Still not entirely sure how the people on here seem to largely continue to support companies like Apple. I get it - they have the high-paying jobs, they make shiny toys, they have slick marketing and symbolism, caring about things like privacy, freedom, education, empowering people, etc, seems oh so very naff - but at the same time, technologically aware people know what Apple are doing.
Right? Or not? Is the argument just - oh, but the stuff is cool, so... whatever?
Not attempting to flame here, I genuinely am curious on the take people have that permits them ethically to continue buying Apple stuff and fan-person-ing over it. I know not everyone is, but it seems really very common, even on here amongst the technically literate. Maybe especially on here?
They make good products that people like to use, so people pay them money to use those products.
There are definitely things to disagree with Apple about, and the crowd here leans towards those values a lot more than the general consumer market.
But a lot of the ethical issues can be debated about basically any technology product not soldered and coded by your own two hands in your garage (and even that solution has ethical quandaries from an accessibility standpoint).
Personally I give Apple money and they give me high-quality, stable tools that let me get my work done in a way that feels nice. The alternatives all have most of the same moral issues (made in China using who knows what labor and material sourcing), but I like the Apple ones so I use them. I don’t see the huge conflict there.
What are you referring to? I’m a power user that buys lots of apple products.
- Best products for what I need: every MacBook since the fat ones in the early 2000s has been solid and living up to abuse. iPhones do not need me to fiddle with configuration or customization, just works (it’s not just a meme, it’s important to people without time), gets software updates for a _long_ time, and works very well in the ecosystem. The iPad Pro is the best tablet I’ve used, ever.
- iMessage is a solid messaging system and FaceTime has the best A/V quality of all the other apps I’ve tried.
- the ecosystem works seamlessly with each other and I can onboard my non techy aging parents into new devices and usage patterns without much trouble
- Apple Home and secure video are a joy to use and it doesn’t feel like you’re using it just because you’re already in the ecosystem
- I do most of my work over plain SSH and tmux/vim, for which iTerm is a great terminal emulator. For the occasional GUI app, the macOS looks fantastic ootb and requires minimal fiddling around to get right. I’ve been there and done Linux ricing and I’m glad I don’t have to anymore. Just dwm/i3 on my workstation works for me.
Now one of the most important things
- Apple support is the best. I’ve broken my phones, laptops, etc. and I’ve never had a bad experience in the Apple Store and I’ve been in an out with a replacement or fix in a few hours tops in multiple countries.
Many people, at some point, begin to truly grok the fact that nobody but themselves exist in their specific life context. That what matters to them— what they value, can be so different.
The moment you can liberate yourself from the “it seems really very common” trap, so much about, well, everything, begins making more sense.
Are you talking about gatekeeping what software I can run on my own device? If so, yes, that's one reason why I don't buy Apple products, generally speaking. I would love to use an iPad Pro as a VSCode machine just as one can do on a Mac but in a much slimmer package, but no, Apple doesn't want me compiling my own software for some reason, so I'm stuck with a laptop.
Same with the Vision headset, it is absurd that the only way to do real software work on it is to literally stream a Mac display onto the device. At that point, why not use the Mac itself?
The Mac screen that's mirrored to the Vision Pro is not 360 degrees and immersive either, it's just...a screen. It would be cool to see stuff like files and connections in 3D space, but it's nerfed pretty hard all so that Apple can keep that sweet 30% fee.
I'm not an Apple fanboi, I generally dislike their stuff, but I am also going to give credit where credit is due because that's what any fair person should do.
Apple makes stuff that will work, that will satisfy the common man, that will (or at least should) have quality meriting their price.
Apple's products are good, and that is an objective fact separate from whether I personally like their stuff or not.
The MacBook Air 15" that I bought 2 weeks ago, is the first laptop that I like using since... my 2012 MacBook Pro 15". I used that 2012 laptop 11 years(!) without any issues. It still does, but 8GB was becoming a problem.
In those 11 years, I've also used quite a bit of expensive workstation class corporate Windows laptops from Dell, HP, and Lenovo, and none of them had or have a usable trackpads or something like magsafe. And don't get me started about the fan on my current Dell that starts screaming at random when it's sitting idle on my desk, or comes out of my backpack screaming hot because nobody but Apple seems to be capable of getting power management right.
The laptop is definitely shiny, but the only one that doesn't feel like a toy.
Your perceptions are wrong from a consumer point of view. They don’t make shiny toys (well they do but that’s not the point)
They make extremely frictionless ecosystems. Everyone on HN loves to tinker I would wager, but that is never going to be your average consumer. Apple knows that.
