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.
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. :)
I still have to encounter a BMW driver who isn’t a piece of trash. Note that I actually raced with BMWs, but still wouldn’t buy one as a daily driver. 🤷🏼
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.
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.
Also the hardware support is not great, for example the webcam. I installed Linux on my old MBP but it was a hassle to get the webcam working involving some dubious command line entries with sudo
Rossman has a vendetta against Apple ever since he got caught importing counterfeit batteries (You can’t slap the Apple logo on batteries that Apple did not make, even if you call them “refurbished”)
The one Apple product I still own is an iPad and I run into this constantly.
Support for network shares in the files app is barely functional at best (“Just use iCloud!”)
Mouse support is still super limited (“Just use touch!”)
You can’t install applications from anywhere but the appstore (“sECuRIty”)
You can’t install a proper browser or browser extensions (I don’t know even know what Apple’s excuse for this one would be)
You can’t disable or modify window tiling (“It’s just like an iPhone, because fuck multitasking!”)
Apple sells the iPad as a computer replacement, but basically all its capable of is watching Netflix or basic note-taking. The longer I use this thing the more I want to buy some x86 tablet that I can just install Linux on instead.
It is true that a real Firefox on iOS/iPadOS is missing. But otherwise you can’t say that your iPad is ONLY used to watch Netflix 🤣 I mean, some people replace their computer with an iPad!
I’m being hyperbolic with that last part, but there’s so much basic computer stuff that the iPad can’t do that is feels like Apple only expects this to be a device to watch Netflix on.
I want to install VS Code (or a comparable IDE) and run/debug some Python scripts, can’t do it.
I want to open a terminal and use basic utilities like ssh. curl, tar, yt-dlp, rclone, rsync, etc, can’t do it. I literally need to install a separate app that lets me SSH into a Linux box so I can do basic stuff there. I’m SOL if I need to work with any data on the iPad’s file system though.
I want to install Godot and continue learning game development on the go, can’t do it.
I want to install Steam and play Stardew Valley
The one thing I’ll say is that Procreate is pretty good, but I’d rather use Krita.
I’m being hyperbolic with that last part, but there’s so much basic computer stuff that the iPad can’t do that it feels like Apple only expects this to be a device to watch Netflix on.
I want to install VS Code (or a comparable IDE) and run/debug some Python scripts, can’t do it.
I want to open a terminal and use basic utilities like ssh, curl, tar, yt-dlp, rclone, rsync, etc, can’t do it. I literally need to install a separate app that lets me ssh into a Linux box so I can do basic stuff there. I’m SOL if I need to work with any data on the iPad’s file system though.
I want to install Godot and continue playing around with game development on the go, can’t do it.
I want to install Steam and play some indie games, can’t do it.
Procreate is pretty good, but I’d rather use Krita.
Which means despite the fact that I want to use it for more, all I do with my iPad Pro (“Pro,” lmao) is watch movies and TV from my Jellyfin server, occasionally draw if I don’t feel like sitting at my desk with a proper Wacom/Krita setup, and write my shopping list.
I agree, I myself am a programmer but hey not everyone is installing IDEs and game engines and Linux on their tablet. Steam could be interesting knowing that Apple authorizes alternative stores in the European Union. The iPad is not complete indeed, but it is just a consumer computer that targets people who do not want to complicate their lives as well as artists (Apple pencil).
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.
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.
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.
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 mean, I wouldn’t expect to have custom Linux ROMs for an iPad. For an Android device, which is already Linux based, that would make sense. But it wouldn’t surprise me if the newer iPads had builds for them since they’re built on the same processor as the MacBooks
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.
Yes, thank you for answering the privacy issue. To be honest, I use Apple products but not so much iCloud. I’m in the Proton ecosystem and I’m waiting for Firefox to become less terrible than it currently is, otherwise in the meantime I’m using Safari with AdGuard…
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.
From recent experience: They read your screen which means the government reads your screen as well. Its okay. if you’re doing nothing illegal, you have nothing to hide! All history books that could tell you otherwise are paywalled anyway!
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.
Apple runs their own advertisement network these days. Its pointless to argue that they sell less data when they themselves still collect all of it for their own advertisement purposes.
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.
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 ops device involved
MMS does have size limits that can hurt image quality, but I have the impression iOS applies limits of its own that are considerably lower. I’m not sure why anybody in 2024 wouldn’t have at least a couple modern messaging apps, but it seems a lot of people don’t.
