Why don’t you like Apple?
Real question. I would like to know what drives you to hate Apple? (In terms of privacy of course because in terms of price it’s another story).
View original on lemmy.zip
Real question. I would like to know what drives you to hate Apple? (In terms of privacy of course because in terms of price it’s another story).
Security theater: All you stuff is encrypted but they have the decryption keys
Proprietary App Store: The apps and the store itself are proprietary and I don't trust Apple.
Gaslighting their customers: Images shared with Android users from iPhone are purposely crushed to a unreviewable quality. The idea is to convince people that Android takes terrible photographs.
From recent experience: They read your screen which means the government reads your screen as well. Its okay. if you’re doing nothing illegal, you have nothing to hide! All history books that could tell you otherwise are paywalled anyway!
About "Security theater": you can enable what's called "Advanced Data Protection" so the encryption keys are only stored on-device for most types of data including photos, backups and also notes for example. Mail and calendar is one exception that comes to mind, but you could also always use a different mail and calendar service. This is a fairly recent feature, so you may have missed it. Sure, it's not your fully self-hosted "cloud" on which you can audit every single line of code and whatnot, but it might actually be the best "compromise" of ease-of-use vs. privacy for many people outside the tech bubble we're in in this community.
About "Proprietary App Store": the store itself and many apps on there are proprietary, but there are a lot of open source apps on the App Store as well. The bigger problem is the fact that the App Store is the only (hassle-free) way to install apps to the iPhone and only recently the EU seems to change that with alternative storefronts now emerging, but Apple is limiting the use of them to the EU, so they're essentially doing the bare minimum to comply with EU law.
About "Gaslighting their customers": I'd like to see hard proof on that. I think what you're talking about is the fact that messages sent to Android users using the default "Messages" app are sent as MMS, which is an ancient technology and as such only support tiny, low-quality images. Android doesn't support iMessage and Apple seems to like to keep it that way as it's apparently selling a lot of iPhones this way in the US (and sure, I agree that's a bad thing). It does get better with the just-announced RCS support (a supposedly open protocol which Google added so many proprietary extensions to you can't really call it open anymore) so pictures can be send in full quality to Android users using the Messages app. Also, you could always use a third-party messenger like Signal or WhatsApp and send full-quality pictures just fine.
I'm not saying there aren't any concerns, but some of the information you provided is at least out of date.
I think it's the inverse: iMessage doesn't support Android.
Those aren't equivalent statements; the first implies that something about Android makes it impossible for Apple to produce an iMessage client for it when that is purely a business decision on Apple's part.
You are correct and the person you're responding to is wrong about just about everything they said. Funny to me they think mms is why those images look so shitty when no android users have ever experienced that without an ios device involved
MMS does have size limits that can hurt image quality, but I have the impression iOS applies limits of its own that are considerably lower. I'm not sure why anybody in 2024 wouldn't have at least a couple modern messaging apps, but it seems a lot of people don't.
Well yes exactly. I have noticed for years that every photo or video an iPhone sends me is worse quality than flip phones used to send/receive. Amazing to me that iPhone users fall for this trick
Like they missed that the whole apple MO is to make them feel superior without evidence
It seems like an odd decision to me, as it would make the iPhone look like it has a substandard camera to someone receiving media from one by MMS.
The idea is to convince people that things only look good on iPhones
Android users would use RCS for communicating with each other via the default messaging app on Android.
MMS has a hard size limit depending on the carrier the sender uses, that's independent of the sender using an Android phone or an iPhone. This limit can be as high as "more than 1 MB", but also as low as 300 KB or even less. Compressing an image down to 300 KB will naturally incur a quality penalty.
Rcs is a new thing and not all android phones use it even now
Photos sent from iPhones look like shit today and they did years ago. Rcs is not a factor.
Interest in RCS is recent - newer than iMessage, which launched in 2011. RCS with Google's proprietary extensions is just another proprietary messaging app, and I am not particularly excited about it.
There's no shortage of options for doing that. What Apple wants is tight control over all of its walled gardens, which should be no surprise given the company's history. They're very good at making it appear as if decisions made to increase their profits are aligned with the interests of users. It's probably even true that someone would have exploited the technique Beeper Mini was using to send spam if Apple hadn't closed it.
SMS fallback is not a common feature of internet-based messaging apps on Android. Signal used to do it, but does not now. I don't think WhatsApp or Telegram ever did.
Yup, good point!
keep in mind that companies can lie on how their stuff works, also I don't think the nature of the store matters, as much as the fact that you're only allowed to get the open source apps from there which will also run on top of a proprietary OS, with proprietary firmware
Consider that I have a low standard on what a hard proof should be,.. I consider telling people that : "Privacy, that's iPhone", while literally developing nothing in the open, which is the best and ONLY way to guarantee transparency, instead they went with the "trust me bruh" method, plus they display ads... like.....they have... a.. dedicated.. ad .. platform...
You don't respect my Privacy while you target me with ads
Or being unable to install third-party apps or other browser engines is supposed to be for security reasons. Or being environment friendly through their recycling program when the truth is that they only do that to keep spare parts out of reach of independent repair shops. Pure gaslighting.
They can lie about how the advanced data encryption works…. But then they also tell you that you’re shit outta luck if you forget or screw up your decryption code. If they really had a back door, then I would expect them to take a much less hard line on you’re screwed if you lose the key.
I would be surprised if they had a back door too given how they’ve pushed back on back doors from the NSA and EU
...
This feels a lot like the argument of well what if they break TLS? A lot of hypotheticals when I don’t have any reason or proof to believe that they’ve made a back door
...
