Apple Just Lost Me
andregarzia.com
andregarzia.com
1. Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user.
2. mac OS26. I totally agree that this is a total fiasco from a design perspective, and liquid glass is unqualified shit. Still, I see Apple at least somewhat moving in the right direction by getting rid of Alan Dye.
3. Apple had a bug in their age verification protocol. Again, valid point, but Apple needs to follow UK law. I've seen a lot more missives arguing against requiring things like driver's licenses and other government ID, and so it seems like Apple is at least trying to go the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification.
To emphasize, I'm not apologizing for Apple here. In particular, much has been written about how Apple has lost their way regarding the "it just works" philosophy. But it seems like the author's main beef is against Apple's level of control, and this is just a fundamental difference in Apple's stance that has existed for about 2 decades.
They had a guy who had no UI/UX experience leading the UI/UX team. He left for Meta thank goodness [1].
[1]: “Alan Dye Leaves Apple for Meta, Replaced by Longtime Designer Stephen Lemay” — https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/03/alan-dye-leaves...
Are you sure you're not apologising for Apple?
Apple isn't shy about its gatekeepy behaviour, and some people believe that it's why Apples ecosystem is subjectively nicer than the Microsoft one.
The point is this person has been dealing with Gatekeeper for a long time but all of sudden it’s a deal breaker?
My point is that having both of these options is a good thing, as they both have pros and cons, so people can decide which of those pros and cons are most important to them, and then choose accordingly.
No they don't. They need to grow balls. They pay hefty tax rates in UK. If they would announce they are leaving UK market in 90 days, I bet you would find enough politicians to change the course of this terrible law.
Are you sure?
I suspect the UK wouldn't love losing that 304m, but Apple would also probably not enjoy losing the 1200m of profits either.
It's almost like international companies having to deal with legislation in every country they operate in is a more complicated topic than could ever be hashed out in the comment sections of a tech news site...
https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2025/07/apples-uk-tax-b...
Apple might be the wrong company for you then. They're all about corporate control and deciding what is and isn't permissible on their devices. The first time you want to install an app that isn't approved in their app store, this becomes quite apparent.
1. The original comment was about Apple using their power to influence UK law.
2. That is bad, don't do that Apple.
3. If they want to do other things not legislated against they are free to do so.
Also there would be many lawsuits arising from this.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few out there who have gotten their Apple account restricted for whatever reason, and didn't have the clout, energy, or mental bandwidth to pursue it loudly and publicly.
Author started at System 8. They didn't start locking things down until the iPhone.
They sure have tried since forever though. My uncle complained about Apple for this very reason ~20y ago…
However, it is quite ironic that while the value of their hardware has sharply increased, their software has become the slop that everyone is complaining about.
No simple drag and drop onto a mounted USB drive like all other mp3 players back in the day. Maybe more of a lock-in attempt instead of lock down, but related imo.
The restriction was that an iPod would only sync tracks from one computer at a time, which was a demand of the music rights holders.
These days? Last week (though WMP). My retired father's old computer died, his new one, no CD slot. Emails me from Australia asking how to rip his CDs for his media player. He's not an audiophile but he's not a technophile (and his blues music collection is sufficiently large that at least one of the blues radio stations in his city will on occasion ask him to borrow something because they don't have it in their library.
Told him to get a USB CD player and a card reader (his media player is on micro/SD).
And the UK law doesn't ask for device-level age verification.
> Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act.
-- https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-introduces-age-verif...
> To summarise for yous there are three main issues for me and the last one happened today and is what pushed me through the threshold.
The compounding led to this, not that individual issues existed (and have been a problem) for a while.
And I’m still able to install any app I want with minimal fuss.
That's why I like Apple so much.
One can be angry about things which directly and immediately make their life worse while also being angry about the other evils in the world.
This is surely not a trend, I am sure humans around the world throughout history have been able to criticize one thing even while something far worse is happening.
Alan Dye left of his own volition to Meta. I 100% believe he would still be there if he had not left.
I find it infuriating I have to verify that I am older than 18 when my gmail account is 20+ years old.
Him moving to Android will do them no good as Google will be implementing similar controls in it. I suggest they get a Pixel Phone and install Graphene OS.
> 1.Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user.
Apple been tightening that control over time. For a long time on MacOS X you could simply run apps. Then came notarisation, but you could still disable it. Now, even with a certificate, it still shows a dialog. I wish that apps that went through notarisation would simply run like the ones from the app store without a dialog showing.
> 3. (...) the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification.
But not everyone has a credit card. Those are not something you're born with or required to have or even required to have them issued from the same country you're living in. That is not the least restrictive, that is a very large assumption. What I would have liked to have seen is them providing you with options: "do you want to use credit card verification? National ID? Passport? Credit check? Etc" and then it is up to each user to decide on their risk profile and what they are okay with.
As of now, my only way to verify it is by literally ordering a credit card from my UK bank when I'm pretty happy with my debit cards already.
I can't pass the age-verification. I am 49. This alone is quite irritating, but the overall developer-hostility of Apple and the quality drift of their software is convincing me to never buy an iOS device again.
And I'll probably not release any software on their platforms either.
It's absolutely nuts that you have to. But it's an option?
> Depending on your country or region, different options might be available to confirm that you're an adult.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/1s2n1yc/psa_apple_h...
If you choose the option to verify with a credit card and scroll down the form, there’s an option to verify another way, which allows you to use your driving license.
And I say this as someone more or less utterly in the same boat as you. I bought a used Thinkpad last June after seeing the first Tahoe beta. It's clear Apple is not the platform for us anymore.
Notarisation is just proof that the app went through an automated malware scan.
Windows, Mac, and Android have all adopted measures intended to warn and attempt to protect users from malware.
As far as age verification goes, this is a restriction being forced on companies by governments.
