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I found this to be a very odd and strange rant. The author's three issues with Apple are: 1. Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's

I found this to be a very odd and strange rant. The author's three issues with Apple are: 1. Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user. 2. mac OS26. I totally agree that this is a total fiasco from a design perspective, and liquid glass is unqualified shit. Still, I see Apple at least somewhat moving in the right direction by getting rid of Alan Dye. 3. Apple had a bug in their age verification protocol. Again, valid point, but Apple needs to follow UK law. I've seen a lot more missives arguing against requiring things like driver's licenses and other government ID, and so it seems like Apple is at least trying to go the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification. To emphasize, I'm not apologizing for Apple here. In particular, much has been written about how Apple has lost their way regarding the "it just works" philosophy. But it seems like the author's main beef is against Apple's level of control, and this is just a fundamental difference in Apple's stance that has existed for about 2 decades.

Pay08 7mo ago
I struggle to believe that Liquid Glass was one person's fault.
- AdamN 7mo ago
  It was probably a cascade of people but the question is whether we all realize Apple was right or if they just implemented it wrong or if it will just take a year or two to get things dialed in (but still prepared for an AR/VR world) and then we forget it ever happened.
  - abirch 7mo ago
    Most people have forgotten Antennagate or the iPhone 4 fiasco. You're probably correct that people won't remember this in 2028
    - nativeit 7mo ago
      Because folks don’t continuously talk about something that happened 14-years ago on a device that’s been off the market for nearly as long?
    - queenkjuul 7mo ago
      I hear the phrase "you're holding it wrong" said sarcastically all the time, people remember antennagate
      - internet2000 7mo ago
        You remember the funny turn of phrase instead of how bad the reception was in your iPhone 4, and how it ruined the experience of owning it. Because it wasn't that big of a deal in the end.
        queenkjuul 7mo ago
        Well no, I've never owned a iPhone, but me and clearly many others remember antennagate, and I'm sure the same many of us will remember liquid glass
  - aenis 7mo ago
    It's a leadership failure. They obviously have a UI/UX dept. Those people want to be considered productive. Hence, they need to force a major redesign every now and then. Without a Steve Jobs like leader, those things will happen due to fundamental laws of corporate bureaucracy.
    - alwillis 7mo ago
      > It's a leadership failure. They obviously have a UI/UX dept. Those people want to be considered productive. They had a guy who had no UI/UX experience leading the UI/UX team. He left for Meta thank goodness [1]. [1]: “Alan Dye Leaves Apple for Meta, Replaced by Longtime Designer Stephen Lemay” — https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/03/alan-dye-leaves-apple-for-meta https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/03/alan-dye-leaves...
      - layer8 7mo ago
        Stephen Lemay reportedly was a driving force behind Liquid Glass: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/15/ios-27-macos-27-no-major-liquid-glass-changes/ https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/15/ios-27-macos-27-no-majo...
  - internet2000 7mo ago
    People had the same reaction to iOS 7. They cleaned up some of the excesses over the next few years, and now the same basic concept is what people want Apple to RETURN to. They'll be fine.
    - layer8 7mo ago
      I’d still want Apple to return to an iOS 6-like design. Not the super-skeuomorphic stuff, but the regular UI with discernible controls clearly separated from content.
pixelpoet 7mo ago
> Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now Are you sure you're not apologising for Apple?
- dijit 7mo ago
  Would you be surprised that your sports car uses a lot of fuel and get mad about it? It was sort of the deal when you bought it. Apple isn't shy about its gatekeepy behaviour, and some people believe that it's why Apples ecosystem is subjectively nicer than the Microsoft one.
  - bengale 7mo ago
    Indeed. For many of us it's a feature, not a bug.
  - hamburglar 7mo ago
    Some of us have watched it ratchet up since the 80’s, when there were no such restrictions. The fact that some people hit a threshold and decide to stop putting up with it isn’t surprising.
- cmiles74 7mo ago
  I assume they are talking about the "This application was downloaded from the internet" warning, which I also don't like. Requiring dollars for signing and then _still_ showing a warning when someone installs your application seems crappy to me.
- alwillis 7mo ago
  > Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now The point is this person has been dealing with Gatekeeper for a long time but all of sudden it’s a deal breaker?
  - subscribed 7mo ago
    "This man was in the abusive relationship for so ling and suddenly he's leaving?"
amelius 7mo ago
Maybe the author was aware of all this, but with "Apple Just Lost Me" they wanted to say that this is the straw that broke the camel's back.
joering2 7mo ago
> 3. Apple had a bug in their age verification protocol. Again, valid point, but Apple needs to follow UK law. No they don't. They need to grow balls. They pay hefty tax rates in UK. If they would announce they are leaving UK market in 90 days, I bet you would find enough politicians to change the course of this terrible law.
- ta9000 7mo ago
  Why is it a US corporation’s job to unfuck UK laws? If they did get involved, you’d blast them for meddling.
  - lotsofpulp 7mo ago
    Corporations don’t belong to a single jurisdiction.
    - ta9000 7mo ago
      Should Apple be responsible for righting the wrongs of legislation in every country it operates in? I don’t think so. Ideally it would mettle as little as possible, even though they clearly don’t (see right to repair).
      - g947o 7mo ago
