
Reasons not to use Apple - e19293001
https://stallman.org/apple.html
======
Frondo
"I can't sympathize much with those app developers, since they are making
proprietary software. They all deserve to fail. However, that doesn't excuse
the way Apple treats them."

This is one of the first things I read on this page.

This kind of uncompromising, unsympathetic view makes me think less that
Stallman stands for something valuable, and more that he wants to use his
principles to be a dick.

I mean, I get it, it's Stallman. He always has a few nuggets of insight,
wrapped up in page upon page of pontification. But "they deserve to fail"?

The other thing that gets me is how muddled his political views end up being.
Like this bit, "Apple is culpable if its products are made by people working a
longer workweek than is allowed in the US." Really? They _are_ culpable? Or
you think they should be? China's a sovereign nation, it can set its own
rules, but that's worth discussing and not just making some blanket assertion.

And, for someone who tends to play so pedantic, I'm surprised he's claiming
that "the mere practice of referring to service staff as "geniuses" is
dishonest already" without actually assessing whether Apple has only hired
geniuses for its stores.

Last..."iBad"? Where's the eyes-rolling emoticon?

~~~
munin
> This kind of uncompromising, unsympathetic view makes me think less that
> Stallman stands for something valuable, and more that he wants to use his
> principles to be a dick.

Stallman is at war, and there are casualties in war. He probably feels that
the ends justify the means.

~~~
Frondo
If Stallman's at war, then this attack is, to quote Terry Pratchett, "right
down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light
Brigade are at the top of."

------
chasing
> I can't sympathize much with those app developers, since they are making
> proprietary software. They all deserve to fail.

What a shitty, shitty attitude.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Apple has made it impossible to ship GPL'd Free Software to iOS devices. I'd
say they _started_ the 'shitty attitude' war.

~~~
_ak
Or maybe they just talked to no-nonsense lawyers that don't just have an
agenda of pushing forward the GPL.

~~~
duncan_bayne
I don't understand your comment. Apple designed their distribution system in
such a way that it precludes shipping GPLd apps. What does that have to do
with lawyers?

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sjwright
In an ideal world these criticisms would be relevant. The reality is, most
people who buy computers aren't RMS, they won't be able to build and support
their own stack. These consumers own their computing devices in much the same
way as a Nintendo GameBoy or a Thermomix; his principles are contextually
irrelevant for anyone looking to purchase a tool to access Facebook.

Most of his reasons fall away when you consider the product an appliance
rather than a computer. Heck, I'm a computer programmer and _I treat my
smartphone as an appliance._ It makes me wonder how seriously RMS takes his
stance. Does he refuse to drive any modern vehicle with an ECU? Does he refuse
to refrigerate his milk in any modern fridge with a microcontroller?

~~~
shakethemonkey
At the HOPE conference last month, Stallman said he would on occasion borrow a
stranger's smartphone should he be in a public place and need to make a phone
call.

~~~
throwanem
He also called people who don't agree with his stance fools, and said that he
holds them in contempt. I guess that doesn't extend to refusing, on principle,
to get the benefit of contemptible foolishness when he finds it useful to do
so.

~~~
simbalion
is it wrong to call a fool a fool?

~~~
sjwright
It's not a question of wrong, it a question of productive.

------
slyzmud
I think he has a point in many things. But sadly, he also criticizes every
alternative like Google, Microsoft and even some linux distros. It's scary but
every day we are closer to the future he has told. I bet that in some years we
will be thinking why didn't we listened to him.

~~~
sotojuan
Who's "we"? Honestly even after Snowden and the rest the amount of people who
really care about privacy and software freedom is tiny, even among
technologists and programmers. Most people stop when they realize being "free"
means barely using anything, for better or for worse.

~~~
technofiend
You had James Bamford writing about phone call monitoring 40 years ago in
Puzzle Palace. Nobody cared. You had Cypherpunks on the cover of Wired wearing
masks with their PGP key IDs and saying encrypt all your emails. Nobody cared.
You had the EFF compromising with the Clinton I administration on Clipper and
key escrow. Nobody cared.

