Reeks of projection that he thinks anyone who disagrees with him is a cultist, and not that maybe they just have a nuanced opinion.
Yes I understand the benefits of having more app stores, but there are benefits to the current setup too. Having all apps installed from a single place means I don't have to worry about sourcing different apps from different places. If my grandma wants to install an app I tell her to go to the App Store, not to install Facebook's app store so she can then install Instagram. It's simple.
This applies to almost every locked-down feature of Apple platforms. Having more browser rendering engines means more user freedom, but the current situation where every iPhone can only render web pages with Safari means web developers have to make sure their page works in something other than Chrome, and if something works on one browser on the iPhone it'll work on every browser on the iPhone.
I've just accepted that I don't really want to use my smartphone as a powerful computing machine, it's a convenient secondary device that does enough to get me by without using a real computer, so I'm fine with these tradeoffs. It doesn't mean I'm a "cultist"
I think the cultism comes from uttering, "I'm fine with these tradeoffs", without realizing that making excuses on these grounds fundamentally rejects the existence of those outside the cult.
It's fine for you. Okay. Why does that mean Alice should be limited by your comfort/discomfort with these policies?
You don't want an alternative source for installing apps on your iPhone. Why does that mean it's okay to keep Alice from exercising that option on her iPhone?
> Reeks of projection that he thinks anyone who disagrees with him is a cultist, and not that maybe they just have a nuanced opinion.
Indeed. It's also really tone-deaf in terms of what it's like to actually be in a cult or what cult mechanics are really like, and makes it hard for someone to respond in good faith without the audience just considering them a cultist from the get-go depending on how popular the author may be...
Count me in as someone who thinks the cult was a lot more significant back in the days when Apples products really kind of sucked (late 90s especially). If the iPhone is a cult it's bigger than Catholicism and almost as big as Islam. Most definitions of cult include that it's a relatively small group with a charismatic leader. Maybe in computer terms they were small and led by a charismatic leader (Jobs) back in the day, but when it's more like 1.5B people small doesn't really fit, and does Cook or anyone else really count as charismatic in the way Jobs was?
Also funny from Doctorow, he always seems so into himself that you'd think he'd have been one of the mac cultists back in the day.
I've witnessed cult-like behaviour in tech circles before, and it's always been from the underdogs.
I used to frequent the Windows Phone subreddit in the OS's final days because most people paying attention got the signal that Microsoft was done with the platform, so what remained was absolute die-hards and they were fascinating to watch. They needed to constantly reassure each other that they were making the right decision by using a Windows Phone. They would brush off the app gap by acting like Instagram and Snapchat were just for stupid children, and their platform was better because it did the important things like Excel spreadsheets. They'd claim one of the few remaining phones - which was a bottom-of-the-barrel Nokia that could be purchased for something like $50 - was equal or better to the latest iPhone or Android flagships.
It was a similar situation in the Blackberry subreddit too at the end of its life. The "losing team" feels the need to justify their side, whereas the "winning team" doesn't consider there to be a battle going on at all. I think there was certainly a point where Apple was the alternative choice and Apple users were acting like that, but these days most people buy Apple products because it's the default choice. The fanboys exist, but with how many users are out there, they're an overwhelming minority. Most people are just using the product they bought, and don't consider it to be a choice in a tech war.
While I think this "cult" phenomenon has been significant, it seems it's not as prevalent as it has been.
Many Macs today are corporate workstations. Individual users still adopt it for the integration of phone/tablet/PC, but the cult persona seems to be a somewhat dated analysis...
> the cult persona seems to be a somewhat dated analysis
iPhones and other iDevices are more accessible. It used to be a certain cohort could afford such devices and the rest had to buy 'Peasant Android' devices. But you can get iPhones refurbished in good condition from many vendors, and at a good discount. Caveat: they're not brand new, but they are very close.
Yes, in the 1980s/1990s Macs were favored by artists and musicians because there were a lot of programs for them that were Mac exclusive. These days the attraction is more that Macs can be treated as basically UNIX workstations that IT is happier with than allowing users their own Linux boxes because it is easier for them to lock them down.
If we are talking about cults. What about the weird orientalism in software engineering? The fetishisation of asian culture particularly Japanese. And the romanticisation of using archaic mechanisms to interface with systems - terminal interfaces.