        Hmm. I don't think the point is that Apple has to "fight". The point is that Apple needs a moral high ground and is willing to completely give up the UK market (which I understand but don't necessarily agree with). I don't see that happening with today's environment, considering that shareholders will happily fire Cook over that.
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
- classified 7mo ago
  > They pay hefty tax rates in UK. Are you sure?
hellweaver666 7mo ago
When I got the prompt it just said "your account age is old enough to prove your age" and didn't ask for any further info.
- boysenberry 7mo ago
  [dead]
bsimpson 7mo ago
> If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you Author started at System 8. They didn't start locking things down until the iPhone.
- catapart 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - frereubu 7mo ago
    I'm in my fifties, have been involved in computing since I was a kid and I like Apple's stance on this because the threat landscape has changed, particularly for non-tech-savvy people. If you want that freedom there are various *nix flavours to choose from, you're not compelled to use Apple.
    - catapart 7mo ago
      [flagged]
  - card_zero 7mo ago
    "Installation rights", fucking hell.
- frizlab 7mo ago
  > They didn't start locking things down until the iPhone. They sure have tried since forever though. My uncle complained about Apple for this very reason ~20y ago…
  - embedding-shape 7mo ago
    Before the iPhone, what was their attempts at that? I remember using OSX a bunch before the iPhone was public, but never remember any of the ways they tried to lock it down, I might have been too young then.
    - 7mo ago
bronlund 7mo ago
I don't think it's just those three issues. Those are just the three final drops in the bucket.
izacus 7mo ago
Why are you so deeply invested into defending the honor of a massive corporation that's callous to its users? Especially corporation that's supposedly proud of their UX?
fredley 7mo ago
I had the UK Age verification popup today. It verified immediately based on the age of my Apple account, I didn't have to take any further action. I am much younger than the OP, and probably than their Apple account. I am surprised that this didn't happen for them.
- estebank 7mo ago
  The OP states they've migrated. That might mean that the field on their account database entry might be related to that move. The account is older, but when moving countries I've had to do weird dances to get my Google accounts to accept the new locale, and wouldn't be surprised if their computed account age coincides with me having done that change.
iLoveOncall 7mo ago
> but Apple needs to follow UK law And the UK law doesn't ask for device-level age verification.
- dghf 7mo ago
  To counter your downvoters: > Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act. -- https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-introduces-age-verification-for-icloud-accounts-in-the-uk-115340237.html https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-introduces-age-verif...
  - stavros 7mo ago
    Yep, this applies to social media companies, not iOS or the App store.
Ragnarork 7mo ago
What's odd and strange about this? Author clearly specifies this at the start: > To summarise for yous there are three main issues for me and the last one happened today and is what pushed me through the threshold. The compounding led to this, not that individual issues existed (and have been a problem) for a while.
roger_ 7mo ago
Criticize gatekeeping all you want, but I feel it’s safer to recommend a Mac or iPhone to an older, non-technical person than the equivalent Windows / Android machine. And I’m still able to install any app I want with minimal fuss.
an0malous 7mo ago
There's a bizarre trend, especially on HN, of unjustified criticism against Apple. There are so many YC companies committing outright fraud, Palantir is building a surveillance state, a bunch of well known founders and VCs openly promote white supremacist ideology, but you'll never see more vitriol on this forum than someone complaining about the liquid glass UI or app store take rate.
- philistine 7mo ago
  Apple holds itself to higher standards, thus its critics hold it to a higher standard than the ghouls at Palantir. That's why I like Apple so much.
- chii 7mo ago
  that's because those other things mentioned are quite irrelevant in every day life, but the apple products' quality or bad appstore practices are directly affecting the said complainer on HN.
- jmye 7mo ago
  Internet memes and terminal Holy Wars take nearly zero thought, effort or intelligence to post about. Just emotion and hot takes, and you're almost guaranteed a response.
- lern_too_spel 7mo ago
  Our choice of phone isn't between Apple and Palantir but between Apple and Android. The criticism comes from the fact that the other option is better.
- subscribed 7mo ago
  Several things can be wrong at the same time.
- jobs_throwaway 7mo ago
  This comment is pure whataboutism
  - 7mo ago
philistine 7mo ago
> at least somewhat moving in the right direction by getting rid of Alan Dye. Alan Dye left of his own volition to Meta. I 100% believe he would still be there if he had not left.
jclardy 7mo ago
Yeah, agreed. Gatekeeper is nearly 15 years old now, and has progressively gotten more aggressive, but AFAIK there isn't much new in the past year or two. macOS 26 is bad, but so is Windows 11...so unless you are willing to jump into Linux for desktop, there aren't many other options. And age verification is likely going to be an issue with any platform he chooses - are other companies not using credit card?
cyanydeez 7mo ago
I guess it's written for people who never had to Apple, cause it just repeated reasons I'd never touch those products.
JollySharp0 7mo ago
The author is complaining about the fact that there are a myriad of issues with Apple's ecosystem that have built up a level of frustration with their ecosystem where they can no longer tolerate it. I find it infuriating I have to verify that I am older than 18 when my gmail account is 20+ years old. Him moving to Android will do them no good as Google will be implementing similar controls in it. I suggest they get a Pixel Phone and install Graphene OS.
soapdog 7mo ago