Apple previously allowed parents to set age restrictions on their children, or not, as they saw fit.
what does the scare modal of "are you really sure you wanna run this? could be bad dude..." do?
the only purpose i can see it serving is to push devs to use the AppStore on mac, which is highly restricted in what you can do, and of course, takes 30% of your revenue
>Gatekeeping
It's a one button dialog, hardly the end of the world, and for users like my 80-year-old mother (An Apple user since the Apple II) who rarely needs to stray outside the App store it improves her security. It's not for you, it's for users like her.
They're tightening security because security needs to be tighter. My bugbear is the implementation of privacy and security permissions because I have to walk people through it continually, it makes no sense, but it's hardly a big deal.
>Liquid glass
It makes a lot more visual sense after my upgrade to a 17 Pro from a 13 Pro, but it also ran faster on the 13 pro than the previous edition. I'm not a fan, but I haven't always been a fan of Apple interfaces since the 1980s, I wasn't into the skeuomorphic era, and people love to have a moan.
It took 5 minutes to turn the all the features off on both mac and phone, the only bugbear is the 3D border, and the contacts background (solved by turning on high contrast mode).
It was a big release, they know where the bugs are, and have already said the next release is about bugfixing and streamlining.
>But not everyone has a credit card.
68% of UK adults have one, and there is an option to scan and upload an ID. IRL law is catching up to the internet at last, and as the father of a daughter who got her first dick pic at 12 this is a good thing. It's not for you, it's for her.
You're not always the primary user these features target so you may not see the logic behind them.
The thing is, Apple has never been about developers, its main thing was to basically sell an image since its inception. A lot of people were excited about the iPhone when it first came out, and then they quickly realized how locked down it was, and how it didn't even have basic copy paste.
Even now, if you look at the AnE in the age of llms, all of it is locked down specifically because its only for Apple to use.
Before people in other countries started popularizing the term “debit card”, most of my visa and Mastercards were hooked up to take money direct from my bank account, but they were still called credit cards.
This is not true. On the screen where it wants you to scan a credit card, tap “Enter details manually”. Scroll down. Tap “Try other methods”. And there, you’ll be offered to scan an ID or your driver’s license.
Full disclosure: I've been in the Apple ecosystem since System 6, worked as an engineer there for 25 years. But I am as frustrated by many of the decisions Apple has made as many people I see posting.
Liquid glass? This too shall pass.
Locked down ecosystem? I imagine the blowback if they unlocked it and people's devices were suddenly being compromised by malware.
I guess I prefer the frying pan to the fire that I feel awaits me if I jump. As I mentioned though, seeing blog posts after the jump will be interesting.
The series I'm watching doesn't drop from Netflix. Nor do I juggle which services have seasons 1-3, and 5, and have to play the subscribe'n'cancel dance to watch the full series.
I never deal with radio-edits or censored curse words in music. When I pull up an album, it will be the proper album, not the smeared or changed swear words. This exact issue is what pushed me off Google Play Music.
Peace of mind in case my house burns down, ha ha.
After that, I've got Chrome, Visual Studio Code, Steam and a full suite of command-line tools, which covers my personal essentials. But if you rely heavily on something like Photoshop or the MacOS X Omnifocus application, then you might find much larger holes on the Linux side.
As a matter of principal, I consider myself too old to troubleshoot Linux without getting paid for it. It turns out that I virtually never do that, so I'm pretty happy. Really, buying pre-loaded and fully supported Linux laptops eliminates 80% of the pain, and nearly all of the remaining 20% can be avoided by refusing to get clever.
The boiling frog thing is a myth - most frogs realize the water's too hot at some point, and jump out.
All the reporting I’ve seen indicates that he left of his own accord and that Apple was blindsided, indicating that they didn’t even consider getting rid of him.
The Online Safety Act does not require device manufacturers to enforce age "verification" at the OS level. If Apple had not implemented this, it would still be in compliance with UK law. Apple is displaying anticipatory obedience here, which is the opposite of good citizenship.
Two things stand out from this fiasco:
1. Apple, and those who praise them for what they just did, don't appear to have learnt from history. Anticipatory obedience used to be known as "vorauseilender Gehorsam" during a particularly dark period in the history of a country a few hundred miles southeast of the UK. It was one of the factors enabling the darkness.
2. The UK is a small enough market for Apple to treat it as a test bed. Which it probably is in this case, and which means that removal of anonymity aka "OS-level age verification" is coming to a lot more devices in a lot more countries soon. See also the uncanny coincidence of lots of OECD countries pushing for online age verification at the same time.
And herein lies the absurdity of the whole legal framework in the first place. Does it apply to tourists? Residents? Citizens? Citizens traveling abroad?
Proceeds to explain why your opinion is not "fine" but rather invalid, because Apple boiled you like a frog...
Every time someone mentions here that they're concerned macOS is becoming more like iOS, Apple apologists show up to explain how that's not actually happening. I guess now you guys have just accepted it.
The only other complaint seems to be liquid glass? It really feels strange because Apple feels on the upswing with their new office and their cheap, repairable mac.
Edge cases like immigrants in a different land are typically unmet for these things. I remember once trying to re-activate my Google Fi SIM from my home in the UK before I returned to the US and getting a strange error message that didn't allude to the region. I got the rep on the line and they said "You're in the US, right?" and I had to bullshit something about "oh I had my VPN on" and then turned it on so I would like I was in the US and it worked then.
Anyway, there's clearly one cause and the rest is just kitchen sink argumentation.
It’s a brutal faux pas from Apple to consider immigrants an “edge case”. We are a significant group in many countries. (That said - I don’t have any banking products from my country of origin anymore)
I mean, I'd consider it important for it to work, but when it doesn't I wouldn't consider it a brutal faux pas so much as a moment of frustration at the kind of engineer who only happy-path builds.
It's also amazing how badly big tech apps will often fail with poor or no internet connection. Clearly a lot of the developers at these companies never leave the cities they live and work in.
Other industries can be just as bad, but it's particularly grating coming from companies that constantly talk about diversity, individual empowerment, and other nice sounding corporate slop.