Is the cult as strong as it has been? I feel like this "cult" is absolutely what Apple leveraged to get where they are and they not doubt played into it. But it doesn't seem like that is really the case anymore. Or is it?
They have legitimately incredible products and services. The M1 alone was a game-changer in so many ways, and as far as I'm aware Apple has always been innovating that way.
I get annoyed by the use of "religious" as a synonym for baseless or irrational.
What I notice about Mac users is that they are convinced all kinds of functionality is unique to Macs. Lots of them have told me "if you had a Mac and an iPhone you could do X" or "this app will make you want to switch" and it ALWAYS turns out to be something I have an equivalent to on the platforms I use (Linux desktop + Android). Copy and paste between machines (OK, I have to install an app and pair, big deal), decent terminal apps, third party services syncing.....
For me, the reason I'd call myself an Apple fan (despite agreeing Apple is in the wrong on many of the points the linked post makes) is the entire rest of all consumer products cater to "non-Apple fan" taste. Most products are differentiated purely on price, not experience, and then if you truly want to pay for a different experience, in most categories you're thrust into super niche and fiddly.
My $2000+ Ableton Push 3 and ~$1500 in ergonomic Egrodox EZ keyboards. Those feel overpriced to me (but worth every penny for my personally).
But the fact that I can do my work everyday on a computer designed with the values Apple values, that it's a product so good that my company even buys it for me, and encourages me to use it for my work? I'm going to be a fan of this company for life! If you don't understand, really don't worry about it, the entire rest of all consumer products caters to your taste, so just enjoy that.
As a non-cult dumb Apple end user, I'm slightly fed up of people talking on behalf of me and telling me what is good for me.
The only app I ever paid for through the store was Pixelmator (desktop) and that was when it was $10 a number of years ago. I don't have any paid iPhone apps at all. The impact of the store on me as an end user is mostly zero.
I haven't had to repair anything yet. I've got phones going back to 2015 which have had new batteries and that's it. I took them to Apple and they sorted it within a couple of hours each time. I had one display issue on a 6s back in 2016 and they just gave me a new phone there and then in the store that day. Also you can buy official parts and equipment to repair your stuff from them as well.
I barely use iMessage. It's not a controversy. Everyone here (UK) uses WhatsApp. Half the people out there, even on iPhones don't even know or care what iMessage is.
My mac just sort of works mostly. I have a PC too because I have two bits of software I can't get rid of yet. I'd rather use the Mac because it doesn't kick me in the balls every 30 minutes like the PC does. The PC is a dire experience from hell (Windows 11). And I've got a lot of experience with Linux running back over 25 years and then a decade of commercial unix before thaet. I don't want to take the day job home thanks.
As for privacy, what other options do I have? It's not perfect but it's the least bad. I either use an android infested with microsoft stuff which is full of Telemetry as well as Google stuff which is infested with advertising and tracking or I use just Google stuff which is infested with advertising and tracking or I get a defanged Android which adds a thousand layers of friction to every day of my life.
My position is distinctly "meh" at this point when I hear people telling me what is good for me because they're not telling me that. They're telling me what I am doing is bad for me then going silent when they're asked to cough up a better solution.
It's impressive the rate at which Microsoft continues to enshittify Windows. If it wasn't for my Steam library I'd love to get rid of my PC and never think about it again.
The other day I was trying to trim a video, simple task. Of course, these days Windows has 2 built-in photo/video viewers and I never know which one to use. I tried the first one, and saw a pencil button that usually signifies "edit". It launched me into some app I've never heard of before called "Clipchamp" with an onboarding screen and everything. I didn't want to learn some new app, so I closed it out, closed out the media viewer app (clearly chose the wrong one), and picked the other one.
Come a few minutes later and I have an email from Clipchamp, thanking me for using the product. I rolled my eyes and archived the email. A few days later, I get ANOTHER email giving me suggestions for videos I can make in Clipchamp. They signed me up for their fucking mailing list! Because I tried to edit a video with their built-in app on their OS!
Yep. And not just iOS. The way the hardware and software synchronize with each other when you include more devices is just alien. Like when you're using an iPhone with a MBP next to a Mac Mini as well, with a single keyboard/mouse being able to interface in some way or another with all of the devices.
