly a very different company than before. I now feel like they are nickel and diming me at every possible turn and it's no longer even subtle. When I picked up my iPhone 14 Pro at the Apple Store, I was in disbelief at how hard the Apple Employee tried to upsell Apple Care using hard sell scare tactics.

I doubt anything will ever change under Tim Cook. Maybe some day Scott Forstall will return in Jobs-like fashion and correct the company's course.

Very nice stories. I just switched to Linux on my laptop to avoid all the iCloud ads. Now I'm considering ditching my iPhone too because as you say my laptop and my iPhone no longer work together perfectly anyway. So I have a bunch more options for phones!

I'm actively looking into running mainline Linux on a Snapdragon 845 phone, actually: https://nikodunk.com/2022-11-05-gnome-shell-mobile-with-post...

You truly switched to Linux to avoid iCloud ads?

> I doubt anything will ever change under Tim Cook. Maybe some day Scott Forstall will return in Jobs-like fashion and correct the company's course.

I really disliked Scott Forstall being fired from Apple, and have felt that he could’ve added a lot more value to Apple’s products if he’d been around. Apple Maps is still terrible (outside the US and a couple of other countries). So it’s not like firing him resulted in great progress quickly.

Recently John Gruber had posted about it being 10 years since Forstall was forced out of Apple. [1] I’m guessing many others feel similarly that his presence could’ve made a positive difference. Now it’s Tim Cook’s ego that would block him from being hired at Apple again.

[1]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/10/31/forstall-10

Funny how a lot of companies should just hire a designer to become as good as Apple, but that never happens. Companies insist on naming their product WX1000 (hi Sony), or adding a BOM to SOAP requests to make their products incompatible (hi Microsoft).

So yes, Apple gear is ultraexpensive, does little, cable breaks and lifelong souvenir photos are locked up in iCloud.

Unfortunately, this is still a much better experience than the Linux or Windows world.

It’s only a matter of various companies having to do fewer dark patterns to win over the market, but that never happens.

100% just because they control their hardware. Not a design thing, mostly.

Linux is like living in the engine room - fantastic if you love engines. Windows is like a mirror house where someone tried to renovate but left all the mirrors in, Mac is a pretty jail cell.

The former two have their quirks, but are livable, the later only if you like prison cells...

I don't think many people will enjoy ads in their prison cells, though.

The thing that the other manufacturers seem to struggle with is that you can't phone in major aspects of your product and expect it to be "apple tier". You have to own it end to end, and sometimes even go so far as to fund new manufacturing techniques and machinery to make your product in its fullest form a reality.

This is a bitter pill to swallow in an industry that's thrived on loosely tying together off-the-shelf components and contracting out the rest to the lowest bidders to produce products that often barely make it past the line of "somewhat acceptable", because the "apple way" is hard, expensive, and risky.

I think the main problem is that industry is focused more on keeping users in their little bubble than on actually making better product. And that of course means no actual talk with "competition", because making both of your products work together better might mean some of your customers might go to them for something.

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