You frame it as a conscious choice, but in my experience more than 9 of 10 Apple users are completely ignorant of the issues. They only "know what they like" or think "Apple is best. " There's no consideration at all of reasons or consequences.

There absolutely is consideration of the reasons or consequences relevant to them, that they care about. The fact is the things you think they should care about, they just flat out don't, and that's fine.

I tend to agree with you, but it’s also definitely possible that segments of the population are unaware of issues they would care about if they were.

This, exactly.

When I have conversations with non techy friends and introduce them to my take on the privacy and consumer rights issues, and they take the time to look into the problems and think about it, they've almost always come back and said the costs in loss of rights, market diversity, ecological impacts, or simply in dollars, are not worth the value provided by huge companies like Apple and Google.

They both ruthlessly squash competition and innovation that threaten their bottom lines, but somehow project wholesome images as innovation engines and friends of consumers. They both ruthlessly exploit employees and partners, while somehow appearing to be wholesome and desirous places of employment.

They're both soulless megacorps with institutional algorithms that prevent any threat to the control over a domain of profit. When such institutions arise, outside the control of any human or group of humans in the loop, they should be forcibly broken up. That level of power and influence belongs in the hands of people, not inhuman constructs.

Certainly, the vast majority of people in rich countries can afford to care more about fashion (including bubble color) than functionality, and this is reflected in their smartphone purchases. The frustration you see in these comments comes from technologists like the OP thinking the same way and repeatedly running into leopard ate my face moments.

> Certainly, the vast majority of people in rich countries can afford to care more about fashion (including bubble color) than functionality,

I've been an iOS and Android developer—as in, paid to do it. Was an Android phone user before doing any mobile dev. Finally got my hands on IIRC a 3rd-generation Surface at work a few years back, as a test device.

Having extensive experience with the competition, I now choose Apple phones and tablets for a few reasons, functionality very much among them.

I don't doubt your experience, but I would expect you to be an outlier and that more technologists would prefer a device they can program with the same APIs as the manufacturer without any gatekeeping and non-buggy web access most of all. Having better photo sharing and phone call capabilities, less device restarts, notification filtering, the ability to caption audio for times when having the speaker on is inconvenient or not loud enough, and supporting restricted guest accounts are also features that most people who don't worry as much about fashion would not want to give up.

> I would expect you to be an outlier and that more technologists would prefer a device they can program with the same APIs as the manufacturer without any gatekeeping and non-buggy web access most of all.

I doubt most "technologists" care about writing code for their phone to begin with, and I don't know what you mean by "non-buggy web access". That doesn't mean I think most "technologists" would pick Apple (I really don't know) but I don't think I'm the outlier here, preferences-wise, even if I am on which platform I choose.

> Having better photo sharing and phone call capabilities, less device restarts

Photo sharing's never been a problem—what am I missing? I don't talk on the phone much so maybe that's actually terrible (it seems entirely fine?) and I just don't know it. Device restarts? How often do you think I restart my iOS devices?

> the ability to caption audio for times when having the speaker on is inconvenient or not loud enough

That is cool. Not something I'd use personally, but it's cool.

> supporting restricted guest accounts are also features that

Account management is my biggest complaint about I-devices. Mostly the iPad—I don't really care if iPhones continue to have only two modes (full, and PIN-restricted "screen time" mode—which I don't use anyway, so I wouldn't mind if that disappeared, really) but true multi-account would be great on the iPad.

> most people who don't worry as much about fashion would not want to give up.

Hahahaha.

> I doubt most "technologists" care about writing code for their phone to begin with

I program my computing devices constantly, and with my phone being a computing device I have near me almost all the time, I naturally program that as well.

> I don't know what you mean by "non-buggy web access".

Webkit is extremely buggy and the only supported way to access the web on iOS. On other platforms, if one engine is buggy, I can use another.

> Photo sharing's never been a problem—what am I missing?

Uploading photos to your server in the background.

> I don't talk on the phone much so maybe that's actually terrible

You can't route calls through other services, you can't record calls (which the first makes trivially possible), you can't have your phone answer the call for you and show you a realtime transcription or save the transcription for later viewing, you can't have the phone wait on hold for you, etc. The iPhone is extremely limited as a phone.

> Device restarts? How often do you think I restart my iOS devices?

Every single time you need to update a system app.

I'd be willing to be those 9 out of 10 users barely know how to use a desktop computer beyond "click on the button for the internet".

I suppose that's the difference: the price they pay in user control and freedom is swapped for experiences and abilities to which they would never otherwise be exposed.

I prefer not to frame those people as ignorant in a negative way. It is we who set them up with those devices and taught them how to use them, we were just as ignorant.

I tend to agree, it's about how you manage your focus and memory in a world of distractions.

The same can be said for Android users. Are you really taking the snobby attitude that 'real' technical people would hack together their phone from parts and open source software?

All of today's desktop browsers come with developer tools built in. How many people know that, and how many know how to use them?

Many Android phones come with unlockable bootloaders. Again, how many of those who bought such a phone know about this capability?

What I'm trying to say that it's fine to sell a device in a locked down state. What's not fine, however, is not providing an unlocking mechanism, possibly deliberately well-hidden like it is in case of Android bootloaders, for those who know what they're doing.

There is absolutely no reason we can't have our cake and eat it too.

That would require solving hard security problems instead of punting on them by whitelisting.

Apple’s policies are guided in part by profit motive but also by security nihilism.

There’s no reason these security measures couldn’t be opt-out

If we regret it long term, people will start buying different products with the features they want.

They won't, if those products aren't available on the market. Which they won't be, because currently the "managed" approach yields more revenue.

"Voting with your wallet" doesn't work on most technology markets, where products and services are not commodities, and where the barriers to entry are insanely high. Yes - insanely high. Sure, you can get a $100 computer and a $10/month Internet connection and start writing software for millions, except it won't do you much good - software is the easy part. To compete with Facebook, you need to bootstrap a whole social network. To compete with Apple and Google on the phone market, you'll need to bootstrap your own hardware manufacturing, because all the smartphone vendors are into the same user-hostile crap these days.

Projects like PinePhone are probably as far as you can reasonably get on the "smartphone, except not user hostile" front. It's worth looking into why they don't succeed. It's not as simple as "people must not truly want it because they aren't paying the premium to get it".

It's irrelevant. We don't get to tell people what they are and are not willing to pay for.

Consumer protection law is the tool that allows that to happen.

Ironic that we're talking about using law to protect consumers from a company by not allowing them to use a walled garden to protect consumers.

The App Store model is about extracting rents. That the walled garden offers "protection" to consumers is incidental. The "privacy" and "security" stance taken by Apple is about protecting their revenues and burnishing their image in the eyes of the public. When their revenues are at risk (like their concessions with China) they take the financially expedient route.

> The App Store model is about extracting rents. That the walled garden offers "protection" to consumers is incidental.

Not according to many on HN who argue that it is precisely why they purchased an iOS device instead of an Android one.

I think we have to be really careful about trying to push our ideals on others via regulation.

> Not according to many on HN who argue that it is precisely why they purchased an iOS device instead of an Android one.

raises hand

It's not the only reason, but it is a reason. With government asleep at the wheel on regulating things like subscriptions, scams, spyware (which is, like, most software these days), et c., I'm living the anarcho-libertarian dream of paying a corporation to be my regulator. As it naturally would in the real world, this requires them to be big enough to distort and control markets, for it to be worth paying for. Does that mean they're behaving as a monopoly? Yeah, probably.

This sucks, of course, but it's what we've got.