Regarding gaslighting: See Apple’s response on the CSAM backdoor shit show. All the critics were wrong, including the various advocacy groups.
Simp.
And in addition they run big adverts on caring about privacy, while in reality they do the same shit as all the other tech companies, but just use their monopoly power to push out surveillance advertisement competitors.
They don’t, actually. They only sell anonymized statistics and don’t allow advertisers to choose who they advertise to. As a result, they can’t charge as much for advertising. So they are actively taking less money to better protect your information in that respect.
Apple runs their own advertisement network these days. Its pointless to argue that they sell less data when they themselves still collect all of it for their own advertisement purposes.
Where is this information from an independent party (not from Crapple)?
I do like their laptops, but for literally everything else: the fact that I basically don’t own my own hardware.
I can’t install or distribute my own software without Apple’s arbitrary approval. When Apple decides it’s done supporting the products, I can’t even install a different OS like Linux because the hardware is completely locked down… they become paper-weights.
That is not how ownership is supposed to work.
What could you not install Linux on? I’ve never had that issue.
My 2011 iPad 3rd gen.
A lightweight Linux distribution would make that thing killer for word processing and document reading. Might even allow YouTube videos to be watched again.
Any equivalent Android tablet would have custom ROMs etc. to get a bit more functionality out of it. I know it's not a tablet, but look at the Samsung galaxy SII - the amount of community development for that is incredible to this day.
I mean, I wouldn’t expect to have custom Linux ROMs for an iPad. For an Android device, which is already Linux based, that would make sense. But it wouldn’t surprise me if the newer iPads had builds for them since they’re built on the same processor as the MacBooks
I was able to install Linux on my 2015 MBP, but weird stuff didn’t work OOTB like the webcam and while I eventually got it working, it was less than polished because it was all reverse engineered workarounds by the Linux gods who managed to figure out the exact commands that were needed to be run.
In what way is the hardware locked down? Is this something new with the M chips?
Everything except the Mac line has a locked boot process. So your iPhone or iPad must run the latest iOS, must have an Apple ID, must source apps from Apple, and Apple has gotten so good at securing their devices that its basically killed hobbyist jailbreaking.
Anything you do on these multi thousand dollar devices is only because Apple allows you to— reluctantly, I might add.
(e.g. my former project lead refused to touch other peoples devices because using them "doesn't feel like apple, eww")
Overpriced hardware comes with a boon: It lasts longer. I am by no means an apple fanboy, but when I discovered the 12 year old Mac of my dad still performed like mid-range PCs with Windows, I was quite surprised.
Still not buying their hardware though…
Except a 12 year old Mac isn't supported by Apple anymore and will likely be riddled with vulnerabilities. You could just load Linux on it since it's probably an Intel based chipset.
It depends on the chipset. The big changes in chipset have been the big barriers for Mac upgradability. My father ran a 10 year old MacBook that was still running the latest MacOS until he found that his 4GB of RAM wasn’t going to be enough and bought a new one (without talking to me first). I had a PPC MacBook that ran on the latest MacOS for about 6 years after Apple switched to Intel.
Also the hardware support is not great, for example the webcam. I installed Linux on my old MBP but it was a hassle to get the webcam working involving some dubious command line entries with
sudoAs long as the OS was supported, updates were available.
But yes, I loaded a nice Fedora on it… 😉
Check out Louis Rossman on youtube. Especially his apple hardware design analysis.
Rossman has a vendetta against Apple ever since he got caught importing counterfeit batteries (You can’t slap the Apple logo on batteries that Apple did not make, even if you call them “refurbished”)
Planned obsolescence: the other day I was setting up a refurbished MacBook air from 2017. It officially runs only up to macOS 12. I wanted to install apple's productivity suite iWorks (pages, keynotes, numbers) on it.
But the AppStore said I would need macOS 13 to download and install it. Why the eff doesn't it allow me to install an older version of those apps, and why does the 2017 not support macOS 13?
So I installed Open core Legacy Patcher, built a macOS 13 installer. Installed 13 with absolutely no issues and finally was able to install iWorks.
Any non versed or risk taking user would need to buy a newer Mac... good job apple.
Conversely I have a dell xps from 2018 that run very well with fedora atomic (kde). I upgraded the SSD, WiFi card and replaced the battery. Should easily last me another 5 years
User repairability and serviceability should be(come) mandatory!
It's Intel, you too can have fedora atomic, and it'll likely last another 5 years.
If it would be my device and not a gift I would, yeah :)
Ahh, not so sure how great a gift an insecure computer is, but I imagine you have your reasons...
Uhm how would be it insecure?
OS hasn't been updated for how many years?
Seeing as no-one's answering the question in terms of privacy (although I agree with their sentiment)
Trust. You have to trust that they will respect your privacy. They actually talk a good game, are probably superior in privacy to the average android (but not GrapheneOS or Linux) in so much as they fend off other entities trying to hoover your data, mostly so they have exclusive access (at least to metadata, actual data may currently even be secure but that can change and possession is nine tenths and all that). At the end of the day, they're a greedy mega-corporation and cannot be trusted if they need to keep that line going up this quarter. I much prefer transparent systems that keep me in control and possession of my data.
I like their hardware, excellent build quality (shame about long term support and e-waste though). Will probably pick up a cheap M1 Air once Asahi linux stabilises.
Yes, thank you for answering the privacy issue. To be honest, I use Apple products but not so much iCloud. I’m in the Proton ecosystem and I’m waiting for Firefox to become less terrible than it currently is, otherwise in the meantime I’m using Safari with AdGuard...
I don't hate Apple in terms of privacy. I hate Apple for a myriad of other reasons. Mostly related to locked down ecosystems.