The fact that you think American corporation punishing foreign users for their laws is acceptible is sick upon itself.
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati...
[2] https://www.money.co.uk/credit-cards/credit-card-statistics
Not really. I was hoping more large US corps would just not comply and force a big kerfuffle and force the UK government to rethink the OSA and other ridiculous legislation.
I don’t think much of that is true for Apple, even though there isn’t even a so called law they’re even following. They’re just doing the opposite and rolling over and pre emptively complying with OFCOM. We’re going to have to look elsewhere for resistance
I’ve had it with Apple and there’s nothing they can do that would salvage my perception of them or make it any worse than it already is. So this company is a bunch of boot lickers on top of everything else that sucks about them, the only reason I’ll ever buy another Mac is if Linux can ever be installed on something beyond the m1/m2 processor.
Fuck Apple as a company, nice hardware— but a trash Fisher Price operating system that they somehow just managed to make even worse than it already was.
The benefit of KF and 4chan telling them to stick it, is that it creates a precedent where most sites outside the UK can just ignore them. I think both KF and 4chan are going to the US courts to get the matter decided IIRC they are suing the Ofcom in the US. I've not bothered checking up on the case because the guy that runs KF is massive dick and I don't want to listen to updates from him.
I’d just get updates from pacer. 1:25-cv-2880 in the District of Columbia. I’m not super interested in this to go look today but leaving it here for future reference once there’s more filings and hearings in the case. This would eventually become “interesting” to me no matter who had raised the federal question(s). Personalities aside , I would rather just stick to the case filings and the findings of fact in there.
Aside from being a “dick” I’ve already made the mistake of looking there for scoops and burned a few brain cells wading through wildly speculative legal interpretations from a crazed mob that has next to no basis in reality.
I guess it has to be someone with standing to sue ofcom and tell them where to stick it and I’d have a really hard time pretending I don’t approve of cantankerous defenses of 1A.
> Aside from being a “dick” I’ve already made the mistake of looking there for scoops and burned a few brain cells wading through wildly speculative legal interpretations from a crazed mob that has next to no basis in reality.
It is an old school forum. Lots of different personalities on there.
> I guess it has to be someone with standing to sue ofcom and tell them where to stick it and I’d have a really hard time pretending I don’t approve of cantankerous defenses of 1A.
I 100% agree.
That covers the good and the bad. The ugly is the increasing presence of ads in Apple software - Maps being the latest example. Something that's going to push me out of the ecosystem eventually. I'm probably ditching Apple Maps for Google Maps this summer, because if I'm going to use an ad-infested product I at least want to get reliable directions out of it.
It would appear the UK doesn't:
> Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act.
-- https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-introduces-age-verif...
Weird take to shift the blame to Apple for that.
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/26/app-store-eu-rule-chang...
Once the dust settles, this will be a case study for decades to come. Apple threw their hard-won reputational gains off a cliff for _nothing_.
I imagine some executive’s ego was spared by not telling them their idea was bad. Priceless.
Those other things add up and are definitely noticed by non-tech users that don't care that things like the alarm UI are massively regressed.
The griping I read about Liquid Glass is from the unhip nerds on HN (like me). I don’t actually know what the industrial designers and graphic artists in their Soho lofts think. I asked an exec designer that I know IRL and got a shrug.
Other than that, I stand by my statement exactly. This is very bad.
We also have data to show people dislike this. Google Trends shows the largest spikes ever for "how to switch to android", "iphone revert update", "iphone fix battery", and "iphone slow", all only after the release of Liquid Glass (and particularly the increased tactics to get people to update starting in September).
And besides a few odd posts on x, I haven’t heard anyone techy speak positively about it.
Maybe I’m the one in a bubble, but I’m seriously considering switching from Apple as a lifelong Apple user, largely because of the UI changes (Liquid Glass et al), so I don’t think the complaints about it are overblown.
Personally I bundle it all up into “Liquid Glass et al”, but the glass effects are the least of the issues for me. I could maybe get over an ugly design; design is subjective after all. But iOS 26 is just disfunctionally bad design (imho)
This is one of many things that really bother me in iOS 26, after just having updated from iOS 18. It just looks wrong that it's fully transparent until you fully pulled it down, and then suddenly everything flies away. Very strange effect.
Another thing is the border effect on the icons and widgets. I wish there was a way to turn those off completely, but either you get the motion effect or you have permanent borders.
So many strange decisions.
Which is to say, we all have our own bubbles.
I have the vision pro, mbp m4, ip15 pro max, apple watch ultra 2, studio display (2026), 2 official keyboards, 2 magic trackpads, ipad (4th gen), 3 homepod 2, 5 homepod mini, airpod pro 3 (I keep buying new airpod pros every time they come out because the improvements are really good).
I'm fine liquid glass and I use their products like.. 20 hours a day?
Now, if I was developing software for MacOS and it broke all my UIs, I would be at least as irritated as the author.
Apple fans bemoaned the Settings menu changing from a grid to a list, or the battery getting a skeumorphic icon, but that doesn't really matter.
The Liquid Glass stuff was forced on users in ways their other OS updates weren't, and it has caused serious performance, stability, and usability problems throughout the entire OS.
The reality is that Windows 11 continues to get worse. I was an embedded Linux dev for 15 years, and even I don't really want Linux on my desktop. Apple has better build quality, long support periods, simplified updates, and for the most part just works. My personal computer is just an appliance and a means to an ends, Apple still is the best of many bad choices.
I don't have a Mac but my tablet and phone are both running liquid glass and it's... fine. I lost my favorite Sudoku app (Enjoy Sudoku) when they updated and for me that's the worst thing about it.
I think on forums like this that tend to have a lot of Apple fans and haters, the impact of UI changes is overblown. Normies mostly don't care. They notice the change when it happens and then two days later they have already forgotten what the UI used to be.
Seems underlying features such as kerberos, NFS, auto mount and others are just bit rotting by now and its a matter of time before MacOS becomes Windows 8.
