I was fully in the Apple ecosystem several years ago. I came to the realization you talk about some time in 2019 or so—very glad I got myself out of it.

I think the best time was around 2007 - that was when apple switched from PPC to intel.

All of a sudden their ecosystem opened up. You could run windows on your solid apple hardware. People had more choices and agency.

To wit: you can't use the new hardware 2FA passkeys on iOS unless you opt in to iCloud and all of the surveillance that entails.

Why is that surprising since the keys are specifically for logging into iCloud? Do you complaine your gasoline car doesn’t have a diesel tank?

Passkeys are Apple's branding for using a iOS device as a WebAuthn authenticator, and it is for logging into everything on the web that supports WebAuthn. You can't use it unless you are using iCloud Keychain.

I'm not talking about security key support for iCloud logins.

Passkeys(tm) != security keys

It doesn’t sound like you know what this new feature actually does.

Beyond hardware integrations between their own HW, their software/services are odd and don't interoperate with conventional things. I used iphoto or whatever it was called and it had proprietary storage which was a huge turn off for me. Its never clear if a point of sale terminal accepts Apple Pay and where to hold your device so I avoid using it since chances are I have to get out a card anyway. Their podcast app has a concept of "play next" or "play last" and I went looking for a playlist thinking that was a thing where I could re-arrange a list, couldn't find that, maybe its there somewhere? Kinda same with "saved" or "downloaded" I was able to figure these out in Spotify's app. It feels like Apple's app UI always has extra clicks involved or its like key features are buried. Maybe its me and how my brain is wired from many years of Windows? The UI's are consistently odd.

You including your Apple Pay gripe in that list is a misattributed laughable Americanism instead of the jab at Apple that you intend it to be.

Why's that?

I'm guessing their point was that in many other countries (ex. Canada), tap to pay is pretty much universally supported for many years, to the point where I'm surprised when a merchant doesn't have it. The majority of my transactions in Canada were tap to pay as far back as 2018.

It's also worth noting that Apple Pay isn't its own protocol, it just does the same thing as the tap to pay built into cards, so not at all within Apple's control how much it's supported or how the terminal works.

Yep, same here in Australia. I never leave the house with more than my phone and I expect to tap & pay for absolutely everything. Even have cardless cash thru my bank's atm. and a digital license.

Visiting America feels like travelling back in time in this regard

Something about the shitty metric system I'll bet

> if a point of sale terminal accepts Apple Pay and where to hold your device

It's pretty obvious, it says "tap to pay" and has the logo on it?

Some of these terminals are oddly designed. Often the screen says "tap to pay," but you tap something above it that's not clearly marked, not the screen. Enough of the others have you tap the screen that you think it's that. Or a part says "Apple Pay," but that's just advertising the feature, and there's some unmarked area to tap.

But even for the ones that are decent, idk why I'd not just use my credit card.

Well, then you'll just tap it in the same place that you'd tap your credit card. ;)

I.e. less-snarkily, nothing about that complaint relates to Apple Pay, just to how contactless payments work in general, whether they're from a phone or from a card. Most cards are contactless -- even in the USA -- these days, in my experience.

Yeah, but you can also insert the card into the chip reader and not deal with the NFC stuff. Anyway, it's not an Apple-specific complaint.

This is much less confusing in Europe because all the card readers are smaller and the nfc reader is always on the screen, and the card is the same size as the screen. In the US the screens are so big and the reader spot can be on the screen, on the side, etc , never consistent

Maybe my gripe is a few years old before chip cards became prevalent here in US. You get my point, the lowest common denominator is a card so if my phone isn’t going to work for whatever reason and I have to dig out my card, I’d prefer to just dig out my card. The only time I use Apple Pay is on the phone in their app store, otherwise it’s just irrelevant.

Yeah I never use Apple Pay, it's useless

Apple Pay is different from an NFC card tap because it's authenticated. This rarely matters in the US but it can in other countries.

Yes, in theory it should be more secure, but they aren't passing that benefit onto the customer in the form of a lower fee or anything, so it's pointless to me.

Apple Pay is super useful for a US-based person while traveling internationally because Apple Pay supports CDCVM. This means that if you have a card that ordinarily requires a signature at the point of sale in the US, you can can use that card in Apple Pay, in Europe or anywhere else, without signing. If you use the physical card, you have to sign. If you try and use the physical card at an automated terminal that doesn't support CVM Signature, you can find yourself in a position where only the Apple Pay version works.