They've redefined privacy to be privacy from everyone except themselves, and then indoctrinated people that they are the most privacy conscious company.
iPhone user here, that is...
...quite accurate actually.
I have used Android and even tried to switch to Android a few years ago, but whenever I use Android, I can't shake the feeling that uncle Google watches whatever I do, I don't get the same feeling when I use iOS.
Weather either feeling is accurate I can't say, but I hesitate to trust an ad compny's OS over a computer company's OS.
Again, that is just a feeling, I make no claim wither way which is factually better.
iPhones tend to send close to the same types of info back home. When started, idle, inserting a SIM, on the settings screen, even when not logged in. Like, its very similar even when you look at comprehensive lists which a lot of people either don't know or ignore. I'm not saying that there aren't specific benefits or reasons to feel more comfortable with Apple. But saying its because they intrinsically are more private, I feel like that's a bridge too far
Try GrapheneOS (on a Google pixel, ironically) if you truly want privacy
Just use a custom rom
Classic Apple user, IMO
Android users also have those, and they also do let their feelings dictate the choice of field communications device
I don't like closed systems, vendor lock-in, overpriced tools, or buying equipment that I'll never truly own.
Few reasons, first is this: . Seems like as long as something has a clean interface, or it looks shiny enough, then all its privacy faults are overlooked.
Apple also seems to intentionally cultivate and sell their products as privacy-friendly, which is clearly not the case (see image above).
2nd reason is that I had an iphone 2g (one of the first models, I forget which one), and it had bluetooth support. An iOS update broke it, and when I reached out to apple, they lied to me and told me my device had no bluetooth module at all. They're one of the worst offenders of planned obsolescence, and have become one of the richest companies on the planet because of it.
3rd reason: they sell overpriced products to mainly to high-income imperial-core consumers, selling an image of "upper-class professional". Look at a graph of iOS market share worldwide, vs its market share in the richest countries. Apple didn't even bother to condescend to make affordable products for the global south.
The markup on iphones is something outrageous, like 40% of the purchase price is going to the shareholders of apple, not the workers who built the phones. By buying apple, you are mainly supporting these wealthy parasites. Its also why other smartphone brands have higher performance at half the cost of iphones. They really bank on the fact that they're selling an upper-class identity, and less of a phone.
4th reason: Their ecosystem is locked down in such a way as to make it difficult for open source development. iirc apple won't even let you use the GPL for any app on their app store.
Wow, this is the most complete answer I have ever seen. But is it wrong if I stay at Apple? Are there any competitors on the Android side that are worth it (I am thinking in particular of a pixel on which GrapheneOS is installed)?
I don't think it's wrong to stay with apple, you could always just go with something else for your next phone, although if you are concerned enough about the privacy aspect, you could always sell your phone, and get some advice about which are the best smartphone models to run the privacy-focused android variants.
Some of them list the devices they work on, like lineageOS.
There's ppl here a lot more knowledgeable than I am here that could help you choose one.
I was thinking about Nothing Phone 2. Does the brand give off a good image in terms of privacy?
I'm currently using Graphene and I love it. There are some features in this OS that i have never seen before. It feels like I'm just running a regular OS. I don't notice anything unusual.
One thing I really like with gOS is the ability to remove network permission on apps. I use Gboard with no network, and I have found it so far to be the best keyboard for me.
I'll mention that a pixel with CalyxOS works great as well, no google code code other than AOSP which helps battery life a lot.
Some things like voice controlled companion or android auto are being implemented, but I never really gave a fuck about that stuff, being on bicycle or motorcycle only.
I wonder if younger millennials' and Gen z's overwhelming preference for iPhones over Androids is indicative anything in the future
Only in imperial-core countries, most Gen Z's worldwide don't use apple products.
apple products are coveted both in and out of imperial core; whether or not they can afford them.
my point is that the most well educated and leftist leaning generations we've ever had (i'm assuming) continues to place a premium on products like these and that makes the eventuality of breaking out of this imperialist cycle seem unrealistic.
Cos i dont trust anything that says privacy but doesnt open source and provide reproducible builds.
Their latest announcements are interesting because they say some of their privacy claims will be verifiable by independent firms (mainly when it comes to their custom built AI servers iirc). Is this actually worth something or is it just marketing fluff?
Independent firms hired by them? Right. I don't think "independent" means what they think it means.
I mean, the Linux lmza exploit was found by a Microsoft engineer. Just because dollars exchange hands doesn’t mean the data provided is invalid.
Companies hire Jepsen to validate their code for example, and you’d be a damn fool not to accept their analysis.
Are you under the impression Microsoft was being paid to find that exploit or something? How is that at all related?
That truly was an independent third-party finding an exploit, and do you know why it was possible? Because the code was open source.
Great point.
That could very well be the case. However, I would have to be seriously gullible to believe anything those closed companies promote an "independent" party paid by them found, moreso if the findings only serve to push their proven lies forward for "public perception'.
In this case it's and actual independent party auditing open source code, that makes much more sense.
You are absolutely correct. What means the provided data is invalid is the fact that these companies are regularly found lying about how they handle our " privacy" or how secure they are. Just search for "Apple lied" and see all the instances and how they try to bury it all via PR bullshit.
I believe that, out of Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Apple, Apple is the lesser evil, but that means shit when they all do the same, just in different ways and at varying degrees.
Who gives a fuck what the server was running when tested. Its not like large companies have ever designed software specifically designed to fool when being tested is it cough vw cough. Its worth something so its probs gonna be fine for the majority of people but never trust anythibg that isnt on hardware u control running verifiably open source code or e2e encrypted.