I have much more of a problem with the terrible window management on the mac and ipad OSs. Not being able to snap and resize windows to the edges of the screen, like every other standard window manager that exists, is insane (I know they added some version of this recently, but unsurprisingly it sucks). And the entire mac OS is starting to feel slow, bloated, and janky. They completely ruined the cmd-space search in their most recent major release. They need to get their house in order.
It appears you do indeed understand the fuss around Liquid Glass :)
The way I see it, "Liquid Glass" is used as a catch-all term to refer to all the UI changes across Apple's 2026 slate of user interfaces.
For one example, the annoying Apple Watch fitness app changes are "Liquid Glass" in my book because it exists only to show off the new wobbling refracting buttons,. The loss of performance and battery life is reasonably assumed to be tied to new Liquid Glass shaders Apple aspires to run 120 times a second on the phone.
- why the added transparency effects don't present accessibility/usability issues, despite what users report
- why the corner radius change (among other UI changes), including its absurd size and broken handle detection actually aren't a big deal (even though every other window toolkit NOT swiftui has to be updated for it)
- why it's okay that they added useless icons to menus that add visual clutter and violate of their own design standards
- why Rosetta is going away, even though so many things still depend on it
The bigger issue is that Tahoe was a frivolous cosmetic update with only a few actual improvements, despite all of macOS's bugs that haven't been fixed over the years. That's a long list, from broken keyboard shortcuts in most their newer apps (and System Settings) to persistent Airplay compatibility problems.
Why is Apple's hardware getting objective better over the years while the possible software gains are squandered year after year?
Re: the rest of your comment, it seems like a real stretch to suggest that any of the following (quoting you) are within the scope of "liquid glass":
* Dropping Rosetta.
* Broken keyboard shortcuts in most their newer apps (and System Settings).
* Persistent Airplay compatibility problems.
* Other bugs that haven't been fixed over the years.
* Possible software gains being squandered year after year.
I clearly articulated in my comment that I have other problems with the current state of mac OS, so I'm not sure why you're implying that I'm claiming all the issues mentioned in your post are in the scope of "liquid glass" and therefore mainly narrative-driven.
It suggests to me that you didn't really read my comment before composing your reply.
But you're right, it's still usable, unlike the window management.
Lucky for me i convinced my boss to buy me a PC about a month after they forced the Tahoe update on my old work MBP
It was very very bad during the beta though
I'm told ThinkPads are getting to parity and have primo Linux support, but barring accident, my M3 MBP will probably last me a decade. Another reason I prefer Apple hardware.
still too many missing bits for me.
1. Battery is better than any other laptop out there
2. Touchpad is better than any other laptop out there. I don't even use a mouse anymore
3. Sound is better than any other laptop out there.
There is no other laptop that comes even close to this hardware.
Before apple silicon, I was making fun of apple fanboys as CPU specs were mostly bad and it didn't make sense for the price. Apple silicon changed that. And it doesn't look like it will change very soon, sadly. I would like to see more really viably alternatives.
Or last month? https://support.apple.com/en-us/126347
Or December? https://support.apple.com/en-us/125885
Or November? https://support.apple.com/en-us/125633
Or September? https://support.apple.com/en-us/125327
My dude, I don't know how much more patching you want.
> Apple also released a few other security-focused updates for older operating systems. The iOS and iPadOS 18.7.7 updates are available for the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR, as well as the 7th-gen iPad, all devices that don’t support iOS or iPadOS 26. At this point, if you’re using a device that can be upgraded to version 26, Apple is no longer releasing iOS 18 updates for your phone or tablet. [1]
1: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/apple-releases-ios-i...
The UK, and Brazil who passed a similar law, 'cheated' by just forcing private companies to figure it out.
However my Apple ID verified me based on my account age, I didn't need to provide anything.
The UK government proposed that and was met by the usual resistance to it.
Honestly I'd rather have private companies figure it out. Then at least you'll get multiple options, including from privacy-first companies. But that still sucks, and my preference strongly goes towards OS-level Age Indication. Just as effective in practice, 100% private and offline.
Not all your online activity, even if they kept logs it would be something like 'this site asked for age verification, we said yes'.
So they would have a list of sites, if they stored them and were allowed to store them. Which is something they can get from your ISP regardless.
It could be used for bad sure, lots of things can. In my perfect world this wouldn't exist at all like it hasn't for 30+ years. But putting the burden on private companies was always going to create other avenues for issues.
The fact that the powers-that-be need to understand but choose not to is that what they want is literally impossible, even with mandatory government blood screenings to access computers. Anything short of requiring identification per POST is inadequate. This whole thing is a fools' errand and we must not give any ground.
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-age-ver...
I really don't like this perfect law enforcement future, but this EU initiative is about the best design one can have.
There are no plans to allow separate, standard AOSP attestation methods for Android. Google's crooked* Play Integrity will be the only one.
*crooked because it confirms Android 8 are safe and with full integrity, even when they're rooted, full of malware and present spoofed certificate.
The user of Play Integrity can choose to just block Android 8.
If the goal really is to just help parents prevent their kids from accessing inappropriate material, that's plenty. Anything else, and you're admitting the real goal is Big Brother style surveillance.
It will be fun when (not if) the database is leaked.
At least on the Brazilian case, it's outright illegal for a private company to implement the thing you are describing. So, if the government doesn't provide the service, there isn't much for them to figure out.
I learned quickly that "Find My" was far superior in remote tracking of airtag-equivalents, and switched some of my convertible tags to their network.
I flew out of O'Hare last month, and there were advertisements all over the airport announcing that Illinois id/drivers license import into Apple Wallet, so I did it, and that works.
Supposedly, passports can be imported. I haven't been able to make that work, even after a few hours on the phone with Apple.
I also added a new CTA Ventra card, and I lost my ATM card while out of the country and instantly added a new one to Apple Wallet.
Apple devices allow biometrics to be disabled for unlocking the phone. That is an important requirement for me to use these features.