Author here. Thanks for engaging is such gentle way, this is rare these days. Let me address some of your comments and maybe you'll understand my position a bit better even if you don't agree. > 1.Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user. Apple been tightening that control over time. For a long time on MacOS X you could simply run apps. Then came notarisation, but you could still disable it. Now, even with a certificate, it still shows a dialog. I wish that apps that went through notarisation would simply run like the ones from the app store without a dialog showing. > 3. (...) the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification. But not everyone has a credit card. Those are not something you're born with or required to have or even required to have them issued from the same country you're living in. That is not the least restrictive, that is a very large assumption. What I would have liked to have seen is them providing you with options: "do you want to use credit card verification? National ID? Passport? Credit check? Etc" and then it is up to each user to decide on their risk profile and what they are okay with. As of now, my only way to verify it is by literally ordering a credit card from my UK bank when I'm pretty happy with my debit cards already.
- stephc_int13 7mo ago
  I am in the same situation. French citizen living in the UK. I never owned a credit card and I have no use for it. I can't pass the age-verification. I am 49. This alone is quite irritating, but the overall developer-hostility of Apple and the quality drift of their software is convincing me to never buy an iOS device again. And I'll probably not release any software on their platforms either.
  - fmajid 7mo ago
    French-US citizen living in the UK as well. I am not experiencing this because I refuse to install iOS 26 on my iPhone, and like the OP I am transitioning away from Apple to Linux + GrapheneOS, and about 90% of the way there since I started 6 months ago.
JKCalhoun 7mo ago
I hope the author reports back in a year. Getting off the Apple train appeals to me, the reality of doing so looks bleak. Full disclosure: I've been in the Apple ecosystem since System 6, worked as an engineer there for 25 years. But I am as frustrated by many of the decisions Apple has made as many people I see posting. Liquid glass? This too shall pass. Locked down ecosystem? I imagine the blowback if they unlocked it and people's devices were suddenly being compromised by malware. I guess I prefer the frying pan to the fire that I feel awaits me if I jump. As I mentioned though, seeing blog posts after the jump will be interesting.
- DemiGuru 7mo ago
  I was in almost the exact same boat as the author. As a long-time Apple power user, I reached my breaking point about a year ago and finally migrated my workflow to Linux. I’m still letting my iPhone age out, but I’ve already stripped it of all Apple cloud services. Instead, I’ve replaced every stock app with self-hosted alternatives running on my own beefy NAS. If you have the technical overhead to manage your own stack, I highly recommend it, owning your data is a total game-changer for privacy.
  - NetMageSCW 7mo ago
    What real world improvement has owning your data made to you besides increasing the friction for a lot of things?
    - xethos 7mo ago
      Self-hosting UnifiedPush / ntfy drops FCM / Google Play Services as a requirement, extending the usable life of my phone pretty dramatically; the better battery life I get is just a bonus. Apps drop from RAM less-frequently. The series I'm watching doesn't drop from Netflix. Nor do I juggle which services have seasons 1-3, and 5, and have to play the subscribe'n'cancel dance to watch the full series. I never deal with radio-edits or censored curse words in music. When I pull up an album, it will be the proper album, not the smeared or changed swear words. This exact issue is what pushed me off Google Play Music.
rdiddly 7mo ago
Someone changed their mind about something they've been putting up with, it's as simple as that. The boiling frog thing is a myth - most frogs realize the water's too hot at some point, and jump out.
drecked 7mo ago
> getting rid of Alan Dye. All the reporting I’ve seen indicates that he left of his own accord and that Apple was blindsided, indicating that they didn’t even consider getting rid of him.
- WorldPeas 7mo ago
  [dead]
qazwsxedchac 7mo ago
> but Apple needs to follow UK law The Online Safety Act does not require device manufacturers to enforce age "verification" at the OS level. If Apple had not implemented this, it would still be in compliance with UK law. Apple is displaying anticipatory obedience here, which is the opposite of good citizenship. Two things stand out from this fiasco: 1. Apple, and those who praise them for what they just did, don't appear to have learnt from history. Anticipatory obedience used to be known as "vorauseilender Gehorsam" during a particularly dark period in the history of a country a few hundred miles southeast of the UK. It was one of the factors enabling the darkness. 2. The UK is a small enough market for Apple to treat it as a test bed. Which it probably is in this case, and which means that removal of anonymity aka "OS-level age verification" is coming to a lot more devices in a lot more countries soon. See also the uncanny coincidence of lots of OECD countries pushing for online age verification at the same time.
chatmasta 7mo ago
I’m from the US but reside indefinitely in the UK, and I’ve dodged all this crap (age verification, disabling advanced protection) by simply remaining in the US App Store. It has some downsides like I can’t download the Vodafone UK app but nowadays most apps are available globally. And herein lies the absurdity of the whole legal framework in the first place. Does it apply to tourists? Residents? Citizens? Citizens traveling abroad?
NotPractical 7mo ago
> 1. Gatekeeping. OK, fine Proceeds to explain why your opinion is not "fine" but rather invalid, because Apple boiled you like a frog... Every time someone mentions here that they're concerned macOS is becoming more like iOS, Apple apologists show up to explain how that's not actually happening. I guess now you guys have just accepted it.