Anti-open(source), anti-open(standards) l, anti-consumer, anti-planet, anti-repair, anti-honest. What else do you need?
Major privacy issues that come to mind include:
Wife spilled some beer in the keyboard. Screen doesn't turn on, it doesn't hold a charge, keyboard doesn't work. But we need sensitive data off the drive.
Take it to their "genius" bar where we are told there is nothing that can be done for the old data and we should just buy a new one.
I take it home, Google a bit and try target disk mode. Et Voila I'm in and can get that data from the hard drive as though it was an external HDD.
Why the Apple "genius" didn't share this option with me? They don't actually care about helping.
And that's the rub with Apple. They don't give a fuck about their users or developers. Just want to herd them around to make more money off their overpriced garbage.
This, Apple is very anti consumer and you have no freedom to use their devices how you want, only how apple wants.
Walled garden, overpriced exploitation of that locked ecosystem ($5000 monitor stand kind of shit), green bubbles/blue bubbles, dominating all tech with their middle of the road/copycat approach where Android was eventually saturated with same type of execs and "gave up" on differentiating until everything was the same sealed back glass rectangle without MICRO SD expansion memory, leading the charge on "brave" feature killing enshitification like removing the headphone jack, plenty more...
what are 'green and blue bubbles'?
An elitist dog whistle built to "other" the "poor" people - people that may have otherwise been successfully socializing or "passing" with wealthy people to the point of the first text message sent. Also a quiet tool for labor discrimination.
Only took them about 20 years of oppression to finally announce they would potentially end the practice.
Tbf that's more of an apple fanboy thing (though apple created, encouraged, and exploited that as an advertising technique, it's an extension of iPods and their "white headphone cord").
Basically apple cultists judge you as less than because you're too poor to afford an iphone and use android instead.
Apple is actually just a really good marketing company that hawks mediocre tech, not a mediocre tech company with a really good marketing team.
iMessage and sms
Golden cage.
Their way or no way.
It's really simple.
Oh adding to that, ever since I received the knowledge: the support, guru or whatever appointment? Worse than doctors and I hate that too. Why??
The one Apple product I still own is an iPad and I run into this constantly.
Support for network shares in the files app is barely functional at best ("Just use iCloud!")
Mouse support is still super limited ("Just use touch!")
You can't install applications from anywhere but the appstore ("sECuRIty")
You can't install a proper browser or browser extensions (I don't know even know what Apple's excuse for this one would be)
You can't disable or modify window tiling ("It's just like an iPhone, because fuck multitasking!")
Apple sells the iPad as a computer replacement, but basically all its capable of is watching Netflix or basic note-taking. The longer I use this thing the more I want to buy some x86 tablet that I can just install Linux on instead.
Apples excuse is Battery Life since their mobile safari is apparently more energy conserving than other browsers.
It is true that a real Firefox on iOS/iPadOS is missing. But otherwise you can’t say that your iPad is ONLY used to watch Netflix 🤣 I mean, some people replace their computer with an iPad!
I’m being hyperbolic with that last part, but there’s so much basic computer stuff that the iPad can’t do that it feels like Apple only expects this to be a device to watch Netflix on.
I want to install VS Code (or a comparable IDE) and run/debug some Python scripts, can’t do it.
I want to open a terminal and use basic utilities like ssh, curl, tar, yt-dlp, rclone, rsync, etc, can’t do it. I literally need to install a separate app that lets me ssh into a Linux box so I can do basic stuff there. I’m SOL if I need to work with any data on the iPad’s file system though.
I want to install Godot and continue playing around with game development on the go, can’t do it.
I want to install Steam and play some indie games, can't do it.
Procreate is pretty good, but I’d rather use Krita.
Which means despite the fact that I want to use it for more, all I do with my iPad Pro ("Pro," lmao) is watch movies and TV from my Jellyfin server, occasionally draw if I don't feel like sitting at my desk with a proper Wacom/Krita setup, and write my shopping list.
I agree, I myself am a programmer but hey not everyone is installing IDEs and game engines and Linux on their tablet. Steam could be interesting knowing that Apple authorizes alternative stores in the European Union. The iPad is not complete indeed, but it is just a consumer computer that targets people who do not want to complicate their lives as well as artists (Apple pencil).
There is no sideloading
No unlocked bootloader on iPhone, iPads and Apple Watches
The products are not repairable enough
Well, there is in the EU, but that does not help anyone not here.
An unlocked boot loader is something that would have to be forced from Apple’s hands like sideloading was in the EU. No way in hell they would pursue that on their own.
Rapairability is a point that bugs me as well, hoping for right to repair laws in the EU to force all manufacturers to make the devices better in that regard.
Can you read their source-code? Nope. And they falsely advertise their phones as Privacy alternatives when they collect just as much data as Google.
This is different than my understanding of Google and Apple. Could you provide links to sources showing what Apple collects about its users?
From their own privacy policy they outline what they do:
Literally all of this is what Google does. The only thing Apple does differently is hinder 3rd party apps to a greater degree, whereas Google is more permissive. But to be fair, Google has been improving the Privacy features of Android with each version.
https://tosdr.org/en/service/158
You can read their own privacy policy, in which they admit to everything: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww
Ignore their bullshit marketing as for "why" they collect it and when they try to justify it. Look at the facts laid out.
On mobile, forcing browsers to only be designed as re-skins of Safari. I would like an actual Firefox mobile browser that you can use uBO with. Right now Orion can do that somewhat, but it’s not polished.