Well yes exactly. I have noticed for years that every photo or video an iPhone sends me is worse quality than flip phones used to send/receive. Amazing to me that iPhone users fall for this trick
Like they missed that the whole apple MO is to make them feel superior without evidence
It seems unlikely to have that effect when the recipient presumably communicates with people who have other brands of phone, from whom they receive better looking media.
I mean, it certainly has that effect. The in group “knows” your phone sucks and will shame you into getting an iPhone. That’s the idea and it’s probably worked millions of times.
Just doesn’t seem plausible to me. If Alice gets low-quality images from Bob and higher-quality images from Charlie, her most likely assumption if she’s not sophisticated enough to be aware of the cause is that Bob’s phone has a bad camera.
I’ve literally experienced this first hand. At least three times I’ve been told that I should get an iPhone when I pointed this out. You’re giving people way too much credit for being rational
Hey that video you sent me is tiny. I can’t even tell what’s going on
Dude when are you going to get an iPhone? iMessage works great. Janky Android phones can’t even receive videos?
Wouldn’t surprise me at all if they’d hired psychologists to figure out the best way to make conversations like that happen
I have no doubt about the part where iPhone fans waste no opportunity to tell someone else they should get an iPhone. It’s the other side of the argument that falls flat: Alice receives video from Charlie that’s perfectly fine, but Bob’s iPhone sends a pixelated mess, and Bob says the iPhone is better?
Android users would use RCS for communicating with each other via the default messaging app on Android.
MMS has a hard size limit depending on the carrier the sender uses, that’s independent of the sender using an Android phone or an iPhone. This limit can be as high as “more than 1 MB”, but also as low as 300 KB or even less. Compressing an image down to 300 KB will naturally incur a quality penalty.
iMessage is an app. Android is an operating system. I think what you meant to say is iMessage doesn’t support RCS.
The difference is Apple worked hard to keep it this way for decades, even so far as “patch” a fix that was created to make it possible for their customers to communicate securely with Android users.
And Apple is only going to support RCS because they were forced to, and they’ll on comply to the degree that they think they can get away with. Just like they’re doing with app stores.
Interest in RCS is recent - newer than iMessage, which launched in 2011. RCS with Google’s proprietary extensions is just another proprietary messaging app, and I am not particularly excited about it.
even so far as “patch” a fix that was created to make it possible for their customers to communicate securely with Android users.
There’s no shortage of options for doing that. What Apple wants is tight control over all of its walled gardens, which should be no surprise given the company’s history. They’re very good at making it appear as if decisions made to increase their profits are aligned with the interests of users. It’s probably even true that someone would have exploited the technique Beeper Mini was using to send spam if Apple hadn’t closed it.
I don’t know that that’s true. But regardless, I agree and wish they decided on a more open protocol, but that is just not the corporate way. Anything is better than SMS/MMS.
There’s no shortage of options for doing that.
Sure. Ask yourself why Apple users don’t use them? The answer is SMS fallback. A feature which you can use with any app on Android and literally only with iMessage on iOS.
It’s probably even true that someone would have exploited the technique Beeper Mini was using to send spam if Apple hadn’t closed it.
Well Apple doesn’t seem to give a single fuck about SMS spam, so I’m not sure what your point is. Google at least incorporates spam filtering.
SMS fallback. A feature which you can use with any app on Android
SMS fallback is not a common feature of internet-based messaging apps on Android. Signal used to do it, but does not now. I don’t think WhatsApp or Telegram ever did.
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
I mean they understand their encryption algorithm, they made it after all, and with the advancements of Quantum computing it could be possible to decrypt someone’s data… So what good does providing quantum computing for Imessages do… If they : understand how the algorithm works + they have enough computing power to decrypt it + it’s proprietary.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was all a theater, and it’s the best backdoor implementation to exist
This feels a lot like the argument of well what if they break TLS? A lot of hypotheticals when I don’t have any reason or proof to believe that they’ve made a back door
No, breaking an encryption is all about knowing how it works, many cryptographers make their algorithm proprietary in hopes that an attacker will have a hard time figuring how it works, however they turn out to be weak, other encryption algorithms are developed in the open so that many people look at it and see the flaws
The key word is : weak The idea is not making a backdoor directly, the idea is making it flawed, it’s like securing a bank with steel doors with the exception of one door, that door is made out of wood and only you know where it’s located.