I would never, ever trust Google with any of these things. Ever.
That being said, if I want to run a torrent client on my phone, I should be able to do so. Apple will never allow that.
If I want a Bourne/POSIX shell, I should be able run one. Apple will never allow that [AFAIK].
There are important reasons that Apple products will never, ever be my primary communication devices.
> If I want a Bourne/POSIX shell, I should be able run one. Apple will never allow that [AFAIK].
I believe you can accomplish the latter (via an emulator) with “ish”, and then use that to accomplish the former (with e.g. rtorrent)
Why do you trust Apple with them? What guarantees Apple will not do evil?
If, at some point, they converge, I will trust Apple as little as I trust Google, but it's absurd to pretend they're the same thing, today or to "what if" yourself into knots.
Google is absolutely an evil company, head to toe, that is aligned against you. Trusting them with anything is almost as stupid as trusting Meta.
You should never really trust a business with your information. At the end of the day all they care about is making money and most customers have no interest in the business making more money, so you're never really in alignment.
Thinking they're the same, or will do the same things, or playing slippery slope games is really silly and/or a complete waste of time and energy.
It's not absurd whatsoever. Apple and Google are oftentimes asked to make the exact same concessions, and in many cases (see: push notification backdoor) they do exactly the same thing: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...
Neither Google nor Apple have any real accountability at play. The same mechanisms that demand Google to surveil users are being accepted by Apple too. The "ad business" canard is (and always was) a distraction.
Your position is that Google has not and does not differentially acquire data on its users (and non-users) because... Apple has shared some data with the feds? Is that a serious position?
It's almost like that's way I've been talking solely about that for the entire thread, in spite of your attempts to whatabout other things into the conversation that you think make Apple Bad. I'm not clear why you're finding this conversation challenging.
Yes, it's still hypothetical, but do you think it's that unlikely? You can't use Advanced Data Protection (full E2EE for iCloud) in the UK anymore. It was forced upon them but compare that vs. their malicious compliance of the EU's DMA. The first only negatively impacts Apple's customers while the second aims to empower customers, but negatively affects Apple.
In the UK most people use debit cards instead for most things.
https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/data-and-research/data/card-spe...
Credit card usage is a small fraction of debit card usage. This is very different to the USA where there are more credit card transactions than debit card ones.
(They also accept an ID scan.)
- Real-time weather alerts (I spend a lot of time in a naked Jeep in the summer, it's helpful to know when rain is imminent)
- Work-related authentication
- Audiobooks
- High quality, always available camera with quick editing and instant sharing capabilities
- GPS tracking when I'm exploring
- Find restaurants, museums, hotels when I'm traveling
- Pay for nearly anything (credit cards are useful but more time-consuming, and pulling them out frequently is a minor friction point that I'm grateful to leave behind)
- Audiobooks can be listened on other devices besides smartphones
- A dedicated camera is a very good option for taking high-quality photos fast, but I do agree that instant sharing is not a possibility
- GPS tracking is available on many watches, even non-Smartwatches like the ones Garmin designs
- You can pay with a credit / debit card via NFC - just as fast as with a smartphone
- You can find restaurants and other places through maps, tourism centers, etc. Or there's a option for researching where to go before heading out
You just find a phone useful
Required would be “I can’t participate in society without a phone”, eg not being able to get healthcare or pay for things w/o a phone
In the UK card readers are still widely supported by traditional banks. As is SMS for one time codes. People who think fintech banks are the only ones that exist might have a warped view on reality of course
Current main bank is not so bad, but i'm not sure if the app works without google play integrity (at least it doesn't mind developer mode / unlocked bootloader)
At least we don't currently require a US tech company (Apple | Google) to give their blessing to people to have a bank account :-)
Though I'm sure your country's set up will be ours before too long...
If this means they would need to geofence + start disabling devices to the extent required by law, good. The laws will immediately be repealed.
The whole platform is a smoldering fire at this point, so nothing in the article is particularly surprising. I've hit 10x as many bugs as the user mentioned. Liquid glass (as bad as it is!) barely makes the top 10 daily issues I have with iOS 26. In any other release, it'd be #1.
Maybe "Flood the zone" should be the word of the year for 2026?
refused whom? they weren't required to do it, it was a law for messenger apps only
The moment you move to something that runs your TV, runs your smart speaker, is the phone in your pocket, is your computer, you end up with some really great features and unfortunately a series of trade offs.
I'm not sure that it means you should dump everything, but that you should try to make things simpler and decentralized.
UK passed age verification law and people still find a way to blame the US.
* Passport
* Identity Card
* Driver's License
It rejected my Driver's License and I gave up after that.
Debit cards can be given to an underage, so I suppose they don't accept it for this reason.
In the US you're usually inundated with offers to open a credit card (often pre-approved) right in your mailbox. Even if you're a poor recent immigrant, or something.
And I don't criticize US way of living here, but Apple is an international company and could do better adjusting to local cultural habits. But maybe they just punish people for this stupid law in the first place which is totally understandable.
I feel in Europe having a credit card means the complete opposite, only "rich" people have credit cards.
I have a credit card, I use it, I pay it off every month. Why am I seen as poor just because I have a credit card? It's just a tool. It spares me from needing to maintain a 10000$ emergency fund in my checking account.
I don't imply that's the same everywhere. Also probably depends on a local regulation and interest rates.
Also people here don't generally like to owe to somebody, that feels insecure.
Is it surprising that people blame the company and the culture that fostered it, instead of the country that is trying to "protect itself", regardless of how misdirected that "protect itself" is?
I have a gmail thats old enough to drink anywhere in the world, and never used it for youtube, accidentally opened youtube, they asked me for my age. At some point, I think its okay to just use account age instead of even asking.
Bet you there’s already a thriving grey market for old accounts with organic history.
"Age" verification was a wonderful trojan horse that has fooled a lot of people.
https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-introduces-age-verif...
[1]: https://www.rpclegal.com/snapshots/consumer/winter-2025/ofco...