CDCVM also generally doesn't have a contactless floor limit meaning while a contactless card may have a $100-200 cap for transactions, Apple Pay usually doesn't have a cap. Even when local contactless cards may be declined! I say usually because the terminal has to have been updated over the last few years to negotiate CDCVM, which they will in time.

I would highly recommend starting with Apple Pay abroad and only if it doesn't work falling back to a physical card because you will have a far better experience.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind next time I travel. Last time, the country didn't have Apple Pay.

> Its never clear if a point of sale terminal accepts Apple Pay and where to hold your device so I avoid using it since chances are I have to get out a card anyway.

This is actually kind of antithetical to your point. Apple Pay interoperates with all conventional point of sale systems. It's a PCI compliant, certified, contactless EMV payment device. You can use it anywhere you see the contactless EMV logo. There are standards actually about where that logo should be placed on the payment terminal to minimize confusion.

As for how to hold it, you're going to actually have less trouble figuring that out as compared to a passive card since passive cards have to be positioned a lot more accurately within the field.

There's a lot of examples of what you're describing but this isn't one.

This is exactly why when I picked a file-sync/storage service I have never once considered iCloud (or OneDrive for that matter) and never will.

And in general I've stopped adopting Apple-originated software entirely, weaned myself off of most of that which I had adopted, and have largely rid myself of anything macOS-only even from 3rd parties. iOS is what I'm taking an inventory of next.

I may continue to buy Apple hardware. They've shown up here well enough that I can ignore minor misgivings about cost and upgradability/repairability/recovery. But the software ecosystem just seems like a gilded cage in the best case, and that's ignoring the signals that this is company that trades in digital experiences & economics rather than the old-fashioned bicycles for the mind. We're well beyond the "PCs are trucks" thing and into "we sell the experience of owning a new sedan every 2 years."

> the signals that this is company that trades in digital experiences & economics rather than the old-fashioned bicycles for the mind

Just to screw with their old marketing: The bicycle is now trying to drive the mind - you want to go left but it keeps gradually, imperceptibly, steering you right - for some people as soon as they feel that force feedback through the handlebars it causes an autonomic response, recoiling in fear as the tool they previously trusted seems to have a mind of it's own... Some other hidden force in the machine is competing with your decisions. Yet the majority of people don't seem to have this response, perhaps it's earned, I don't know.

It ain’t 1s or 0s with vertical integration, right now and in the near future it works well and still not restrictive at all on most things. All I can say is that the quality and experience of using apple products has been worth it. You are free to hedge your bets by using both apple and google but that would be a bad experience

True, and it will never be 100% because society and governments have their own way of pushing back eventually. But as I said, the issue is in the broader strategy, a trend has been emerging for some time now. The cost benefit is subjective so people have different tolerances - but some, like me, exited a number of stops back when they saw the track ahead. I'm only here to suggest others might want to pop their head out the window and decide for themselves.

> Apple's end game is vertical integration, it's "lock-in" on steroids. When they own every product or service in the stack, they can tune one product (like podcasts) to serve the purposes of another, even when it appears to hurt a product and it's users individually, because it benefits Apple as a whole.

This is demonstrable not true. From the time that iTunes first introduced podcast support in iTunes back in 2004 until today, you host your RSS feed on your own site and iTunes indexes your RSS feed. But you still host your own audio that gets served off of your own site.

Not only that, Apple has had a public documented API that doesn’t need any keys that you can use to basically get any information from the index since 2006.

Third party podcast apps use the API.

If your podcast isn’t listed on iTunes, you can still subscribe to the RSS feed of the podcast directly if you know the url.

If you publish a URL on your website, by default it will open in the podcast app.

This is much different than the podcast in name only monstrosity that Spotify has

On the other hand, the Apple podcast app has always sucked and I use Overcast.

Yes you can pretty easily have paid podcasts outside of Apple .

To the first approximation, no one is dumb enough to use Apple’s paid podcast offering and uses a third party one or roll their own with dedicated urls because they realize the number of third party clients available and they have no relationship with the customer.

This is a great answer/ great reply to the thread. Thank you for sharing

> I get that Apple stuff is generally a nice experience and there is genuinely lots of cool technology, but people need to understand the future they are buying into with Apple.

Can't speak for all Apple users, but the way a lot of my friends talk about their phones - it is crystal clear they think they're better than you if you don't have an iPhone.

I imagine this subset of users would be glad that people without iPhones can't listen to podcasts.

I think they're aware of what they're buying into and like it.

As someone who loves Apple stuff: what kind of people are you hanging out with?

I’ve never heard an adult I interact with express that. My Android using friends don’t care.