I really enjoy Apple products, but this is my biggest peeve. It’s not like I cannot manage without a different browser—certainly about half of americans primarily use Safari—but the flexibility and customization of Firefox or chromium would be very welcome.
Yehhh it’s interesting reading this thread but I’m on my still-super-fast five or six year old iPhone and my biggest complaint is I would LOVE to have an actual version of my beloved Firefox with plugins and whatnot. Firefox Focus works fine but it’s still WebKit. Safari works great with Wipr, vinegar, and baking soda but it’s no Firefox with ublock.
I use Adguard, vinegar and baking soda, but wasn’t aware of Wipr. I might give it a try as a replacement for Adguard. Glad you mentioned it.
It’s not perfect, but I do appreciate it when I’m away from my PiHole! It’s also hella cheap, which I appreciate. I should check out AdGuard too!
Locked down proprietary ecosystem that lacks basic support for open standards.
No thanks
Anti-consumer shit like crazy pricing, doing everything they can to discourage repairs, going after third party parts/accessories/service, and how locked down their OSes are. Also, it's ridiculous that they don't have any sort of real enterprise management and IT has to rely on third party stuff (ironic given how Apple can be about third party stuff sometimes).
Same reason I don't like sony. They're too busy telling the people who buy the fucking products what they're allowed to do with them, and spend the rest of the time creating proprietary shit that traps their customers.
Hardware is great. Everything else is pretty much an abusive spouse.
The hardware is locked down and proprietary. I wouldn't call it great.
The hardware quality, seeing as I already spoke upon the programming and philosophy. Sorry, thought that was clear.
Walled gardens are antithetical to real privacy.
The fact that they claim to be the most private, but also the most closed, is a contradiction. And that irony doesn't sit well with a lot of people
Not supporting the open nature of hardware and software.
Basically it's too much of a hassle to make their software run on other hardware or use other software on their hardware.
As a citizen of the world its because they are slavers and fuck slavery. One of the biggest lobbiest against fighting slavery too.
Having been friends and family IT though its because they suck. They suck to work on. They suck to devolop for. They suck to run server stuff on. They suck to game on. And they cost an arm and leg for the privilege.
There’s plenty of real things to complain about Apple, no need to be petty like this.
Not only the wheels, take a llook on their store and it's hilarious prices for simple complements. Pitty that you must buy a charger apart for your phone which not even include it by default.
Sure, if I didn’t have 100 compatible chargers already from a variety of other products, and wasn’t willing to purchase 3rd party products, I’d have to buy a $20 adapter from Apple.
Also, I just checked and the latest Pixel comes with a cable but not a brick, same as the iPhone. Also Google’s cheapest power brick is $25, so it’s actually worse than Apple.
Got any real complaints?
"Other company is worst so Apple is in the clear".Why are you shilling for a mega corp that doesn't give a shit about you?
If the worst thing Apple ever did was sell some optional components no one needs to buy to use their core products for more than you think is reasonable, Apple would be a fantastic company.
I’m not shilling a mega corp, I’m calling out petty bullshit. You’re the one making Apple look good by complaining about petty bullshit. Find something real to complain about.
They kill off third party solutions shamelessly.
?
You cant use standard parts in there hardware
You certainly can use 3rd party chargers
No you can't really as lightning requires you to pay royalties to Apple. It isn't a open connector. You can't even get anything faster than USB2 speeds.
They pioneered modern day planned obsolescence, they also popularised unrepairable electronics. They try to block or bastardise any right to repair bills. They force chip distributors to not sell chips they use so their products can't be repaired. They make building applications for Mac at scale a huge pain in the ass and extremely expensive, the solution I recently built wastes insane amounts of power because of the way Apple licenses their stuff. Overall it's a shitty company who fucks poor people in developing nations, fucks the environment and fucks it's customers. I don't care how well it may or may not work, fuck Apple.
Also OSX ui is shit and annoying.
I just hate being told what (not) to do. If there is a solution to the problem, fucking let me solve it. I don't need anyone's permission or be told to deal with it just like every other schmuck.
I feel like my intelligence is being personally insulted. Any company deciding that I shouldn't try to repair my phone, which is my property, because they believe I am too retarded to fix it, can suck a dick.
It boils down to two broad categories for me:
Closed source that pretends to be your friend. They are just wearing a different mask than google, microsoft, facebook, bytedance, and so on. Any privacy gained is a circumstantial side-effect that will cede to any monetary interests and will be used as an excuse to lock users into their walled garden.
I don't care how nice the sports car is, if it's not going where I want it to, I'm not getting in.
Mostly their marketing practices. They are designed well but mostly designed to keep you locked in one way or another.
For me, their desktop is not as intuitive as people make it seem and lacks simple shortcuts that most other desktops have.
On mobile, its the restriction of customization and options. They are getting better at customizing but still limit you on options for anything outside of their apps. They claim to be private but follow similar practices as other companies, just in a more quite way with better PR.
Because I want to repair and fix my things without needing special software or proprietary tools. Along with a userbase of American teens who will treat you like shit just based on the phone you have.
I'm so glad I switched away.
they make bad products that are media darlings because it's fashion more than anything. they're treated like consumer advocates but they are one of the absolute worst companies for vendor lock-in, and are absolutely anti-consumer, but will have innumerable articles written about how they're "the best" for any given measure. it drives me nuts how the public perception of them is the complete opposite of what they actually are, and i don't get it.
also their software is bad. all due credit their hardware impressed but it doesn't matter if the software is crap.
and they aren't private: they've got all your data but have somehow convinced everyone that it's fine that they have it because they're somehow better than every other large tech company.
Like what another person said, hate is a strong word. But when it comes to Big Tech, I'm all for the word.
