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Your Computer Isn't Yours

sneak.berlin

171–180 of 764 posts

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#171

What we poor souls didn't understand all these years is that we're effectively helping other companies to steal from Apple by running software that isn't distributed via their app store [1]. I think now that Apple has learned from iOS how profitable a walled garden business model is they are trying to bring that model to the PC world as well. Shipping hardware with their own processors is an important step in that di…

Real Hacker who has concern about her/his privacy wouldn't touch this kind of product with a 10 foot pole!

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#172

Yet despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth - both in the article and in the comments here in the various threads - people are still making excuses for continuing to use Apple/Google/Microsoft/et al products because the alternatives are a bit rough round the edges. These companies have repeatedly shown that they don't respect people's privacy and people have resoundingly responded that neither do they. I would…

Apple has NOT being the same after steve is gone. It is MS 2.0 now! With better design and products of course, none the less the business practices are the same. Much this is enforced by the current economic and political system.

Not MS. MS today is much less into the anti-user, anti-privacy, rentseeking game, compared to Apple or Google. Apple today is M$ 2.0, as much as people here hate that trope.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#173
post #161
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s fairly simple to avoid this by buying hardware that is proven to be effective with the OS. E.g. buy a machine with *buntu preinstalled. Same as with mac really.

Even so, I install Ubuntu on a wide range of machines, laptops included, and I can't recall having any hardware related issues since, oh, 2005 or so? Parent must be very unlucky, or in fact not realise it is their tweaking and tuning that causes issues.

True, installing Ubuntu is probably simpler than installing Windows, it doesn't ask you a million privacy shirking questions.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#174

Yet despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth - both in the article and in the comments here in the various threads - people are still making excuses for continuing to use Apple/Google/Microsoft/et al products because the alternatives are a bit rough round the edges. These companies have repeatedly shown that they don't respect people's privacy and people have resoundingly responded that neither do they. I would…

I'm not. Since the last few iterations of Apple hardware and OS software, I've decided to switch to something else. I'm also advicing all friends and collegues to do the same. There is simply no reason to stay with Apple anymore as a professional. It used to be stability and ease of use, but Windows has since closed that gap, and Linux is a close second (and a must for programming).

Most likely that means I'll run a Linux laptop for programming, and have a partition for Windows on a gaming computer, cuz I love me some games. I know Steam is gradually approaching Linux, but most AAA games still run best under Win. Plus it's an easy platform (outside OS X) to run multimedia production tools. Sorry, I just don't think Gimp or other Linux tools for multimedia production are good enough yet, but the hope remains that they will someday compete with giants like Adobe. For real. And not just as free but woefully inadequate alternatives. Please correct me if I'm wrong here, though. I'd love to be surprised, if you are able!

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#175
I'm so glad I sticked to Arch Linux since early days. It felt wild in the beginning but now, after 10 years, I'm glad I took the risk. Yes, I have had a few sleepless nights trying to solve problems (90% of time caused by myself, remaining 10% caused by not reading wiki/docs/forum before doing stuff). And yes, Arch is not as polished and pretty as MacOS is but... I don't care, I do backend so I can survive without frontend niceness. In the same time I feel sorry for people who rely on tools from apple... it won't be as easy for them to switch.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#178

What we poor souls didn't understand all these years is that we're effectively helping other companies to steal from Apple by running software that isn't distributed via their app store [1]. I think now that Apple has learned from iOS how profitable a walled garden business model is they are trying to bring that model to the PC world as well. Shipping hardware with their own processors is an important step in that di…

Good thing said hacker culture spent 15 years buying inflated laptops and desktops from them ultimately for convenience to give them the market presence to do this in the first place. Its the same thing with Windows.

People will preach all day that they won't make any personal sacrifices to try to avoid feeding literal cancers that are eating the software industry and are shocked when said all consuming voids take away their autonomy but they are so locked in to their ecosystems they are trapped.

These are for profit corporations, not your friends. Their bottom line dictates they maximally abuse copyright and their ability to sell and distribute proprietary software out of your control to maximum effect. Microsoft, Google, et al want you using devices you cannot control, because then they hold all the keys and can demand the greatest ransoms for you to do what you want. Its inevitable, and the persistent total arrogance and hubris on display in the tech hive mind in regards to any of these walled gardens is just... depressing.

Free software isn't going anywhere, especially with RISC-V now being an established failsafe if UEFI PC and ARM totally lock down, but it would just make the struggle a lot easier if the principle victims would stop martyring themselves for the corporate ecosystems they have no say, influence, or control over.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has NOT being the same after steve is gone. It is MS 2.0 now! With better design and products of course, none the less the business practices are the same. Much this is enforced by the current economic and political system.

Not MS. MS today is much less into the anti-user, anti-privacy, rentseeking game, compared to Apple or Google. Apple today is M$ 2.0, as much as people here hate that trope.

The privacy-invasive tracking in Windows 10 is much more obnoxious and tricky to workaround (since it is spread out and hard/impossible to disable). This tracking in macOS is at least under the guise of security whereas the Windows tracking is pure telemetry.
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