

Free “as in free speech” or why I don’t buy Apple’s products - knitatoms
http://longtermlaziness.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/free-as-in-free-speech-or-why-i-dont-by-apples-products/

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danudey
This is a perfectly fair point of view, and I definitely see the author's
point as far as freedom goes. Still, a counterpoint.

Part of the problem I've seen with this point of view, though, is that the
people who espouse it that I tend to deal with (which I won't claim is
representative) all tend to have some other form of 'giving up freedom'
instead.

For example, people who don't buy Apple devices because they want control over
their devices, but then buy Android devices and keep all their data on
Google's services, tying everything together (Picasa, Gmail, Google Docs,
etc). Putting all of your personal information in one place so that a company
can comb through it all and learn everything about you, especially when that
company can just turn off your digital life arbitrarily, and provide you no
recourse.

Case in point: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2794529>

It's really just the other side of the coin, and I know a lot of people that
are ok with that tradeoff. Still, the idea that some giant, faceless
corporation's algorithm will one day return true instead of false for some
blog post I wrote and suddenly erase my (access to my) contacts, photos,
email, documents, and everything else I've built up just rubs me the wrong way
- much as I'm sure the idea of a closed ecosystem bothers people like the
author.

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gujk
Are fou familiar with Google Takeout? Google doesn't hold your data hostage,
but they do offer convenient hosting for the time being.

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mise
I'm not an Apple user, I just look in from the outside.

I don't understand this seeming tension where Apple restrict choices in their
systems for usability, homogeneity, etc, while also being the system of choice
for many hackers.

How come Apple machines are still geek-friendly?

~~~
sbmassey
It's a Unix with most of the bells & whistles (albeit a different flavor to
Linux), plus you get to use a decent selection of commercial software.

