I feel your pain. I have been an Apple enthusiast since I bought my first computer, a McIntosh Classic 11. I have remained within the Apple ecosystem ever since. These days I have an Apple Watch, an IPhone, an iPod and an iMac desktop. I know it is evil, I know it is overpriced, and maybe Tim Cook isn’t the most evil CEO in the world, but … in a packed field he is certainly up there. But, but what is the choice. They are hard to seperate. I’m 71. Hard to learn another operating system. So I find myself tied to Apple may the supreme being whomever she may be forgive me.
Powerful take on the ecosystem lock-in problem. The second-hand Mac route is actually clever because it avoids the financial support issue while keeping workflow intact. I've been thinking alot about how consumer choices intersect with corporate ethics lately too.
But fortunately, there will be also lot of other people, entities, and even governments that are facing the same dilemma, and governments have money to throw at it unlike consumers. For example, the French and German governments decided to ally on "Le Suite", an open source online office tool, so they don't have to rely on Google Docs, and by extension the American government.
(Now imagine trying to go back a century and explain the last sentence to Marshals Foch and Hindenburg. When bafflement and fury fight each other for a tie. )
Yes ditto. I've had Samsung ever since I got rid of the ancient Nokia. They're fine but then I don't do anything major on a phone, my eyes aren't up to it any more.
I've recently retired from the fruit factory, so am no longer constrained by the company line. That said I do own a boatload of their stock due to discounted employee purchase deals and my original sign-on options bonus - I can't just sell them without having to make a much larger than usual donation to the IRS and the California Tax and Franchise Board, and for obvious reasons beyond the self-interested I'm not keen on funding the current US govt any more than absolutely necessary. I'd like those shares to still be worth something so I can enjoy my retirement - maybe not to the level of buying any gold hovercraft but, say, being able to afford to buy books from our esteemed host while also eating and sleeping under a roof.
I honestly don't know what's wrong with Tim Apple. The most charitable possible explanation is that he's taking one for the team, taking all the obsequiousness upon his own shoulders so no-one else there has to. I think that's being too charitable, but other opinions are possible. It's true that the Undead Tangerine does have both the power and the demonstrated willingness to break Apple if he wants. CPUs and other chips are made in Taiwan, computers and devices are mostly assembled in China, though some in Vietnam, India, Brazil and a tiny fraction in the US, using components sourced from all over the place. Any new tariff games would increase costs enormously, and any non-tariff trade barriers could completely disrupt the supply chain. Any hint of anything that might encourage Xi Jinping to think about any Taipei-wards adventures would also be catastrophic - there is currently no alternative to the Taiwan chip manufacturing business. The Mango Mussolini problem is real, and it has to be managed.
So I can sort of see a business case for all this bootlicking. But does he have to be so enthusiastic about it? Donating to the inauguration was the first obvious turning point - first time around it was well documented that the inauguration was just a grift and most of the donated funds were misdirected into the obvious pockets - so anyone donating second time around could be under no misapprehension that they were paying anything other than a bribe. The gold trophy just seemed like taking the piss - and maybe it was, giving him exactly what he wanted in the form of a trophy so tacky that Apple could never possibly think about releasing a product that looked like that. I have some nice trophies of my own from my years of service/servitude, and the difference is night and day, mine are nicely understated and attractive.
Internal dissent at the fruit factory is mostly carefully managed. There is no forum for the expression of political views, and attempts to use more general channels for that purpose tend to get squashed fairly promptly - doesn't even need senior management to be involved, self-policing is quick and ruthless. However the inauguration donation was enough to break through all those barriers - enough people were agitated about that to blow straight past the self-policing, at least for a while. It didn't change anything, of course.
As for the realities of having to maintain a personal IT infrastructure for just getting stuff done, eg writing about explosions, if you have a workflow established using one platform it's hard to change that. At the very least it would be a huge disruption that would take a lot of time and effort without any assurance of ever getting back to the prior level of productivity. I personally wouldn't write off Linux - if you have a spare computer lying about and a little bit of time it might be worth experimenting with, without committing to actually using it as a working desktop. I'm doing this myself, with the intention of running a server at some point.