About “Proprietary App Store”: the store itself and many apps on there are proprietary
Doesn’t matter. The point is that devs have to jump through completely arbitrary hoops and pay Apple money just to make their apps available to Apple users. And any money they take they have to give 30% of the income to Apple for the privilege of running it on their hardware.
About “Gaslighting their customers”: I’d like to see hard proof on that.
There isn’t any. But all you have to do is look at their actions.
I’m not saying iPhones don’t have their advantages but you don’t understand what the actual problem is. And it comes off as intentional.
Regarding iPhone photos, these are usually stored in HEIF/HEIC format, which is a large annoyance if you want to edit, and sometimes show, those pictures. I work at a photolab and whenever we see customers with iPhones we immediately say “There will be issues to develop your pictures”
Forcing me to keep updating my OS version, even though it probably isnt that necessary (yes like Windows). Ok there will be perks and nominal security/privacy issues but not sufficient to make me have to replace all my usual software for versions with huge bloat and zero improvement.
The quality of build and user experience are great and def better than even top end Windows machines, but really, is that the deal maker? (I use both Mac and PC units every day.) If you look after a MBPro it will last 20+ years, but the constant 'you cant update something bc your OS is really old (High Sierra in this case) becomes a total PITA, along with battery death etc. My PCs also last a very long time and are very reliable. If they do break they are usually easier to sort out (and much cheaper).
Genius bar is a joke. As a pretty mid range tech person I actually repaired/reinstalled a Yosemite machine myself rather than wait in excess of 14 days to get any help from them and then be charged an arm and a leg. Google was my friend. Cost? Nothing. I got a battery replacement for an old mac laptop from an independent good rep company, cost was about 25% of what Genius bar would have charged.
My next laptop will probably be a Dell or System 76 Linux. Just to experience a fancy Linux build in a posh box.
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
Closed source that pretends to be your friend. They are just wearing a different mask than google, microsoft, facebook, bytedance, and so on. Any privacy gained is a circumstantial side-effect that will cede to any monetary interests and will be used as an excuse to lock users into their walled garden.
iPhone does not allow you to have privacy due to its blackbox nature, and is simply a false marketing assurance by Apple to you. Recently, an unpatchable hardware flaw was discovered in Apple’s T1 and T2 “security” chips, rendering Apple devices critically vulnerable.
Apple’s CSAM mandatory scanning of your local storage is a fiasco that will echo forever. This blog article should be of help. But they lied how their system was never hacked. I doubt. They even removed CSAM protection references off of their website for some reason.
Pretty sure atleast the most coveted privacy innovation of App Tracking protection with one button tracking denial would work, right? Pure. Privacy. Theater.
Surely this benevolent company blocked and destroyed Facebook and Google’s ad network ecosystem by blocking all those bad trackers and ads. Sigh. Nope. Now it is just Apple having monopoly over your monetised data.
Also, Android’s open source nature is starting to pay off in the long run. Apple 0-day exploits are far cheaper to do than Android.
they make bad products that are media darlings because it’s fashion more than anything. they’re treated like consumer advocates but they are one of the absolute worst companies for vendor lock-in, and are absolutely anti-consumer, but will have innumerable articles written about how they’re “the best” for any given measure. it drives me nuts how the public perception of them is the complete opposite of what they actually are, and i don’t get it.
also their software is bad. all due credit their hardware impressed but it doesn’t matter if the software is crap.
and they aren’t private: they’ve got all your data but have somehow convinced everyone that it’s fine that they have it because they’re somehow better than every other large tech company.
I don't hate apple. Especially from a privacy record, they actually have a far superior history than essentially every other hardware manufacturer out there.
I think they're overpriced and I don't agree with some of their design decisions, and in general feel like they could give the consumer more control over things, which is why I don't personally have an iPhone or iPad etc., I use them at work and have nothing against them in general)
Especially from a privacy record, they actually have a far superior history than essentially every other hardware manufacturer out there.
That’s what their marketing department wants you to believe. But basically all independent investigations into that have concluded that Apple is no better, just that they collect all the data themselves rather than allowing you to have it collected by Facebook etc.
If you look into their privacy policy etc. its very obvious that they exclude all their own surveillance advertisement and privacy invasive stuff from the limits imposed on others. If they truly cared about privacy they would not make these exceptions for themselves.
I don’t hate apple. Especially from a privacy record, they actually have a far superior history than essentially every other hardware manufacturer out there.
Is there a source that has independently verified and tested this claim? Or is this a fabrication of strings made out of your asshair?
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