
Be angry with yourself, not Apple - tyrion
https://blog.germano.io/macbook/
======
ajeet_dhaliwal
Sounds like a post by Richard Stallman. I understand the argument but there is
an element of practicality involved here, is there anyone out there who buys
absolutely nothing from corporation? Very few I would think unless you own
your own farm and never leave it.

~~~
danudey
Fundamentally, this sounds like a generic 'anti-corporation' rant. "That's
what you get for trusting The Man, man!"

~~~
jasonkostempski
It's an anti-idiot factory rant. In the tech field, it's a fact at this point,
you cannot trust the man. It's demonstrated almost daily. It won't change
though, it takes about a decade of getting burned before getting fed up with
it and by then you're outside the target market, but the next round of idiots
are already in line.

------
iagooar
> Therefore what happens when the new CEO decides something that you don't
> agree with? When they release a new product that you don't like, because
> they removed the Escape key? Nothing. You are in deep trouble. You start
> complaining. No alternatives. Either you accept their word or you are out.

Well, the same applies to ANY OS out there. I can't complain if Canonical
decide to switch to a new desktop UI. Same with any other "free" distro. In
the end, it's people making decisions. It has nothing to do with being open or
closed source.

The only relative advantage for open source software is that given enough
people with the same problem, someone might dedicate some time to fix that
issue. But a lot of times you might be left on your own.

~~~
l0llo
The point is: if you choose a Mac and you work on it for years then you are
not only becoming dependent to an OS but also to an hardware platform...

------
byuu
> Therefore I feel like it is almost morally mandatory to continue to use
> GNU/Linux, otherwise in the long run we will all lose our freedom to choose.

Yeah, like the freedom to choose our own init systems! ...... oh wait.

Software simply being free or open doesn't automatically mean we are given
choice. We are dealing with a steady erosion of choice in open source software
these days, too.

Mozilla decides to drastically redesign their user interface, removing tons of
flexibility, and next on the chopping block are their more-powerful
extensions. Gnome decides to totally throw out the old paradigm of desktop
user interfaces with version 3. Every major Linux distro jumps on board with
systemd. It's _great_ if you like these changes, but just like with Apple's
changes ... it sucks to be you if you don't. No developers, whether the apps
be proprietary or open source, seem to want to give the users any choices
anymore. No, they always know better than their users.

Just look at browsers alone: today we have about as much choice in web
browsers as we do in cable companies to provide us with high-speed internet
access, or in which cola brand we want at restaurants. The open source status
of the two most popular ones doesn't amount to much.

The world is increasingly being consumed by software monoliths that want to
control the entire experience from top to bottom. The idea of doing one thing
and doing it well, and letting people build systems out of smaller components
mixed and matched to their liking, has been dying a long, slow death.

There is still, of course, choice. You can run Pale Moon, or Openbox, or
Haiku. But you pay dearly for being on the fringe of the fringe. 99% of the
market is wrapped up in ~3 choices. And Linux as a whole isn't faring much
better than Apple these days.

We can't even really fight against this with our own code because everything
has been steadily soaring in complexity. Nobody can write a modern browser on
their own anymore. Hell, you can't even write a web server on your own anymore
-- HTTP/2 and TLS are frighteningly complex. That used to be a ten minute task
back in the day. Want to write an OS? Good luck even getting a USB stack up
and going on your own. Forget about accelerated graphics, that's never gonna
happen.

~~~
majewsky
> Mozilla decides to drastically redesign their user interface, removing tons
> of flexibility

Or you can just use Pale Moon which is literally a Firefox fork without the
Australis UI.

> and next on the chopping block are their more-powerful extensions

They're not "on the chopping block". If they stop working, it's only because
they haven't been maintained for a long time anyway. Mozilla doesn't break
backwards-compatibility for the heck of it, it needs to do these changes to
get to the same level of security that's offered by Chrome (with its multi-
process architecture), to get to the next level of performance that's hinted
at by Servo, and to get rid of the massive maintenance nightmare that is XUL.

(I don't say that the transition won't be painful at places. I'm very worried
that Vimperator does not support Electrolysis yet.)

> Gnome decides to totally throw out the old paradigm of desktop user
> interfaces with version 3.

Or you can just use Mate, which is literally a Gnome 3 fork with the Gnome 2
UI.

> Every major Linux distro jumps on board with systemd.

Yes, because it has tremendous technical advantages for distributors. And it's
also good news for independent software vendors because it steamrolls over a
lot of useless incompatiblities between distributions, so if we see more
commercial software for Linux in the future, systemd might play a small part
in it. (Of course, stuff like that doesn't make the frontpage.)