If considering a switch to some other companies' cloud services, I'd be cautious as most competitive offerings are more thoroughly enshittified in the Corey Doctorow sense than Apple's. Apple has traditionally treated the users of its products as its customers, so hasn't felt the need to proceed to the subsequent steps in the enshittification path. That has unfortunately been changing, slowly, as device sales have stopped growing (almost everyone in the world who wants an iPhone and can afford one already has one) so there is more of an effort to make money from "services", which tends in an enshitty direction. Long term I think we all need to be taking Linux and small-scale internet services seriously.
Thanks for this Tim. It was one of the most interesting essays about Apple I’ve ever read! Confirms a lot of my biases. And you made me realize that when I was griping about prices what I was really talking about was the endless subscription grift which is now in effect.
Like I said somewhere else recently Tim is ultimately a parts guy. He wants to keep the parts flowing and if kissing an ass or several and giving some shit bird a gold piece of shit that he knows the guy can't take home according to federal law he's willing to do it where were you? I was backstage at every product Announcement and WWDC Theatre for 20 years and have I got a hilarious early App Store story for you
It's a problem. Years ago I went to Pixel when they were made by LG. That was after swearing off Samsung because of all their bloatware. But Apple, Amazon and Google are right in there with Trump so I cannot go back. Maybe OnePlus next time. Linux Mint runs great on Mr 12's old school notebook. Microsoft owe me several weeks of my life from reinstalling their shit years ago so that's a hard no even without their AI slop.
Well, let's look at it this way: these different hardware have been around for 30 years. Trump will only be around for a maximum of another five, and then he will eat himself to death. Or that little blood clot that we have all been nudging with our brains every morning will finally break loose and we will Advance to Vance I only said that cause it was cool just know this, in three years every one of these fuckers will need two lawyers.
I built a new pc this week , and installed a windows 11 from a windows 10 upgrade. The hardware was mostly whipped off the old pc and the three meaningful bits purchased. a cpu, motherboard and new main ssd harddrive. And I bought a very cool case which is goth black, except the fans have left the goth scene and started going to raves. I could never do apple products, I sold off a bunch of Ipods and made a cool 1000 bucks on ebay. I think it was the lack of drag and drop that got me, and the mice with no right clicking.
The phones though, I buy Motorola I have a 50 edge pro, its the most expensive shiny phone I have ever owned but I got it for 500 down from a 1000 bucks at Harvey Norman. and I have a 100 dollar backup Motorola which is just as good except the camera isn't as nice and doesn't shoot log/Raw. But then what do I know, my cameras are all second hand and were all made in 2008 - 2012 , my sony camera is the cheap end compact version and all I want from my computers is no lag when rendering video or gaming. And that they do.
I just like having the ability to make my crappy gig videos look like 35mm film circa 1988. https://youtu.be/ppjDYlvHLLo
I've totally moved away from Adobe after a 25 year use both professionally and creatively. Basically there are now free programs that are as good if not better , Blackmagic for video and audio, Affinity for art, layout and photoshop, Krita for animation. and google docs and Canva to make Pdfs. Its been good to totally get away from the evil and totally shit endless seas of Adobe grift. I still have a Corel Video licence that I bought once (once!) and it works great.
My first was a home-built Apple II. Then the Macs. Forced to go Windows for a while, then reunited, Apple, phone, watch. But now…Apple glass - WHY? Linux is calling but the phone is a challenge.
Agree going the used / 2nd hand / refurb path, and $ going to someone else.
+1 for CEX.
I also bought refurb iPhone 15 Pro from Mobile Federation last Nov (upgraded from 8+).
Set my limit at $1000 for a new-to-me phone, typically ~ 2 models back from latest. Did the same when I jumped from a 5 to the 8+.
And thanks to Andrew Reid for the tip to dial down that bl00dy liquid glass BS. Looks a lot better. Hopefully it won’t chew the battery as much either.
I feel you, Birmo. I too am deeply unimpressed with Cook's sucking up to the Trump admin, even as I suspect they're just doing it as a survival strategy as Tim Allen notes elsewhere in these comments. Trouble is the only alternative is something that runs Google's software and their hard pivot into evil over the last decade has made them absolutely off limits for me. (Ed Zitron's "The Man Who Killed Google Search" is an eye-opening piece.)