You can pull off some very powerful workflows for this and customize very powerful workflows that benefit the user far beyond just what apps can be installed. Apple is amazing and they're just barely getting started.
Spot on. It is a great system. Really one of the great benefits of a “walled garden”
But you can do that in linux using this:
> weird unmaintained git repository
> some kernel level patch
> weird bash script that looks like it has a rce exploit in it
> weird vim configuration combination
> custom build android app because banned on the app store
Haha yeah I think that journey is worth taking into creating your own ecosystem as well, if there's time for it, otherwise having a polished walled garden is good news to me. Like in The Secret Garden.
Apple makes legitimately awesome products. That's why this lengthy response.
> Apple's most valuable intangible asset isn't its patents or copyrights – it's an army of people who believe that using products from a $2.89 trillion multinational makes them members of an oppressed religious minority whose identity is coterminal with the interests of Apple's shareholders.
To a large extent, the future of computing hardware and software from Apple in the Mac and in MacOS does coincide with the interests of the shareholders as well. This is not always 1:1, sometimes shareholders want more profit so they can sell some shares, but the company's growth and making the shareholders happy does, at least in Apple's case, translate into better products and services.
> Take the App Store. Apple blocks third parties from offering rival app stores for its iOS platform, which means you can only install apps that have been blessed by Apple. That blessing is contingent on the software authors involved giving $0.30 out of every dollar you spend in their apps to Apple.
You can install any app you want as long as it's installable on the hardware. It's true that the Apple App Store is the only sanctioned curated App Store. I'm not sure who would produce an App Store that they'd like installed on an Apple machine? Are you considering a world where Android apps are installable on Mac and people can install the Android Store on their Mac? Or the Samsung Store? Or etc. I'll be open and say I don't want that. What I want is installers available directly from the company or from an App Store that is really close to the hardware and can curate things. I only need one App Store. If there were more, I'd likely stick with 1 or just get software I want directly from the company or person selling it via their website and installers off the open internet.
> That's why non-Apple audiobook stores like Libro.fm and Downpour require you to buy your books in a browser, which hamstrings them and gives Apple an unbeatable advantage
I don't see selling via a browser as a limitation. Payments in browsers have improved a lot, from the point of view of how seamlessly you can enter payment details to how secure the flow is. If you sell via just a website link, that's less friction than installing an entire app. So unless your app is really heavyweight, the web and links are nice and should not be considered a limitation. If your purchase funnel is for obtaining access rights or licensing rights, the web is more than sufficient.
If Apple's Store in particular results in more sales, that may just be because people prefer Apple's curation over the open web. It's not necessarily going to be true or a given that additional App Stores would have the same commercial success on Apple hardware.
> But that's not the only bad outcome. Some lucky service providers are able to pay the Apple Tax by gouging Apple's customers, raising prices to pay the danegeld. That's the second effect.
They do this already on other platforms, like on Kindle where digital copies are very expensive despite the marginal costs per copy being very low. I think because of LLMs we're going to get to a world where digital books become very cheap by comparison and physical books ship with a key to have a digital copy as well. This is the ideal world for books. But in any case, when it comes to digital copies of books or audiobooks the prices are high everywhere because consumers have not yet realized that marginal costs per digital copy are effectively $0, and that if they're paying full price they should be getting a physical copy with a key to the audio book and the digital book. Consumers will catch on and then this aspect will go away because it's not a factor anymore.
> But Big Tech most assuredly steals from the news: it steals money. The ad-tech duopoly takes 51% out of every ad dollar. Social media holds news subscribers to ransom and requires "boosting" payment to reach the people who've asked to see their articles. And the mobile duopoly takes 30% out of every in-app subscription dollar:
Exactly to my point that other companies charge a lot for digital goods. Granted, they build and maintain the infrastructure and the IP that makes all of these capabilities possible. But more and more free and open capabilities exist for this. Bring back RSS feeds. (Although I think they never really went away...I'm going to set up an RSS feed and reader for the first time in a long time this weekend)
> The real beneficiaries of an open app world is Apple customers. After all, it's Apple customers who bear the 30% app tax when it's priced into the apps they buy and the things they buy in those apps. It's Apple customers who lose access to apps that can't be viably offered because the app tax makes them money-losing propositions. It's Apple customers who lose out on the ability to get apps that Apple decides are unsuitable for inclusion in its App Store.