Pay08 7mo ago

I struggle to believe that Liquid Glass was one person's fault.

AdamN 7mo ago
It was probably a cascade of people but the question is whether we all realize Apple was right or if they just implemented it wrong or if it will just take a year or two to get things dialed in (but still prepared for an AR/VR world) and then we forget it ever happened.
- abirch 7mo ago
  Most people have forgotten Antennagate or the iPhone 4 fiasco. You're probably correct that people won't remember this in 2028
  - nativeit 7mo ago
    Because folks don’t continuously talk about something that happened 14-years ago on a device that’s been off the market for nearly as long?
  - queenkjuul 7mo ago
    I hear the phrase "you're holding it wrong" said sarcastically all the time, people remember antennagate
    - internet2000 7mo ago
      You remember the funny turn of phrase instead of how bad the reception was in your iPhone 4, and how it ruined the experience of owning it. Because it wasn't that big of a deal in the end.
      - queenkjuul 7mo ago
        Well no, I've never owned a iPhone, but me and clearly many others remember antennagate, and I'm sure the same many of us will remember liquid glass
- aenis 7mo ago
  It's a leadership failure. They obviously have a UI/UX dept. Those people want to be considered productive. Hence, they need to force a major redesign every now and then. Without a Steve Jobs like leader, those things will happen due to fundamental laws of corporate bureaucracy.
  - alwillis 7mo ago
    > It's a leadership failure. They obviously have a UI/UX dept. Those people want to be considered productive. They had a guy who had no UI/UX experience leading the UI/UX team. He left for Meta thank goodness [1]. [1]: “Alan Dye Leaves Apple for Meta, Replaced by Longtime Designer Stephen Lemay” — https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/03/alan-dye-leaves-apple-for-meta https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/03/alan-dye-leaves...
    - layer8 7mo ago
      Stephen Lemay reportedly was a driving force behind Liquid Glass: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/15/ios-27-macos-27-no-major-liquid-glass-changes/ https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/15/ios-27-macos-27-no-majo...
- internet2000 7mo ago
  People had the same reaction to iOS 7. They cleaned up some of the excesses over the next few years, and now the same basic concept is what people want Apple to RETURN to. They'll be fine.
  - layer8 7mo ago
    I’d still want Apple to return to an iOS 6-like design. Not the super-skeuomorphic stuff, but the regular UI with discernible controls clearly separated from content.

