No Stupid Questions

Most of the time it does work, which is why it’s so goddamned hard to undo. I’ve been working on de-appleing, I’ve nearly completely de-Amazoned and am also working on de-googling. But these damn providers make it so difficult, they get in so deep. It’s not even me that makes it hard, I’m willing to make a little extra effort for a more privacy focused platform I control. No, it’s the family and friends that all are perfectly comfortable handing control of their data and frankly lives (everything is in these fucking things, schedule, contacts, financial stuff, all digital communication, photos, videos, etc..).

As long as you keep spending a lot of money, and upgrading to the newest devices, you will have a decent experience. As soon as you try to extend the life, find alternatives, look for ways to control your own data, then it gets real hard.

To be fair, it’s not just Apple. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, any of the big players are the same. They all manage to make it easy, so long as you are comfortable being captured.

They give free macs to public schools, so when those kids get to college or join the adult world, they can only use MacOS.

As someone who prefers linux but is relegated to Windows, my wife is strictly an Apple person and I have to say I'm impressed with them.

She doesn't use a laptop a lot but she has some upcoming certifications to renew and so she brought out her 2015 macbook pro. It was outdated and had no recent OS updates available. However after a simple manual installation of a few year newer OS it runs just fine. At one point we considered buying her a new laptop this time. While looking at new laptops I told her we could get a cheaper Windows one that would be ok for a few years or another, slightly more expensive macbook that would last another 10. I don't think we'll need to buy a new one though as her 2015 seems ok to run at least until 2028 and that's only because of available OS upgrades.

Our kids were also using her iPad 2 when they were younger from 2011 and it ran fine until 2022 and again, no hardware issues, just old performance and lack of support.

But probably the biggest thing is when I put a pihole on my network. Almost EVERY device be it google, Samsung, Windows, LG, smartphones, printers, TVs, etc etc is CONSTANTLY pinging outside your network. To the tune of thousands of blocked attempts per day per device. Yet Apple products are constantly at the bottom of the blocked attempts list, closer to about 100 per device per day.

They work quite hard to make it all work together well, and push to make their devices status symbols. Apple is the premium product everyone wants, and all that.

So the hardware may be lacking, but Apple tries to make up for it in making the OS work nicely, and tie in relatively nicely with any other Apple devices you have.

By comparison, the other options aren't nearly as seamless. I'd need a lot more fiddling to send my keyboard and mouse inputs to an android tablet, or share the clipboard, for example, compared to a Mac being able to just push the mouse and keyboard to an iPad with no extra work.

The file management remains atrocious over USB (it's basically the iTunes file transfer interface), on both Mac and Windows, but they've basically tried to paper over it with airdrop and an iDevice file manager.

Whenever I hear somebody moving to a Macbook and make any sort of complaint onkine, lots of people unhelpfully tell you to buy a $1000+ iPhone and that will solve all your problems, or when an Android user is "switching to iPhone", a similar thing happens with "just use a Mac". Why the hell do you need to purchase all the expensive devices to just use one?

At least from my personal perspective, I've never heard nor seen people recommending someone buy a different device to supplement something they're currently using.

With the exception of things like debugging (for some bewildering reason, if your Mac's software breaks, you need another Mac to repair the software), it tends to be fairly self-contained.

The closest thing seems to be more that if you're on a device that Apple hasn't released the full set of features on, some stuff just doesn't work properly, because it expects the full feature set, and seemingly ends up trying to annoy you into replacing it that way.

On my old iPad Mini 2, for example, you couldn't actually close the slide-out panel, or expand an app there, since Apple didn't let them use the split view, and you needed that to expand the window. The closest you could get is making the app crash when in the slide-out, and then it would open normally, or a lot of finagling by swapping it out with a different app, and then running the original app you wanted to.

My current one has a different issue where some apps have Apple Intelligence specific features that I cannot turn off, because the setting I need to change is put away under Apple Intelligence's settings, and that's not available on my device, so the settings are also inaccessible.

I can answer this from the perspective of someone who, until 18 months ago, was all-in on Apple stuff.

