Fair, but I think that while Apple is generally more authoritarian with regard to developer experience, they’re less user-hostile overall and generally strike a good (at least compared to the current alternatives) balance between freedom, privacy, and usability for most people.
I think Google (and Silicon Vally writ large) is coming to terms with the fact that past a certain size userbase, authoritarianism is necessary to maintain control, consistency, and (very importantly) safety… where Apple has pretty much always embraced it; for better or worse.
I could easily turn this into a larger critique about society and governance, federated republics being necessary in the long-term versus corporate monoliths, and the “10x everything” culture being the root of the new tech-right, but I will digress, lol.
In terms of freedom, Apple is the most user-hostile company in the business and has been forever. People are screaming in justified outrage at Google taking out sideloading in 2025, but when was the last time you could sideload something on an iPhone? Oh, never? Right.
The passes Apple constantly gets, even here, are absolutely fucking insane to me. “Oh well, at least they’ve always been authoritarian!” What??
I make no claim against the lack of freedom on Apple devices, but “un-free” doesn’t mean “user-hostile”. We’re talking about the perceived quality of experience for the user, not anything else. Like, look, don’t get me wrong, I still hate Apple (and all the big tech corpos) out of principle- but they provide an objectively better user experience for the vast majority of people.
Apple has been, while extremely restrictive, very consistent on what users are allowed to do with devices… Google has repeatedly shown that they can’t be trusted to actually commit to popular features or services that they put out.
Apple has put forward several measures to increase [perception of] user privacy where Google has repeatedly shown that they have no interest in doing anything other than collecting as much of your data as possible and using it for their ad business.
iOS/iPadOS accessibility features blow Android’s out of the water in terms of breadth and quality; where with Android you often have to rely on third-party apps that may or may not work consistently or break with an update.
It’s the lack of choice on what to do with your hardware after EOL that always rubbed me the wrong way with Apple. Unless there’s a known exploit to unlock the boot loader, you can’t install something like postmarketOS or LineageOS to continue using it, so you just feel compelled to treat it like e-waste and buy a new device.
I’ve had 3 android phones total in my life, and one of them I only replaced after it got crushed in a roadside accident. The other 2 are still useable.
That might because many people (at least in the US) get their phones through payment plans with a cell service carrier, and those usually aren’t unlocked unless you pay for the whole phone + if they care enough to give you the code after.
I always bought unlocked phones directly, so I guess I never had that issue?
I seem to remember a very high profile case where the FBI wanted access to a suspect’s iPhone, and all Apple had to do was give them an iOS side release that bypassed the unlock system. Apple refused to do it since it would break user security.
It’s very possible things have changed since then.
Fair, but I think that while Apple is generally more authoritarian with regard to developer experience, they’re less user-hostile overall and generally strike a good (at least compared to the current alternatives) balance between freedom, privacy, and usability for most people.
I think Google (and Silicon Vally writ large) is coming to terms with the fact that past a certain size userbase, authoritarianism is necessary to maintain control, consistency, and (very importantly) safety… where Apple has pretty much always embraced it; for better or worse.
I could easily turn this into a larger critique about society and governance, federated republics being necessary in the long-term versus corporate monoliths, and the “10x everything” culture being the root of the new tech-right, but I will digress, lol.
In terms of freedom, Apple is the most user-hostile company in the business and has been forever. People are screaming in justified outrage at Google taking out sideloading in 2025, but when was the last time you could sideload something on an iPhone? Oh, never? Right.
The passes Apple constantly gets, even here, are absolutely fucking insane to me. “Oh well, at least they’ve always been authoritarian!” What??
Golden fucking handcuffs. Is that the right expression?
i couldn’t find that, but I found this as consolation
I make no claim against the lack of freedom on Apple devices, but “un-free” doesn’t mean “user-hostile”. We’re talking about the perceived quality of experience for the user, not anything else. Like, look, don’t get me wrong, I still hate Apple (and all the big tech corpos) out of principle- but they provide an objectively better user experience for the vast majority of people.
It’s the lack of choice on what to do with your hardware after EOL that always rubbed me the wrong way with Apple. Unless there’s a known exploit to unlock the boot loader, you can’t install something like postmarketOS or LineageOS to continue using it, so you just feel compelled to treat it like e-waste and buy a new device.
I’ve had 3 android phones total in my life, and one of them I only replaced after it got crushed in a roadside accident. The other 2 are still useable.
To be fair, unlockable bootloaders seem a bit exceptional on the Android side too…
That might because many people (at least in the US) get their phones through payment plans with a cell service carrier, and those usually aren’t unlocked unless you pay for the whole phone + if they care enough to give you the code after.
I always bought unlocked phones directly, so I guess I never had that issue?
Literally the worst
Bad. Regularly snitches to the bad guys.
Arguable. If everything you own is in their ecosystem and up to date.
Nobody uses apple because of this shit. It’s all dtatus and branding.
I seem to remember a very high profile case where the FBI wanted access to a suspect’s iPhone, and all Apple had to do was give them an iOS side release that bypassed the unlock system. Apple refused to do it since it would break user security.
It’s very possible things have changed since then.
I seem to remember one where they caved, but i also remember them refusing a bunch