Free and Open Source Software

Apple products are great if you're already in the ecosystem. As someone who's only Apple product was an iPod nano, I never understood the hype. Yes, they make nice looking devices, but Apple products are all so... Locked. If you want to run Adobe Premier on your new M1 MacBook, great, it does it amazingly well. If you want to run a half dozen virtual machines on the same M1 (which has more than enough power to do it), then you're totally out of luck.

It's the "walled garden" approach that I don't like. Computers, and by extension, smartphones and smart watches, are capable of so much more than what we ask of them, but if we're not allowed to even try then why would I dig myself further into an ecosystem that says "here's what you're allowed to do" rather than "here's what you can do".

Apple has it's place; if you like it, great, but it's not for me.

I have an iPhone, use a MacBook for work (only options are windows and Mac), but use Linux at home. I was an android user years ago, but one of the things that pushed me away is google treating android users as a data source. There were ‘bugs’ which caused the google services to run constantly in the background. In my opinion, Apple cares about users privacy lot more than google does. Use whatever tool suits you best.

I don't like Apple... refuse to elaborate further

I use Apple Watch, phone and iPad because they just work. For my computer, I use Linux. Don’t overthink it.

I think your colleague used an excellent example. Just like COVID vaccination Patente can be considered not good for public interests, the same applies for the FOSS mentality regarding Apple ecosystem.

While I can understand, that Apple products interface very well with each other, it's also true, that it's not hard to get these things working without a walled garden. Just like ActivityPub is an essential standard for Lemmy/Kbin.social and the Fediverse as a whole, there are also standards for all kinds of connections between devices.

The problem is, that corporations like Microsoft and Apple can earn more by making it walled so that people have to decide between compatibility and comfort. Unfortunately, such a dichotomy is false and completely artificial. It only exists solely to optimise the profits of Apple.

I personally have never used an Apple product. When I see the price tag and what I get for it - and see, that I'm put into a small safety box, I don't feel attracted to it. I want things to be simple and under my control. I hate using windows as I feel, how less it's under my control. It's true, that some things like Cortana (Desktop AI on windows) aren't available on Linux, but for now I can well live without it.

At the same time, I also believe in FOSS and also think that it's huge, that anyone in the world can get s flexible versatile OS simply with an internet connection.

I may also be biased, as I'm a software engineer.

I don't use Apple products myself, although I do have an old iPad. My main issue with them isn't a moral one though, it's that Apple seem to design their products to work as slickly as possible with their own ecosystem to the detriment of everything else.

If you use an iPhone, an iPad, an Apple Watch and a Mac then you're probably enjoying a great user experience. If you want to use an Apple device with anything else you're probably in for some amount of pain. I'm not against them, but they're not for me.

I do try and use FOSS software where I can, not least Lemmy and Mastodon, but my main devices are a Windows PC along with an Android phone and tablet. Windows is obviously closed source, and while Android itself is open source you can't say the same for all the vital Google stuff on top. I have a plan to get my hands on a high specced Raspberry Pi when they're finally back in stock and use it as my main home desktop for light use. If I had a laptop of my own I'd definitely be running Linux on it too.

I think everyone should absolutely look into FOSS hardware and software, although in reality I doubt most people would care. If anything it's just the "free" part they care about, but there's obviously a huge benefit in software and hardware being free for others to build on, fork and improve. I'd love nothing more than seeing everything work on this principle, but that's sadly not the world we live in.

Check out https://www.eff.org/: Electronic Frontier Foundation

Maybe this isn't contributing much, but I'm trying to put myself out here to keep the community active. I always would hesitate before commenting my opinion on reddit, lol.

My job borders on the tech industry (environmental modelling, so we use a lot of the framework that programmers do but most of my work is environmental work), but I've always had a really great interest in tech and gaming.

I had a couple of different Android phones, like I really tried - some LG phone but also a Samsung Galaxy S3 - and I felt like they aged quickly. If I installed one too many weird apps it would start running slow like the PCs I used to pirate on in the 2000s. That has literally never happened to me with an iPhone. The ease and seamlessness of messaging and facetiming with other iPhone users (80% of people in my life) is great enough that I can kind of shrug my shoulders and say 'There's no ethical consumption under capitalism anyways.' Plus the seamlessness with the Apple Watch and being able to keep my phone in my bag and know if anything important comes up by looking at my wrist? Honestly has helped me kick the phone habit.

I had a Mac for a while also, but ended up selling it when I felt so limited in the games I could play and apps I could use. I find that Apple's computers are pretty worthless to me, but if I had the money to spend and wanted a reliable, fast browsing and general computing experience, I'm sure I would gladly spend the money on it. But this is coming from someone with a $3000 beast of a home machine lol

You touched upon quite a few interesting topics, so I’ll try to summarize a few things quickly (i.e. prepare for a wall of text).

Generally speaking, citizens of various countries around the world pay taxes, and some of that money gets turned into science. Theoretically, those papers should be accessible to all the citizens because they paid for the experiments to be made and the papers written.

