The foundational tenet of “the Cult of Mac” is that buying products from a $3t company makes you a member of an oppressed ethnic minority and therefore every criticism of that corporation is an ethnic slur.
Call it “Apple exceptionalism” – the idea that Apple, alone among the Big Tech firms, is virtuous, and therefore its conduct should be interpreted through that lens of virtue. The wellspring of this virtue is conveniently nebulous, which allows for endless goal-post shifting by members of the Cult of Mac when Apple’s sins are made manifest.
↫ Cory Doctorow
An absolutely brilliant response to the DoJ lawsuit from Cory Doctorow.
You notice this “Apple exceptionalism” a lot right now because of the new laws in the EU and now the lawsuit by the US DoJ. Apple products being better is posited as a fact, a law of the universe, and as such, any claims, either through lawsuits or legislation, that Apple is doing something wrong, illegal, or anticompetitive are by definition false. Things that, according to them, make Apple products “superior” can simply not be illegal.
You also notice this a lot when it comes to the existence of Android. People who don’t like being locked in or have issues with Apple’s behaviour can just switch to Android, right? The thought that there are real, monetary costs to switching from iOS to Android – costs driven up by Apple’s very behaviour – is irrelevant to them, because in the eyes of the tech pundit, everyone’s rich.
What we’ll be discovering over the course of the DoJ lawsuit – a course that will take us years – is that the general public cares a lot less about Apple as a company than Apple tech pundits think it does. People have iPhones not because they love Apple, but because their previous phone was an iPhone, because of network effects, or a bit of both. I doubt the average (in this case) American gives a rat’s ass about Apple, and are much more worried about the fact they have to live paycheck-to-paycheck in a dysfunctional shell of a democracy while being told the economy is doing just great.
Assuming that Trump DoJ will not withdraw or curb the case, or the republican appointed supreme court majority will not dismiss the case in its nth appeal a decade into the future.
cevvalkoala,
You are right, this will take years and will be decided by whatever administration is in charge years from now. Campaign contributions and even supreme court “gifts” could help grease the wheels of “progress”. Trump may be one of the most openly corruptible politicians we’ve witnessed in our lifetimes. I don’t follow Tim Apple’s political views or if he would actually stoop to this level, but as far as Trump goes there’s zero doubt that he would be open to a corruption deal. Quid pro quo.
Thom Holwerda,
Not only is switching vendors non-trivial because of these engineered barriers, but really there are significant problems with google too. Voting with one’s wallet becomes rather futile whenever there’s not enough competition. The “choice” tends towards having to be choosing the least bad option as opposed to something that you actually want to support. A duopoly is still a failing grade for healthy markets.
I would be happy to see the return of the Windows Phone platform. I really liked the last one I had, an Acatel Idol 4S, and the Nokia Lumias I had before that. After they were no longer available I’ve had an LG G7 (Android) and an iPhone 13 Mini (iOS). I still think Windows Phone was the best of the three for all around usability,
I wouldn’t be. Windows Phone combined the worst aspect of iOS (locked sideloading) with the worst aspect of Android (uncertain upgrades). Just ask all those people who bought WP7 phones and never got upgraded to WP8 despite most midrange and high-end Android 2.x phones receiving upgrades to 4.x. Windows Phone sucked and deserved to die.
I can mourn the loss of WebOS and Symbian, but not WP.
Anyway, one thing those 3 OSes had in common is that they showed the true colors of all those people harping on about Windows license refunds. I never saw one of those people demand that the $40-per-device GMS fee be refunded to them, despite Android dominating the non-Apple OEM market. Strange.
I disagree that “Windows Phone sucked and deserved to die”. I’ve used all three main phone OSs (Windows, Android and iOS). My first Windows Phone one came with WP7.0 and got an update to WP 7.5. I later got WP 8.1 and WP10 by buying newer phones. I still prefer the WP user interface (best) compared to Android (middle) and iOS (worst).
WP sucked because it tried to copy Apple’s worst business practices (locked sideloading) without even bothering to offer what Apple offered at the time (guaranteed upgrades). So, I wasn’t sad to see it go away. Even if I liked the UI, I wouldn’t reward such business practices when alternatives were very much available (all my phones are and have been Androids btw).
This is the second time Microsoft made that mistake btw, the first time was when they tried to copy Apple’s practice of selling DRMed music without even offering long-term support for the DRM like Apple did (leading to the PlaysForSure fiasco: https://www.eff.org/el/deeplinks/2006/09/microsofts-zune-wont-play-protected-windows-media).
Simply put, any company that gets a severe case of Apple envy and tries to copy Apple’s worst business practices without at least offering what Apple offers deserves to see its products shunned. And most of the time, that’s exactly what happens, because customers can see a worst-of-both-worlds deal when they come across one.
