I'm not one to buy into Apple exceptionalism, but today when setting up a new Lenovo laptop I was just flabergasted at how terrible the experience is. I opened

I'm not one to buy into Apple exceptionalism, but today when setting up a new Lenovo laptop I was just flabergasted at how terrible the experience is. I opened IE to be hit with both the vendors ad-laden OEM page and MS's own news page which is ad-laden and is full of outrage and low information stories. The laptop is chock full of lenovo apps that get in my way, or worse, cause me issues down the line. On Android its almost as bad. Every app has big obtrusive apps and they all sample my location without even asking, because according to google, they don't need to ask. This also ignoring the clusterfuck that is OEM customizations. Apple's biggest strength, imo, is that its not terrible beholden to OEMs (it doesnt have any) or ad networks. It doesn't need to put up ads. It doesn't need to worry about OEM customizations. It doesn't have the federal government on its back from 1990s excesses. It makes its own hardware and its own software. That right there is very liberating. End users are sick of being seen as just eyeballs for ads and third-party software they don't want. There's something shameful about paying hundreds of dollars for a piece of technology only to end up with something covered with ads and hostile to you. That's Apple's big benefit. They simply don't play that game.