Might have missed adding something to the list. Will add more if I have.
If not USA, where ought they be based? Costa Rica?
For example in a country with actual privacy laws that also get enforced... like most of the EU or several east Asian countries.
Anywhere in Europe so GDPR can be fully used and so Apple will not have the same power over their users as they have today.
Anti-freedom
Profit-maximising
Literally killed the 3.5mm to increase profits
Acts holier than thou
If Apple had kept the 3.5mm port, we'd all probably still be having it on our phones and not have to deal with flimsy adapters.
i have it on my phone just fine, aint it crazy how cheaper phones have more features.
I have it on my Asus Zenfone 8 too. Sad to tink that my next phone upgrade will likely not have the 3.5mm port anymore. :(
One of the biggest walled gardens around. Also, they treat users like they’re stupid. No, you can’t do anything with your hardware or software that we don’t want you to. No, you can’t fix it, either. Windows/Linux you’re free to break shit, change whatever you want (not always for windows), repair a system you build yourself, etc. And I despise apple’s perceived “status” and premium pricing. We joke about #pcmasterrace, but there’s some weird social cache around messaging and even dating where you have to have an iPhone to participate. Tf is wrong with people.
Hates too strong a word for me, walled garden is unacceptable, completly unacceptable.
I get 1/2 my apps from F Drod.
You got 2 apps on your phone???
...sorry, could not resist
..
overpriced, jailed
I'm not a masochist.
They're more secure (albeit in many wsys security through obscurity) than private, although the privacy aspect is probably among the best you can get by default as far as I can tell. On the other hand, if you're willing to do some relatively simple steps and buy specific hardware, you can achieve better privacy and security on both mobile (graphene) and desktop (qubes) devices.
I personally dislike them for building unrepareable crap, tho.
Objective c, mostly. 😐
But also the fact that other operating systems run better on their hardware. Linux on apple silicon outperforms macos on that same hardware. A tiny team is porting software to your platform almost completely in the dark.
Always found their adverts rubbed me the wrong way, the technology as fashion thing. I also considered them the best brand on the planet for how successful their marketing was. Just not for me.
Not because of their privacy choices, but because they have made it impossible for people to leave their ecosystem, and anyone outside of it can't use anything from apple (not like I would anyway)
Forcing me to keep updating my OS version, even though it probably isnt that necessary (yes like Windows). Ok there will be perks and nominal security/privacy issues but not sufficient to make me have to replace all my usual software for versions with huge bloat and zero improvement.
The quality of build and user experience are great and def better than even top end Windows machines, but really, is that the deal maker? (I use both Mac and PC units every day.) If you look after a MBPro it will last 20+ years, but the constant 'you cant update something bc your OS is really old (High Sierra in this case) becomes a total PITA, along with battery death etc. My PCs also last a very long time and are very reliable. If they do break they are usually easier to sort out (and much cheaper).
Genius bar is a joke. As a pretty mid range tech person I actually repaired/reinstalled a Yosemite machine myself rather than wait in excess of 14 days to get any help from them and then be charged an arm and a leg. Google was my friend. Cost? Nothing. I got a battery replacement for an old mac laptop from an independent good rep company, cost was about 25% of what Genius bar would have charged.
My next laptop will probably be a Dell or System 76 Linux. Just to experience a fancy Linux build in a posh box.
Do they really think we believe any of their lies? We don't control macOS, iOS, anti-libre software (it fails to include a libre software license text file, like AGPL). Dangerous! 🚩
So I'm confused on what your point is
They control it, not us. It's anti-libre, dangerous.
That isn't the case though
I literally run it on my own hardware. Zero proprietary software is needed.
macOS is proprietary.
I don't use MacOS. Never did I say I use Mac OS
It sounds like you may be lacking an understanding. I run Debian in a VM that has Ollama and OpenWebUI. The base OS is Linux I just use VMs to separate everything out.
When I was going through college I had to work as a Microsoft salesperson in the largest commercial shop of my country. Basically I had to sell Windows laptops and ensure every purchase had a Microsoft office attached.
My stand was right next to Apple's and I had a lot of Apple fan boys tease me saying how superior Apple hardware was, how fast and secure everything is. I felt that by having no experience with Apple devices I was not doing my work properly, I couldn't personally disprove their experiences and opinions with my own. I ended up buying a 13 inch MacBook pro for 1300 euros, I believe. Since I worked at the shop they gave me a considerable discount, I'm unsure what the actual retail price was but certainly at least 1800 euros.
I felt robbed, to be honest. Using an Unix like system was nice, I always loved posix shells. Everything else was honesty a terrible experience. Why the hell do I need xcode to do anything? Why does git depend on xcode? Why is xcode no longer available for my machine directly from the store? Why is the store sooooo damn slow? Why am I forced to use Safari's garbage engine, regardless of the browser I choose?
I understand the appeal of having an entire ecosystem of devices that play nice together but MacOS was the only operative system I tried that would actually get on the way of doing work for me personally. For 1300 euros I could have gotten a beast windows laptop at the time, with a nice dedicated GPU instead of that Intel integrated garbage card that can barely play a YouTube video without full speed fans.
A couple of months ago I ended up installing EndeavourOS on this MacBook and it honestly brought this laptop back to life. So much faster and I can finally go back to installing up to date browsers! I have full Java stack running on an up to date intellij IDE and it works nice. A little slow, sure, but fast enough to get work done on emergencies. No more eternal spinning wheel loops.
Hate is a very strong word, I don't hate Apple. I just would not buy or recommend anyone to buy any of their products. They're pretty, tho!
