7 ms·

Curious, why do you "resent" your money going to Apple?

by mgh2 3y ago

ok123456 3y ago
Because they're hostile to general purpose computing.
- Angostura 3y ago
  Well, they certainly view phones as appliances, rather than general purpose computers. Personally, I’m fine with that
  - MildRant 3y ago
    They absolutely view phones as general purpose computers. It's why iOS is slowly turning into OS X.
    - abenga 3y ago
      Isn't it going the other way?
      - Tagbert 3y ago
        Not really. They are bringing features out on all of their platforms at the same time, now, so where is more feature constancy. Some iOS UI treatments have been brought to MacOS and some MacOS UI elements have been brought to iPadOS. But MacOS is not getting locked down the way that a phone is.
  - meragrin_ 3y ago
    They view all of their products as appliances rather than general purpose computers.
- lockhouse 3y ago
  My UNIX workstation that I bought from them running a bunch of open source software installed with Home brew disagrees.
- kube-system 3y ago
  General purpose computing is a concept that computer scientists appreciate. The vast majority of consumers buy products based on their cost/benefit of their features and overall experience, not ideology of their technical construction. You won't see too many people who decide to hand wash their dishes because they can't find a dishwasher with an unlocked bootloader. It either satisfactorily washes the dishes or it doesn't. Most people buy phones the same way.
  - echelon 3y ago
    General purpose computing was the default from 1990 - 2010. Apple killed it by turning computers into "devices" and "platforms". And now Google is killing the web. Fuck these two companies. They're too big, too unilaterally powerful, and their greed to control knows no bounds.
    - kube-system 3y ago
      The disconnect is that you're thinking about computers for their ability to do computing. Most people don't care about whether their computers are good at computing, but are instead trying to accomplish some other task. In fact, the more that the 'computer' disappears, the better in their mind.
      - Aerroon 3y ago
        They don't care until they need to do something that they can't do because their platform doesn't allow them to do it. There's no reason why compilers couldn't run on phones. Modern phones are more powerful than computers were even 15 years ago. And yet you can't do the things on a modern phone that you could on that computer from 15 years ago. At least you can't do it nearly as easily because of artificial limitations.
        kube-system 3y ago
        > And yet you can't do the things on a modern phone that you could on that computer from 15 years ago. At least you can't do it nearly as easily because of artificial limitations. This may be a con for enthusiasts, but these artificial 'limitations' are exactly why Apple has been successful with the mass market. 15 years ago, computers were plagued by drive-by downloads, malvertising, and other crap. People in the early 00s spent millions of dollars paying repair technicians to uninstall toolbars, adware, and other junk software they were duped into installing.
- nerdbert 3y ago
  I don't understand what you mean. They make an awful lot of their money selling what I'd assume to be general purpose computing devices. I run mostly mostly open source software on mine. Almost everything made for the linux ecosystem is also available packaged for MacOS or can be trivially built on MacOS. What more are we talking about here?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sb057 3y ago
https://stallman.org/apple.html https://stallman.org/apple.html
lazide 3y ago
For me it's things like iCloud Photos having no API to access them and no reasonable way to pull them out or back them up. So very much a trap. Among other things.
- filoleg 3y ago
  There was a thread on HN in the past few days linking this[0] post about a tool that seems to solve just that problem. 0. https://eclecticlight.co/2023/07/17/how-does-icloud-work-plus-a-new-version-of-cirrus/ https://eclecticlight.co/2023/07/17/how-does-icloud-work-plu...
  - lazide 3y ago
    Thanks! I looked into it when that article got posted actually, and near as I can tell that isn't a solution to this problem - and that is fully intentional on Apple's part - because: 1) That article is for things in iCloud Drive, which is everything EXCEPT iCloud Photos. Though you can put photos in iCloud Drive (as files), they just won't be seen as photos, visible in iCloud Photos (or the Photos app), etc. without importing them on an Apple device manually into the Photos app. Where they'll then be synced into iCloud Photos. The photos that are imported/stored in the Photos App on Apple devices also are not visible in iCloud Drive after being imported into iCloud Photos. 2) It only works on Mac/Apple devices. And only locally. So you'd need to sync to a Mac device, then backup the mac device, then hope it all works. No direct backup is available. So even if it did allow syncing iCloud Photos, it is a really awkward and brittle way to back them up. 3) There ARE APIs for iCloud Drive. But not iCloud Photos. The web iCloud Photos interfaces also only does manual per-album level downloads (no Takeout or global download equivalent) of photos using the web interface), which stops working at scale VERY quickly. Notably, Google Photos stopped providing the Google Drive interface to Google Photos shortly after Apple made this their standard operating procedure. So it's a common theme. Though Google Photos does have APIs and Takeout, so it's lockin is less 'firm', and they're definitely less obnoxious about it. The Takeout data requires some significant massaging to get equivalent from what is visible in Google Photos though. This is the kind of sneaky trap I've learned to be wary of, as Apple does this a lot for lock-in purposes with their hardware too.