For years I did try to avoid buying into the smartphone duopoly at all. The Palm Pre was fantastic, and then HP bought them and killed them. So I jumped over to Windows Phone because Microsoft at the time seemed hungry for my business and were trying to occupy a reasonable middle ground between Google and Apple. And we all know how that wound up.
Apple aren't a great choice but at least they're not a fucking advertising company and I have some trust that they are not surveilling my every online move in the same way that Google does. Nor are they stealing from literally everyone who publishes art on the Internet to power a shitty chatbot. I wish I could raise my consumer bar higher than that, but then I wouldn't have a smartphone at all 😭
I went all in a few years ago on team Xi. Tradie type milspec Blackview robot phone is unkillable and still has half decent battery life after much abuse.
Not quite the same, but I’ve spent the last 6 months or so weaning myself off Windows, mainly to get away from the AI slopfest, and have set my machine up with Linux Mint in a dual boot (which in practical terms, means I only boot up into Linux). Is there some initial friction/learning curve? Yes. Can I customise my setup so it’s now a weird hybrid of Mac and Windows desktop? Also yes. Do I have almost complete control over my operating system? Also yes.
There’s almost nothing in the Windows ecosystem that I can’t replicate in Linux, with the jarring exception of syncing my iPhone (all my media is either ripped from my CDs, or otherwise downloaded - I don’t have subscriptions). I’ve got Scrivener working ok, the Office alternatives are fine for what I need, and I got Steam games working as well. Once I get around to sorting out my iPhone, I should be able to wipe Windows entirely, after being a user of Microsoft since before they had Windows.
Have also set up a home server for backups (from laptop and our phones), as well as a media centre, so I’ll have the option of cutting the cord to the cloud one day.
I'd recommend loading Linux Mint onto one of the old Windows machines, it will take maybe an afternoon, and you will end up with a browser (or two!) with ad-blocking, an email client if you want, an office suite, various graphics programs, PDF readers and so on, all of which work in sensible manner.
I have had little experience with Macs but I am sometimes mystified by the approach, some things are just weird.
In Linux, if you want a fiddle, (calendar items mentioning 'due', coloured red?), someone has done it
It's rather a depressing repeat of history that we've seen before though, isn't it?
I mean, Krupp, Hugo Boss, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Miele, Deutsche Bank, Allianz, Bayer, all made out like bandits in the Third Reich. And not just by selling armaments (hello Miele), Hugo Boss supported Hitler and designed the SS uniforms, and Bayer participated in medical experiments in concentration camps.
This is what happens in a capitalist society when the authoritarians take over. The capitalists prioritise money over humanity, the survival of their profits over social responsibility, and when the inevitable storming of bunkers happens and the clean up begins, they'll obfuscate and deny that they were ever anything more than horrified bystanders to the unspeakable. They might fire a few execs in the name of accountability, and then get right on with collaborating, in the Vichy France sense of the word, with the next regime.
It was Assassin's Creed of all things that pointed out to me the futility of attempting to extricate yourself completely from the clutches of our corporate capitalist overlords. The Evil Corp(tm) in that game had its tendrils embedded in so many things that Our Heroes(tm) couldn't even buy aspirin without helping Evil Corp's bottom line. So they accepted this and focused on the real work of destroying Evil Corp and its Templar minions and used its tools and products in the fight against it.
So yes, condemn Tim Apple, buy his stuff second hand, and then use it to rail against his American Reich collaboration and his betrayal of humanity in the name of profit, and when the bunker is inevitably stormed let's make sure him, Bezos, Altman, Zuckerberg and all the other nasty tech bro fascist sympathisers aren't allowed to avoid the 21st century equivalent of Nuremburg.
Never had anything iPhone and never will. Happy with Samsung despite them being a massive Chibol megacorporation.
Not sure if you've come across Marques Brownlee but anyway, he's probably one of the better tech reviewers on YouTube, getting hold of the hottest, newest things and giving, IMO, a reasonable review of the product.
Also, I have recently learnt how to disengage my next laptop from the clutches of Microslop by registering it as a local user. Again there's easy to follow videos that show you how to do this on YT.