Right to repair and own
They own decryption keys
Can't use without an account so you can't deGoogle or deApple them
You also can't use anything but iMessage and you are stuck with Apple cloud
I use Signal either way so if I were to go iphone, it wouldn't matter much.
I think for most privacy nuts it comes down to “I don’t trust them and it’s closed source. They could be hiding anything in that code.”
And then there’s the people who can’t afford or won’t spend the money it takes to have an enjoyable Apple experience. It genuinely costs multiple thousands of dollars to get into the Apple ecosystem and then it’s massively painful to get out. It’s basically just “corporation bad” because corporations are bad. The only way to be truly private is to not carry a phone at all and use only FOSS solutions.
I keep hearing how painful it is to get out. Can someone please elaborate on this?
I am not super tech savvy and was DEEP in the ecosystem but didn't think it was hard by any stretch.
I migrated my data, purged my files, canceled my subscriptions in a few taps/clicks, sold our imacs, MacBook pros, homepods and iPhones and moved on with my life and haven't looked back since. Took maybe an afternoon for the data piece and a few other after-the-fact logins to cancel things I forgot about. This is legit the 4th time in two days I've read this comment so I am just genuinely curious!
For me the biggest thing would be apps. No way I’d want to re-buy all my apps on the play store.
If you have terabytes of data in iCloud, use their mail, contacts, photos, everything? Plus decades of purchased content, expensive devices losing functionality by dropping the iPhone… you have to basically replace everything with something else and it’s tedious especially for a less techy person. This is the reason walled gardens are anti consumer.
No unlocked bootloader
It begins with Apple's petty reasons to prohibit The Binding of Isaac from the Apple store.
I never heard of this, what happened?
Exactly as per the label in 2016, the biblical themes and involvement of children were too spicy for the App Store, and the folks in Apple weren't allowed to think outside their box, so it was rejected.
Even now, Apple is fighting gunpower and gelatine to sabotage all efforts to allow side-loads and stores they cannot control.
I don't hate apple. Especially from a privacy record, they actually have a far superior history than essentially every other hardware manufacturer out there.
I think they're overpriced and I don't agree with some of their design decisions, and in general feel like they could give the consumer more control over things, which is why I don't personally have an iPhone or iPad etc., I use them at work and have nothing against them in general)
That's what their marketing department wants you to believe. But basically all independent investigations into that have concluded that Apple is no better, just that they collect all the data themselves rather than allowing you to have it collected by Facebook etc.
If you look into their privacy policy etc. its very obvious that they exclude all their own surveillance advertisement and privacy invasive stuff from the limits imposed on others. If they truly cared about privacy they would not make these exceptions for themselves.
I use Mac's at work and whenever I have to use 3rd party accessories (keyboard, mouse, headset, USB switch, etc) that are not apple products they tend to have some issues. I use the same accessories on my personal PC and have never had any issues that unplugging and plugging back in didn't fix. Also I hate that I need to use two USB C to HDMI connectors to have two displays connected to my laptop.
Not sure if that’s a quirk of your particular laptop but I’ve been using a thunderbolt to dual displayport adapter for years and it works great out of one port to drive a pair of 240hz 1440p displays.
It very well could be the mac that I have. It's a work laptop so it's not the top of the line mac book pro, so some more advanced display features may be missing. I haven't tried the dual displayport connection only HDMI. Might be worth checking out. Thanks for the tip!
Price is indeed part of it. If I'm paying that much I'm getting repairable and upgradable hardware.
I also hate their walled garden approach to everything. You can do X so long as apple has decided to allow you to do X. Things like no sideloading, no repair/upgradability, etc. I love Framework for instance and would like to see more stuff like it in the future.
And before you ask, yes I hate the other companies that do it too, they don't get a pass but we're talking apple right now.
As far as privacy goes, they're better than windows imo but not by much and it's only because windows is so bad, they still harvest your data but they target the ads instead of selling the data so others can target the ads. That is "better." I guess. I still prefer linux which doesn't even want your data (except anonymized bug reports if you opt in).
over priced without a single good quality, aside from things that are personal preference like aesthetics and the layout of things and workflows which i also dont like but its whatever, by every objective measure imaginable apple is outdone by their competitors and their competition is cheaper, there is no point to buying anything apple unless u really like the personal preference stuff or ur an apple simp.
Black box.
Top comment:
Also none of the comments even bother addressing the actual question.
They are gate keeping
Their hardware is just poor. They can charge whatever they like, I'm fortunate enough to not look at prices for that type of kit. Objectively, their hardware sucks compared to many other brands, especially at the same price point.
Their OS sucks for 90% of my use cases. If your "work" involves you just using a browser then yes you can use a big phone to get your work done. Slap an arm in a big case with a keyboard as a "pc" or a big screened arm for a tablet, or a small screen for a phone. But if you do anything where you use a computer, you need an x86 architecture and you need certain hardware capabilities. Over the time, they have all been lacking in performance even at the highest tier, and the price has been high end. Overall makes zero sense. The locked down *nix systems hide everything useful to make it pretty. Isn't compatible with real software. And isn't backwards compatible. I can install windows and my software from the mid 90s or 2000s or today and it just f'cking works. That's why Windows is king. Bloated absolutely. But it just works.
That doesn't make me hate the company. That just makes me sad for the uninformed people that get fooled into spending their hard earned money on sub optimal pieces of kit.
What makes me hate them is this game of "we just invented this new feature from 10 years ago!" and then all their fan bois go apeshit over it like they just stepped into the future. And they're too stupid to know they're being lied to and manipulated for profits. But they are also vocal and arrogant about their stupidity and ignorance, so I don't like them either.
