Free and Open Source Software

I consider Apple to be one of the most evil corporations out there, but it appears that my interpretation of "evilness" seema to coincide with size a lot.
so maybe i just don't like (stupidly) successfull companies.

Anyway, I think Apple locks people in their very nice walled garden and in that garden uses a lot of public infrastructure (like open source software, but also other open services on the net), and gives comparatively very little back to the community.

and they do it, because they think it propably makes slightly more money.

Which is also the reason I don't trust their privacy promises at all, since they can't prove many of them.

Apple could be an enormous force for good, but to me it feels like they care more about making 0.5% more money to put into their hoard.

Terrible company, I do believe the world would be better if it vanished.

I have an iPhone, use a MacBook for work (only options are windows and Mac), but use Linux at home. I was an android user years ago, but one of the things that pushed me away is google treating android users as a data source. There were ‘bugs’ which caused the google services to run constantly in the background. In my opinion, Apple cares about users privacy lot more than google does. Use whatever tool suits you best.

You touched upon quite a few interesting topics, so I’ll try to summarize a few things quickly (i.e. prepare for a wall of text).

Generally speaking, citizens of various countries around the world pay taxes, and some of that money gets turned into science. Theoretically, those papers should be accessible to all the citizens because they paid for the experiments to be made and the papers written.

However, the story doesn’t end there! Usually, those papers go through a bizarre system where the scientist pays for them to be published in a journal and then the readers also need to pay to read them. IMO this part of the system is very broken, and open access seems like a way to fix it.

If you feel like it’s all just a big scam, then using sci-hub doesn’t really have any ethical problems. If you feel like the system is contributing something important, then paying for it shouldn’t be a problem either. I’m open to both interpretations, but I’m also reading from sci-hub, so I’m not entirely neutral.

I wonder if you friend would argue that scientific journals are a scam and Apple is also scamming people in a way. If that’s the case, it’s a social justice thing, isn’t it?

It’s true that Apple is pretty bad when it comes to right to repair or FOSS. If you believe that more things should be FOSS, then you probably would be using Android products instead. However, that world comes with a long list of problems too, such as privacy, but that’s a story for another wall of text.

However, as far as the philosophy of open source is concerned, Android is slightly better than iOS. If you’re all about supporting open access and open source, it would make a lot of sense to use Android and avoid all Apple products.

Obviously there are other ways to look at this subject. Personally, I would love to use a 100% FOSS electronics, and as far as laptops are concerned, you can go pretty far in that direction. Mobile devices are a very different story though, but that’s a story for yet another wall of text.

Apple products are great if you're already in the ecosystem. As someone who's only Apple product was an iPod nano, I never understood the hype. Yes, they make nice looking devices, but Apple products are all so... Locked. If you want to run Adobe Premier on your new M1 MacBook, great, it does it amazingly well. If you want to run a half dozen virtual machines on the same M1 (which has more than enough power to do it), then you're totally out of luck.

It's the "walled garden" approach that I don't like. Computers, and by extension, smartphones and smart watches, are capable of so much more than what we ask of them, but if we're not allowed to even try then why would I dig myself further into an ecosystem that says "here's what you're allowed to do" rather than "here's what you can do".

Apple has it's place; if you like it, great, but it's not for me.

I like to tinker. I don't buy apple products. I get that most people want a device that just works when they pick it up and integrates with the rest of their devices. Apple does this really well.

While I personally agree with your colleague, one must consider one's use case and the amount of time and effort it will take to replicate the things you like about the apple UX and ecosystem and make a judgement call. I have a Windows desktop, a Linux server, an Android phone and tablet and I spend a fair amount of time seeing them up and keeping them talking to one another to share data, but even then I can't get them to share settings simply like do not disturb.

Apple has innovated on the user experience to the point where if I pick up an iphone I can't navigate around it because it relies on a soft touch, "intuitive", gestural interface. And therefore it's easy for me to shun apple products on principle. The real hard work is migrating off the platform you know. And for people that were raised in the apple touch ecosystem, I don't realistically see many of them ever leaving.