------
stephenr
Considering how little apple gives away for "free" and how much they have
pushed about user privacy and doing privacy invasive things on-device or
encrypted end-to-end, it seems odd to call apple users "the product".

~~~
jolux
It's just someone who doesn't understand what people mean when they say that
you aren't a Google customer, you are Google's product. You are absolutely an
Apple customer, in fact this is a screed against being too much of an Apple
customer, not one against becoming a product.

------
fatbird
"Their philosophy is to believe they know better than me what is good and
better for me without giving me the chance to choose or opt-out." is true with
Linux as well: KDE's rewrite for 4, the whole shift to SystemD, the mobile-
first retooling of Gnome, etc. You're one person; every provider of a platform
you use will ultimately make decisions for you, and you get to choose again
whether to accept or move on.

And besides, no one is that locked in to Apple. The HN rage is all about being
forced to make that choice and potentially spend time moving on switching.
Welcome to life.

------
tlow
tl;dr The article basically says: > If you don't like Apple's decisions, then
switch. But it's really your fault for using their products for years because
you've locked yourself in.

There's really nothing new here. The article doesn't present any arguments for
why you should actually be mad at yourself and also fails to suggest
alternatives.

While Apple is not your typical computer hardware company, there's nothing
here that doesn't apply to ANY company.

~~~
drieddust
I don't think he is arguing against Apple. He is arguing to stop unconditional
devotion to a single corporation and start investing time to learn
transferrable skills.

~~~
tlow
That is a good point. Basically, you've abstracted the argument away from the
Apple focus and applied it more generally to any proprietary technology. If
one takes this proposed abstract perspective, I think it becomes clear that
this isn't even just an issue of hardware or consumer products, but likely
applies to nearly every product, service, ecosystem, network or tools provided
by third parties -- if their goals and interests diverge from yours, you might
be left in the dust and they likely won't care.

~~~
taylodl
Exactly. Just like SystemD. It's caused me to walk away from Linux and on to
BSD. Lock-in can happen even in non-proprietary, non-vendor scenarios. The
moral of the story is you always need to be prepared to move on.

~~~
drieddust
Yes, but in this case I am sure you were able to reuse a lot of your
knowledge.

------
anexprogrammer
I'll ignore the fact that OSX was the most stable and integrated OS for years,
and attracted commercial software that people often needed to use. The fact it
was built atop BSD was a bonus. Personally I'd have been happiest if it had
been running on Thinkpads rather than Macbooks. It's never been about Apple's
software, or even the best hardware, but the whole ecosystem. Even then
they've made some horrible choices with the GUI, especially more recently.

FOSS is hardly free of similar issues. Linux wasn't always a mostly smooth
installation, it used to be firmly for tinkerers only. Not everyone was able,
or willing, to spend the time making the broken things just work. More
recently Gnome 3 springs to mind, and resulted in a similar scale of angry
reaction.

I used to wonder why no company had tried to make something as well integrated
as OSX for their own laptops. Most of the core is FOSS. Someone like Dell or
even IBM before selling off Thinkpads could have achieved something
significant with Linux or BSD.

Edit: I'm interested - what's worthy of downvotes here? Have I got something
wrong or is it merely difference of opinion?

------
thght
First off, I'm not angry, but I do have some right to complain. There is not
really an alternative laptop of the build quality of the mac book pro, and
they are degrading it! This is a hardware issue, I never liked Apple software,
only forced to use it as an annoying shell for doing my work. I do have a
powerful HP laptop too, but man that thing is heavy and the battery doesn't
last..

------
rsoto
I agree—it's not about buying from one company or another, it's about looking
at your options. Yes, Apple does excellent hardware, can hardly argue about
that; I'm not too fond of their software, but there are options.

I bought a laptop on 2012 and it's been going strong since that day. Its price
was ~$1,200 USD ($12,000 MXP) and since then I've invested ~$150 USD on its
maintenance. Altough it's old, it remains fast (Ubuntu boots in 13 seconds),
usable and it's been a great investment, also it's very lightweight. And its
brand is Samsung. I'm really sad they've shifted focus on their business to
tablets and hybrids.

I've heard the Dells are quite good too, as well as the Lenovo. There's a
world outside Apple, and I think that would be good for the market—maybe if
they didn't have such a massive monopoly, they would think more of other
markets, including power users.

------
cx1000
"Their philosophy is to believe they know better than me what is good and
better for me without giving me the chance to choose or opt-out."

How are they supposed to allow _all_ of their customers to choose their
preferred hardware? They don't have to, and it would be wildly inneficient to
try to do so. That's what the free market is for. People wanted a
different/smoother experience than what Linux was giving them, and were
willing to pay for it. Some of us were happy messing around on the command
line, and didn't need to buy Apple products to be productive. It doesn't mean
they have to be everything to everyone.

------
Dotnaught
"Why you have no right to complain about the new MacBook"

In fact you do have a right to complain. And if you enjoy using Apple
products, you ought to do so in the hope of influencing future Apple design
decisions.

------
_ix
If someone can crack the code on a buttery smooth track pad experience like
that of Apple's track pads, I'm in. Until then, any mobile computing
experience for me that involves interacting with a gui and mousing device will
be a jaw-clenching experience at best. Same goes for their iPhones.

Is it merely genetics that make the Apple touch experience so much more
intuitive than the competing products, or is it truly superior?