Also, does Ofcom have the power under the Online Safety Act to mandate app-store verification (or device-level verification, for that matter)? Or would it require secondary, or even primary, legislation?
4chan, KiwiFarms etc. can stick a middle finger up at the UK because tbh they probably don't have that many UK users and have nothing there for the British Government to go after, the best they can do is probably nab the owner if they ever land on UK soil.
I hate to make Game of Thrones references, but there is a scene where Little Finger said to Cersei "Knowledge is power" (in an attempt to blackmail her about her incestuous behaviour) and Cersei had Zombie Gregor choke him and told him "No power is power". Little Finger had lots of soft power and it meant nothing when comforted with hard power.
It illustrates that a simple fact that people like you and other don't appreciate that the state has the monopoly on aggression and they have the real power. That is why corporations cozy up to governments.
That is why every corporation will almost immediately implement any Byzantine bullshit that the State mandates. I am sure that you and others will point to a few exceptions where this didn't happen, but they rare and often done very strategically.
There isn't some American principle that human = credit score. Americans just don't want their government ID required to do basic things.
See discord age verification controversy.
> First it attempted to check my Apple Wallet, it failed even though I have five cards in it and am able to use the App Store fine.
> Then it moved onto wanting me to manually add a card to verify myself. It failed with all my five cards. Four were debit cards, and one was a credit card from another country, cause you know I am an immigrant who has accounts still in my own original birth place.
I'm saying that a functioning company that reaches a certain size can stop being good at what it does and start buying market position and market share.
For example, I don't believe Apple is more efficient at designing processors than most processor companies, I think they have had some luck in that they adopted a strategy for mobile that ended up delivering a CPU with high performance (this is roughly the same story as Intel Core 20 years ago). They are able to deliver a CPU that is at the top but not dramatically faster than their competitors not because they are so 'good at' designing processors, but because they steer a very large percentage of the total CPU R&D budget of the entire world. They can buy anyone who is innovative, and generally that means eliminating them rather than incorporating them.
This is the way ID verification is going in the USA and the reasons for it seem clear. A human person is only useful to a corporation if they have money to give the corporation. If you don't have provable money, either through a third party corporate payment service willing to pay for you sometime later (a credit card) or by giving a corporation your login details to your bank account (ie, Plaid), then you're not a human.
It clear what a bot is now: anything that doesn't have provable money.
If you look at it this way: they’re trying to identify somebody, and they don’t want to do a massive amount of work in house. Do you go to a company that verifies identity? Or… you can use credit cards as a proxy for identity. Most of your users already have them.
Credit cards require no additional infrastructure, no additional corporate approval, no additional expenses, and no additional auditing. It’s good enough for the company and who cares if it’s good enough for the users.
Corporate greed is a massive problem, but you’re giving people too much credit to assume they have some kind of grand conspiracy for every decision. That requires far too much intelligence.
Corporate laziness is a far better explanation for this one.
This is spot on. This is the same tactic used by the affiliate marketers back in the day to qualify leads - Free book, just pay for shipping! Or, get this e-book for just $1 (so we can upsell you a $97 product later)
And if I'm being frank, my time with Linux (Debian 13 on an N100 NUC w/ Docker) has really opened my eyes to just how excessive modern compute is, specifically to power increasingly bogged-down operating systems and woefully inefficient software. The N100 sips energy while happily transcoding 4K video streams on Jellyfin, running my IRC server for friends to hop off Discord, reverse proxying my entire home network, letting me stream game nights via Owncast, host some image board shitposts for various friend groups, host my RSS Aggregator, and still yawns with 75% excess capacity left over.
I'll still have a Mac because that's what my family uses (if they want free tech support from me, that is), and I'll still have my Windows gaming PC, but I'm already drafting up cyberdeck plans for my first primary Linux box, with just a CLI to get me by. Realizing I don't actually need ten cores and 32GB of RAM and a hefty GPU to do daily work is pretty damn revelatory - and shows how grotesque mass-market software and OSes have become in the name of marketing cycles and advertising dollars.
30 days later they canceled the ABM company account and deleted all the associated users along with the Apple ID which I used to log into a testing device, which now became a fairly expensive paperweight: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47516266
But OT: it makes me realize my Yahoo Mail account is turning 30 this year, because in 1997 Yahoo wanted to compete with Hotmail and I thought "Having a @yahoo.com email, that's a very good nerd badge!". Nowadays the ridicule is deserved, and they've silently lost all my mail from 1990s...
Anonymity allows one to behave in ways they would not "in public", with your neighbors, or co workers (for the most part). Be that building malware, or kids doing things they should not, and the people and business that take advantage of that.
I don't think the UK law is a good one, but when major companies continuously fail at their social responsibility I understand why people want the government to step in. I don't think the friction apple creates is a great user experience but it is better than the old approach that ended up with systems riddled with malware and spyware because normal users don't think like the folks who built technology.
Could the law have been written better: sure. "More control" over their Childs devices would have been the way. Is there a solution to the friction with apple... maybe but I'm not sure it would be that much of an improvement (its purpose IS to slow you down).
This problem is everywhere in your products and it’s clear the passion for high quality work is gone from the company.
Apple will not survive at luxury prices and Google level service.
The sad story is, that I would rather go caveman mode than use MS Windows.
In other words: Apple’s complacency will be left unpunished since there has never been a worse situation for an alternative.
I see none. None at all.
Apple is the new Windows XP for me. It is as crappy as it gets, but compared to any alternative it still leads by a fair margin.
Apple before the glossy crap was the amount of boring beauty, I loved to work with on a daily basis. Decent visuals without any distractions.
Glossy suddenly put me over the edge and I am glad to get a discount for mainly using the devices as business machines.
Otherwise: luxurious rot.
Change my mmind
Also curious what Linux distro and desktop you're going to. Flatpak makes it matter a lot less these days, so long as the base stays pretty current.
