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Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

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Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#161

Post by Shivetya »

ubermonkey wrote: post #151

Honestly, the arguments in this series of posts are not strong. I laughed out loud when I got to his complaints about Apple's headphone chips and the ease of pairing they allow -- and how it's somehow unfair that Apple, having developed this competitive advantage, is refusing to share it with other companies. What IS it about Apple that makes a certain class of tech geek feel like they have to dislike them in such a…

Sadly many are very anti success here when it comes to corporations. It is all okay when you are the underdog but when you become top tier suddenly everyone piles on to nitpick

you can read stories throughout the history of HN and see where a company was being heralded for what they were doing only to be criticized later on for the same or similar.

We will never have a world where every company is equally successful and rarely does one company stay at the top for very long. Apple has been at the top of the "their" game for a relatively short amount of time considering how long they have been around. Same with other companies

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#163

Post by brink »

vetinari wrote: post #120
simonh wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I'm fed up with people criticising Apple because it refuses to instruct it's employees to criminalise themselves. Nobody expects any other companies to do this. It's bizzare to me how distorted a moral framework can be that people blame a company for obeying bad laws, as if breaking laws and criminalising employees was an acceptable and moral way to run a business. Sure a company can fight governments in cour…

> people criticising Apple because it refuses to instruct it's employees to criminalise themselves. That's not what they criticize. They criticize Apple because Apple positioned itself to be the sole actor capable of enforcing such a bad laws. That they do it, surprised nobody. In this case, if they were not capable of destroying Telegram on iOS platform, their request would have no teeth and even the governments wou…

This.

After Belarus, I thought Apple would have learned it's lesson and might loosen it's so-called "security" a bit and allow 3rd party apps/app stores on their phones, but nope; they went full steam ahead into their M1 chips with forced code signing in ARM, demonstrating that they learned nothing.

Apple positioning itself as the sole proprietor of what can and cannot run on their machines will only get worse as censorship becomes normalized.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#164

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

ubermonkey wrote: post #151

Honestly, the arguments in this series of posts are not strong. I laughed out loud when I got to his complaints about Apple's headphone chips and the ease of pairing they allow -- and how it's somehow unfair that Apple, having developed this competitive advantage, is refusing to share it with other companies. What IS it about Apple that makes a certain class of tech geek feel like they have to dislike them in such a…

And, on the converse side, why is there a class of tech geek that always strongly defends Apple in the comments? No matter how strong or weak the original criticism is, the top comment basically laughs it out of the room. It is never taken seriously. Could we not equally characterize the defenses as 'public and performative' as well, and if not, why not?

In either case, I agree with you people generally have strong feelings about Apple, relative to other companies. The existence of one side brings out the other more (compared to a baseline where more people have no opinion or are neutral).

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#166

Post by AlexandrB »

rglullis wrote: post #76
tshaddox wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, okay, it may be the case that our democracy is so crippled that it can’t protect basic consumer rights. But even so, what are we supposed to do? Quit our jobs, abandon our livelihoods, and take to the streets until our government decides we’re too much trouble and hands over power to a more consumer-friendly replacement government? Or just continue to want to use subscriptions through Apple where possible?

This is a false dichotomy that both pro-government and pro-corporate people fall into. Whether Apple or "Our Government", we shouldn't be giving this much power to institutions. > But even so, what are we supposed to do? Vote with your wallet. Stop consuming whatever it is that comes with attached strings. Stop putting convenience above principles. Refuse to pay/subscribe/accept any terms that are clearly not in your…

> Vote with your wallet. Stop consuming whatever it is that comes with attached strings.

This is... impossible. Ignoring the amount of time I would sink into researching every eventuality for a given service (how do you find out what the unsubscribe flow is for a site before you subscribe to it?). Some "services" have their hooks in just about everything. Good luck avoiding the likes of Google Analytics or ReCaptcha if you want to use the internet.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#167

Post by f1refly »

duhi88 wrote: post #159
ubermonkey wrote: post #151

Honestly, the arguments in this series of posts are not strong. I laughed out loud when I got to his complaints about Apple's headphone chips and the ease of pairing they allow -- and how it's somehow unfair that Apple, having developed this competitive advantage, is refusing to share it with other companies. What IS it about Apple that makes a certain class of tech geek feel like they have to dislike them in such a…

They're not the underdog anymore, they're very profitable, they make lukewarm claims for headlines that fall apart under scrutiny (the kind of scrutiny that tech geeks are all about), and in recent history have acted pretty badly towards developers. All that said, after building a Linux machine for development and general client work, I consider Macs the best option out there. Everything from being able to copy 2FA c…

Hate to be that guy, but I copy paste clipboard contents across devices with kde connect. It's so reliable that I tried doing it when fixing my mum's computer without realizing it's not a magic built in thing that computers just do for some reason.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#168

Post by rglullis »

Closi wrote: post #140
rglullis wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

"We shouldn't do something, because someone might use it as an opportunity to make it worse" Great.

More like "we should only try to implement large-scale systems after we test a smaller-scale of it and that we are sure that no side-effect is worse than the problems we are trying to solve in the first place"

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#169

Post by yepthatsreality »

ubermonkey wrote: post #151

Honestly, the arguments in this series of posts are not strong. I laughed out loud when I got to his complaints about Apple's headphone chips and the ease of pairing they allow -- and how it's somehow unfair that Apple, having developed this competitive advantage, is refusing to share it with other companies. What IS it about Apple that makes a certain class of tech geek feel like they have to dislike them in such a…

> What IS it about Apple that makes a certain class of tech geek feel like they have to dislike them in such a public and performative way?

Ask yourself the reverse too while you're at it:

> What IS it about Apple that makes a certain class of tech geek feel like they have to like them in such a public and performative way?

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#170

Post by jerf »

rglullis wrote: post #83
the_other wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Stop consuming... " isn't enough. You also have to do some of the work needed for the other side of "vote with your wallet". "Vote" for the system/product/method you wish to see. This might include building it yourself, using crowdfunding/micropayments for journalists/politicians/artists you trust/follow.

Agreed. "Vote with your wallet" does not exclude the idea of being an investor or sponsor of better alternatives.

I would also add that nobody saying "vote with your wallet" necessarily means it to be the only action you take.

It's more a bare minimum. If you're inclined to moan about how awful something is, but you're still paying $5/month for it, it kinda bounds how awful it must be in practice. If it's that bad, stop paying them, as a bare minimum, not as an exclusive remedy.

(Exceptions for monopolies like local internet or other situation where there are considerations strongly forcing you into a particular contract. Some exception for oligarchic situations where everyone has the bad terms... but only some. If it didn't even exist 20 years ago, you don't "need" it.)

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