The short answer is: As long as all of your devices are reasonably new and running the latest software, they're all really good at talking to each other. Got a Mac and an iPad? Great, you can use Universal Control to operate the iPad using your Mac's keyboard and mouse/trackpad. And that is a genuinely useful technology. Got something on your phone that you want to share with your partner on the TV? AirPlay it across to Apple TV. And so, and so forth.

Thing is, once you're in that situation, you're kinda stuck. If your Mac ages out of OS feature support, the only option is to replace the Mac if you want it to match the interconnectivity features of your new iPhone. So the answer in that situation is to buy a new Mac, one that supports the new features available in the newest OS. At that point, your options are to either shell out £1000+ on a new Mac, or completely change your workflow to one that can be achieved using open source or paid alternatives. The vast majority of people have neither the time nor the inclination to set up things like that, so they factor in the cost of a new computer, phone, or iPad every few years.

But Apple's real secret sauce is that - and judging by the attitude you're swinging around in your post, OP, you're not going to like this - they make REALLY good hardware.

My primary computer is still a 15" M2 MacBook Air. That thing is super thin, super light, completely silent to use and has never given me a moment's trouble in three years that I didn't somehow inflict on myself. Using Crossover, I can play Windows games on it just as easily as using Steam/Proton on my Linux PC. I can play RDR2 on my fanless ARM laptop and get a perfectly fine 30fps when I'm not at home. The battery is three years old but still gives me a full day of use. Sure, it only has two ports, but both of them are Thunderbolt 4, and it has a dedicated Magsafe charging port.

I still have my 2011 MacBook Pro at home. It's currently running Debian and is still rock solid. Looking a little rough around the edges these days, but still a perfectly usable computer - that's 15 years old.

Apple has inherently worse hardware

This just isn't true. At all. The build quality of their hardware is the best in the business.

Sure, they effectively paywall things like 120hz screens to the higher end Pro models, but they have enough market research telling them that people who buy a mid range iPhone don't care about refresh rates, or even know what they are. Why spend money on a QoL upgrade that the user will never notice?

But yeah, their cost for memory and storage is downright criminal, and always has been. The only thing that's changed in recent(ish) years is that now everything is soldered or proprietary, they've made it effectively impossible to upgrade it yourself at a far, far lower cost. And that's incredibly shitty.

These days I'm primarily a Linux user. My work PC is Kubuntu, my home server Debian, my gaming PC CachyOS. None of those machines are as easy to use as my Macbook running macOS 15. They can (theoretically) achieve more, but in the 2 years I've been using Linux I've had to teach myself how to use a command line; something I very, very rarely needed to when I just used macOS alone.

But I reached a point where I got sick of Apple's bullshit, their performative stance on progressive politics that didn't match the image of Tim Apple licking Trump's ring. So I traded in my iPhone 13 mini for a Pixel 9 onto which I immediately installed GrapheneOS. That one act completely broke the spell of the interconnected nature of Apple products for me. I still have an iPad mini, but 90% of its use is as a peripheral for my MacBook, where it does still have genuine utility.

So yeah, Apple don't do anything particularly groundbreaking, they just make good hardware running software that's mostly good and useful. People, it may shock you to learn, generally prefer to use devices that don't need much tinkering to keep them running.

I use Arch. Since around 2009. I might stop soon. My 2018 desktop might be the last PC I own. I got a MacBook from work and I've been using it more and more the last few years. Macs are so ridiculously fast and power efficient, it's not even funny. I see the new laptops on LTT and you either have to use windows 11 or struggle with x86 processors.

The Macs have awesome build quality screen, sound, haptics, speed, battery life, thermals...

I tolerate the OS, I'm either on the console, IDE or browser 95% of the time anyway. Rectangle for window tiling + homebrew makes me feel 97% "at home". I wish Asahi would allow me to run KDE but I'll take it.

I don't even have any other grapple product, I imagine if you have airpods, iPhone, apple TV, etc it's even better and more magical.