I hate the current state of Apple with a burning passion. At some point I had tried using their devices. They treat me like I am retarded. But if you like their interface, the interconnectivity and the workflow, more power to you. I myself have bought windows keys from shady websites for like 10% of the price (I am a gamer and linux wasn't ready for gaming at the time). I have stripped the OS of all the tracking bullshit, used third party tools to disable everything I don't like, uninstalled Edge (painful), installed tools to disable licensing checks in programs (sketchy), etc. I have never bought an iPhone. When I switch phones, I root the old one for shits and giggles. I use only open-source software and everything I publish (files for 3d printing) are openly accessible too and never paywalled. But not everyone can live like me. I have, at one point in my life, spent 18 hours at my PC screwing around with the registry in windows, to disable some slimy POS tracker. I do not have a problem with anyone choosing convenience over cheapness or open-sourceness. But I hope more people make the leap. Because your coworker is right. The problem is absolutely the same. I hope open-source gets more convenient to use. For example gaming on Linux is finally possible. You can't change the whole world, you can only change yourself. And you won't do it overnight, you have to wake up in the morning and make a conscious effort of making a change in your routine. I convinced my SO to at least try an Android phone after she was done with her iPhone. Now she can never go back. Now she has a Laptop with Windows on it. A custom PC, which she wouldn't trade for a top of the line MacBook. In any case, OP: if you want to make a change, do it one step at a time. Don't overload yourself. I was introduced to linux by my dad, where he helped me follow a tutorial on how to make a bootable usb drive for Ubuntu. It was fun and not complicated at all. Once you have that USB, try booting off of it, play around in Linux. Have some fun. It is closer to MacOS than Windows. It just doesn't stop you from being dumb and doing dumb things :). And after that, if you like it, do some more research, try some more things. Be the change you want to see in the world.

Guy was just converted into a FOSS nerd. Give it a few months and he'll own a thinkpad with a custom i3 rice and be saying "I use arch btw".

Jokes aside, I think apple is a terrible company. Sure, their products are amazing but they're grossly overpriced and not FOSS or compatible with anything else.

The iphone 14 pro max costs $464 to make and retails for $2000. That's not innovation, that's grifting. Besides, the main difference between the Iphone 11 and 14 is the price (no, the camera is not that much better, i don't care what you say).

Apple also intentionally gatekeeps their products (Vender Lock-in) making the experience worse for everyone who doesn't own Apple products. They could adopt the open standard that all other phones use for texting (MMS I think it's called) but instead they use imessage to make your experience worse when texting people with Androids. This also makes it hard to switch to an Android even if it's better. And don't even get me started on the charger situation.

Also, they use privacy as a branding statement but we have no way to verify that claim. They could be selling all our data and be well within their rights. If they were open source we would be able to verify that claim.

I can't really talk though because I own a (refurbished) Iphone. I do this because a) the messaging system and b) my whole family is in the apple ecosystem (with no way out) so I get benefits of our family plan like tons of storage.

In wise words of Commander Data: "I realized, it is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive to be more than we are, Lal. It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort yelds its own rewards"

You now understand the importance of free software just like you already knew the importance of free knowledge. You don't need to force yourself into shapes you don't fit, but you can help move us all into a better future for everybody.

The FOSS and open ecosystem is a deep rabbit hole to jump down. Its an important one to be sure, but its also important to know that there is no really feasible way for lay folks to fully pass any sort of purity test without swapping to Linux, using a nonstandard mobile OS, etc. These are all achievable things to do, but they come with significant tradeoffs that require people to be very tech savvy.

I'd say it would be good to learn more about open source as an idea, and then take consistent, small measures to wean yourself out of the totally closed Apple ecosystem. But dont beat yourself up - the most important change is the one upstairs...IRL impacts will flow from that over time.

I like your scientific way of looking at things i am a software developer and i know few people who are using apple laptops and phones and they are defending everything that company make or say or do even it is a very anti-consumer decition like their implementation of right to repair so i am glad that not every apple user is also in their cult

Apple is the symbol for a walled garden that feeds it's inhabitants overpriced crap and they love it.

When buying tech products I mainly care about if they are integrated with each other or not.

A lot of people do. That's why apple made sure you can only use apple devices with other apple devices. Bluetooth allows users to share files between any two devices? Better make sure an iPhone can't connect to anything that doesn't have an i prefix in it's name. You like our earbuds, buy an iPhone if you want the buttons to work. Sure, you can play music over the radio from your phone while driving, oh you don't have an iPhone, get fucked.