pixelpoet 7mo ago

> Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now Are you sure you're not apologising for Apple?

dijit 7mo ago
Would you be surprised that your sports car uses a lot of fuel and get mad about it? It was sort of the deal when you bought it. Apple isn't shy about its gatekeepy behaviour, and some people believe that it's why Apples ecosystem is subjectively nicer than the Microsoft one.
- bengale 7mo ago
  Indeed. For many of us it's a feature, not a bug.
- hamburglar 7mo ago
  Some of us have watched it ratchet up since the 80’s, when there were no such restrictions. The fact that some people hit a threshold and decide to stop putting up with it isn’t surprising.
cmiles74 7mo ago
I assume they are talking about the "This application was downloaded from the internet" warning, which I also don't like. Requiring dollars for signing and then _still_ showing a warning when someone installs your application seems crappy to me.
alwillis 7mo ago
> Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now The point is this person has been dealing with Gatekeeper for a long time but all of sudden it’s a deal breaker?
- subscribed 7mo ago
  "This man was in the abusive relationship for so ling and suddenly he's leaving?"

amelius 7mo ago

Maybe the author was aware of all this, but with "Apple Just Lost Me" they wanted to say that this is the straw that broke the camel's back.

joering2 7mo ago

> 3. Apple had a bug in their age verification protocol. Again, valid point, but Apple needs to follow UK law. No they don't. They need to grow balls. They pay hefty tax rates in UK. If they would announce they are leaving UK market in 90 days, I bet you would find enough politicians to change the course of this terrible law.

ta9000 7mo ago
Why is it a US corporation’s job to unfuck UK laws? If they did get involved, you’d blast them for meddling.
- lotsofpulp 7mo ago
  Corporations don’t belong to a single jurisdiction.
  - ta9000 7mo ago
    Should Apple be responsible for righting the wrongs of legislation in every country it operates in? I don’t think so. Ideally it would mettle as little as possible, even though they clearly don’t (see right to repair).
    - g947o 7mo ago
      Hmm. I don't think the point is that Apple has to "fight". The point is that Apple needs a moral high ground and is willing to completely give up the UK market (which I understand but don't necessarily agree with). I don't see that happening with today's environment, considering that shareholders will happily fire Cook over that.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
classified 7mo ago
> They pay hefty tax rates in UK. Are you sure?

hellweaver666 7mo ago

When I got the prompt it just said "your account age is old enough to prove your age" and didn't ask for any further info.

boysenberry 7mo ago
[dead]

bsimpson 7mo ago

> If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you Author started at System 8. They didn't start locking things down until the iPhone.

catapart 7mo ago
[flagged]
- frereubu 7mo ago
  I'm in my fifties, have been involved in computing since I was a kid and I like Apple's stance on this because the threat landscape has changed, particularly for non-tech-savvy people. If you want that freedom there are various *nix flavours to choose from, you're not compelled to use Apple.
  - catapart 7mo ago
    [flagged]
- card_zero 7mo ago
  "Installation rights", fucking hell.
frizlab 7mo ago
> They didn't start locking things down until the iPhone. They sure have tried since forever though. My uncle complained about Apple for this very reason ~20y ago…
- embedding-shape 7mo ago
  Before the iPhone, what was their attempts at that? I remember using OSX a bunch before the iPhone was public, but never remember any of the ways they tried to lock it down, I might have been too young then.
  - 7mo ago

bronlund 7mo ago

I don't think it's just those three issues. Those are just the three final drops in the bucket.

izacus 7mo ago

Why are you so deeply invested into defending the honor of a massive corporation that's callous to its users? Especially corporation that's supposedly proud of their UX?

