Real question. I would like to know what drives you to hate Apple? (In terms of privacy of course because in terms of price it’s another story).
Security theater: All you stuff is encrypted but they have the decryption keys
Proprietary App Store: The apps and the store itself are proprietary and I don’t trust Apple.
Gaslighting their customers: Images shared with Android users from iPhone are purposely crushed to a unreviewable quality. The idea is to convince people that Android takes terrible photographs.
About “Security theater”: you can enable what’s called “Advanced Data Protection” so the encryption keys are only stored on-device for most types of data including photos, backups and also notes for example. Mail and calendar is one exception that comes to mind, but you could also always use a different mail and calendar service. This is a fairly recent feature, so you may have missed it. Sure, it’s not your fully self-hosted “cloud” on which you can audit every single line of code and whatnot, but it might actually be the best “compromise” of ease-of-use vs. privacy for many people outside the tech bubble we’re in in this community.
About “Proprietary App Store”: the store itself and many apps on there are proprietary, but there are a lot of open source apps on the App Store as well. The bigger problem is the fact that the App Store is the only (hassle-free) way to install apps to the iPhone and only recently the EU seems to change that with alternative storefronts now emerging, but Apple is limiting the use of them to the EU, so they’re essentially doing the bare minimum to comply with EU law.
About “Gaslighting their customers”: I’d like to see hard proof on that. I think what you’re talking about is the fact that messages sent to Android users using the default “Messages” app are sent as MMS, which is an ancient technology and as such only support tiny, low-quality images. Android doesn’t support iMessage and Apple seems to like to keep it that way as it’s apparently selling a lot of iPhones this way in the US (and sure, I agree that’s a bad thing). It does get better with the just-announced RCS support (a supposedly open protocol which Google added so many proprietary extensions to you can’t really call it open anymore) so pictures can be send in full quality to Android users using the Messages app. Also, you could always use a third-party messenger like Signal or WhatsApp and send full-quality pictures just fine.
I’m not saying there aren’t any concerns, but some of the information you provided is at least out of date.
Android doesn’t support iMessage
I think it’s the inverse: iMessage doesn’t support Android.
Those aren’t equivalent statements; the first implies that something about Android makes it impossible for Apple to produce an iMessage client for it when that is purely a business decision on Apple’s part.
You are correct and the person you’re responding to is wrong about just about everything they said. Funny to me they think mms is why those images look so shitty when no android users have ever experienced that without an ios device involved
About “Security theater”:
keep in mind that companies can lie on how their stuff works, also I don’t think the nature of the store matters, as much as the fact that you’re only allowed to get the open source apps from there which will also run on top of a proprietary OS, with proprietary firmware
Gaslighting their customers": I’d like to see hard proof on that
Consider that I have a low standard on what a hard proof should be,… I consider telling people that : “Privacy, that’s iPhone”, while literally developing nothing in the open, which is the best and ONLY way to guarantee transparency, instead they went with the “trust me bruh” method, plus they display ads… like…they have… a… dedicated… ad … platform…
You don’t respect my Privacy while you target me with ads
Or being unable to install third-party apps or other browser engines is supposed to be for security reasons. Or being environment friendly through their recycling program when the truth is that they only do that to keep spare parts out of reach of independent repair shops. Pure gaslighting.
They can lie about how the advanced data encryption works…. But then they also tell you that you’re shit outta luck if you forget or screw up your decryption code. If they really had a back door, then I would expect them to take a much less hard line on you’re screwed if you lose the key.
I would be surprised if they had a back door too given how they’ve pushed back on back doors from the NSA and EU
And in addition they run big adverts on caring about privacy, while in reality they do the same shit as all the other tech companies, but just use their monopoly power to push out surveillance advertisement competitors.
They don’t, actually. They only sell anonymized statistics and don’t allow advertisers to choose who they advertise to. As a result, they can’t charge as much for advertising. So they are actively taking less money to better protect your information in that respect.
I do like their laptops, but for literally everything else: the fact that I basically don’t own my own hardware.
I can’t install or distribute my own software without Apple’s arbitrary approval. When Apple decides it’s done supporting the products, I can’t even install a different OS like Linux because the hardware is completely locked down… they become paper-weights.