And it's an effective strategy. You start off with a phone, add a watch and earbuds to it, and the next thing you know you're buying a $1k stand for a $5k monitor to work with your $7k cheese grater of a tower. Because what are you going to do, give up on connectivity, throw away all of your apple devices, or go all the way in on the apple koolaid?

Don't even get me started on the quality of their overpriced crap, or the fact that they've been fighting tooth and nail to keep making ewaste instead of allowing the users to repair and upgrade their devices. Watch any video on the topic from Louis Rossmann.

Tldr

Fuck apple

I'm a software engineer who uses a lot of open source software and I use Apple devices whenever possible. Electronic devices cost a lot of money, so I want my money to count. With that said, every Apple device I've owned has lasted me for a very long time and are still working today; The longest one being a 2012 Macbook Air which is still alive and kicking today after 2 battery replacements.

Every iPhone I've ever owned have received major iOS updates for 5-6 years. Meanwhile, every Android flagship phone (which costs similarly to the latest and greatest iPhones) I've owned have stopped getting major Android updates after 2-3 years. People criticize Apple for planned obsolescence, but other brands have it worse.

Even if you do listen to your friend's advice and decide to go for another brand, which one actually advocates for the ideals your friend has shared with you? The direct alternatives to Apple products aren't better in any philosophical way. The ones that do either offer a completely difference experience or an inferior product.

Don't feel bad about what your friend is saying. He doesn't pay for your stuff.

I think FOSSS shouldn't be some kind of religion, if you like Apple, great, go for it. However if you truly value privacy (while beeing better than Microsoft, Apple still collects some of your data) and freedom it certainly won't hurt to try out some alternatives. If you like them better it is a win-win situation, if not switch back.

Things you can do if you are interrested in FOSS, that don't necessary need you to change everything:

• Try some software alternatives for programms you are using (LibreOffice instead of Word, Gimp instead of Photoshop etc.) This lets you search for alternatives.
• Spin up a Linux VM and try it, or try to install linux on an old laptop. -And when you do that, look into KDE Connect as it offers connectivity between devices, that even Apple does not offer in some cases.
• If you are truly into it, you can even contribute to FOSS, to make them as good as Apple products.

I'm an Apple user, and have been since 2007 when I bought my first MacBook. I have an iPhone, a Watch, a bunch of Macs, and Apple TV. I have an iPad too, but the screen's broken, I can't afford to repair it, and honestly, I don't really have much use for an iPad these days.

While I like how much these devices sync with each other, and I love how well they're built, with every year that passes it sits less well with me how, if you can't afford the latest and greatest, you'll experience some level of OS-rot.

I mean, my iPad is new enough to support iPadOS 16, but too old to support Stage Manager. That I'm not really bothered by, but it's indicative of a problem. If the device is capable of running an OS, it should get all of the OS that its hardware will allow. Even more fundamentally though, say iOS 17 has some new additions to Notes.app that will also work in Sonoma, but your Mac isn't recent enough to go beyond Monterey; does that mean you can't view notes made on your iPhone on your Mac?

And yeah, that doesn't sit right with me.

Your friend is right about open source as an idea and companies like Apple being antithetical to that idea. However, unless you have the time and determination to make a hobby out of it, just keep using whatever tech works for you. I say this as a Linux and Android user who really dislikes Apple's walled garden. Your choices as an individual consumer will only significantly matter to you.

Apple is just about the worst offender out there in terms of desire to maintain a closed ecosystem.

• They only adopt open hardware standards when forced to by law

• They scrupulously enforce price controls on their resellers, ensuring that you can't usually purchase prior generations at a discount

• They intentionally degrade performance on older generations of devices through malicious software updates to force users to upgrade

• They aggressively combat open source and cross platform integration. E.g., Apple TV can't be cast to a Google device, etc.

My main problem with Apple is they really only care about what you've done for them lately.

They have a tendency to obsolete things and force devs to come along for the ride. They killed PowerPC, they killed flash and they're in the process of killing x86. If devs are still around they need to work to catch up. If they aren't, the applications just won't work anymore. Compare this to the backwards compatibility of, say, Windows applications. I like when my applications continue to work.