It is an open app world. I can install any app I want from the open web on my MBP, like I would on a Linux or Windows machine. I don't care if I can't replace the App Store as I only rarely use it, and when I use it it's for the trusted curation by the experts of the hardware and the software or the convenience of its integration into the MBP.
I do think Apple needs to do better for supporting modern web standards for their browser, though, particularly to ensure that browser-based payments and support for payments from the device through other major browsers remains reasonable. And so far it has.
> The minority of Apple customers for whom their brand loyalty is a form of religious devotion insist that "no Apple customer wants these things."
I've been an Apple customer for a few years only. They make really awesome products. I use a Windows machine for Microsoft-stack work as well. There are great Windows machines. I also really enjoyed ElementaryOS and Ubuntu the last time I used them and can see myself using them some more.
I don't actually care if the Apple App Store is the only one present on Apple devices, particularly because of the security benefits if less technically inclined people want to trust the curation there. If the web browsers maintain good modern standards, then it'll be easy and friendly to buy and/or install other software downloaded from the web, and that's what matters. The App Store stuff comes across more like competitors trying to impose a regulatory burden that doesn't actually matter to try to slow down Apple's huge strides in producing the best software and hardware integration that exists on the market.
> If rival app stores – ones that had different editorial standards and different payment policies – existed, the only people who could possibly use them are Apple customers. Android users won't be using an alternative iOS store. Symbian users aren't going to be installing apps from an iOS store offered by someone other than Apple.
Give me a practical example of a different editorial standard or different payment policy that translates into an actual different and desired user flow than what is possible on an Apple device today. Right now it seems like this move is just an unfair attempt by other large corporations to try to crack open Apple's tight integration, which could compromise the quality of the products and services Apple already provides. So what is the fabled additional experience that someone could get if they followed your path?
> If it's true that "Apple customers don't want non-Apple app stores," then Apple wouldn't need to use technological countermeasures and legal threats to prevent them from coming into existence. These non-Apple app stores would fail on their own terms.
This assumes that anyone was polled. It also assumes that there are no technological constraints and deep IP secrets behind the Apple integrations that need protection. It also assumes good intentions on the part of the other companies, and that they actually care about the users rather than just trying to get a look at Apple from much closer up at the hardware/software level.
> Remember: the only people who could use an alternative iOS store are Apple customers. Moore – a Minister from the Conservative Party – went on record saying that if you want to use your private, personal property in ways that the corporation that manufactured it objects to you, the government should step in to defend the corporation from you.
If anyone actually really cares that strongly, then eventually Apple will add support to replace the main App Store, but only for apps that are actually installable on the architecture for M3 or Rosetta...there may be legitimate technical constraints. Remember, these are products. If you're buying the machine with the expectation that you can install and do everything from source and customize everything, then you need a different product.
Should a MBP with Mac OS be customizable in every setting? That's not something the users, even the power users, really seem to care about otherwise you'd see them asking for it. Instead I see more commentary from those who want the access for other reasons...
As long as developers are not blocked from releasing their code, assuming it isn't malicious code, then users will not care if they can't install something from the Android Store or other stores...
> This is not the property-worshiping, market-based ideology the Conservative Party claims to support. The only way to square that circle is if somehow, the people who want to install apps on their phones without the manufacturer's approval are not really customers.
Is there data on how many iOS users actually care about another store?
> Think of Apple's years-long war on repair. When Apple gets a veto over where you fix the small, slippery, glass object you carry everywhere and hence break a lot, they can get up to all kinds of mischief. They can gouge you on parts and service charges, sure. But they can also simply rule out fixing your device at all, declaring it beyond repair.
> This prompts you to buy another gadget from them, and they get to offer you a trade-in. That means that your old gadget gets "recycled" by Apple, who – uniquely among electronics manufacturers – drops all its "recycled" gadgets in giant shredders, ensuring that parts from old phones don't find their way into the secondary market for use by independent repair
Sounds good from a security point of view. I want anyone who touches my devices for repair to follow documented, monitored, understood processes for what to do with the device during repair and how to dispose of the device if being recycled. Bummer in the edge case where sometimes they won't repair something...that happened to me with my M1 MBP back when the keyboard was completely gone. I could've repaired it myself with a new keyboard but I did decide to upgrade because it was time even though it wouldn't have been that bad to replace the keyboard myself.