My phone has more RAM, more storage, better screen, better camera, faster charging by an order of magnitude (120W wired, 50W wireless...), more radio transceivers for global connectivity, better battery life, and honestly looks better. There is not a single thing I prefer about an iPhone and there is not a single qualitative metric an iPhone beats my phone on.
My laptop has more RAM, more storage, better screen, better camera, faster and more charging, more ports, upgradability, and is a BEAST that will eat even mid range desktop computers. There is no equivalent Apple product. Not even close. And when you factor in the best and beefiest new macs can't even run my software, it's not even an option. Now my battery life sucks and it looks like a zombie movie prop, but it is actually functional. I can run a simulation or a LLM/ML algo that stresses the CPU at 100%, the Quadro RTX5000 at 100%, and gobbles up 120GB of system RAM plus the 16GB of VRAM writing TBs of data to the 5 internal M2 drives. And I can do so indefinitely with the temps peaking to 100C and limiting to about 300W of power draw. It blasts air out of 3 sides that I could probably cook an egg in. But it doesn't thermal limit after 5 mins of web browsing like the Macbooks or the Airs. It's a beast that is made to beast and it does. Apple can't even compete in the class.
For a tablet, I don't have a need. My phone gives me a giant screen and my tiny auxiliary laptop does everything I need. My aux laptop is beefier than most, but it would be slower than a top of the line mac doing basic tablet things of web browsing. If I did need a tablet I'd just get a Xiaomi Pad. But in general I feel that the entire tablet market is a solution looking for a problem that only exists because Apple and fan bois are idiots again. I've been taking notes on TabletPCs for 20 years now. Seriously, Windows XP had a tablet mode. As did every one after. My laptops have touch input. My laptops in university the screen swiveled and then laid flat on the keyboard with a stylus to write on the screen. All of those fancy new Apple pen features? I had them in 2005. Pressure sensitive, gyro enabled for brush strokes/widths. Eraser on the other end. It was capacitive and needed a proprietary pen which was evil to say then. Now that's Apple motto and they stole the idea and people are believing it's new.
If they release a good product, I'll try it. I'm not brand loyal. If they keep releasing shit, I'm going to keep calling them out.
Decide what good for me
In terms of privacy? What's the alternative? I'm sure that stock Android phones are way way worse in terms of privacy than any Apple device ever made.
Android is great in theory but the amount of pre-installed garbage, material design and Google / vendor powered spyware is way too much for my liking. I’m not saying that Apple doesn’t track things, because they do, but at least there’s no vendor garbage and you can go through the Settings and disable everything you don’t need, restrict Apps from running in the background etc. If you don’t upload your data into iCloud it will be way more private than the average Android phone.
Another thing I dislike about non-Apple phones is that, besides the Pixel and a few others, their bootloader and storage security is a joke, if someone gets your device you can assume they’ll get to your data.
GrapheneOS is great, it would be the one and only alternative to the mess that Android is however I can't daily drive that as it lacks features (nice things) I do want to have.
That tools doesn’t always work, besides an iPhone comes clean out of the box. No constantly running spyware on the background, no Samsung/Xiaomi apps. Almost everything can be easily turned off under Settings unlike an Android where you’ll be forced into a 3rd party tool or a ROM like GrapheneOS if you want a clean experience.
When you buy an iPhone you’ll also have a guarantee that you won’t be installing malware, even with the new Alt Stores in Europe, all the apps are code-signed and require validation. You also are sure that your apps won’t be able to get system-wide access and run all over your data and battery like we see on Android.
Yes, the iPhone is less open but it provides a level of security, privacy and “cleanliness” out of the box that Android devices can’t just match. If you don’t have much time / interest / tech skills to mess around with a phone then the iPhone is the best phone you can buy.
iOS comes with reasonable privacy defaults and blocks things such as apps running in the background for long time. Going into the settings is the extra-mile that still easier than having to install a cleaner ROM or deal with 3rd party tools.
I'm not lying about anything here, you know as well as I do that many vendors don't allow you to remove all of their Apps and most install permanently running daemons that you can't remove without UAD or other methods.
Yet the sandboxing isn't even comparable. One key aspect of the iOS sandbox is that is not only restricts filesystem access but also executes applications with way less privileges than Android does.
To complement the sandbox iOS apps are forced to use Apple's APIs in order to access user data (eg. Contacts and Photos) which will apply strict restrictions such as allowing you to limit at a system level what photos an application may access. Since all apps are required to be summited to Apple for review (even on Alt Stores) they'll enforce the usage of their APIs making it way harder to bypass restrictions.
Comparatively, on Android, you can install applications from random sources that typically resort to hacks to get around the sandbox restrictions and access more than they should.
OS and hardware potential to best the best but always something stupid and limiting
I’m not an Apple apologist, but I feel there are some things Apple does that are privacy focused.
The things I hate about Apple are generally not privacy related.
i like apple i just prefer using android and/or linux (and windows because i like playing games).
You can tame even Windows, making it reasonable private, because in Windows you can set almost everything (most things a certainly hidden and without much documentation, logic, but it's possible) in Mac you can't set nothing what Apple don't want.
Neither of those are under your control
I hate apple so much.
I really hate Iphones.
Iphone, Iphone,
I fucking hate it
I hate it so much
I want to beat it wtih a stick
It's such a slow-ass,
buggy piece of shit,
and everyone who works for Apple
can suck my fucking dick
I want to punch it in the face
and shoot it in the head
and run it over with a steamroller
over and over, until it's fucking dead
I'm going to dig up Steve Jobs
and Piss on his bones
Because fuck him and everyone
with their stupid fucking Iphones.