People of a certain age have discovered the value in ephemeral services after
Facebook and other services with long memories have proven to potentially
cache embarrassing posts for future employers but there's no cyber utopia with
anonymous communication empowered by a vetted web of trust because nobody
cares. Just snapchats you hope the recipient doesn't capture.

~~~
schoen
> You had the EFF compromising with the Clinton I administration on Clipper
> and key escrow. Nobody cared.

Are you sure you're not thinking of CALEA?

~~~
technofiend
I just remember at the time being shocked that the EFF had endorsed a
compromise but no longer remember the details. I'll have to google for it and
see if I can find it now.

~~~
schoen
There was a compromise around CALEA which was one of the precipitating factors
in EFF's split into CDT and EFF. As an EFF member during the early Crypto Wars
and a staff member since just before September 11, I'd be surprised to hear
about a compromise on Clipper; I haven't heard any of the 1990s-era employees
mention such a thing.

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AckSyn
His constant distain for anything not GPL'd is rather off-putting, and won't
be winning over anyone with the constant derision with comments like "deserve
to fail", "iBad" and "iThings".

Really, Stallman? Is this the best that he can do? It reads like some angsty
teenage, knee-jerk Apple hater bullshit that's reminiscent of the late 90's.

------
timewarrior
Stallman has done a great service to OSS. However his personality and stances
might be detrimental. I happened to meet him around 12 years back and that
meeting turned me away from associating with anything which he is involved. I
was helping organize the biggest software event in India and as a part of that
we had invited him to speak. I was responsible for his arrangements and he was
very rude to me throughout. He kept making fun of me because of my accent
(which apparently was sufficient to get a leadership role in US at one of the
Fortune 15 companies). Needless to say it was very childish and a complete
turnoff.

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mankash666
Done deal. GNU Hurd FTW. Will post a follow up from my new Hurd workstation.

Edit: never really got the display and network cards to work, stuck with my
Mac for now

------
simbalion
"It should be illegal to make or distribute computers which are platforms for
censorship."

Stallman understands the consequences of these things in a way that most
humans are blind to. I am so glad that someone as high profile as him has the
guts to stand up and persistently deliver the same message, maybe someday
everyone will wake up and figure out they've been paving the road to hell
before it's too late (if it's not already..)

------
falcolas
Remember: This is Stallman's opinion. If you share his point of view that the
rights of the user should be valued above the rights of the programmer and the
corporation, then this is the rant for you.

But if you don't; if you value convenience, maximizing profits, and minimizing
development effort, then this will probably annoy you.

------
confounded
I donate to the FSF (and favor the GPL) in spite of Stallman. I like what me
means, but tend to dislike how he says almost everything.

I've been quietly hoping that a more personable figurehead for the free
software movement might emerge for some time.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
That was Linus, and also ESR before he went batshit insane

------
qwertyuiop924
Stallman sticks to his principals, and I can admire him for that. But he's
actually outright unpleasant to be around, because he's facist about his
ideals in a way that most of us cannot or do not want to be. I get that he's
against proprietary software, but calling John Ousterhout a cancer while
licking his foot? It's not winning people over.

The EFF and Mozilla have done more for Stallman's cause than Stallman ever
did. ESR got this one right.

Jeez. I never thought I'd say ESR was right about something that wasn't a
piece of code. I guess a broken clock really is right twice a day.

~~~
kijin
Stallman has done a great deal of work to move the Overton window [1] in a
direction that makes it much easier for EFF and Mozilla to operate, not to
mention provided them with the FOSS tools they depend on every day. If
Stallman had never existed, Microsoft might have moved the Overton window in
the opposite direction and ESR would have sounded too radical for anyone to
take seriously.

As long as these other people are winning over more people than Stallman is
losing, I'd say Stallman is still making a positive contribution to the world.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Well, that's one of the the reasons I can't hate stallman. I'm an emacs user:
I'd be talking out both sides of my mouth if I wished he didn't exist.

OTOH, gpsd...

For Rainer's sake, 1) Emacs might not have existed in the first place if it
weren't for Stallman, and 2) I use GNU emacs more often then not.

------
hoodoof
I use Apple Macintosh because, despite the various bugs, it is an outstanding
operating system and works extremely well and is built on Unix. Ive followed
operating systems closely for more then 30 years and frankly no company or
open source effort managed to make anything as good as OSX in a whole range of
ways.