If you want something truly wild weest and open, why not aim for a Linux machine that you maintain on your own? If expecting something from someone else's labor, you'll need to accept that sometimes they can decline to work on your projects or repairs if it's deemed reasonably beyond what they repair...
> Apple's religious adherents stepped into insist that Apple customers preferred to get their iPhone fixed by Apple and its approved depots.
I personally prefer Apple to handle all repairs and if they make a judgment that something is not feasible or not supported on their end, I'll make a call if I repair it myself. But I don't care about using third parties to repair an Apple device, or for that matter any computer I have. I will even repair screens myself if I have to, because I prefer that versus risking my code or projects or keys leaking or being tampered with in any way. Sounds to me like Apple's approach guarantees customer security this way and having gone through three support needs so far for a repair, a reset, and a request for a repair that got rejected, I will keep giving Apple money for new products when it's time to upgrade again. Apple makes great stuff.
> The chorus of credulous, faithful shouters gives Apple enormous cover to get up to the worst behavior. Apple keeps making announcements about its commitment to repair that get trumpeted to the heavens, even though these announcements barely bother to cover up how Apple will continue to block repair in practice:
I have AppleCare on the 16" M1 MBP I have right now and they paid for an expensive repair for me. They did reject a past repair as mentioned before but that's when I agreed and upgraded to this one. I trust Apple's judgment so far based on my experiences with them. Great products.
Microsoft had a great policy too back when they had Microsoft Stores.
> Apple refused to weaken its security for the FBI, but when China threatened its access to cheap manufacturing and hundreds of millions of customers, Apple eviscerated its products
I believe this is very over-stated considering that Apple is also employing a lot of Indian firms and technologists to build more and more there and in other places as well. In the long run I do not see Apple risking their largest customer bases for the slower Chinese market if they end up having to choose. This is because they know that this choice would represent a bigger supply chain risk.
Not sure about Apple's data harvesting practices, I rely on the official product promises on their product pages for this and if there are higher quality sources showing proof of nefarious behaviors or excessive data collection, I'll definitely pay attention to those.
> And then there's iMessage, Apple's default messaging service – "default" in the sense that there's no way to use other messaging apps without taking additional steps. IMessage has end-to-end encryption – but only when you're communicating with other Apple customers. The instant an Android user is added to a chat or group chat, the entire conversation flips to SMS, an insecure, trivially hacked privacy nightmare that debuted 38 years ago – the year Wayne's World had its first cinematic run.
You can install other messaging apps and I believe that Apple has been upgrading iMessage when it is used in groups with Android users recently.
> This is not good for Apple customers. It exposes them to continuous, serious privacy risks. Our mobile devices are keepers of our most intimate secrets, and when mobile security fails, the consequences are grave, as Apple discovered in the hardest way possible, ten years ago:
This is precisely why cracking open MacOS or iOS to facilitate additional stores and installs of apps that may not even support the target architecture well is risky, and I'm glad that you agree that mobile devices in particular need to be secure.
In any case, that's the end of the post mostly. I think I addressed the main things, but over-all there's a lot of lashing out at Apple products...realistically based on my own usage over a few years now, I'm not convinced by your arguments. I think in general Apple stewards their customer base very well and produces quality products and services across the board. They'll keep improving too.
Yes I understand the benefits of having more app stores, but there are benefits to the current setup too. Having all apps installed from a single place means I don't have to worry about sourcing different apps from different places. If my grandma wants to install an app I tell her to go to the App Store, not to install Facebook's app store so she can then install Instagram. It's simple.
This applies to almost every locked-down feature of Apple platforms. Having more browser rendering engines means more user freedom, but the current situation where every iPhone can only render web pages with Safari means web developers have to make sure their page works in something other than Chrome, and if something works on one browser on the iPhone it'll work on every browser on the iPhone.
I've just accepted that I don't really want to use my smartphone as a powerful computing machine, it's a convenient secondary device that does enough to get me by without using a real computer, so I'm fine with these tradeoffs. It doesn't mean I'm a "cultist"