That is why Linux will never become mainstream, the friction of using it (from installing to daily driving it) is INSANE . No one can use it outside of a select few. Same with Android. Lots of idiosyncrasies when you start digging deeper. I wanted to use Samsung version of Airdrop today. It was a disaster trying to get a picture over to another device.
That’s where Apple shines. Get that and you might make a dent in Apples market share.
For your Airdrop example, my iPhone has just as many silly UX idiosyncrasies as any Android phone. For example, recently I needed to translate the text in an image on my iPhone and there is no way to do it(from what I know) other than paying for a dedicated app and giving it Photo permissions. On my Pixel (and any Android phone) the same thing can be done by long pressing the image in my web browser -> Share -> Google Lens -> Done.
IMHO, phone OSes are mature enough nowadays that both options can achieve the same things and whether you prefer one UX over the other depends on what you "grew up with".
> I needed to translate the text in an image on my iPhone and there is no way to do it(from what I know) other than paying for a dedicated app and giving it Photo permissions
Save Image => highlight text in the saved image from the native Photos app => click "Translate". No third-party apps involved. All done locally too, no need for internet connection even (after the image is saved, ofc).
For my usecase saving the image would make it more annoying since I would then have to go through every image afterwards and delete it.
Also, I like that the translation is done offline but in my experience the iOS image translation does a much poorer job at OCR-ing East Asian languages than Google Lens.
In apps using the native UI framework (UIKit), text in images is automatically locally OCR’d and is selectable. Apps built in third party toolkits like Flutter won’t have this, but that can be worked around by taking a screenshot and selecting the text in Photos.
Lens can be used by going to images.google.com or the official Google app. Nothing is stopping the same share sheet flow you mentioned from being possible but for some reason Google hasn’t added a share sheet extension to their iOS app.
Your usage is already in the intermediary stage of interfacing. Still is a bit cherry picking, I stand by the overall assessment that Apple products are greatly frictionless and easy to use, and work together. Anecdotally, older relatives need a lot less help, almost none with their iPads.
For the low end iPhone and iPad have a super simple interaction model. My grandma uses both, and she’s 88. If it breaks she can take it to the Apple Store and they’ll fix it or help her. No one else comes close to them in this regard.
From a tech perspective owning the full stack from silicon / hardware / OS / service allows them to make things no one else can. Can anyone else make vision Pro right now? Even at the $3.5k I’m not sure they could.
The marketing / distortion field thing is bs in my opinion, when apple release a shitty product it fails, when it’s good it does well. Look at Ping, Apple Watch Edition, and to a lesser extent Siri and homepod.
> Is the argument just - oh, but the stuff is cool, so... whatever?
Do you find it that strange that "company makes things people like to pay money for"?
I'm unsure which "objective" ethical framework disallows Apple products but allows any other consumer tech device. Apple does very well at some things, average at some others, and very poorly at other things, which isn't particuarly insightful. Whether you would like to spend money on an Apple product depends on how you value each of these things, and you can't be surprised that other people might prioritise different things than you.
I bet you never took a vow of poverty or decided not to use tech. Do you use computers? Do you own a phone? Do you spend all of your time feeding starving children?
I am going to assume that this is not just a troll so I will take the time to answer your question.
> technologically aware people know what Apple are doing
Yes, I do. I have over 30 years designing chips and computing systems (not an Apple employee). The Apple Silicon Macbook Pro I am typing on has great performance and I never think about battery life any more and I never hear a fan. I've owned a lot of laptops and nothing has ever come close in build quality, design, and performance/watt.
Apple has over 2 billion active devices in service. Two possibilities: We are all suffering some massive delusion, or your criteria for evaluating quality and engineering need to be adjusted.
Please name another large company that cares more about privacy, freedom, education, empowering people, the environment, diversity, etc. than Apple. They are from perfect, but they keep investing in the quest to do better. What specific ethics issues are you so concerned about?
Please answer a question for me. How come so few people who are into open source operating systems seem to be unable to understand that the vast majority of the world doesn't want to deal with all of that stuff? I think it is great that some folks enjoy the configuring, tweaking, writing their own services, setting up their shells, arguing about vi vs emacs, etc. That's really cool and I am happy that is available for those users. However, don't condemn me if I have other priorities.
It is super simple. Apple makes products. If people like the products they will buy them. If people can't do what they need to do with the product and don't enjoy using it, they won't buy it again. If you are right, Apple will soon die and your problem will be solved. If you are wrong, their unprecedented growth will continue.