As for Linux distros. The MNT Pocket Reform comes with Debian and I plan to leave it at that even though Debian is not my favourite. I will use Niri and Noctalia with it. I plan to make use of whatever Debian package but if it is too old for my taste, I'll look for AppImages and Flatpaks as needed. I got a Surface Go 1 running exactly that setup but with Fedora and works really well for me.
Want to use KDE Connect to link whatever Android I get with the laptop.
Also, it seems relevant to mention that the software is mostly maintained by a Chinese company (T2Mobile), which might be relevant depending on your threat assessments.
For security/software updates it's pretty much:
GrapheneOS > iOS > Pixel OS >> Samsung flagships >> pretty much everyone else.
Absolutely agreed about the gatekeeping — just as example, you cannot even update your MacOS without being online unless you create a full USB Installer.
For your particular situation, presuming your hardware supports it, you can use MrMacintosh guides [0] to downgrade your OS from Tahoe — I recommend the latest Sequoia installer — all officially downloaded via Apple links.
[0] <http://www.mrmacintosh.com>
I further recommend blocking *.apple.com & *.icloud.com (and many more hosts) using a PiHole (so simple, so necessary).
Your phone, which you own, updated during the night, and now demands you tell it who you are through a credit card, which you may not have, or you're locked out of features. On your phone. This is outrageous.
We can jump ship -- for now -- but it's only a matter of time before these laws cover every kind of Internet access, if they remain unchecked.
So despite the claims in the article, it's not credit card centric.
However, they did not accept my passport as a scannable ID, and so luckily I had a credit card somewhere that I have used recently for a single large purchase otherwise I'd be stuffed, as I don't drive
Does them quitting Apple mean they're going to stop supporting MacOS users?
Honestly it sounds like Apple is far from lost here, but I'm excited to see updates on how the transition is, if it ever does happen.
The laptops seem... crazy enough. And what you get for your buck is even less than with normal PC manufacturers, let alone Apple. You get CPU that is slow for a phone. For 1300 USD.
On the other hand I have a weird urge to buy one and use as a daily.
They have 5 days to unfuck this or I'm literally rolling out Pixels + Graphene to the family.
Exit plan for the Mac is a Linux desktop.
This situation is being treated like a bad business decision. It’s not. It’s a new set of laws. It’s bigger than just Apple.
What "unfucking" looks like though? The law is mandated in the UK. What other way of age verification would work better for them?
Unfucking looks like a "look what the UK government policy is causing" PR disaster and a rollback and consultation.
Edit: I suspect this might happen when MPs start getting upgraded...
Sorry but I don't want there to be an issue full stop.
Seems to happen a lot with "ragequitting" posts. I feel like I could write "Microsoft Just Lost Me" and it could get to the top.
I was never an Apple maximalist to begin with, I just have an iPhone and use a Mac at work because I have to (and will continue to), but I just turned off auto-updates on my iPhone and will never buy a new Apple device.
Anyway: Not sure why fairphone. While i like the concept it's still an android phone, eos is not much better than lineage. If i had to change today i would go again for a Pixel 8A (or a series 10) and graphene. But if the OP can wait and see, next year we should get replaceable batteries everywhere because EU, and maybe wait and see whatever motorola is cooking for graphene. Or check out the pinephone and go full linux.. i guess, when i'll have some spare cash to throw away..
Indeed. I'm honestly impressed that he lasted this long. My first "I'm very displeased moment" was when Java became a second-class citizen on macos. I was a Java dev at that time and had written some non-trivial apps. They weren't native perfect, but they were close enough that my highly-Apple-fan relatives didn't realize they weren't "native" until I told them. The write-once-run-anywhere dream of desktop UI software (without getting into Qt) was there in a very real way for me. I ran it on my windows machine at work, and my mac laptop and linux desktop at home. The hoops at that point were nothing compared to what they are now, and it began souring me.
For me the final straw was when I got the latest macbook pro with the latest mac monitor (all from Apple mind you) and yet there was a horrific bug that about half the time when you plugged in to the monitor, the laptop screen shut off and would never come back on until you did a hard reboot (holding the power button). That was never supposed to be possible since it was Apple hardware/software controlled top to bottom, the original promise of the vertical integration and one of the reasons we accepted the heavy lack of cross-platform compatiblity.
A little before that I used to put my macbook on the nightstand and listen to podcasts at night to fall asleep. I would dim the screen to off and have the volume at low levels. Apple rolled out a software update that suddenly caused the screen to kick on at FULL BRIGHTNESS after about 5 to 10 minutes (when the screensaver would have normally kicked in), while I'm sleeping in a completely dark room. It was so bright that it would wake me up. That bug was there for years, and myabe still is (I replaced it with a Linux laptop).
My user experience on macs was never close to bug-free, and was frankly worse than almost everything else out there. It took me a while to figure that out though.
- Final Cut X. Its first incarnation was a huge slap in the face for features and workflow. They completely cut a large swathe of the rest of Final Cut studio, and knew they were shipping shit with the new pricing.
- The first Unibody Macbook came out. Very little could be upgraded, the keyboard was a leap backward, and all they had for I/O was a half-baked USB3. It's usage for pro video workflows was severely hobbled compared to the last generation.
- Mac OS Lion came out, which was when it started showing signs of user hostility. Power-user features were getting locked down or removed, the app store was being pushed harder, and it was consuming more base resources for the privilege. The tend was clear that advanced users were no longer welcome in Apple land.
These things made me change majors back to computing, and a full return to Linux. I've never regretted that.
"curl -LsSf https://acme.tld/install.sh | sh" and "xattr -c" ?
Far from ideal and safe but it's still a very common pattern.
For instance, I've had a ton of issues with Airpods Max so I moved over to the Sony WH-1000XM6, and they do a much worse job sharing connections between multiple devices to the point where I have to reset them constantly to get sound to reliably play from both my phone & computer.
Same for moving to macOS to linux - the issues on add up to the point where the papercuts from macOS are still worth it.
Someone make it make sense.
