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What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. It's the stronges

by f430 6y ago

What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. It's the strongest example of consumer cultism. Absolute in their exceptionalism and ignorance. Similar problems discussed in the article are found in Tesla. The lowest common denominator of consumer cultism is surveillance and it's no surprise that both Apple and Tesla do exceptionally well in authoritarian countries like China. When our data is worth more than a barrel of oil, strange things are happening.

jasonv 6y ago
And what to do about it? Windows & Linux probably aren't the answer to the trillion-dollar juggernaut that is Apple. OSS has drawn the talent, and there's a lot of talent building enterprise applications, most of which are the bricks in the wall of mega-tech as they re-write our rights. Macs are great if you want access to the financial funnel that is the app stores now. That probably defines the echo chamber of silence that exists on this subject.
- oblio 6y ago
  > Windows & Linux probably aren't the answer to the trillion-dollar juggernaut that is Apple. Windows, that indie project from the mom & pop software store :-)) Microsoft is another trillion dollar corporation, not that far behind Apple.
staplers 6y ago
They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. This is an ignorant view to take. I'm a pretty dedicated apple user but only because the other options don't have the tools I need and the UX I desire. Likely many of the flaws apple products have are piling up to a "straw that broke the camels back" situation for users in a few years or decades. When you assume other's intentions and feelings, bad things happen.
- amelius 6y ago
  So you're saying that privacy (Apple knows what apps you're running and when) and autonomy (Apple controlling which apps you may run) are less important than the improvements which Apple has made to its OS over competitors? This is totally fine. But there's where the friction between the two viewpoints is.
rootusrootus 6y ago
> What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. Alternatively, they know what's going on and approve of it. Consider that this blog post frames the issue as one of surveillance, instead of an anti-malware effort. If you are inclined to be anti-Apple-at-any-cost, then you will agree with the blog post. If you are a happy Apple user, you are inclined to go for the latter explanation. > It's the strongest example of consumer cultism. Absolute in their exceptionalism and ignorance. Now you're being ridiculous, snobby, and insinuating that you are of course immune to such motivations. Sucks to see this on HN.
- saghm 6y ago
  > Consider that this blog post frames the issue as one of surveillance, instead of an anti-malware effort. It does address the idea of this system being intended to combat malware in the fourth and fifth paragraphs. The point it makes is that there's nothing stopping it from being used against legitimate software too, other than the benevolence of the "warlord" who controls it, so you're still just trusting them to protect you and hoping they don't take advantage of it.
  - zepto 6y ago
    “you're still just trusting them to protect you and hoping they don't take advantage of it” That is exactly what Apple’s customers are doing. It actually a pretty normal feature of modern society to trust institutions or businesses not to take advantage of particular powers they have. It’s really bizarre to call a business a ‘warlord’. The converse, where we can’t trust any institution or business and we must all be fully equipped to individually defend our own interests on our own is a lot more like a warlord situation. That said, I agree that the centralized model is bad and we need to develop technology that is both secure and decentralized. But currently no such technology exists. Everyone has to trust someone.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      Cory Doctorow is a sci-fi author and has written cyberpunk fiction, calling corporate empires "warlords" seems par for the genre. Scott Galloway has called GAFA "the four horseman" and Bruce Sterling calls them "the Stacks."
gumby 6y ago
> What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. They are hardly alone. There are so many issues to worry about you can really only afford to pay attention to a few. Water pollution, food pollution, being able to to be housed and fed 20 years ago...the list goes on and on. And computer security is obscure and way down the list. And specifically addressing your case, the same is true of Windows and, TBH, all Linux distros. You've checked everything on your machine for back doors?
- mistermann 6y ago
  > They are hardly alone. There are so many issues to worry about you can really only afford to pay attention to a few. Water pollution, food pollution, being able to to be housed and fed 20 years ago...the list goes on and on. And computer security is obscure and way down the list. I would be quite surprised if American citizens were not able to come to a reasonable (at least partial fix) consensus on most of these issues in fairly short order if there was a platform designed specifically for making such decisions. Of course, getting any substantial value out of this knowledge would require a means to pass legislation, but "democracy" is at least as compromised and beyond control of the citizens as our software is. Nonetheless, I think it would still be valuable to have a grassroots way for the public to actually voice their opinions on matters, at least then we could all have a good laugh in higher resolution at how we allowed control over our destiny to slip out of our hands, without putting up even the slightest fight.
shmerl 6y ago
Those who care mostly never used Apple in the first place. So naturally those who use it usually don't care. There are some refugees from Apple periodically though.
coldtea 6y ago
>What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. Or, you know, we're as informed (or more) than you, but have different priorities and opinions. Other people that are not merely mindless sheep, where you and those agreeing with you are the only smart people? What a wild concept! I've used anything, from 4 major unices of yore, to FreeBSD, a dozen of Linux varieties, Windows, and modern Linux. I still enjoy macOS more and I agree with lots of the decisions taken in that ecosystem (not every one, but more than not). You are free to buy something else. >The lowest common denominator of consumer cultism is surveillance and it's no surprise that both Apple and Tesla do exceptionally well in authoritarian countries like China. A non sequitur if I ever saw one...
- julianmarq 6y ago
  >> What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. > we have different priorities That's a different way of saying "we don't care". You aren't really contradicting the other person's point.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >That's a different way of saying "we don't care". You aren't really contradicting the other person's point. And yet, I am. The weasel phrasing "we don't care" implies: (a) we should care (b) everybody should care (c) we're doing the wrong thing by not caring In other words, it takes the parent's prioritization as some absolute correct one everybody should agree on (this is also evident from the rest of the comment). As opposed to merely "we have different priorities, and we don't believe yours are important". If the parent changed the "they don't care" accusation to a neutral "they don't care about the things I care", I'd undersign it.