Correction: all my phones of the past 14 years are and have been Androids (never owned an iPhone or WP)
This, again. Apple’s troubles in the mid-90s (which almost resulted in the bankruptcy of the company and a potential Microsoft monopoly on desktop OSes) gave birth to a mythology that Apple is always the plucky startup that can’t be a monopolist and it’s all the other Big Tech firms that are the monopolists. No matter how much evidence to the contrary there is out there that this is not the case today, that myth just. won’t. die.
We are living in a society with ecosystems for technology. The Apple one is perhaps the most evident, but let’s not forget what companies like IBM did in the 60-70’s where starting with them basically meant that you were stuck with them, that there were not easy way to take your data away and move to another company. When the microcomputers appeared in the mid-70’s, we had a democratization of computing, that became available to everyone. The IBM PC was built in an open way. But companies like Apple with their MAC line of products made sure that again, if you start with their line of computers, that was perhaps easier than DOS, you were stuck in their environment. That was in the mid-80’s. Fast-forward to the 2000’s and the same closed ecosystem survived, although it started to expand. And since the 2010’s, other companies like Microsoft are also trying to do the same thing with their app store, and all restrictions they impose on both developers and end-users. At least, if Android the Google-owned ecosystem tries to restrict the apps to the Google app store, you have a choice of the hardware. You can start with a Samsung phone and change to an LG or another brand name when your phone is obsolete or you lock yourself in another multi-year contract with your cell provider. And Samsung also has its ecosystem, with all their appliance products that can now be monitored or controlled from your Samsung cell phone. But you can choose not to do it. You can choose to have different brands, and manage them as we always did in the last 50-75 years. And in the world of the operating systems, something that everyone takes for granted, consumers are stuck with what Microsoft will let the computer companies install on their systems in all major stores across the world. Unless you accept to pay the “Microsoft tax” to get the hardware and are tech-savvy enough to install your own OS. Are we going to have another antitrust against Microsoft because they have all the market of non-Apple devices ? I would like to see that…….
On that democratization of computing note…
We decided to forego with that lottery win, when we opted for cloud. We somehow got the chance of doing everything our way, on our machines, and we decided not to. Instead, we gave away the liberty we accidentally won from IBM to Amazon, Google, Apple, MS et al.. That was stupid of us.
But also there’s a physical development putting an end to that democratization of computing era. The AI demands huge computing power. At a scale I physically can’t (and don’t want to anyway, No way I’m putting a 400 watt gpu on my laptop) run on my laptop. So, that democratization of computing power is dead, and I need datacenters if I want to do anything significant involving AI.
I don’t know where this will take us. But it won’t be a happy place, I presume.
cevvalkoala,
Yeah, I don’t think many people consciously thought about the control they were giving up. Today 5g networks were sold to the public as a positive thing, with everything on the internet. However it’s kind of turning into a nightmare with everything designed to track us all the time.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a60175396/connected-cars-driver-data-tracking-insurance/
It depends what you are referring to. Training a NN is extremely energy intensive. But once you have all the training weights, evaluating AI output is generally very fast even with moderate hardware – especially if there are no critical real time requirements.
IMHO a bigger problem consumers face with AI isn’t so much that they need expensive hardware, but that companies these days don’t want consumers to run software locally anymore, as you mentioned earlier. Keeping features locked to their servers means they are better able to gate keep users, software, and data while imposing subscriptions.
https://www.sammobile.com/news/you-will-have-to-pay-for-using-galaxy-ai-features-after-2025/
Much like “cloud” everything, technology is taking shape around business models rather than the other way around. For some of us, this is kind of a disappointing direction for tech and for me it is one of the reasons I’m compelled to use local FOSS software instead of increasingly tethered commercial software.
The other concern with Apple’s business practices is its network effects. When other corporations see Apple getting away with user rights abuses, they follow suit. A good example of this is with Android going the iOS way of OS lockdowns, gradually with every new release. Consumer rights abuses has been on the rise worldwide due to poor ‘innovation’ and ‘safety’ of users.
I would like to see the return of an OS like Maemo on smartphones. A smartphone phone is basically a downsized computer. We refuse to put up with locked down crap on PCs, but somehow, this is acceptable on smart phones.
adkilla,
As a lineageos user, I am extremely troubled by google’s moves.
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-silently-blocking-rcs-rooted-android-phones-custom-roms-3421652/
At the same time though there is no real competition. As harmful as google’s restrictions are to power users and alternative ROMs, Apple are even worse. They are both effectively sealing the doors for alternative solution providers..
cevvalkoala,
Granted things are getting a bit more restrictive every generation, however both Mac and Win11 still support installing 3rd party software without getting vendor permission first. I think this was adkilla’s point.
You still can buy a PC today that you can install with any OS that you want. Macs have never considered themselves as PCs. Though Apple has in the past enabled 3rd party OS through the use of Bootcamp. You don’t need permission from either PC manufacturers or Apple to install a different OS on these systems.