Here's the link to Marques channel if you're interested -
I feel your pain. I have been an Apple enthusiast since I bought my first computer, a McIntosh Classic 11. I have remained within the Apple ecosystem ever since. These days I have an Apple Watch, an IPhone, an iPod and an iMac desktop. I know it is evil, I know it is overpriced, and maybe Tim Cook isn’t the most evil CEO in the world, but … in a packed field he is certainly up there. But, but what is the choice. They are hard to seperate. I’m 71. Hard to learn another operating system. So I find myself tied to Apple may the supreme being whomever she may be forgive me.
Powerful take on the ecosystem lock-in problem. The second-hand Mac route is actually clever because it avoids the financial support issue while keeping workflow intact. I've been thinking alot about how consumer choices intersect with corporate ethics lately too.
It's going to be a real bastard: cutting off oneself from US hardware and software vendors. It's like a weaponized version of XKCD's Nebraska problem.
https://xkcd.com/2347/
But fortunately, there will be also lot of other people, entities, and even governments that are facing the same dilemma, and governments have money to throw at it unlike consumers. For example, the French and German governments decided to ally on "Le Suite", an open source online office tool, so they don't have to rely on Google Docs, and by extension the American government.
(Now imagine trying to go back a century and explain the last sentence to Marshals Foch and Hindenburg. When bafflement and fury fight each other for a tie. )
I've had Samsungs for years & am happy with them, but I know it must be a headache swapping over (or it would be, for a tech idiot like me)
Yes ditto. I've had Samsung ever since I got rid of the ancient Nokia. They're fine but then I don't do anything major on a phone, my eyes aren't up to it any more.
I've recently retired from the fruit factory, so am no longer constrained by the company line. That said I do own a boatload of their stock due to discounted employee purchase deals and my original sign-on options bonus - I can't just sell them without having to make a much larger than usual donation to the IRS and the California Tax and Franchise Board, and for obvious reasons beyond the self-interested I'm not keen on funding the current US govt any more than absolutely necessary. I'd like those shares to still be worth something so I can enjoy my retirement - maybe not to the level of buying any gold hovercraft but, say, being able to afford to buy books from our esteemed host while also eating and sleeping under a roof.
I honestly don't know what's wrong with Tim Apple. The most charitable possible explanation is that he's taking one for the team, taking all the obsequiousness upon his own shoulders so no-one else there has to. I think that's being too charitable, but other opinions are possible. It's true that the Undead Tangerine does have both the power and the demonstrated willingness to break Apple if he wants. CPUs and other chips are made in Taiwan, computers and devices are mostly assembled in China, though some in Vietnam, India, Brazil and a tiny fraction in the US, using components sourced from all over the place. Any new tariff games would increase costs enormously, and any non-tariff trade barriers could completely disrupt the supply chain. Any hint of anything that might encourage Xi Jinping to think about any Taipei-wards adventures would also be catastrophic - there is currently no alternative to the Taiwan chip manufacturing business. The Mango Mussolini problem is real, and it has to be managed.
So I can sort of see a business case for all this bootlicking. But does he have to be so enthusiastic about it? Donating to the inauguration was the first obvious turning point - first time around it was well documented that the inauguration was just a grift and most of the donated funds were misdirected into the obvious pockets - so anyone donating second time around could be under no misapprehension that they were paying anything other than a bribe. The gold trophy just seemed like taking the piss - and maybe it was, giving him exactly what he wanted in the form of a trophy so tacky that Apple could never possibly think about releasing a product that looked like that. I have some nice trophies of my own from my years of service/servitude, and the difference is night and day, mine are nicely understated and attractive.
Internal dissent at the fruit factory is mostly carefully managed. There is no forum for the expression of political views, and attempts to use more general channels for that purpose tend to get squashed fairly promptly - doesn't even need senior management to be involved, self-policing is quick and ruthless. However the inauguration donation was enough to break through all those barriers - enough people were agitated about that to blow straight past the self-policing, at least for a while. It didn't change anything, of course.
As for the realities of having to maintain a personal IT infrastructure for just getting stuff done, eg writing about explosions, if you have a workflow established using one platform it's hard to change that. At the very least it would be a huge disruption that would take a lot of time and effort without any assurance of ever getting back to the prior level of productivity. I personally wouldn't write off Linux - if you have a spare computer lying about and a little bit of time it might be worth experimenting with, without committing to actually using it as a working desktop. I'm doing this myself, with the intention of running a server at some point.