There are people who get iPhones just for iMessage. They don't want to be the one person who puts the entire group chat into "green bubble" mode. People accuse Apple of doing this intentionally, but you know, it's not their fault SMS is terrible; even Android users tend to use WhatsApp or something for group chats.

So I totally understand that. But does that rise to the level of “I’m a better person than you”?

I guess I haven’t heard it put that way.

I know it was a thing in middle school, and I'll bet some people never grew out of it. I've never heard an adult directly say that having an iPhone makes you better, but I have seen groups exclude people based essentially on income, and none of those people would be caught holding an Android phone.

It's dumb, I hate smartphones.

At least WhatsApp can be used in iOS.

Can iMessage be used in Android? No.

I think the SMS fallback makes this fair. Apple saw how bad SMS is, they made a better replacement with automatic fallback to the more open standard of SMS, and I don't see why it's their job to give the upgraded mode to everyone for free.

They even put early effort into making Macs send/receive SMS via the iPhone. Google didn't do something similar until recently, or did they, hard to tell with their chat app naming.

I cannot tell you the amount of times my friends mentioned Green Bubble to me as an insult.

I just call them sheeple

Are you the person who made up that insult? Or do you just go along with all the other people who use it?

When did I say I wasn't a sheeple?

I just think the adult iPhone users that care about the color of a text message are pretty brainless. Care about something important.

As a person insult? Or an insult against your phone choice?

What is a person beside the sum of their choices?

If having Green Bubbles is a negative connotation. It would seem it's because Blue Bubbles have a positive connotation.

It does not seem like a stretch that someone talking like that feels elitist because they have an iPhone - which they express by your lack of Blue Bubbles.

And that was basically Apple's strategy to begin with. That user can say he doesn't experience it in his friend group but its been well documented and accepted at this point [1], especially among teenagers.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...

I think it's local phenomenon. It seems to be the case in the US at least. Where I live (Switzerland), most people are using WhatsApp (or Threema or Signal) anyway, even if they have iPhones.

Apple has controlled the podcast industry through the iTunes podcast directory since day one.

They’ve been benevolent and haven’t cracked down on things. They let basically any podcast in for free. They let 3rd party clients use their directory for free.

They ARE the podcast industry. And they’ve been open.

I see this purely as a reaction to Spotify and Google and others trying to grab and control the industry with private “podcasts” that can only be listened to in their custom app.

They’re trying not to be shoved out. And they’re big enough to be able to hold it.

It would be great if 3rd party apps on iOS could access your podcast subscriptions.

But this is way better to me than standing by and letting Spotify or whoever destroy the industry.

(I subscribe to podcasts, but not through Apple since I can’t use my preferred app, Overcast).

This is the same set of excuses trotted out for why you can't use Firefox's Gecko engine with uBlock Origin on iOS.

Not exactly.

Apple has been basically been providing a public service with their free podcast directory since 2012.

There is nothing comparable in the case of the Safari on iOS situation.

>Apple has been basically been providing a public service with their free podcast directory since 2012.

that benefited them?

So the charitable interpretation is that they're trying to compete with Spotify's walled garden, by... doing the same thing themselves?

This also doesn't help them compete with Spotify anyway, since they use their own directory and hosting system. The only ones hurt here are third-party clients and end users. The ones you think they're trying to "protect".

If a podcast was only ever going to be available to people who paid, it means people using the Apple podcast app might still be able to get it if they can prevent an exclusivity deal.

If a podcast was available both free and paid, it will still be available for free. And maybe the exclusivity won’t be paid.

In either case, Spotify (or whoever) might not be stealing users and market share they could use to force things in their favor further.

I’m not arguing this is good. I don’t like the trend of “you can only listen to it in $APP”, and I would agree with some others those shouldn’t be called podcasts.

I’m just saying Apple isn’t starting the fight, they’re trying not to be caught flat-footed by all the others who were.

>If a podcast was only ever going to be available to people who paid, it means people using the Apple podcast app might still be able to get it if they can prevent an exclusivity deal.

I don't understand exactly what you are saying, but if you mean that they wanted to offer a way to publish paid content, that doesn't explain or justify why they would add DRM to all content uploaded, which is what the author is upset about.

> Apple has controlled the podcast industry through the iTunes podcast directory since day one.

> They ARE the podcast industry. And they’ve been open.

Hmmm is this really true? I've been listening to podcasts since 2012ish which puts me fairly early in the adoption curve and I've never used iTunes once (always been PocketCasts on Android).