Bootloader unlock is becoming a thing of the past with newer Android phones. Google may even introduce restrictive unlocking procedures to prevent you from installing any custom Android ROM on their Pixel line of phones. Other Android manufacturers are already doing this with their phones. The same thing has already happened with Chromebooks. Same could also be said of upcoming ARM based laptops and desktops.
Oh dear such silliness.
Let’s recap.
Twenty years ago when Apple and it’s computers were a minor slice of the PC market the consensus amongst ‘techie’ commentators was that Apple and the Mac had been beaten by Microsoft and Windows because Apple Was Closed And Windows Was Open.
Open Always Beats Closed – cried the tech brainiacs stretching their cognitive abilities to the limit.
It seemed so plausible – to some.
Then came the expensive iPhone. Apple were making the same mistake again chortled the tech geniuses, didn’t they get it – open always beats closed! Android would sweep the iPhone into a niche just like Windows did with the Mac.
Then came the App store.
And there were a few worrying signs – like the fact only Apple and Samsung seemed to making any money in this reinvented smart phone market. But still – open would inevitably beat closed – wouldn’t it?
Then came the iPad. Then Airpods. Then a Watch. And new Macs running Apple silicon that don’t need a hear dryer running inside them and battery life that is impossible to match. Now a headset. Plus lots of services. And everything Apple made seemed to work together seamlessly, and it was secure, or at least lot more secure than anything people were used to using from the wacky world of Windows.
Apple’s relentless march of vertical integration culminated in Apple bespoke silicon, which was not just bespoke but better than all the other silicon. This was jolly confusing for the terminally confused techies – how could that be?
And here we are. Apple has built a very, very successful business making a vertically integrated suite of devices that all connect seamlessly together. None of these devices have a monopoly share of any of the markets they operate in. Non-vertically integrated devices are freely available in all the markets that Apple operate in and they sell in large numbers. And the best bit is that consumers get to choose what model they like best – open or closed – they can pick.
Except in some sort of dreadful error the consumers seem to actually really like Apple products. Apple products are pretty expensive but they sell in vast numbers. Apple products always come top or near the top of consumer polls.
Ah – the only explanation – those poor foolish consumers have been tricked into the Apple ecosystem and now find themselves ruthlessly locked in against their will. We must free them even if they seem happy and don’t want to be free! We must force Apple to change it’s products so that they are open and not closed because – you know – Open Always Beats Closed (even if you have to make it legally mandatory).
BTW only someone from the closed loop of the techies sub-culture could write drivel like this:
“What we’ll be discovering over the course of the DoJ lawsuit – a course that will take us years – is that the general public cares a lot less about Apple as a company than Apple tech pundits think it does. People have iPhones not because they love Apple, but because their previous phone was an iPhone, because of network effects, or a bit of both. I doubt the average (in this case) American gives a rat’s ass about Apple, and are much more worried about the fact they have to live paycheck-to-paycheck in a dysfunctional shell of a democracy while being told the economy is doing just great.”
This is an interesting take on it:
https://medium.com/chamber-of-progress/the-governments-new-apple-antitrust-case-would-force-iphones-to-look-like-androids-0048fb0e49e4
Strossen,
What on earth are you talking about? I’d don’t recall anybody using that argument and it kind of comes across as a straw man here.
You’re entitled to have a condescending view of consumer rights, but I’ll be honest it does very little to rebut the case against apple and it’s market abuses.
I miss my Maemo and Sailfish OS phones so much… :'(
Another stupid waste of tax dollars. This case will go about as well as the Microsoft one went. And last I looked Microsoft was much more guilty in their Wintel duopoly. (Especially with how they treated Linux at the time)
Microsoft didn’t blink and nor will Apple and 10 years from now no one will remember this like no one talks about the case against Microsoft.
Windows Sucks,
We don’t know, time will tell.
Some are disappointed that the MS penalties were little more than a slap on the wrist. They didn’t give much back to microsoft’s victims. Even then though we need to recognize that the antitrust cases did have a significant impact on microsoft’s practices going forward. MS were closely monitored and prohibited from abusing their monopoly going forward. They were compelled to make technology more accessible to 3rd parties, stopped interfering with other browsers, stopped market manipulation, etc. If not for the MS lawsuits, odds are very high that MS would control the dominant browser today. Their dominance wouldn’t have stopped there either. Given the microsoft’s market power, experience, willingness and ability to use their monopoly, it is likely that a lot more of our technology would have fallen to microsoft. Microsoft could have beaten google on the web and apple at mobile….unfairly of course, but still that’s the point.
Some people might want apple to be punished for their antitrust abuses over the past decade. I don’t know if that will actually happen or not, I’m not betting on it personally. Regardless of what happens retroactively though, it’s still important to bring antitrust lawsuits to put a stop to the most abusive practices going forward.