Why don’t you like Apple?

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.
- Android doesn’t support iMessage
  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.
- About "Security theater":
  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
  Gaslighting their customers": I'd like to see hard proof on that
  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
- Regarding gaslighting: See Apple’s response on the CSAM backdoor shit show. All the critics were wrong, including the various advocacy groups.
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.

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 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.

price
closed ecosystem that funnels you into buying more overpriced hardware
general feeling of superiority apple customers often seem to aquire

(e.g. my former project lead refused to touch other peoples devices because using them "doesn't feel like apple, eww")

All that.
BTW, of all the drivers on the road, I always hated Volvo drivers who sport an Apple sticker the most. They're pure entitled no-good scum. Except BMW drivers, they should be euthanised.
- What kind of image do Volvo drivers have where you live? Here Volvos are just seen as reliable but boring.
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.
- Check out Louis Rossman on youtube. Especially his apple hardware design analysis.

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!

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.

I don't like closed systems, vendor lock-in, overpriced tools, or buying equipment that I'll never truly own.

Anti-open(source), anti-open(standards) l, anti-consumer, anti-planet, anti-repair, anti-honest. What else do you need?

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'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.

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.
- 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.

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.
- Try GrapheneOS (on a Google pixel, ironically) if you truly want privacy
- 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
- Just use a custom rom
- feeling
  Classic Apple user, IMO

Major privacy issues that come to mind include:

App store lock-in on iOS combined with terms incompatible with the GPL mean that some of the most privacy-respecting software cannot be distributed for Apple's mobile devices.
Apple proposed, but ultimately did not implement client-side scanning for end-to-end encrypted cloud storage. That such a thing even made it to the public proposal stage shows either incompetence (unlikely) or a lack of serious commitment to privacy (more likely). Apple's proposal may have emboldened EU regulators who are trying to mandate client-side scanning for encrypted chat apps.
Browser engine lock-in on iOS means hardened third-party browsers are unavailable.
The popularity of Apple's platform-exclusive iMessage service in the USA may be hindering adoption of cross-platform encrypted messaging. On the other hand, without it perhaps most of its current users would use SMS, which is obviously worse.

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

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.

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:
  For research and development purposes, we may use datasets such as those that contain images, voices or other data that could be associated with an identifiable person.
  To provide location-based services on Apple products, Apple and our partners and licensees, such as maps data providers, may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device.
  Apple’s websites, online services, interactive applications, email messages, and advertisements may use "cookies" and other technologies such as pixel tags and web beacons.
  We also use personal information to help us create, develop, operate, deliver, and improve our products, services, content and advertising
  At times Apple may provide third parties with certain personal information to provide or improve our products and services, including to deliver products at your request, or to help Apple market to consumers.
  Apple may collect location, IP Address, network information, Bluetooth information, connected devices, accessories, personal demographics, browsing history, browser fingerprint, device fingerprint, search history, app data, usage data, performance, diagnostics, product interaction, transaction information, payment information, purchasing records, contacts, social graph, watch history, listening interests, reading list, call metadata, device information, messaging metadata, email addresses, salary, income, assets, health data, ad interaction, in-app purchases, in-app subscriptions, app downloads, music downloads, movie downloads, TV show downloads, Apple ID, IDFA, Random Unique ID, UUID, IMEI, Hardware serial number, SIM serial number, phone number, telemetry, cookies, Nearby WiFi MAC, Siri request history, Web sign-in, songs played, play and pause times, playlists, engagement and library.
  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.

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.

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??

Their way or no way
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 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.

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).

Locked down proprietary ecosystem that lacks basic support for open standards.

No thanks

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.

Worst relation price - performance, you pay design not features
Apple is own by Apple, never by the user
Not share-friendly with other phones or systems; you are locked within the Apple world, you can't even download a simple mp3 without installing first the iTunes app.
Almost not repairable
It's the closest of all closed source, hermetic against all out of the Apple ecosystem.
Not more private than other

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.

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.

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Apple's authorised repair leaked a customer's sex tape during iPhone repair.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

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.

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.

1. There are cheaper 3rd party (and also cheaper 1st party) charging options
2. That wheels kit is clearly aimed at big businesses and not something a normal consumer would buy
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.
- They kill off third party solutions shamelessly.

It boils down to two broad categories for me:

How locked down the OS is on iPhones and iPads. We've seen recent progress (Safari extensions, retro console emulators), but we're still far from a serious OS. iOS still lacks a proper file management system (especially for playing back local audio) and no side-loading is still a deal breaker.
Obscene markups for easily accessible parts. Apple still believes 8GB RAM is worth $200, and they believe 1TB storage is worth $800. I'd rather just get something with replaceable RAM and storage.

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.

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.

They have their own closed eco system
They think money is key and throw large amounts at their consumers
All source code is closed
They are based in USA
They love AI

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.

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.

Closed software (and hardware if we count in house arm chips?) ecosystem is bad for security and privacy
Apple is subject to ancap US corporate law, which means they can realistically do whatever they want with your data (and it would be a bad business decision not to) with no real punishments/business expenses if they're caught
Large number of users increases interest for state backdoors
*BSD has mostly the same userland, is totally free, and open source

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.

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.

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

Overpriced
Tim Cook
Closed ecosystem
People using Apple devices are usually people that don't know a thing about tech, yet boast about how good Apple is while criticizing other brands, blindly believing the marketing Apple does
Shitty decisions
Devices are designed to be as hard as possible to self-repair
Overpriced

What’s wrong with Tim Cook?
Edit: Downvoted for asking a question, y’all are miserable people.

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.

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.

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.

I'm not a masochist.

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.

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.

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.

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)

Especially from a privacy record, they actually have a far superior history than essentially every other hardware manufacturer out there.
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.

Can't say anything about privacy because I haven't used their stuff enough, however I have an iPad from 2013 in perfect state that it useless because I can't install anything on it.

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).

Overpriced, locked down hardware, walled garden software, and a snobbish userbase. I simplify it all down to "I'm not paying 500 more dollars for a logo."

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.

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!

Black box.

In terms of privacy of course because in terms of price it’s another story

Top comment:

price

Also none of the comments even bother addressing the actual question.

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.

They are gate keeping

OS and hardware potential to best the best but always something stupid and limiting

Decide what good for me

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

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.

I’m not an Apple apologist, but I feel there are some things Apple does that are privacy focused.

The ability to E2EE encrypt iCloud is a very simple privacy feature that is accessible to the technical and non-technical alike.
Private relay provides a double VPN architecture that doesn’t cause constant captcha hell and again just works for non-technical people.
Hide my email, while not being perfect, is a pretty straightforward method to make throwaway email addresses.

The things I hate about Apple are generally not privacy related.

They are a mega-corporation that stifles innovation
They don’t allow other browsers
They are puritanical about what is allowed in the App store

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.