> permits them ethically to continue buying Apple stuff
you need to be more specific about what your ethical objection is.
I avoid the iOS ecosystem because I see it as a monopolistic lockin that restricts fundamental freedoms. It is hostile to its user's interests by taking those freedoms and achieves it by exploiting their lack of technical understanding of what they are giving up.
> if only people knew what they were giving up by using closed sourced mobile devices they would all be using PinePhones
not what I'm saying. It's not about closed vs open source but closed vs open platforms.
I think if people understood the real level of control Apple actually has over their lives by completely controlling every bit of software their phone is allowed to execute .... at least some of them would probably look to at least keep their options open. Of course, as long as Apple behaves benevolently, nobody will really notice this. But being a corporation controlled by money and shareholders, even if staying benevolent is a promise Apple wants to make it actually isn't one they can guarantee to keep.
I hope no touch continues to be an option even if Apple adds touchscreens to MacBooks.
When buying a PC laptops I look specifically for models that have a no touch version, because unintentional touches triggering things is annoying and for some reason, in my experience large touch screens almost always either lack antiglare coating or if they have it, it’s so weak that they’re practically mirrors. The antiglare coating on current MacBooks is quite good and I wouldn’t want to trade that for touch… same goes for my matte PC laptop.
I sincerely appreciate the replies but can't respond to them all.
I was tempted not to reply, because I feel we'd be talking past each other. This article here illustrates my point better than I could, and coming across it prompted me to put aside my misgivings and reply at least this once:
Many of the arguments put forward in response to my initial post are probably fairly consistent inside a world where what capitalists call "competition" and "success" are the sole arbiters of right and wrong. I don't think that world has any place in any sane discussion on ethics. You could argue that ethical discussions are nonsense, then, I suppose, if you want, but you'd have to argue it and stand behind it.
In a world where ethics means something, Apple is a terrible company. They don't care about freedom, education, empowering people, software freedom, the right to repair, sharing, etc. Neither could they; they care about selling products, cutting costs, dominating their competitors, and so on. They're as cut-throat and ruthless and relentless as any company their size must be.
They're good at advertising and making well-integrated, pretty prisons.
And again, just to be clear, I've made no comment here or in the OP about whether their products work, or are powerful, or about whether it's easy to get your granny set-up on them. These things are beside the point.
I'm not playing the blame-game either, you can all buy/not buy whatever you want. I genuinely was interested to hear how technically literate people who are aware of things like the already ongoing climate collapse can keep buying new products from megacorporations producing tons of new fast-gadgets every year.
What is the justification? What I'm mostly hearing is: we like the gadgets, they work well, it's real nice not having to explain anything to Grandma, and we couldn't care less or at least would much prefer to ignore the obvious ethical issues of supporting massive, wasteful, anti-competitive monopoly-like structures.
It's a harder argument to make, but for me personally the worst thing Apple (and Microsoft, etc etc) have probably done over the longer term is disempower people. They've turned all these things - email, browsers, searching, messaging, calling, storing data, etc etc - into mystical black-boxes that work thanks to the benign good graces of some super-nerd off up in a cave or a cloud somewhere.
It's a hard argument because the ignoramus doesn't know what it's like to be a power user, and power users can't remember what it was like to be powerless. What does it do to the spirit of curiosity and playfulness to constantly be computing in fear? Fear you might break something, or lose something, or that the metaphors that you never really got in the first-place might come crumbling down at any moment?
Here's an experiment for you to try in your own entourage: whenever the opportunity presents itself, ask the people around you - especially young people, adolescents - basic computer questions. Stuff like: what browser do you use, do you know any others, what's your operating system called, what does a search engine do, what's a URL, what is an "app", where do they come from, do you know at what moment you're officially 'in' your desktop, etc.
In summary, Apple depends on the ignorance and disempowerment of the masses, as well as being on the front line of a never-ending ecocidal hunt for "newness" which is actually grotesque given the finite nature of the Earth's ecosystems.
Inside of our current culture where "might makes right", this surely sounds bonkers, but from outside that framework, supporting Apple (and other tech behemoths feeding us garbage content, spying on us, obfuscating reality, censoring people, making addictive services, etc) looks similarly incomprehensible, let me assure you.
Cheers again to all the people who took the time to reply initially.
Right? Or not? Is the argument just - oh, but the stuff is cool, so... whatever?
Not attempting to flame here, I genuinely am curious on the take people have that permits them ethically to continue buying Apple stuff and fan-person-ing over it. I know not everyone is, but it seems really very common, even on here amongst the technically literate. Maybe especially on here?