Have you ever heard the phrase 'walled garden?' Apple makes their products to work very well together and with anyone else's products they work in a way that is intentionally functional, so they can't be said to be actually blocking interoperability, but mediocre, so you'll get a better experience with their products. If you care about price, you aren't using apple anyway, so it milks their price-insensitive customer base for more money while only really bothering the people who wouldn't buy them anyway.

At this point I would rather use a Mac than windows I suppose. They are actually rather secure and are Unix which is nice.

But in general, if you don't care about moral, being caught in an actively hostile eco system, have enough money, and being the little bitch of bog tech, Apple is quite nice?

I mean tbh what is a valid Alternative? Android, same big tech dependency, just different company. Samsung wannabe apple but in shit and more evil. Windows, same big tech, just incompetent company and evil on top.

So apple seems at least to be quite okish if you don't have the skill to degoogle your phone and use Linux?

In my bubble, apple has very little bad press about security, had few bugs until maybe 2 years ago, then it got worse I think? And the device connectivity is pretty solid. If you have enough money, their devices are pretty high quality, from a manufacturing standpoint. And they slowly allow repairs on their devices again

As far as laptops go, exactly which company is producing a competitive product to Macs? Like at this point it’s a no brainer, get a cheap Mac for an average user and they get better hardware and don’t have to deal with how bad Windows has become. I’ve even switched grandma over to one after her PC died.

I run Linux for my own stuff but given a choice between a mac or windows for work I’ll take the Mac every time. Even the cheapest Mac beats the typical business laptops. Good screen. Touchpad that doesn’t utterly suck. Better performance.

Why is it that, when Apple has inherently worse hardware

Uhm ... no? They have some of the best hardware, it's just expensive.

I run hybrid zoom sessions for people and rely solely on macbooks to run them. I have never had issues with them, and am very happy to stay on their OS (tahoe now).

It may be hard to believe, but some people actually buy apple products because they like them.

1. Apple has always designed things for people who want to do things without having to be a technologist. For which I will always credit them, massively.

2. Apple has always designed things to work together seamlessly. Again, massive kudos, even though I condemn their using this to lock people in.

Then there's Job's cult of personality, marketing Apple as for people who are better than the plebes.

I've never been a fan of Apple as a company, but I've always given massive credit for the good ideas behind making things that just work.

As someone who migrated from android pixel to an all in Apple ecosystem I’ll provide my context. As a software developer for cloud most of my software runs in Linux, so having a platform that mirrors it pretty closely is a plus, in addition to being a sturdy and performant coding machine, development on a windows laptop has always been far clunkier and unstable comparatively to my Mac experience. From there a person recommended I get an Apple TV to get away from my Samsung smart TV integrations that were dog shit slow, this was a vast improvement plus I could mirror my laptop to the tv easily.

From there I decided I wanted to do some pen drawing on a tablet, and I looked into things like remarkable etc but my experience with android tablets with pens was lackluster so I went with a iPad Pro with the pencil and it has been a great experience, the fact that it can seamlessly be controlled by the MacBook was pretty stunning the first time I accidentally discovered that feature. Follow that up with being able to plug in the iPad and have it be a 2nd display and it has been a great companion to the MacBook.

I got my wife a iPad Air as well and she loved it so when it came time to upgrade our phones I looked at my history with android, of my last 4 android pixel devices all 4 of them had to be recalled either for a bricked scenario from a patch or battery expansion. I decided I might as well give the iPhone a try, this also allowed my wife to have a universal computing experience as she could open tabs on her phone then migrate to the tablet seamlessly.

When I got the iPhones I decided to get their AirPod pros as well since I heard they can pretty easily transition(without button press) between devices easily, and that it has hearing aid grade audio enhancement(I am old and have bad hearing in certain scenarios. The user tailored enhanced hearing was game changing in certain environments and the transitioning between devices has been in all but 1 scenario a great experience(for some reason my iPhone 16 and the AirPods don’t always get along, requiring a phone restart to get them to operate).

Android auto vs CarPlay is personal preference but I find CarPlay to be a bit more sleek and easier to navigate and more performant.