Anyway, just another f'ing reason to NOT go all-in on Apple. Apple Podcasts kinda sucks? The few times I do use it as a directory to grab a link to send to a iOS-using friend, i just hate it. Search sucks, linking to a specific episode sucks, discoverability sucks.

I love my '22 M1 MBP I get from work, but it's the only Apple device I own. I just cannot stand this type of closed-system tactics, especially when their offering is so much worse than alternatives (don't get me started on iMessage or Safari)

>> They ARE the podcast industry. And they’ve been open. >Hmmm is this really true?

They’ve accounted for the vast majority of podcast listeners since the early iPod days. It’s literally why they are called podcasts. They only dipped below 50% of listeners relatively recently.

Wonder what they're called in the alternate universes? Zunecasts? (mp)3casts?

Netcast seems appropriate

Both podcasts and the term podcast predated Apple’s support of podcasts. The reason it was named as such was because iPods were the most popular listening device for podcasts.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast

That's what I meant but you're right my comment could easily be interpreted differently, thanks.

The "pod" in "podcasts" stands for iPod.

They even C&D the original podcast app, because it was named iPodder.

"Apple Takes Podcasting Mainstream" in 2005.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2005/06/28Apple-Takes-Podcast...

> The "pod" in "podcasts" stands for iPod.

Yes, but it wasn't invented by Apple, but by a BBC Journalist, who had nothing to do with Apple.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p038m811

As per Wikipedia page:

The term "podcast" predates Apple's addition of podcasting features to the iPod and the iTunes software.

"They let 3rd party clients use their directory for free."

But all the numerous other free directories, I doubt they are all sourced from Apple. The non-Apple podcast hosting services provide RSS feeds. Self-hosted podcasts usually provide RSS feeds. Anyone can use these feeds, not just Apple.

Personally I think Apple's directory, as accessed via www, is inferior to some of the alternatives. For example, it does not list all episodes, only the most recent ones.

If I want a definitive podcast index, I go to the source of podcasts for the RSS feeds or just .mp3 URLs, not to Apple. (Apple appears to prefer .m4a to .mp3)

Most podcasts are not hosted on Apple servers. Apple is just retrieving XML files from someone else.

I agree with this--however it was largely accidental. Apple supported open podcasting because that is all there was. I also agree that changes to Apple's podcast efforts for the worse are mostly about countering Spotify, which by the way is the real bad actor in closing down podcasts, by a country mile.

It sure would be nice though if instead of just praising podcasts as they have been, if there were open solutions to various problems open podcasts face that are not shared by closed ecosystems: There is still no good way to share a link or a clip for instance, unless the podcast app bakes its own (which will not work with other apps). There should be RSS syncing back-ends not tied to any one app as well.

> They ARE the podcast industry.

Huh. I never knew that Apple invented RSS feeds and hosting an mp3 file at a URL. Because that's all a podcast is.

I don't use enough tech stuff to care. I have an iPhone and a Mac, and they go together in a few ways like iMessage, but that's not the reason I have both. They're just good products. I would swap one of them out if I didn't like it. The deeper integrations are just toys; why would I even remotely need a Homepod or an Apple Watch? Why would I use the crappy News app on my Mac instead of a web browser?

The scarier thing they have is other users' loyalty on phones. Android has the same. I feel like nobody switches between the two anymore like the older days, and there was a distinct time when they switched from making what the user might want to deciding what the user wants. So both players do anti-consumer stuff in lock-step like removing headphone jacks to sell more accessories. I don't mind holding onto an old phone to avoid that, but there's a limit. AT&T stopped serving my iPhone 5.

What you are noticing is that competition is literally the worst strategy that corporations can adopt with respect to each other. Apple and Samsung probably have the keys to each other's destruction, but destroying the other would be bad because the remaining party would become a "monopoly" which is a loss condition, So the destruction is mutually assured, and intrinsic cooperation is possible. There's more money to be made cooperating, so the result is we lose the headphone jack.

I figured the same, but I'm still a little surprised because there are so many major Android phonemakers who should be competing. It's Samsung, LG, Google (Pixel), etc. Though the software is a duopoly of course.

Destroying the other company would primarily be bad because Apple is a good customer of Samsung ;)

someone will turn this into politics at some point. Someone will promote that reds use Android and Windows PCs, blues use iPhone and Macs. Then you'll need to fall in line or get cancelled.

not looking forward to it.

If computer usage ever became political, I think these companies are smart enough to play both sides.

The future is silos.

I hope not.

I imagine most people believe that legislation will step in in the case that it becomes too uncomfortable for them, as consumers.