I don't care much about principles - Apple made the best OS so I use it. If
you want me to use something else then it has to be at least as good.

------
sergiotapia
Richardo Stallmanu - the quintessential /g/entleman incarnate, no? But hey,
here we are talking about him.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Having seen some of the worst of /g/, you're right, he fits right in. And
because it has nonfree software in the repos, and doesn't run linux-libre by
default, he already hates Arch.

~~~
Nadya
You hadn't been around /g/ long enough then. Too much discussion about non-
libre software/hardware. I believe he even responded to an email once calling
it an "inane place devoid of any meaningful conversations". Or something along
those lines...

Due to the "I should be able to do whatever I want with my computer" crowd
being a large part of /g/ though, many people agree with what he says. The
user should basically be treated as a god - and not be put under limitations
to modify the code running on their computer.

It also helps he has a pretty strong track record of being right. Even if his
being right isn't recognized until years after the fact.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
The one thing he's consistantly wrong about is that it is acceptable to run a
full free-software system RIGHT NOW. For most of us, it would be awkward at
best, impossible at worse.

It's still better than it used to be...

------
jalami
On one hand, I like that Stallman is opinionated and forward about his
politics and how we wants the world to work. So many people are silent or
inactive about the things they care about, wishing for people at large to just
change. You ruffle some feathers when you open up and say what's on your mind,
but hopefully after enough rational argument, you come off better and with a
better message.

On the other, I don't really like everything he says, despite being a pretty
firm OSS supporter. He conflates so much with open source it's nauseating.
People choose a license for all kinds of reasons and I understand he's a
cheerleader, I am too, but conflating everything hurts open source as much as
it hurts proprietary actors.

It's a market. Some people will want to buy your product because they see its
open nature as a benefit they are willing to pay more for, others don't care
and will not pay more. The same goes for privacy promises, DRM or which
devices you support, the color etc. If people buy or sell things that you
would rather not, that's cool. Pointing out that everyone at every level of a
proprietary agreement is _duped_ by some nefarious puppet-master and the
entire machine should fail is childish. Furthermore, throwing in things like
economics and employment fairness into the mix really confuses the message to
the determent of OSS developers. In like kind, I may be a vegetarian, but PETA
certainly doesn't speak for me.

I realize he thinks the current market is trash and slight deviations from the
status quo won't bring real change, but most people just don't care enough
about what many of us care about. That's the hard truth. Slinging mud and
building straw-men isn't how we fix this problem. It just makes OSS proponents
look out of touch.

Also, some people commented on his sometimes hypocritical impurity. eg. making
phone calls on locked down phones and using closed source websites
occasionally. Being OSS pure in 2016 is crazy hard and getting harder, again
due to market forces. I think there's a lot to fault Stallman on, but his
deviation from OSS purity is not one of them.

------
hoodoof
It's really hard to get on board with such extreme opinions.

------
toshka
This is what you would expect from Stallman. He's extremely smart guy, but
such categorical position makes it impossible to agree with him for
utilitarian reasons. I don't wanna to restrict my comfort just to prove a
point. Besides, we are all under surveillance regardless.

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MicroBerto
Here's a shorter list: ~3x the cost for nearly the same thing you can get from
Samsung.

------
sneak
I would pay Real Money for viable alternatives that respect my time and
attention and don't fuck up my life.

Nobody has built any, sadly.

------
devin
Hey, not a big surprise to see this on stallman.org, but I thought I'd drop in
to mention Apple created ALAC (which is basically FLAC, just with lock-in),
which when I first discovered it, found to be a pretty egregious example.

~~~
sjwright
...except that Apple ALAC is Free Software released under the Apache License.

And it's no more similar to FLAC than any other lossless audio codec.

It's widely believed that Apple chose to build their codec rather than simply
implement FLAC because their goal was to optimise for maximum battery life
efficiency on the iPod. (No such optimisations have been open sourced by
Apple, but that doesn't in any way imply their non-existence.)

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mcphage
iThings? iBad? Was this written by a 19 year old edgelord? Does he write
Microsoft as "M$", too?

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toodlebunions
Rehashing 2012?