So the trick at least for me has been how seamlessly it all fits together, the hardware quality and polish(aside from the iPhone/airpod thing that does annoy me pretty hard) and the reduction in overhead I have. Instead of dealing with windows 11 bloat and spyware, android device quality and occasional patching problems, a TV that runs like dogshit because it’s using old phone hardware to drive the experience, I can instead focus on what I want to do with the hardware, it just makes me more productive, less admin work, more time to create.

Time will tell I suppose if I feel the same way when my current stack ages out of the support window, but overall I prefer the low maintenance I encounter with this setup so I can focus my efforts on my docker swarm and other facets of my homelab.

They are successful because they nailed device management and corporate IT loves it.

I’m a nearly everything apple user. It started with a macbook air that I was gifted. It was an incredibly stable laptop that basically just always worked. I had no troubles doing things like finding the printers in my department or the library (something which was stupid frustrating with my prior laptop). I had that laptop without any other apple products for 7-8 years.

The iPhone started my move into everything else. I used to have a fit bit but when the battery died, I got the apple watch because it was so much easier to connect/keep connected. I got airpods for the same reason.

I want stuff that works the way I expect it to work and works all the time. Everything I’ve had is very stable.

The reasons you hate these things are the reasons other people love them.

Other people are not you. They have different preferences and values. They like what you hate.

They have an interconnected proprietary ecosystem. This is simultaneously one of their biggest strengths and biggest weaknesses.

It would probably be easier to answer the intent behind the question, if the question itself wasn’t embellished with wild exaggeration.

One of the funniest essays I ever read was by porn actress Bobbi Starr. It was about porn's addiction to Apple products. Someone copied it from an issue of FOX Magazine.

The idea was that a girl could shoot, edit, and distribute all her own stuff on Apple devices.

I think you need to understand how powerful Apple’s marketing is, especially in the US. People just like a system that is simple and just works. Their use cases are limited. They don’t want to spend time to figure out which distro to install or which instance to join, they just want to start their browser and go on twitter.

I will disagree with your statement on iPad displays. The iPad has been one of the only viable tablet out there for graphic artists. The pencil is great, the color accuracy and consistency between Apple devices is excellent, the device is just functional for that type of workflow. Now if only it were repairable and not subject to planned obsolescence…

There is a lot of angry people, despising everything that even touched apple and let me tell you there is a lot of things I hate. For example you need second mac to reinstall os after breaking partitions no usb stick for recovery for you sucker. That said there is a lot of neat features that just work like apple tv box screen-sharing or using iphone as keyboard instead of dealing with arrow typing on remote, or when someone calls I can just respond on my laptop. To sum it up yes you can find cheaper device yes you can also find more performant device. What you won’t find is this walled garden of things that just work together. And for those angry people it’s okay that some people have different preferences than you have.

I think there are many reasons, some of them are:

• Apple has a very straightforward design that is instantly recognizable. People love that, it's the same people who want to have a "great unboxing experience"
• They combine hardware and software - it is not Apple vs Android but Apple vs Samsung, Motorola, Sony and whatever; on the mobile and desktop market there is so much crappy hardware. Apple users just buy the BigMac they already know, even if there are much better burgers around
• you always never get pure Android, it is bloated by phone manufactures. You have the Samsung app store and the xiaomi app security checker and other bloat.
• Apple knows marketing very well, they tricked their customers into thinking apple cares about privacy. If you only have the Google surveillance mother ship as an alternative, they rather choose the product that promises to care about their data
• Windows is a huge pile of crap. It is such a frustrating and bad OS that has annoyed people for decades. Yes there is Linux, but it usually does not come preinstalled
• apple users join a cult when they buy Apple products. It is very important for people to "be different" or to "be smarter"
• by paying a higher price, people have the feeling of buying "premium" (which by itself is a marketing word)

I could go on and on and on. I have never used an apple product in my life and am a Linux FOSS enthusiast by the way. But I think it is pretty east to understand.

People love to feel superior and having blue text bubbles does that. Not green text bubbles (yuck) but blue text bubbles. It was that easy! /s

Apple is a cult.