Re:Ask HN: Are you reconsidering your upcoming Mac purchase?
by Nextgrid on Saturday August 14, 2021 @08:11AM
(#28180026)
Yes, but not for the recent privacy-hostile announcement (though that obviously doesn't help).
Since Big Sur (and to a certain extent Catalina) it's clear that the Mac is moving away from being a work machine suitable for professionals to create things into a toy for consumers to consume media on.
It started with these new "apps" such as Music, Videos and News which look unfinished given how empty they are (especially comparing to their iTunes predecessor), completely out of place (as some are just ports of iOS apps), and the few features that are in there have bugs or don't behave like you'd expect.
In Big Sur there appears to be a Stocks app, that somehow asks me to accept a privacy policy and tries to connect to Apple News behind the scenes (which I denied). Is it for people who are too stupid to look it up in the browser?
The Big Sur UI is also an absolute insult.
The constant nagging about iCloud is tiring, and that feature is outright dangerous for anyone working with confidential data. Did you know that having iCloud Drive enabled and opening a CSV file in Numbers will silently upload it to iCloud in the background?
I used to like Mac because the UX was nice and as long as you gave them their money, Apple seemed to respect you and get the fuck out of your way. I don't remember Mac OS being actively hostile against the user until the Catalina era where Apple transitioned to their services approach, but I can't see every buying into these services for 2 reasons:
1) they are still so behind the competition - see Apple Music vs Spotify, iCloud Drive vs OneDrive.
2) I don't want my data siloed into apps - I want the option to access it on the web
3) I don't want the auth to said service depend on the entire machine being logged in. You can't easily log into 2 iCloud accounts for example because it's not just a client app where you can run 2 instances, it's built into the system
Finally, if you get a Mac and install something like Little Snitch (a firewall) you'll be scared of how the machine is constantly pinging Apple about something.
Since Big Sur (and to a certain extent Catalina) it's clear that the Mac is moving away from being a work machine suitable for professionals to create things into a toy for consumers to consume media on.
It started with these new "apps" such as Music, Videos and News which look unfinished given how empty they are (especially comparing to their iTunes predecessor), completely out of place (as some are just ports of iOS apps), and the few features that are in there have bugs or don't behave like you'd expect.
In Big Sur there appears to be a Stocks app, that somehow asks me to accept a privacy policy and tries to connect to Apple News behind the scenes (which I denied). Is it for people who are too stupid to look it up in the browser?
The Big Sur UI is also an absolute insult.
The constant nagging about iCloud is tiring, and that feature is outright dangerous for anyone working with confidential data. Did you know that having iCloud Drive enabled and opening a CSV file in Numbers will silently upload it to iCloud in the background?
I used to like Mac because the UX was nice and as long as you gave them their money, Apple seemed to respect you and get the fuck out of your way. I don't remember Mac OS being actively hostile against the user until the Catalina era where Apple transitioned to their services approach, but I can't see every buying into these services for 2 reasons:
1) they are still so behind the competition - see Apple Music vs Spotify, iCloud Drive vs OneDrive.
2) I don't want my data siloed into apps - I want the option to access it on the web
3) I don't want the auth to said service depend on the entire machine being logged in. You can't easily log into 2 iCloud accounts for example because it's not just a client app where you can run 2 instances, it's built into the system
Finally, if you get a Mac and install something like Little Snitch (a firewall) you'll be scared of how the machine is constantly pinging Apple about something.