I also wish they'd never inflicted smartphones upon the world, but I suppose that's a personal gripe.

I don't use Apple products myself, although I do have an old iPad. My main issue with them isn't a moral one though, it's that Apple seem to design their products to work as slickly as possible with their own ecosystem to the detriment of everything else.

If you use an iPhone, an iPad, an Apple Watch and a Mac then you're probably enjoying a great user experience. If you want to use an Apple device with anything else you're probably in for some amount of pain. I'm not against them, but they're not for me.

I do try and use FOSS software where I can, not least Lemmy and Mastodon, but my main devices are a Windows PC along with an Android phone and tablet. Windows is obviously closed source, and while Android itself is open source you can't say the same for all the vital Google stuff on top. I have a plan to get my hands on a high specced Raspberry Pi when they're finally back in stock and use it as my main home desktop for light use. If I had a laptop of my own I'd definitely be running Linux on it too.

I think everyone should absolutely look into FOSS hardware and software, although in reality I doubt most people would care. If anything it's just the "free" part they care about, but there's obviously a huge benefit in software and hardware being free for others to build on, fork and improve. I'd love nothing more than seeing everything work on this principle, but that's sadly not the world we live in.

I think your colleague used an excellent example. Just like COVID vaccination Patente can be considered not good for public interests, the same applies for the FOSS mentality regarding Apple ecosystem.

While I can understand, that Apple products interface very well with each other, it's also true, that it's not hard to get these things working without a walled garden. Just like ActivityPub is an essential standard for Lemmy/Kbin.social and the Fediverse as a whole, there are also standards for all kinds of connections between devices.

The problem is, that corporations like Microsoft and Apple can earn more by making it walled so that people have to decide between compatibility and comfort. Unfortunately, such a dichotomy is false and completely artificial. It only exists solely to optimise the profits of Apple.

I personally have never used an Apple product. When I see the price tag and what I get for it - and see, that I'm put into a small safety box, I don't feel attracted to it. I want things to be simple and under my control. I hate using windows as I feel, how less it's under my control. It's true, that some things like Cortana (Desktop AI on windows) aren't available on Linux, but for now I can well live without it.

At the same time, I also believe in FOSS and also think that it's huge, that anyone in the world can get s flexible versatile OS simply with an internet connection.

I may also be biased, as I'm a software engineer.

I'm going to give a different and possibly controversial opinion to the others in here. To get started, I admit that I am a daily mac and ios user so there's definitely some bias there. That being said, I think there is a clear difference between the vaccine and information resources and using a mac or iphone. I think there is an incredible need for there to be a free and open source option that exists for everything (especially for public health and information), but not everything needs to be free and open source if a free version exists elsewhere (or even multiple viable free options). Just because I like going to libraries doesn't mean I dislike book stores. As a video editor, I very much disagree with my professional industry basically mandating ProRes, which forces Mac use (or at least it did for a long time), which institutes a costly and sometimes impossible barrier to entry for many people, which is lame because more editing friends in post is always better.

Maybe there's something I'm missing in the argument, but it seems like if a programmer or end user wanted to use open source software, nothing is stopping them, but if a government wanted to implement "open source" vaccines, that wasn't possible because of the patents. Sure, cross-integration would be super nice (airpods on an android, ipad on windows, imessage on everything, etc), but I don't know if it should be an expectation, just like cross-play in video games would be super nice, but shouldn't be an expectation.

I do like tinkering with things though, and that's really my main personal qualm with apple (I know they're a huge megacorporation, but they don't generally make my personal life worse for the most part). I was running a pretty beefy hackintosh for 7+ years before that computer decided to give up. Now I use that hardware for a home media server. I also love tinkering with little linux distributions on my raspberry pi. Apple really doesn't scratch any of these itches for me, but that's why I do both. I have the reliable mac for work and general computing use and I have my other devices for everything else.

@IronTwo Yep. I don't use Apple primarily because their ecosystem is too closed and you gotta register and buy a programming license from them to do any programming.

Screw all that, I'm staying where the ability to program my devices is guaranteed and I can load and run free software if I want and I don't have to get permission from mega-corp to change the apps I run.