That is not how ownership is supposed to work.
My 2011 iPad 3rd gen.
A lightweight Linux distribution would make that thing killer for word processing and document reading. Might even allow YouTube videos to be watched again.
Any equivalent Android tablet would have custom ROMs etc. to get a bit more functionality out of it. I know it’s not a tablet, but look at the Samsung galaxy SII - the amount of community development for that is incredible to this day.
I was able to install Linux on my 2015 MBP, but weird stuff didn’t work OOTB like the webcam and while I eventually got it working, it was less than polished because it was all reverse engineered workarounds by the Linux gods who managed to figure out the exact commands that were needed to be run.
In what way is the hardware locked down? Is this something new with the M chips?
Everything except the Mac line has a locked boot process. So your iPhone or iPad must run the latest iOS, must have an Apple ID, must source apps from Apple, and Apple has gotten so good at securing their devices that its basically killed hobbyist jailbreaking.
Anything you do on these multi thousand dollar devices is only because Apple allows you to— reluctantly, I might add.
- price
- closed ecosystem that funnels you into buying more overpriced hardware
- general feeling of superiority apple customers often seem to aquire
(e.g. my former project lead refused to touch other peoples devices because using them “doesn’t feel like apple, eww”)
All that.
BTW, of all the drivers on the road, I always hated Volvo drivers who sport an Apple sticker the most. They’re pure entitled no-good scum. Except BMW drivers, they should be euthanised.
What kind of image do Volvo drivers have where you live? Here Volvos are just seen as reliable but boring.
Here in Slovenia they have this sort of hipster/yuppie clientele, basically the same demographic as the smug Apple users, that’s why you see so many with Apple stickers. Usually they drive the estate version like XC70. The new SUVs are more for the executive smug base, though, but obviously they’re still scumbags. :)
Overpriced hardware comes with a boon: It lasts longer. I am by no means an apple fanboy, but when I discovered the 12 year old Mac of my dad still performed like mid-range PCs with Windows, I was quite surprised.
Still not buying their hardware though…
Except a 12 year old Mac isn’t supported by Apple anymore and will likely be riddled with vulnerabilities. You could just load Linux on it since it’s probably an Intel based chipset.
It depends on the chipset. The big changes in chipset have been the big barriers for Mac upgradability. My father ran a 10 year old MacBook that was still running the latest MacOS until he found that his 4GB of RAM wasn’t going to be enough and bought a new one (without talking to me first). I had a PPC MacBook that ran on the latest MacOS for about 6 years after Apple switched to Intel.
Check out Louis Rossman on youtube. Especially his apple hardware design analysis.
Planned obsolescence: the other day I was setting up a refurbished MacBook air from 2017. It officially runs only up to macOS 12. I wanted to install apple’s productivity suite iWorks (pages, keynotes, numbers) on it.
But the AppStore said I would need macOS 13 to download and install it. Why the eff doesn’t it allow me to install an older version of those apps, and why does the 2017 not support macOS 13?
So I installed Open core Legacy Patcher, built a macOS 13 installer. Installed 13 with absolutely no issues and finally was able to install iWorks.
Any non versed or risk taking user would need to buy a newer Mac… good job apple.
Conversely I have a dell xps from 2018 that run very well with fedora atomic (kde). I upgraded the SSD, WiFi card and replaced the battery. Should easily last me another 5 years
It’s Intel, you too can have fedora atomic, and it’ll likely last another 5 years.
Seeing as no-one’s answering the question in terms of privacy (although I agree with their sentiment)
Trust. You have to trust that they will respect your privacy. They actually talk a good game, are probably superior in privacy to the average android (but not GrapheneOS or Linux) in so much as they fend off other entities trying to hoover your data, mostly so they have exclusive access (at least to metadata, actual data may currently even be secure but that can change and possession is nine tenths and all that). At the end of the day, they’re a greedy mega-corporation and cannot be trusted if they need to keep that line going up this quarter. I much prefer transparent systems that keep me in control and possession of my data.
I like their hardware, excellent build quality (shame about long term support and e-waste though). Will probably pick up a cheap M1 Air once Asahi linux stabilises.
