Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

At this point it is obvious that every piece of content worth pirating mysteriously ends up locked behind the “we hired an enterprise consultant who has never used a computer” user experience. Which means pirating is not stealing, it is simply undoing a curse. I used to think taking someone’s work without permission was wrong. But now I understand that if they make me click more than two times or sign up for an account that wants my blood type, the theft automatically becomes a principled act of civil disobedience. Robin Hood with magnet links.

My friend tried to ruin this beautiful moral architecture I’ve built. He goes, “You’re just lying to yourself. This is motivated reasoning. People justify actions after doing them so they don’t feel guilty.” Then he starts rattling off psychological terminology like he’s been waiting his entire life to use the phrase “post-hoc rationalization” in a sentence. He even said cognitive dissonance while maintaining full eye contact, which should honestly be illegal outside of a grad seminar or a cult.

He’s like, “You want the thing. Then you explain to yourself why it was okay to take the thing.”

And I was like: Wow. Incredible. Thank you, professor Brain Surgeon PhD of Human Morality and Meme Piracy. Please invoice me for the lecture. I’ll pay you in exposure and a strongly worded moral shrug.

Because here is the truth:

I am not justifying anything. I am suffering. I am enduring the emotional hardship of navigating a UI that looks like it was designed in Microsoft Access by someone who hates joy. Do you understand the courage it takes to ignore that Buy Now button and instead go spelunking into the digital underworld like I’m Indiana Jones but for PDFs?

This is not theft. This is archaeology.

And yes, sometimes what I excavate is a folder labeled “S04E01–S04E23 (WEB-DL 2160p)” with subtitles and commentary tracks that legally shouldn’t exist. But that is not piracy.

That is restoration of cultural heritage.

The Library of Alexandria burned. I’m simply making sure Season 4 doesn’t.

The way I see it, this type of behaviour by Apple (or any other company doing this) is an invasion of mental real estate. When you force things in front of my eyes that I didn't ask to see, or in my ears, or whatever, that's occupying my brain cycles and space in ways that are entirely uninvited.

Of course, the EULAs and whatnot all require me to agree to this bullshit, so fine, it's technically invited when I opened the application and said "sure, try to sell me your stuff", but to me this isn't the spirit of the software or operating system at ALL, and has been a signal of worse things to come for some time now. It's essentially enshittification.

My answer has been to stop using it. After 25 years of using Apple's computers and around 12 years on their phones, I'm migrating off. No more iPhone, Apple Watch, Airpods, etc. I'm still on a mac and that'll be hard to change, but it's slowly happening. I spent the last week on the ocean and in the woods on a toughbook, and that was kind of fun. It was eye opening to take a computer where I'd never take a macbook.

I find this kind of behaviour totally deplorable anyway, and I can't tolerate it. It's insidious and damaging to their brand because ultimately it's harmful to their users. They want number to go up, I get it, but I'm not their fodder.