If considering a switch to some other companies' cloud services, I'd be cautious as most competitive offerings are more thoroughly enshittified in the Corey Doctorow sense than Apple's. Apple has traditionally treated the users of its products as its customers, so hasn't felt the need to proceed to the subsequent steps in the enshittification path. That has unfortunately been changing, slowly, as device sales have stopped growing (almost everyone in the world who wants an iPhone and can afford one already has one) so there is more of an effort to make money from "services", which tends in an enshitty direction. Long term I think we all need to be taking Linux and small-scale internet services seriously.
Thanks for this Tim. It was one of the most interesting essays about Apple I’ve ever read! Confirms a lot of my biases. And you made me realize that when I was griping about prices what I was really talking about was the endless subscription grift which is now in effect.
Like I said somewhere else recently Tim is ultimately a parts guy. He wants to keep the parts flowing and if kissing an ass or several and giving some shit bird a gold piece of shit that he knows the guy can't take home according to federal law he's willing to do it where were you? I was backstage at every product Announcement and WWDC Theatre for 20 years and have I got a hilarious early App Store story for you
It's a problem. Years ago I went to Pixel when they were made by LG. That was after swearing off Samsung because of all their bloatware. But Apple, Amazon and Google are right in there with Trump so I cannot go back. Maybe OnePlus next time. Linux Mint runs great on Mr 12's old school notebook. Microsoft owe me several weeks of my life from reinstalling their shit years ago so that's a hard no even without their AI slop.
Well, let's look at it this way: these different hardware have been around for 30 years. Trump will only be around for a maximum of another five, and then he will eat himself to death. Or that little blood clot that we have all been nudging with our brains every morning will finally break loose and we will Advance to Vance I only said that cause it was cool just know this, in three years every one of these fuckers will need two lawyers.
I built a new pc this week , and installed a windows 11 from a windows 10 upgrade. The hardware was mostly whipped off the old pc and the three meaningful bits purchased. a cpu, motherboard and new main ssd harddrive. And I bought a very cool case which is goth black, except the fans have left the goth scene and started going to raves. I could never do apple products, I sold off a bunch of Ipods and made a cool 1000 bucks on ebay. I think it was the lack of drag and drop that got me, and the mice with no right clicking.
The phones though, I buy Motorola I have a 50 edge pro, its the most expensive shiny phone I have ever owned but I got it for 500 down from a 1000 bucks at Harvey Norman. and I have a 100 dollar backup Motorola which is just as good except the camera isn't as nice and doesn't shoot log/Raw. But then what do I know, my cameras are all second hand and were all made in 2008 - 2012 , my sony camera is the cheap end compact version and all I want from my computers is no lag when rendering video or gaming. And that they do.
I just like having the ability to make my crappy gig videos look like 35mm film circa 1988. https://youtu.be/ppjDYlvHLLo
I've totally moved away from Adobe after a 25 year use both professionally and creatively. Basically there are now free programs that are as good if not better , Blackmagic for video and audio, Affinity for art, layout and photoshop, Krita for animation. and google docs and Canva to make Pdfs. Its been good to totally get away from the evil and totally shit endless seas of Adobe grift. I still have a Corel Video licence that I bought once (once!) and it works great.
My first was a home-built Apple II. Then the Macs. Forced to go Windows for a while, then reunited, Apple, phone, watch. But now…Apple glass - WHY? Linux is calling but the phone is a challenge.
Agree going the used / 2nd hand / refurb path, and $ going to someone else.
+1 for CEX.
I also bought refurb iPhone 15 Pro from Mobile Federation last Nov (upgraded from 8+).
Set my limit at $1000 for a new-to-me phone, typically ~ 2 models back from latest. Did the same when I jumped from a 5 to the 8+.
And thanks to Andrew Reid for the tip to dial down that bl00dy liquid glass BS. Looks a lot better. Hopefully it won’t chew the battery as much either.
I feel you, Birmo. I too am deeply unimpressed with Cook's sucking up to the Trump admin, even as I suspect they're just doing it as a survival strategy as Tim Allen notes elsewhere in these comments. Trouble is the only alternative is something that runs Google's software and their hard pivot into evil over the last decade has made them absolutely off limits for me. (Ed Zitron's "The Man Who Killed Google Search" is an eye-opening piece.)