- type0 6y ago
  > I still enjoy macOS I would enjoy macOS if it subscribed to open source ideals, but then it wouldn't be Apple right > You are free to buy something else. That's exactly the advice I give to everyone who asks me about appel
zaptheimpaler 6y ago
Ah yes, let me guess... we should all move to Linux & Pinephone right?
amelius 6y ago
> What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. From what I see in discussions: they do care. But it seems they have simply accepted Apple as a benevolent dictator.
- sorokod 6y ago
  To use the article's terminology, Apple is the lord of the manor which makes owners of Apple hardware, serfs.
  - backing 6y ago
    And uses slaves to build devices.
- Klonoar 6y ago
  What? I think if people bothered to read beyond blind hatred, they'd see Apple users _do_ tend to care - and are often very critical of Apple, which is what you'd want. Hell, read any of Sneak's comments on here - they might be the perfect example. Ultimately, until another ecosystem can match what Apple provides (Windows & Linux do not), I don't see a particular point in attempting to switch. I'd rather be critical of Apple, disable the things I don't like or trust, and then do actual things with my life.
na85 6y ago
>What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. I'm not really an Apple fan, per se, but I do own a macbook and the reason is this: It's not worth my time to switch to Linux. I have a core i7 Thinkpad that I also run Debian+KDE on, and the user experience is much worse, to say nothing of track pad quality and battery life. I'm a parent and I'm not a software developer in my professional life, which means every minute spent figuring out why Linux won't do $thing properly is a minute not spent on more important things. The opportunity cost of using free software is just too high for my use case.
nickik 6y ago
Apple and Tesla do perfectly well everywhere, in China and guess what, in Switzerland, one of the most democratic countries there is. You are suffering from strong does of selection bias.
ramphastidae 6y ago
And yet you can identify no real alternative. Last I checked Apple is the only company with a consumer-grade operating system that (1) has refused to turn over user data even after legal challenges from the federal government and (2) doesn’t generate revenues from advertising and selling user data.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Are you ignoring alternatives like Debian and PureOS? They may not be as widely used but they exist.
- f430 6y ago
  > And yet you can identify no real alternative. Qubes/Whonix/Tails or any hardened linux distros is a practical and widely accepted alternative in the security field. To my knowledge I don't think I recall anybody using a comprehensive "pen test" framework on a Mac. > has refused to turn over user data even after legal challenges from the federal government While this is true, it never stopped the agencies from getting their data through other means. There is a company in Israel that specializes in unlocking iPhone data. It recently lead to the arrest of a child sex cult ring in South Korea. > doesn’t generate revenues from advertising and selling user data. neither does Microsoft if you consider the metrics are used internally and using it to optimize their product to maximize revenues. I will agree that it is less pervasive than Google or Facebook.
  - yborg 6y ago
    And these alternate solutions lack 75% of the functionality available to customers of Apple products. It isn't that these customers are all clueless dunces, many of them look at the tradeoffs and if they are living in a country with some citizen rights conclude that the risk is acceptable given the magnitude of the tradeoff.
- est31 6y ago
  > has refused to turn over user data You don't need to turn over any data if you transmit which programs people start in the clear, unencrypted, easily observable, to one of your servers. And they do turn it over. They tried to make icloud end to end encrypted but then didn't do it at the behest of the US government. They employ the same tactics as zoom by claiming that icloud is encrypted, trying to make people believe that it's end to end encrypted. The encryption key still sits with them though. Yes, there are some high profile cases where they very publicly refused the feds. Got a lot of publicity. That was their main goal, to paint an image of them not turning over user data. Maybe apple indeed collects less user data than Google. But they still collect many things, and it's way harder to escape apple's collection than to escape Google's collection as their OSs are so locked down.
azernik 6y ago
Take this quote from the article, and s/Google/Apple/g: "If you don’t mind being spied on by Google, and if you trust Google to decide who’s a scumbag and who isn’t, this is great."
renewiltord 6y ago
Wait, you'll pay me $50 (just under today's Brent crude) for a list of everything I downloaded and ran (what Apple gets)? I'll maybe even throw in all the names of the `a.out` that I create for no reason. Sure, what the hell. It's a deal, email me and I'll run: find ~/Downloads -type f -executable On video for you.
boxed 6y ago
We care. And Apple cares which is why they publicly said this system as run right now was a mistake. Within a week of this going public. The article linked here is pretending that didn't happen. And you are pretending, against all evidence, that Apple users don't care. But it's apple users who complained and sounded the alarm in the first place. Your statement is so obviously and trivially false it's crazy to see any one up voting it.
nbzso 6y ago
>What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. I am Apple user and I care a lot for my self and my privacy. Thats why I will not support this company with my money. Some people are aware, but unfortunately we run a business in which Mac OS as software platform is superior. Little Snitch is installed in all my Apple computers. In last 5 years after every os update, telemetry from mothership is exponentially more. I don't like this direction and have taken active measures to change my business operation and remove everything Apple related excluding some graphic software and audio. Windows is not an option. Apple is a company that openly dislikes professional users and focusing marketing efforts to semi pro audience by using powerful tribe psychology, trends and sentiments to create public perception of a Good Shepard and Guardian. In reality they know that future is data based and Google has advantage in this market. So they correct direction to recondition public over the idea of personal computing and transform Mac OS to iOS UX with already established consumer habit of no control and minimum transparency. From business perspective the idea that someone will have a log file with my office activity is non acceptable. Period. Apple knows this and recently stopped standalone updates. This pushes businesses to avoid sandboxing of Apple computers in corporate network. The message is clear. You rent Mac Os as a service, the price is your data. It is Beautified Google:)
- etripe 6y ago
  > we run a business in which Mac OS as software platform is superior Out of curiosity, what business is that? Music? Video editing?
  - nbzso 6y ago
    Graphic/ UI design plus audio and video production. Affinity/ Sketch/ Final Cut / Resolve / Fusion / Logic.