fredley 7mo ago

I had the UK Age verification popup today. It verified immediately based on the age of my Apple account, I didn't have to take any further action. I am much younger than the OP, and probably than their Apple account. I am surprised that this didn't happen for them.

estebank 7mo ago
The OP states they've migrated. That might mean that the field on their account database entry might be related to that move. The account is older, but when moving countries I've had to do weird dances to get my Google accounts to accept the new locale, and wouldn't be surprised if their computed account age coincides with me having done that change.

iLoveOncall 7mo ago

> but Apple needs to follow UK law And the UK law doesn't ask for device-level age verification.

dghf 7mo ago
To counter your downvoters: > Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act. -- https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-introduces-age-verification-for-icloud-accounts-in-the-uk-115340237.html https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-introduces-age-verif...
- stavros 7mo ago
  Yep, this applies to social media companies, not iOS or the App store.

Ragnarork 7mo ago

What's odd and strange about this? Author clearly specifies this at the start: > To summarise for yous there are three main issues for me and the last one happened today and is what pushed me through the threshold. The compounding led to this, not that individual issues existed (and have been a problem) for a while.

roger_ 7mo ago

Criticize gatekeeping all you want, but I feel it’s safer to recommend a Mac or iPhone to an older, non-technical person than the equivalent Windows / Android machine. And I’m still able to install any app I want with minimal fuss.

an0malous 7mo ago

There's a bizarre trend, especially on HN, of unjustified criticism against Apple. There are so many YC companies committing outright fraud, Palantir is building a surveillance state, a bunch of well known founders and VCs openly promote white supremacist ideology, but you'll never see more vitriol on this forum than someone complaining about the liquid glass UI or app store take rate.

philistine 7mo ago
Apple holds itself to higher standards, thus its critics hold it to a higher standard than the ghouls at Palantir. That's why I like Apple so much.
chii 7mo ago
that's because those other things mentioned are quite irrelevant in every day life, but the apple products' quality or bad appstore practices are directly affecting the said complainer on HN.
jmye 7mo ago
Internet memes and terminal Holy Wars take nearly zero thought, effort or intelligence to post about. Just emotion and hot takes, and you're almost guaranteed a response.
lern_too_spel 7mo ago
Our choice of phone isn't between Apple and Palantir but between Apple and Android. The criticism comes from the fact that the other option is better.
subscribed 7mo ago
Several things can be wrong at the same time.
jobs_throwaway 7mo ago
This comment is pure whataboutism
- 7mo ago

philistine 7mo ago

> at least somewhat moving in the right direction by getting rid of Alan Dye. Alan Dye left of his own volition to Meta. I 100% believe he would still be there if he had not left.

jclardy 7mo ago

Yeah, agreed. Gatekeeper is nearly 15 years old now, and has progressively gotten more aggressive, but AFAIK there isn't much new in the past year or two. macOS 26 is bad, but so is Windows 11...so unless you are willing to jump into Linux for desktop, there aren't many other options. And age verification is likely going to be an issue with any platform he chooses - are other companies not using credit card?

cyanydeez 7mo ago

I guess it's written for people who never had to Apple, cause it just repeated reasons I'd never touch those products.

JollySharp0 7mo ago

The author is complaining about the fact that there are a myriad of issues with Apple's ecosystem that have built up a level of frustration with their ecosystem where they can no longer tolerate it. I find it infuriating I have to verify that I am older than 18 when my gmail account is 20+ years old. Him moving to Android will do them no good as Google will be implementing similar controls in it. I suggest they get a Pixel Phone and install Graphene OS.

soapdog 7mo ago

Author here. Thanks for engaging is such gentle way, this is rare these days. Let me address some of your comments and maybe you'll understand my position a bit better even if you don't agree. > 1.Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user. Apple been tightening that control over time. For a long time on MacOS X you could simply run apps. Then came notarisation, but you could still disable it. Now, even with a certificate, it still shows a dialog. I wish that apps that went through notarisation would simply run like the ones from the app store without a dialog showing. > 3. (...) the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification. But not everyone has a credit card. Those are not something you're born with or required to have or even required to have them issued from the same country you're living in. That is not the least restrictive, that is a very large assumption. What I would have liked to have seen is them providing you with options: "do you want to use credit card verification? National ID? Passport? Credit check? Etc" and then it is up to each user to decide on their risk profile and what they are okay with. As of now, my only way to verify it is by literally ordering a credit card from my UK bank when I'm pretty happy with my debit cards already.

stephc_int13 7mo ago
I am in the same situation. French citizen living in the UK. I never owned a credit card and I have no use for it. I can't pass the age-verification. I am 49. This alone is quite irritating, but the overall developer-hostility of Apple and the quality drift of their software is convincing me to never buy an iOS device again. And I'll probably not release any software on their platforms either.
- fmajid 7mo ago
  French-US citizen living in the UK as well. I am not experiencing this because I refuse to install iOS 26 on my iPhone, and like the OP I am transitioning away from Apple to Linux + GrapheneOS, and about 90% of the way there since I started 6 months ago.