For years I did try to avoid buying into the smartphone duopoly at all. The Palm Pre was fantastic, and then HP bought them and killed them. So I jumped over to Windows Phone because Microsoft at the time seemed hungry for my business and were trying to occupy a reasonable middle ground between Google and Apple. And we all know how that wound up.
Apple aren't a great choice but at least they're not a fucking advertising company and I have some trust that they are not surveilling my every online move in the same way that Google does. Nor are they stealing from literally everyone who publishes art on the Internet to power a shitty chatbot. I wish I could raise my consumer bar higher than that, but then I wouldn't have a smartphone at all 😭
I went all in a few years ago on team Xi. Tradie type milspec Blackview robot phone is unkillable and still has half decent battery life after much abuse.
Not quite the same, but I’ve spent the last 6 months or so weaning myself off Windows, mainly to get away from the AI slopfest, and have set my machine up with Linux Mint in a dual boot (which in practical terms, means I only boot up into Linux). Is there some initial friction/learning curve? Yes. Can I customise my setup so it’s now a weird hybrid of Mac and Windows desktop? Also yes. Do I have almost complete control over my operating system? Also yes.
There’s almost nothing in the Windows ecosystem that I can’t replicate in Linux, with the jarring exception of syncing my iPhone (all my media is either ripped from my CDs, or otherwise downloaded - I don’t have subscriptions). I’ve got Scrivener working ok, the Office alternatives are fine for what I need, and I got Steam games working as well. Once I get around to sorting out my iPhone, I should be able to wipe Windows entirely, after being a user of Microsoft since before they had Windows.
Have also set up a home server for backups (from laptop and our phones), as well as a media centre, so I’ll have the option of cutting the cord to the cloud one day.
I'd recommend loading Linux Mint onto one of the old Windows machines, it will take maybe an afternoon, and you will end up with a browser (or two!) with ad-blocking, an email client if you want, an office suite, various graphics programs, PDF readers and so on, all of which work in sensible manner.
I have had little experience with Macs but I am sometimes mystified by the approach, some things are just weird.
In Linux, if you want a fiddle, (calendar items mentioning 'due', coloured red?), someone has done it
It's rather a depressing repeat of history that we've seen before though, isn't it?
I mean, Krupp, Hugo Boss, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Miele, Deutsche Bank, Allianz, Bayer, all made out like bandits in the Third Reich. And not just by selling armaments (hello Miele), Hugo Boss supported Hitler and designed the SS uniforms, and Bayer participated in medical experiments in concentration camps.
This is what happens in a capitalist society when the authoritarians take over. The capitalists prioritise money over humanity, the survival of their profits over social responsibility, and when the inevitable storming of bunkers happens and the clean up begins, they'll obfuscate and deny that they were ever anything more than horrified bystanders to the unspeakable. They might fire a few execs in the name of accountability, and then get right on with collaborating, in the Vichy France sense of the word, with the next regime.
It was Assassin's Creed of all things that pointed out to me the futility of attempting to extricate yourself completely from the clutches of our corporate capitalist overlords. The Evil Corp(tm) in that game had its tendrils embedded in so many things that Our Heroes(tm) couldn't even buy aspirin without helping Evil Corp's bottom line. So they accepted this and focused on the real work of destroying Evil Corp and its Templar minions and used its tools and products in the fight against it.
So yes, condemn Tim Apple, buy his stuff second hand, and then use it to rail against his American Reich collaboration and his betrayal of humanity in the name of profit, and when the bunker is inevitably stormed let's make sure him, Bezos, Altman, Zuckerberg and all the other nasty tech bro fascist sympathisers aren't allowed to avoid the 21st century equivalent of Nuremburg.
Never had anything iPhone and never will. Happy with Samsung despite them being a massive Chibol megacorporation.
Not sure if you've come across Marques Brownlee but anyway, he's probably one of the better tech reviewers on YouTube, getting hold of the hottest, newest things and giving, IMO, a reasonable review of the product.
Also, I have recently learnt how to disengage my next laptop from the clutches of Microslop by registering it as a local user. Again there's easy to follow videos that show you how to do this on YT.
Here's the link to Marques channel if you're interested -
https://youtube.com/@mkbhd?si=dKzjLShRgRU5UfES
Liquid Fucking Glass.