by f430 6y ago

jasonv 6y ago

And what to do about it? Windows & Linux probably aren't the answer to the trillion-dollar juggernaut that is Apple. OSS has drawn the talent, and there's a lot of talent building enterprise applications, most of which are the bricks in the wall of mega-tech as they re-write our rights. Macs are great if you want access to the financial funnel that is the app stores now. That probably defines the echo chamber of silence that exists on this subject.

oblio 6y ago
> Windows & Linux probably aren't the answer to the trillion-dollar juggernaut that is Apple. Windows, that indie project from the mom & pop software store :-)) Microsoft is another trillion dollar corporation, not that far behind Apple.

staplers 6y ago

They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. This is an ignorant view to take. I'm a pretty dedicated apple user but only because the other options don't have the tools I need and the UX I desire. Likely many of the flaws apple products have are piling up to a "straw that broke the camels back" situation for users in a few years or decades. When you assume other's intentions and feelings, bad things happen.

amelius 6y ago
So you're saying that privacy (Apple knows what apps you're running and when) and autonomy (Apple controlling which apps you may run) are less important than the improvements which Apple has made to its OS over competitors? This is totally fine. But there's where the friction between the two viewpoints is.

rootusrootus 6y ago

> What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. Alternatively, they know what's going on and approve of it. Consider that this blog post frames the issue as one of surveillance, instead of an anti-malware effort. If you are inclined to be anti-Apple-at-any-cost, then you will agree with the blog post. If you are a happy Apple user, you are inclined to go for the latter explanation. > It's the strongest example of consumer cultism. Absolute in their exceptionalism and ignorance. Now you're being ridiculous, snobby, and insinuating that you are of course immune to such motivations. Sucks to see this on HN.