JKCalhoun 7mo ago

I hope the author reports back in a year. Getting off the Apple train appeals to me, the reality of doing so looks bleak. Full disclosure: I've been in the Apple ecosystem since System 6, worked as an engineer there for 25 years. But I am as frustrated by many of the decisions Apple has made as many people I see posting. Liquid glass? This too shall pass. Locked down ecosystem? I imagine the blowback if they unlocked it and people's devices were suddenly being compromised by malware. I guess I prefer the frying pan to the fire that I feel awaits me if I jump. As I mentioned though, seeing blog posts after the jump will be interesting.

DemiGuru 7mo ago
I was in almost the exact same boat as the author. As a long-time Apple power user, I reached my breaking point about a year ago and finally migrated my workflow to Linux. I’m still letting my iPhone age out, but I’ve already stripped it of all Apple cloud services. Instead, I’ve replaced every stock app with self-hosted alternatives running on my own beefy NAS. If you have the technical overhead to manage your own stack, I highly recommend it, owning your data is a total game-changer for privacy.
- NetMageSCW 7mo ago
  What real world improvement has owning your data made to you besides increasing the friction for a lot of things?
  - xethos 7mo ago
    Self-hosting UnifiedPush / ntfy drops FCM / Google Play Services as a requirement, extending the usable life of my phone pretty dramatically; the better battery life I get is just a bonus. Apps drop from RAM less-frequently. The series I'm watching doesn't drop from Netflix. Nor do I juggle which services have seasons 1-3, and 5, and have to play the subscribe'n'cancel dance to watch the full series. I never deal with radio-edits or censored curse words in music. When I pull up an album, it will be the proper album, not the smeared or changed swear words. This exact issue is what pushed me off Google Play Music.

rdiddly 7mo ago

Someone changed their mind about something they've been putting up with, it's as simple as that. The boiling frog thing is a myth - most frogs realize the water's too hot at some point, and jump out.

drecked 7mo ago

> getting rid of Alan Dye. All the reporting I’ve seen indicates that he left of his own accord and that Apple was blindsided, indicating that they didn’t even consider getting rid of him.

WorldPeas 7mo ago
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qazwsxedchac 7mo ago

> but Apple needs to follow UK law The Online Safety Act does not require device manufacturers to enforce age "verification" at the OS level. If Apple had not implemented this, it would still be in compliance with UK law. Apple is displaying anticipatory obedience here, which is the opposite of good citizenship. Two things stand out from this fiasco: 1. Apple, and those who praise them for what they just did, don't appear to have learnt from history. Anticipatory obedience used to be known as "vorauseilender Gehorsam" during a particularly dark period in the history of a country a few hundred miles southeast of the UK. It was one of the factors enabling the darkness. 2. The UK is a small enough market for Apple to treat it as a test bed. Which it probably is in this case, and which means that removal of anonymity aka "OS-level age verification" is coming to a lot more devices in a lot more countries soon. See also the uncanny coincidence of lots of OECD countries pushing for online age verification at the same time.

chatmasta 7mo ago

I’m from the US but reside indefinitely in the UK, and I’ve dodged all this crap (age verification, disabling advanced protection) by simply remaining in the US App Store. It has some downsides like I can’t download the Vodafone UK app but nowadays most apps are available globally. And herein lies the absurdity of the whole legal framework in the first place. Does it apply to tourists? Residents? Citizens? Citizens traveling abroad?

NotPractical 7mo ago

> 1. Gatekeeping. OK, fine Proceeds to explain why your opinion is not "fine" but rather invalid, because Apple boiled you like a frog... Every time someone mentions here that they're concerned macOS is becoming more like iOS, Apple apologists show up to explain how that's not actually happening. I guess now you guys have just accepted it.