However, the story doesn’t end there! Usually, those papers go through a bizarre system where the scientist pays for them to be published in a journal and then the readers also need to pay to read them. IMO this part of the system is very broken, and open access seems like a way to fix it.

If you feel like it’s all just a big scam, then using sci-hub doesn’t really have any ethical problems. If you feel like the system is contributing something important, then paying for it shouldn’t be a problem either. I’m open to both interpretations, but I’m also reading from sci-hub, so I’m not entirely neutral.

I wonder if you friend would argue that scientific journals are a scam and Apple is also scamming people in a way. If that’s the case, it’s a social justice thing, isn’t it?

It’s true that Apple is pretty bad when it comes to right to repair or FOSS. If you believe that more things should be FOSS, then you probably would be using Android products instead. However, that world comes with a long list of problems too, such as privacy, but that’s a story for another wall of text.

However, as far as the philosophy of open source is concerned, Android is slightly better than iOS. If you’re all about supporting open access and open source, it would make a lot of sense to use Android and avoid all Apple products.

Obviously there are other ways to look at this subject. Personally, I would love to use a 100% FOSS electronics, and as far as laptops are concerned, you can go pretty far in that direction. Mobile devices are a very different story though, but that’s a story for yet another wall of text.

My view: I could not, even if it would safe my own life, explain my 69 year old luddite mother how to operate and navigate an Android smartphone, but I was able to teach her how to use an iPhone 7 Plus without much trouble. She's 73 now and scrolls Twitter and Instagram like the best of them. Replies on emails are still full of typing errors but hey we communicate just fine.

Having languished for years hoping for new updates of android and being hampered by carriers or phone makers, I greatly enjoy the long term support apple gives to its devices.

On then computer front I’m a huge fan of Linux distros. If I could I’d move on from windows.

Just had a lunch conversation today as well and a colleague's iPhone got stolen. I mentioned how the problem of being able to do everything on the phone makes it a single point of failure (back in the day when I traveled I needed internet cafés to login into my brokerage account to sell off some stock. Now I just do it with my phone.). We discussed a bit more how he was stuck and frustrated as all things are done with the phone now (Uber, 2-factor authentication etc.).

But, it was an iPhone, so Apple allowed him to completely shut down and erase his old phone together with all payment info and all other personal info. And then just enter his Apple ID on his new phone (paid by the insurance) and he was back in the game.

If I had my Fairphone stolen, I'd have to somehow recover some parts of my data from my personal backup and the installation process of any new device would take some time. Also, who knows what the thief could've done with my phone?

So yeah, I'm completely opposed to my device being controlled by a corporation to the point they can lock, erase and move all data (including app data) somewhere else, but I do see the advantages.

In wise words of Commander Data: "I realized, it is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive to be more than we are, Lal. It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort yelds its own rewards"

You now understand the importance of free software just like you already knew the importance of free knowledge. You don't need to force yourself into shapes you don't fit, but you can help move us all into a better future for everybody.

(Note that I'm not much of a tech wiz myself, so I only roughly understand the issue with the lack of privacy.)

When it comes to weighing the pros and cons between security versus convenience, it's hard for me to say that one tops the other. We live in a fast-paced world. At the same time, I hate the idea of people profiting off my data and trying to snoop. A lot of companies like Apple have an iffy reputation when it comes to data security, even though they say they protect your data and privacy. At the same time, many companies provide services which have become an integrated part in people's lives.

I have an Android because I love dabbling with FOSS apps. I never want to have a phone from Apple. However, I also have an iPad— and I'm planning on getting a MacBook. The iPad is good for taking notes and making digital art, while the MacBook helps me deal with industry standards in my future career field.

So for me, I'm not indifferent but... I guess a better way to word it is that I'm wary. On a day-to-day basis I prefer efficiency, but in the long-term I think it might bite me in the ass. Somehow. If it didn't already. (Probably did.)

I like to tinker. I don't buy apple products. I get that most people want a device that just works when they pick it up and integrates with the rest of their devices. Apple does this really well.

While I personally agree with your colleague, one must consider one's use case and the amount of time and effort it will take to replicate the things you like about the apple UX and ecosystem and make a judgement call. I have a Windows desktop, a Linux server, an Android phone and tablet and I spend a fair amount of time seeing them up and keeping them talking to one another to share data, but even then I can't get them to share settings simply like do not disturb.

Apple has innovated on the user experience to the point where if I pick up an iphone I can't navigate around it because it relies on a soft touch, "intuitive", gestural interface. And therefore it's easy for me to shun apple products on principle. The real hard work is migrating off the platform you know. And for people that were raised in the apple touch ecosystem, I don't realistically see many of them ever leaving.

Apple is the symbol for a walled garden that feeds it's inhabitants overpriced crap and they love it.

When buying tech products I mainly care about if they are integrated with each other or not.