Curious, why do you "resent" your money going to Apple?

by mgh2 3y ago

Curious, why do you "resent" your money going to Apple?

ok123456 3y ago

Because they're hostile to general purpose computing.

Angostura 3y ago
Well, they certainly view phones as appliances, rather than general purpose computers. Personally, I’m fine with that
- MildRant 3y ago
  They absolutely view phones as general purpose computers. It's why iOS is slowly turning into OS X.
  - abenga 3y ago
    Isn't it going the other way?
    - Tagbert 3y ago
      Not really. They are bringing features out on all of their platforms at the same time, now, so where is more feature constancy. Some iOS UI treatments have been brought to MacOS and some MacOS UI elements have been brought to iPadOS. But MacOS is not getting locked down the way that a phone is.
- meragrin_ 3y ago
  They view all of their products as appliances rather than general purpose computers.
lockhouse 3y ago
My UNIX workstation that I bought from them running a bunch of open source software installed with Home brew disagrees.
kube-system 3y ago
General purpose computing is a concept that computer scientists appreciate. The vast majority of consumers buy products based on their cost/benefit of their features and overall experience, not ideology of their technical construction. You won't see too many people who decide to hand wash their dishes because they can't find a dishwasher with an unlocked bootloader. It either satisfactorily washes the dishes or it doesn't. Most people buy phones the same way.
- echelon 3y ago
  General purpose computing was the default from 1990 - 2010. Apple killed it by turning computers into "devices" and "platforms". And now Google is killing the web. Fuck these two companies. They're too big, too unilaterally powerful, and their greed to control knows no bounds.
  - kube-system 3y ago
    The disconnect is that you're thinking about computers for their ability to do computing. Most people don't care about whether their computers are good at computing, but are instead trying to accomplish some other task. In fact, the more that the 'computer' disappears, the better in their mind.
    - Aerroon 3y ago
      They don't care until they need to do something that they can't do because their platform doesn't allow them to do it. There's no reason why compilers couldn't run on phones. Modern phones are more powerful than computers were even 15 years ago. And yet you can't do the things on a modern phone that you could on that computer from 15 years ago. At least you can't do it nearly as easily because of artificial limitations.
      - kube-system 3y ago
        > And yet you can't do the things on a modern phone that you could on that computer from 15 years ago. At least you can't do it nearly as easily because of artificial limitations. This may be a con for enthusiasts, but these artificial 'limitations' are exactly why Apple has been successful with the mass market. 15 years ago, computers were plagued by drive-by downloads, malvertising, and other crap. People in the early 00s spent millions of dollars paying repair technicians to uninstall toolbars, adware, and other junk software they were duped into installing.
nerdbert 3y ago
I don't understand what you mean. They make an awful lot of their money selling what I'd assume to be general purpose computing devices. I run mostly mostly open source software on mine. Almost everything made for the linux ecosystem is also available packaged for MacOS or can be trivially built on MacOS. What more are we talking about here?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

sb057 3y ago

https://stallman.org/apple.html https://stallman.org/apple.html

lazide 3y ago

For me it's things like iCloud Photos having no API to access them and no reasonable way to pull them out or back them up. So very much a trap. Among other things.

filoleg 3y ago
There was a thread on HN in the past few days linking this[0] post about a tool that seems to solve just that problem. 0. https://eclecticlight.co/2023/07/17/how-does-icloud-work-plus-a-new-version-of-cirrus/ https://eclecticlight.co/2023/07/17/how-does-icloud-work-plu...
- lazide 3y ago
  Thanks! I looked into it when that article got posted actually, and near as I can tell that isn't a solution to this problem - and that is fully intentional on Apple's part - because: 1) That article is for things in iCloud Drive, which is everything EXCEPT iCloud Photos. Though you can put photos in iCloud Drive (as files), they just won't be seen as photos, visible in iCloud Photos (or the Photos app), etc. without importing them on an Apple device manually into the Photos app. Where they'll then be synced into iCloud Photos. The photos that are imported/stored in the Photos App on Apple devices also are not visible in iCloud Drive after being imported into iCloud Photos. 2) It only works on Mac/Apple devices. And only locally. So you'd need to sync to a Mac device, then backup the mac device, then hope it all works. No direct backup is available. So even if it did allow syncing iCloud Photos, it is a really awkward and brittle way to back them up. 3) There ARE APIs for iCloud Drive. But not iCloud Photos. The web iCloud Photos interfaces also only does manual per-album level downloads (no Takeout or global download equivalent) of photos using the web interface), which stops working at scale VERY quickly. Notably, Google Photos stopped providing the Google Drive interface to Google Photos shortly after Apple made this their standard operating procedure. So it's a common theme. Though Google Photos does have APIs and Takeout, so it's lockin is less 'firm', and they're definitely less obnoxious about it. The Takeout data requires some significant massaging to get equivalent from what is visible in Google Photos though. This is the kind of sneaky trap I've learned to be wary of, as Apple does this a lot for lock-in purposes with their hardware too.