saghm 6y ago
> Consider that this blog post frames the issue as one of surveillance, instead of an anti-malware effort. It does address the idea of this system being intended to combat malware in the fourth and fifth paragraphs. The point it makes is that there's nothing stopping it from being used against legitimate software too, other than the benevolence of the "warlord" who controls it, so you're still just trusting them to protect you and hoping they don't take advantage of it.
- zepto 6y ago
  “you're still just trusting them to protect you and hoping they don't take advantage of it” That is exactly what Apple’s customers are doing. It actually a pretty normal feature of modern society to trust institutions or businesses not to take advantage of particular powers they have. It’s really bizarre to call a business a ‘warlord’. The converse, where we can’t trust any institution or business and we must all be fully equipped to individually defend our own interests on our own is a lot more like a warlord situation. That said, I agree that the centralized model is bad and we need to develop technology that is both secure and decentralized. But currently no such technology exists. Everyone has to trust someone.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Cory Doctorow is a sci-fi author and has written cyberpunk fiction, calling corporate empires "warlords" seems par for the genre. Scott Galloway has called GAFA "the four horseman" and Bruce Sterling calls them "the Stacks."

gumby 6y ago

> What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. They are hardly alone. There are so many issues to worry about you can really only afford to pay attention to a few. Water pollution, food pollution, being able to to be housed and fed 20 years ago...the list goes on and on. And computer security is obscure and way down the list. And specifically addressing your case, the same is true of Windows and, TBH, all Linux distros. You've checked everything on your machine for back doors?

mistermann 6y ago
> They are hardly alone. There are so many issues to worry about you can really only afford to pay attention to a few. Water pollution, food pollution, being able to to be housed and fed 20 years ago...the list goes on and on. And computer security is obscure and way down the list. I would be quite surprised if American citizens were not able to come to a reasonable (at least partial fix) consensus on most of these issues in fairly short order if there was a platform designed specifically for making such decisions. Of course, getting any substantial value out of this knowledge would require a means to pass legislation, but "democracy" is at least as compromised and beyond control of the citizens as our software is. Nonetheless, I think it would still be valuable to have a grassroots way for the public to actually voice their opinions on matters, at least then we could all have a good laugh in higher resolution at how we allowed control over our destiny to slip out of our hands, without putting up even the slightest fight.

shmerl 6y ago

Those who care mostly never used Apple in the first place. So naturally those who use it usually don't care. There are some refugees from Apple periodically though.

coldtea 6y ago

>What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. Or, you know, we're as informed (or more) than you, but have different priorities and opinions. Other people that are not merely mindless sheep, where you and those agreeing with you are the only smart people? What a wild concept! I've used anything, from 4 major unices of yore, to FreeBSD, a dozen of Linux varieties, Windows, and modern Linux. I still enjoy macOS more and I agree with lots of the decisions taken in that ecosystem (not every one, but more than not). You are free to buy something else. >The lowest common denominator of consumer cultism is surveillance and it's no surprise that both Apple and Tesla do exceptionally well in authoritarian countries like China. A non sequitur if I ever saw one...

julianmarq 6y ago
>> What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. > we have different priorities That's a different way of saying "we don't care". You aren't really contradicting the other person's point.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >That's a different way of saying "we don't care". You aren't really contradicting the other person's point. And yet, I am. The weasel phrasing "we don't care" implies: (a) we should care (b) everybody should care (c) we're doing the wrong thing by not caring In other words, it takes the parent's prioritization as some absolute correct one everybody should agree on (this is also evident from the rest of the comment). As opposed to merely "we have different priorities, and we don't believe yours are important". If the parent changed the "they don't care" accusation to a neutral "they don't care about the things I care", I'd undersign it.
type0 6y ago
> I still enjoy macOS I would enjoy macOS if it subscribed to open source ideals, but then it wouldn't be Apple right > You are free to buy something else. That's exactly the advice I give to everyone who asks me about appel

zaptheimpaler 6y ago

Ah yes, let me guess... we should all move to Linux & Pinephone right?

amelius 6y ago

> What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. From what I see in discussions: they do care. But it seems they have simply accepted Apple as a benevolent dictator.

sorokod 6y ago
To use the article's terminology, Apple is the lord of the manor which makes owners of Apple hardware, serfs.
- backing 6y ago
  And uses slaves to build devices.
Klonoar 6y ago
What? I think if people bothered to read beyond blind hatred, they'd see Apple users _do_ tend to care - and are often very critical of Apple, which is what you'd want. Hell, read any of Sneak's comments on here - they might be the perfect example. Ultimately, until another ecosystem can match what Apple provides (Windows & Linux do not), I don't see a particular point in attempting to switch. I'd rather be critical of Apple, disable the things I don't like or trust, and then do actual things with my life.

