It strikes me as terrifying, personally, but to each their own.

I have been responsible for creating and maintaining an app generation system. Among other things, it taught me that App Store Connect has many sharp edges showing how easy it is to abuse the kind of power you've correctly pointed out Apple has.

In a world where every other tech company swindles and manipulates consumers at every opportunity, I'm happy that at least one is incentivized to do the opposite, and has the power to do so.

Apple swindles, manipulates and mistreats developers to further their own ends.

It's perhaps less evil than the kind of wholesale data-farming the other big tech companies are engaged in, but it still doesn't make me like the idea of Apple ascendant.

And I was raised on Macs, giving Apple a heavy nostalgia bonus that they burned years ago.

Apple takes powers from developers hired by greedy companies and puts that power in the hands of the users.

You find that you're being strongarmed. As a oonsumer, I could not care less. Hell, I am thrilled that developers are being strongarmed when it comes to user privacy and security.

I'm not concerned with Apple refusing apps that do seamy things (though "seamy things" is more subjective than you might think, as Apple is well aware).

I am concerned with things like Apple's terms of service saying "If you put an app in the store, we reserve the right to copy it and ban yours."

They don't spell it out quite that clearly, but sections 14.4 and 11.2 of the developer guidelines make it clear enough (https://download.developer.apple.com/Documentation/ADP_Progr...).

Yes, there are more charitable interpretations possible, but Apple does have some history of cloning and killing off third party software, so I see no reason to apply the more charitable interpretation.

How is it evil? Apple is saying that their customers aren't yours to pillage. No developer is forced to write for the Apple platform. If a developer doesn't like the terms, there will always be another developer willing to fill the gap.

Who said the Windows/Android model is the morally correct one anyway?

As a customer I'm glad that Apple is providing a truly different alternative.

I guess I was not especially clear, so my apologies for that.

I'm not scared of this anonymous signin feature, per se.

I'm scared of the sheer amount of power Apple has, and that they can abuse it to force third parties into compliance with what they think software should be.

That's what I was saying I found terrifying.

Apple swindles and manipulates the user to buying a new device whenever there is any fault at all because everything is glued and soldered together so fixing anything requires buying half of the device.

Personal experience. Battery change on iphone SE, cost $75. They couldn't safely do the replacement (broken tabs on battery) and they simply replaced the phone.

I'm not sure how this is manipulating to get me to purchase a new phone.

That's not much better. Another phone goes to landfill because not even apple was able to repair it due to their horrendous practicices. It took me half an hour to remove a battery from an iPhone and I had to get the hair dryer out to melt the glue. With other devices I just unscrew a bracket holding the battery down and it takes me 5 minutes.

> Another phone goes to landfill

That's disingenuous. Apple has a recycling program, where they take apart every component to be reused or recycled into new materials.[1]

[1]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/04/apple-adds-earth-day-...

Has a recycling program =/= everyone who ever purchased an iPhone is using that recycling program.

7.8 million "Apple devices"[0] in 2018 is a lot, but an average iPhone is far more likely to end up on a landfill. If it were easy to extract the battery, that wouldn't be such a problem.

[0] They group them all together and I can't find any other metric: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/04/apple-expands-global-...

Yes, but phones that Apple swaps out generally do get recycled.

I don’t think that is a fair comparison. Aside from hardware va software I personally have never had an issue with apple products last 3 or more years. Get apple care and they just fix or replace it when anything goes wrong. Better experience then my friends seem to have with other manufactures.

I have a collection of broken apple products from other people who were going to throw them out. Usually they have a fairly minor issue but its just about impossible to fix because of the use of insane amounts of glue or one way clips

It’s pretty funny though that you consider a few dozen Apple broken devices as "a collection" meanwhile a few dozen of Android broken devices is generally considered "a pile of thrash".

And this effect is massive last week I offered two of my old laptops to a friend child wanabee hacker. He quickly considered a 2012 HP for parts, then he kept on thanking me for a working state 2002 PPC iBook.

PS: To be honest he might be ranting about it in a few day, I’ve played around it a little and that 2002 iBook bios is a mostly undocumented nightmare!

I went through the pile of Apple stuff we'd collected over the last few years and repaired them myself. Annoying + fiddly but simple and extremely possible with some spare parts, a $20 toolkit, and care + patience.

The battery glue is like a 3M command strip, you're supposed to remove it by applying tension to the side. You need the heat source if the strip breaks and gets trapped underneath, but I used dental floss instead.