Why I don't like Apple

1/20/2022

This isn't really about the UI. I do have gripes with it, more recently. 2010 to 2015 I think it was actually pretty good. With so many apps out there I prefer to navigate by typing the first few letters of an app, rather than by swiping through pages of apps. This is exceedingly difficult in Appleland.

No this is more about attitude. Here are the principles I feel like Apple abides by now, as if they had been written by management.

1. Overcharge as much as possible on storage. Despite advances in storage technology and ever dropping prices, we can make people pay a huge amount extra for more storage.  Never ever ever put in a MicroSD card interface, which would allow 1 Terabyte of easily purchasable and high transfer speed storage and possibly more in the future. When we can charge so much for 32 or 64 GB or 128 GB of onboard storage, why allow people to buy storage from somewhere else.

2. Tie people into our product by whatever means necessary. Make it impossible for them to ever leave.

This means a walled garden, impossible to escape from. 

a. Lock up their music collection. Make it easy to buy our locked format and super difficult nay impossible to export. Make it very difficult to use standard music. Make it impossible to ever switch to another platform without losing your data. [by the way this is the number one reason I have refused to purchase music under any locked system, nor any apple phone].

b. Lock up their photos and video. Use nonstandard photo and video formats (like HEIC). Make them difficult to use on other platforms. Lock them in by using our cloud storage.

c. Refuse to use any outside standards nor work with standards groups to improve communication interchange schemes. For all practical purposes ours is the only world that matters. For example iMessage must use its own format, to the point that a stigma will be encouraged within our system for those who use popular standards. Flag them as outcasts by using a different color. Ideally peer pressure will grow within groups (such as teens) so that they will demand to own our products for fear of this stigma. 

3. Apps must do what we want and everything must benefit us. No unauthorized apps, no applications that compete with our own services, even if what we're doing could be considered a conflict of interest.

Take a very large percentage of sales from any app.

4. Avoid paying our fair share of taxes by whatever means possible. Use tax havens to avoid paying taxes. Direct assets overseas.

5. Use cheap labor overseas for manufacturing wherever possible. Do not pay a living wage.

6. Exploit our near-monopoly wherever possible. 

For example, use our ubiquitous network to implement bluetooth trackers. Use everyone's cell data (dollars) to (whether they want to or not, if nothing else simply by default) pass on tracking data for others.

7. We must maintain a monopoly on phones used by the US government. Use lobbying to claim that other phones can never be secure. The US government must never realize they could choose to build and maintain its own software build of Android, and could insist on US made components for phones it purchases for security reasons. Don't mention to the government where our phones are made.

Taking a break for now- there is more to add in the future.