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Obviously I can’t speak for others, but I was, for a long time, a part of this world (parents bought a Quadra as our first home computer in 1993, I had a colore

Obviously I can’t speak for others, but I was, for a long time, a part of this world (parents bought a Quadra as our first home computer in 1993, I had a colored iMac in 1999, I released a few crappy freeware OS X 10.2 “Jaguar” desktop apps as a teenager, had an early iPod and an early iPhone, shipped a couple of iOS apps, watched keynote livestreams, actively participated on the MacRumors forums etc etc), yet I have become increasingly frustrated with Apple’s approach and have switched to using Linux on my primary (non-Mac) computer. I don’t feel like Apple cares about my business in the slightest. Macs have become increasingly locked down in both software and hardware, and the level of control Apple wants over what end users can do with their hardware feels more onerous than ever. When that book came out, being a Mac user felt like being part of a fun community of oddballs (I was one of like 5 or 10 in my school of 600), which is absolutely nothing like today.

lioeters 3y ago
> increasingly frustrated with Apple’s approach and have switched to using Linux on my primary computer That's what happened to me too. In my youth I grew up with a Macintosh, and it was a lovely machine, a marvel of design and technology. You could tell the creators were inspired, intelligent, artistic. They cared about the user, the person using the computer - which included programmers. As the years went on, it seems Apple got consumed by a different kind of people, it gradually bacame another soul-less corporation with profit as its main motivation. They still make good(-looking) products, but riddled with user-hostile design and dark patterns. The iPhone is not a computer in the full sense of the term, it's an appliance where the user is just a consumer. Eventually I gave up and switched to Linux, which I had been using off and on the entire time. It's not an artistic computing experience, but there is a fundamental respect for the user. The web is similar, despite the on-going enshittification, it feels like the original spirit has managed to live on and even thrive.

lioeters 3y ago

> increasingly frustrated with Apple’s approach and have switched to using Linux on my primary computer That's what happened to me too. In my youth I grew up with a Macintosh, and it was a lovely machine, a marvel of design and technology. You could tell the creators were inspired, intelligent, artistic. They cared about the user, the person using the computer - which included programmers. As the years went on, it seems Apple got consumed by a different kind of people, it gradually bacame another soul-less corporation with profit as its main motivation. They still make good(-looking) products, but riddled with user-hostile design and dark patterns. The iPhone is not a computer in the full sense of the term, it's an appliance where the user is just a consumer. Eventually I gave up and switched to Linux, which I had been using off and on the entire time. It's not an artistic computing experience, but there is a fundamental respect for the user. The web is similar, despite the on-going enshittification, it feels like the original spirit has managed to live on and even thrive.