A lot of people do. That's why apple made sure you can only use apple devices with other apple devices. Bluetooth allows users to share files between any two devices? Better make sure an iPhone can't connect to anything that doesn't have an i prefix in it's name. You like our earbuds, buy an iPhone if you want the buttons to work. Sure, you can play music over the radio from your phone while driving, oh you don't have an iPhone, get fucked.

And it's an effective strategy. You start off with a phone, add a watch and earbuds to it, and the next thing you know you're buying a $1k stand for a $5k monitor to work with your $7k cheese grater of a tower. Because what are you going to do, give up on connectivity, throw away all of your apple devices, or go all the way in on the apple koolaid?

Don't even get me started on the quality of their overpriced crap, or the fact that they've been fighting tooth and nail to keep making ewaste instead of allowing the users to repair and upgrade their devices. Watch any video on the topic from Louis Rossmann.

Tldr

Fuck apple

i dont like apple, but i understand why people do. the ecosystem seems convenient, the promises of privacy, etc. but as a techy person i dont like to use them, it feels too constricting and overpriced. and they havent innovated in a long time (with the exception of vision pro, which although i find ridiculous, at least they finally did something innovative)

I'm an Apple user, and have been since 2007 when I bought my first MacBook. I have an iPhone, a Watch, a bunch of Macs, and Apple TV. I have an iPad too, but the screen's broken, I can't afford to repair it, and honestly, I don't really have much use for an iPad these days.

While I like how much these devices sync with each other, and I love how well they're built, with every year that passes it sits less well with me how, if you can't afford the latest and greatest, you'll experience some level of OS-rot.

I mean, my iPad is new enough to support iPadOS 16, but too old to support Stage Manager. That I'm not really bothered by, but it's indicative of a problem. If the device is capable of running an OS, it should get all of the OS that its hardware will allow. Even more fundamentally though, say iOS 17 has some new additions to Notes.app that will also work in Sonoma, but your Mac isn't recent enough to go beyond Monterey; does that mean you can't view notes made on your iPhone on your Mac?

And yeah, that doesn't sit right with me.

I think FOSSS shouldn't be some kind of religion, if you like Apple, great, go for it. However if you truly value privacy (while beeing better than Microsoft, Apple still collects some of your data) and freedom it certainly won't hurt to try out some alternatives. If you like them better it is a win-win situation, if not switch back.

Things you can do if you are interrested in FOSS, that don't necessary need you to change everything:

• Try some software alternatives for programms you are using (LibreOffice instead of Word, Gimp instead of Photoshop etc.) This lets you search for alternatives.
• Spin up a Linux VM and try it, or try to install linux on an old laptop. -And when you do that, look into KDE Connect as it offers connectivity between devices, that even Apple does not offer in some cases.
• If you are truly into it, you can even contribute to FOSS, to make them as good as Apple products.

I don't like any of the big tech companies at all, Apple included. I think they all have way too much power. I don't trust the 'cloud' either - you don't truly own your data/media unless you have a local, DRM-free copy.

@IronTwo Yep. I don't use Apple primarily because their ecosystem is too closed and you gotta register and buy a programming license from them to do any programming.

Screw all that, I'm staying where the ability to program my devices is guaranteed and I can load and run free software if I want and I don't have to get permission from mega-corp to change the apps I run.

The only Apple thing I ever enjoyed using was a ][e.

I'm a software engineer who uses a lot of open source software and I use Apple devices whenever possible. Electronic devices cost a lot of money, so I want my money to count. With that said, every Apple device I've owned has lasted me for a very long time and are still working today; The longest one being a 2012 Macbook Air which is still alive and kicking today after 2 battery replacements.

Every iPhone I've ever owned have received major iOS updates for 5-6 years. Meanwhile, every Android flagship phone (which costs similarly to the latest and greatest iPhones) I've owned have stopped getting major Android updates after 2-3 years. People criticize Apple for planned obsolescence, but other brands have it worse.

Even if you do listen to your friend's advice and decide to go for another brand, which one actually advocates for the ideals your friend has shared with you? The direct alternatives to Apple products aren't better in any philosophical way. The ones that do either offer a completely difference experience or an inferior product.

Don't feel bad about what your friend is saying. He doesn't pay for your stuff.

My amateur opinion: Apple makes beautiful and thoughtful devices that are tightly integrated into a system of services that work well. But I don't use them, mostly because of the closed nature of that ecosystem, and also because they are consistently more expensive. Back when you could jailbreak and sideload apps on iPhones, I had a series of iPhones and they were pretty good phones, although iTunes always sucked. While they were around, iPods were clever. But I preferred to buy music from a variety of places, I wanted to install apps that I wanted and not what were available on the App Store, and I really didn't like the user-hostile decisions Apple made to sell more hardware. Getting rid of the headphone jack was one of the worst decisions to me, as was Apple's dogmatic refusal to use USB-C until European regulators recently forced the change.