na85 6y ago

>What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. I'm not really an Apple fan, per se, but I do own a macbook and the reason is this: It's not worth my time to switch to Linux. I have a core i7 Thinkpad that I also run Debian+KDE on, and the user experience is much worse, to say nothing of track pad quality and battery life. I'm a parent and I'm not a software developer in my professional life, which means every minute spent figuring out why Linux won't do $thing properly is a minute not spent on more important things. The opportunity cost of using free software is just too high for my use case.

nickik 6y ago

Apple and Tesla do perfectly well everywhere, in China and guess what, in Switzerland, one of the most democratic countries there is. You are suffering from strong does of selection bias.

ramphastidae 6y ago

And yet you can identify no real alternative. Last I checked Apple is the only company with a consumer-grade operating system that (1) has refused to turn over user data even after legal challenges from the federal government and (2) doesn’t generate revenues from advertising and selling user data.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
Are you ignoring alternatives like Debian and PureOS? They may not be as widely used but they exist.
f430 6y ago
> And yet you can identify no real alternative. Qubes/Whonix/Tails or any hardened linux distros is a practical and widely accepted alternative in the security field. To my knowledge I don't think I recall anybody using a comprehensive "pen test" framework on a Mac. > has refused to turn over user data even after legal challenges from the federal government While this is true, it never stopped the agencies from getting their data through other means. There is a company in Israel that specializes in unlocking iPhone data. It recently lead to the arrest of a child sex cult ring in South Korea. > doesn’t generate revenues from advertising and selling user data. neither does Microsoft if you consider the metrics are used internally and using it to optimize their product to maximize revenues. I will agree that it is less pervasive than Google or Facebook.
- yborg 6y ago
  And these alternate solutions lack 75% of the functionality available to customers of Apple products. It isn't that these customers are all clueless dunces, many of them look at the tradeoffs and if they are living in a country with some citizen rights conclude that the risk is acceptable given the magnitude of the tradeoff.
est31 6y ago
> has refused to turn over user data You don't need to turn over any data if you transmit which programs people start in the clear, unencrypted, easily observable, to one of your servers. And they do turn it over. They tried to make icloud end to end encrypted but then didn't do it at the behest of the US government. They employ the same tactics as zoom by claiming that icloud is encrypted, trying to make people believe that it's end to end encrypted. The encryption key still sits with them though. Yes, there are some high profile cases where they very publicly refused the feds. Got a lot of publicity. That was their main goal, to paint an image of them not turning over user data. Maybe apple indeed collects less user data than Google. But they still collect many things, and it's way harder to escape apple's collection than to escape Google's collection as their OSs are so locked down.

azernik 6y ago

Take this quote from the article, and s/Google/Apple/g: "If you don’t mind being spied on by Google, and if you trust Google to decide who’s a scumbag and who isn’t, this is great."

renewiltord 6y ago

Wait, you'll pay me $50 (just under today's Brent crude) for a list of everything I downloaded and ran (what Apple gets)? I'll maybe even throw in all the names of the `a.out` that I create for no reason. Sure, what the hell. It's a deal, email me and I'll run: find ~/Downloads -type f -executable On video for you.

boxed 6y ago

We care. And Apple cares which is why they publicly said this system as run right now was a mistake. Within a week of this going public. The article linked here is pretending that didn't happen. And you are pretending, against all evidence, that Apple users don't care. But it's apple users who complained and sounded the alarm in the first place. Your statement is so obviously and trivially false it's crazy to see any one up voting it.

nbzso 6y ago

>What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. I am Apple user and I care a lot for my self and my privacy. Thats why I will not support this company with my money. Some people are aware, but unfortunately we run a business in which Mac OS as software platform is superior. Little Snitch is installed in all my Apple computers. In last 5 years after every os update, telemetry from mothership is exponentially more. I don't like this direction and have taken active measures to change my business operation and remove everything Apple related excluding some graphic software and audio. Windows is not an option. Apple is a company that openly dislikes professional users and focusing marketing efforts to semi pro audience by using powerful tribe psychology, trends and sentiments to create public perception of a Good Shepard and Guardian. In reality they know that future is data based and Google has advantage in this market. So they correct direction to recondition public over the idea of personal computing and transform Mac OS to iOS UX with already established consumer habit of no control and minimum transparency. From business perspective the idea that someone will have a log file with my office activity is non acceptable. Period. Apple knows this and recently stopped standalone updates. This pushes businesses to avoid sandboxing of Apple computers in corporate network. The message is clear. You rent Mac Os as a service, the price is your data. It is Beautified Google:)

etripe 6y ago
> we run a business in which Mac OS as software platform is superior Out of curiosity, what business is that? Music? Video editing?
- nbzso 6y ago
  Graphic/ UI design plus audio and video production. Affinity/ Sketch/ Final Cut / Resolve / Fusion / Logic.