It turns out that if you put a from in water and raise the termperature slowly, they jump out exactly when they can no longer maintain homeostasis. Not everything can be manipulated by making change slow enough. Sometimes there are bifurcations.

I agree that having everything on Apple Podcasts may put more power into Apple and hurt smaller businesses/projects.

But I also totally dislike what is happening now with movie streaming I pay for a couple of platforms, and if I want to watch something, I start opening them one by one and search of that movie. Moreso when a tv series that I started watching on one platform suddenly migrates to another one so I have to follow it between platforms.

I start seeing that with podcasts: some of them launched only on other platforms and now I have to install 4-5 podcast apps on my phone and keep track of all of them when something new appears. From an Apple user perspective, I like that I have on app Podcasts where I go and can listen to the latest episode from my favorite podcasts.

I don't like the recent development either. With shows it is even worse for podcasts you can usually get an RSS feed that can be used by many apps

> I agree that having everything on Apple Podcasts may put more power into Apple But I also totally dislike what is happening now with [streaming]...I start seeing that with podcasts: some of them launched only on other platforms and now I have to install 4-5 podcast apps on my phone and keep track of all of them when something new appears

You hate it when you have to use different/specific apps to get access to certain content. Apple is making it so that a bunch of people will be forced to use apple's app to get certain podcasts. It sounds like apple is making the problem you dislike worse for many people, but since it isn't impacting you personally as an apple user you don't mind it?

Except that you were warned about this, but you still chose to use platforms, hence becoming part of the problem yourself.

> but people need to understand the future they are buying into with Apple

When Google or MS or someone else builds a better experience then we can move.

Google shuts things down like there’s no tomorrow. MS can’t release a product beyond 3 countries. No one makes headphones like Apple.

You can argue till you’re blue in the face that all the sound quality of every other brand is better. But I’m so tired of having to re-pair headphones on every device.

Can argue that android phones a better cos of this feature and that feature but the moment you install some apps the battery drains, there’s less consistency, apps want my credit card directly.

I’ve been spending years pushing back against Apple for being overpriced but the overall experience is just better.

I realize that it was just an example but newer bluetooth TWS chipsets can do multi-point pairing just fine. Also, Google's Fast Pair API is currently being expanded beyond just pairing headphones. They aim for more than just surface-level UX.

I doubt apps can stay on the playstore after asking for card details in a form. Google wants their cut too

> newer bluetooth TWS chipsets can do multi-point pairing just fine.

This is great news!

both Apple and Spotify are dead set on ruining podcasting. look at their podcast sites. they dont believe in RSS, they don't believe in MP3. screw them for ignoring the roots of this movement and trying to build walled gardens around other people's content.

My iPhone 12 Mini had gotten slow and the battery life was becoming mediocre (after only 2 years), so I spent the last couple of months looking at phones. I use Linux primarily, so I was looking at Android phones because of course iPhones don’t talk to Linux or Windows computers. Unfortunately I ended up with an iPhone 14 because without an iPhone: - I can’t use (or update) my Apple Watch - I can’t use/track my AirTags - I can’t use most of the features of my AirPods Pros - I can’t use FaceTime or iMessage with 95% of the people I talk to who also have iPhones - I can’t utilize the free Apple Arcade subscription I get through Verizon (not a big deal obviously but this is why Verizon and Apple have this deal- to sell iPhones).

I’m getting rid of my MacBook because macOS is going down the shitter (another topic entirely). On a related note, I needed a second Mac in order to restore my MacBook, that is, remove the beta version of macOS Ventura I was running awhile ago to go back to a stable (“stable”) version. So yeah, the game is to get everyone to have to buy iPhones every couple of years whether there are any significant improvements or not. What can the iPhone 14 do that the iPhone 12 can’t? Absolutely fucking nothing.

The iPhone 12 mini has an A14 and the iPhone 14 an A15 processor. Geekbench single core performance is 7% better in the newer one. I doubt you're "feeling" the difference in speed between these two phones. The battery life in the 12 mini was not considered good from the start, so it's understandable, that after two years the battery is in not so good shape anymore.

As an owner of the 12 Pro, I can concur that the battery life of the 12 line is not that great compared to the 13/14.

So I have the iPhone 14 Pro Max which looks to be about a 30% improvement.

Only in multi core. Single core performance is up 18%. I once read you need at least 20% higher speed to feel an improvement. Perhaps the 120 Hz display is a much higher factor in the perceived performance in your new phone.

Not disputing your general points, but you could have gotten your iPhone battery replaced for about 70 USD.