Apple is a monopoly. Where’s the alternative?

The article The Cult of Mac by Cory Doctorow (Pluralistic) goes hard on anyone who uses Apple hardware.

“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’s never even occurred to me to have this on my radar because I don’t use the App Store for anything but finding a very specific app, usually one that I’m forced to download. Do you want to invest a second to whip me up too, or are you just going to dismiss me as an Apple acolyte out of hand? I know that Apple’s app practices are abusive and monopolistic, but what’s the alternative to their hardware?

I’m caught in their hardware monopoly in that Windows is a dumpster fire and so is all of the noisy, energy-gobbling hardware that it runs on. iOS versus Android is the same. The hardware is quite significantly better. I’m all for putting pressure on Apple, but let’s not pretend that they have a stranglehold on the market just because they have an app-store monopoly. They actually make some pretty good hardware and decent services.

“These religious apologetics for Apple’s business practices are a devastatingly effective defense against the public outcry that would accrue to any other business that abused its customers in similar fashion. Every time Apple finds a new way to rip off its customers, the cult is there to insist that those aren’t true Apple customers at all!”

“[…] 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:”

Apple iPhone 4sWhat an odd claim. I’ve never had a new iPhone. I’ve had four of them: an iPhone 4s and iPhone 5s, both hand-me-downs from my sister, an iPhone 6s bought from Revendo, and an iPhone 12 Mini, also from Revendo. Where did they come from if Apple shreds everything?

The 12 Mini is my current phone. It was introduced to the market 4 years ago. It works extremely well, even though it’s still on its first battery. I’ll almost certainly put a new battery in it within about a year and continue to use for several years.

“If it were the case that No True Apple Customer would patronize a third-party repair depot, then Apple could simply step out of the way of right to repair campaigns and those independent phone fixit places would sink without a trace.”

Some of them almost certainly would sink without a trace. Have you tried them? I had to leave one because it was so scammy. It would have cost three times as much as Apple and they wanted my password. Given that experience, you can’t ignore the downsides of opening up to competition: ads, scams, etc. I wouldn’t use the third-party stores, unless they had a really good reputation, because I’ve seen what that world does with people’s time and money. I have bought the last two laptops for my household (2 in ten years) from a third-party vendor, as well. I wonder if things are just different in the U.S.? (You know, in the land of the free?)

“Apple blocked Facebook from spying on you, but when it wanted to build its own surveillance advertising empire, it switched iOS spying back on, gathering exactly the same data as Facebook had, but for its own sole use, and then lied about it”

“One of the clinical signs that someone is in a cult is that they are encouraged to isolate themselves from people who aren’t also in that cult:”

Or it could just be the least shitty of shitty options. Again, I feel like Doctorow fails to see what the world is like outside of the California bubble. Internationally, SMS is a costly train wreck anyway, so the only alternative is to just get a different messenger if you want to communicate with the United States. There was never a useful alternative. If Apple were to make a perfect messenger, then he’d probably bitch that they’re using their monopoly power to squeeze independent messengers.

I like Signal. I would use it for everyone and drop Apple Messages, but some people are deep into the network effect. It’s hard enough keeping them from trying to contact me with Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. Only Signal and Threema are quasi-independent of giant monopolies. And not nearly enough people are on that. And Threema’s desktop solution for messaging is an absolute dumpster fire.

“The company claimed that there was some nonspecific way in which Beeper Mini weakened the security of Apple customers, though they offered no evidence in support of that claim. Remember, the gold standard for security claims is proof-of-concept code, not hand-waving.”

The gold standard for proving that you are secure is not having software “based on a determined teenager’s code” FFS. Beeper was and is almost certainly leaky as shit. What makes you think Beeper’s code was secure? Literally no reason, other than, if Apple says it is, they must be lying. Everything is leaky as shit. The answer to Apple should be: then make a version that isn’t leaky as shit. Even they probably won’t be able to do it (they’re leaking your contact information via AirDrop right now).

As an update, Apple is rolling out RCS support for Apple Messages, even though I haven’t seen it yet. This is probably the alternative to which they were alluding.

To sum up: some of us are trying to navigate the corporate options available without conceding everything on functionality or hardware. Richard Stallman is absolutely admirable for having consistently done so but I am not that strong. Sometimes I just want a laptop that works for me rather than the other way around. I know he thinks his laptop works for him because it’s free but the reality is that the free solutions continue to require a lot of time in order to get to the point where you’re doing the task you originally wanted to do, rather than doing tasks required by the software and hardware choice you’ve made.