-Accessibility options
-Display & Text Size
-Turn on “Reduce Transparency”
I forgot glass was even a thing as I immediately turned it on day one.
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/16/macos-tahoe-26-4-compac...
You can't install Google Wallet - it does not work, but also defeats degoogle mindset. There were curve company that people seem to have used in the past, but seems like the company was sold to someone and now it's dead. So I have to use physical card like a boomer.
---
My story is similar, somehow my air managed to update to 26' (maybe I just clicked that stupid notification window button to make it go away). I will keep my opinions on glass to myself.
Facts are: docker broke again, app launcher is whatever the hell it is, firewall with started messing up with my dns blacklists. I know you can somewhat fix it, but nixos/asahi on m2 with hyprland gives me a workflow that is superior. I just won't go back. AeroSpace just can't match.
Then the credit cards... I have my original store country elsewhere. I've then moved a few times and changed banks. Now, apple does not like my card. It won't accept it. That's it. Nothing you can do about that. And I couldn't really change the country because I have had some subscriptions and I had to wait until they expire. Meanwhile, apple killed my apple subscription I lost Music, I lost cloud storage, I lost some backups.
The thing that incredibly pissed me off is that as soon as my apple subscription got cancelled I could not even see my music library in the app. It would just prompt me with "gotta subscribe buddy" screen, which I can't.
And yes, the hardware is very good. I love my m2. But the whole software part is becoming messier and messier and I don't want to deal with it anymore.
(Enjoyed your phrasing here.)
The other issues are more serious, especially macOS 25, but again, how much of that deeply affects the vast majority of actual paying customers who buy Macbooks? As long as Apple learned their lesson and will do another one of those bugfix OS releases they've done before, no long lasting harm done.
Using credit cards for age verification is certainly dumb, but age verification is coming and most people see the need for it. You can disagree that there is a need for it (entirely different discussion), but you must acknowledge the broad support for it at least.
Can't use my expired provisional license to confirm my age.
Can't use my Croatian ID to confirm my age.
Can't use a credit card, because I never have had nor do I ever want to have a credit card.
So I'm fucked.
Anyway, he's free to choose whatever, but I have to nitpick here:
1. macOS 26 - a fiasco? Come on. A lot of like the liquid glass. On macOS I hardly notice it, but on iOS is actually beautiful to me. Also a long time macOS user, since 2003 btw. You can always dampen it using accessibility settings.
2. Age verification ? First time I've heard of it. Also on latest iOS. But then I'm also not in the UK.
3. "Interfaces built with AppKit or SwiftUI that rendered perfect, are now overlapping controls and clipping stuff. They have no consistency at all in terms of icons, placement, corners…". I'm all for constructive criticism. But where are you seeing this? I've got 8-9 apps open and none are inconsistent in my view. I'm picky about these things too. Genuinely I'd like to know.
https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/
https://noheger.at/blog/2026/01/11/the-struggle-of-resizing-...
there are a lot more, but I don't have the links handy.
The corners haven't bothered me much, I like seeing a bit of a gap down there, and I haven't had issues dragging it but that could be because I'm using a regular USB mouse and not a trackpad.
I've been a macOS user (or OS X rather back then) since 2003. It was truly a blessing to finally get a proper UNIX™ on the desktop. I was on Linux in the 7-8 year period before that.
Never did much System 8 etc but we had it in school on one of the Mac labs.
It’s OK to dislike glass, of course. I’m not saying doubters are wrong. A lot of it, though, feels like piling on to sound like one of the cool kid skeptics.
I know, this exists in some form or another, eg Dell, but meh.
And I know Jony Ive / Altman are working on something but Altman, uhg.
Edit: wow are people really that tied to their technology? You're fucked if anything worse happens geopolitically than is happening today.
Don't get me wrong, I can't stand surveillance, and I think age verification is virtue signaling and will have very little affect on actual cyber crime. We need a better way to stop online abuse.
But certificates, GateKeeper, app certification, app stores etc. are all supposed to mitigate serious harm from bad actors.
We need to get much better at security in general if we want to have nice things.
Even if avoid installing their apps, take a look at all the third-party data harvesting malware that iOS apps bundle. You'll find you have plenty of stuff installed from them, and even worse actors.
Linux doesn't have any of this developer certification bullshit, and it has (almost) none of these issues.
I would also argue that Linux does have it - at least in Ubuntu it does with snaps. And package maintainers do a lot of unseen, thankless work as well.
As a developer, I do not like having to deal with certificates. But the few times I have seen them prevent serious problems, I was glad they were there.
"I'm done with Apple. I've been a Mac user since since $EARLY_YEAR. I loved using $OLD_APPLE_HARDWARE to work on $VARIOUS_INTERESTING_PROJECTS. I fondly recall $FORMATIVE_APPLE_MEMORY.
But they've gone too far. $NEW_APPLE_ENSHITTIFICATION is the last straw, I can't do this any more. This will be hard because $REASONS. But I'm going to adopt $PLATFORM because it's the right thing to do."
Most of them mention Steve Jobs but this one didn't actually.
(for me it was interop issues around wearables and trackers; I want to use chipolo and a pebble watch and not feel punished every day for going out of the ecosystem)
CarPlay being actively dangerous if you use it for GPS navigation and someone dares to call you, so the call prompt blocks the entire screen until you either accept or reject the call, was my last straw.
Sure, shit UX and UI is a hassle, but at least it was somewhat consistent. But that the UX department have completely left the building so they're enabling UX that puts people in real life danger? That's the stop I get off at.
This is a so generic template that you cannot criticize a post for matching it. It'd be like criticize a story for matching "X happens to Y, leading to Y doing Z which leads to a (happy|unhappy) ending"
Absolving Apple of responsibility gives more than they deserve.
The author tried to go along with the age verification system with five different cards and failed five times. For an account that's older than the legal age that would need to be verified in the first place, mind you.
There are many ways to do age verification, most of them bad, but that's why most companies complying with these laws use multiple methods.