> I'm not passing judgment one way or another regarding consumer protections here, though I personally find EU more draconian than my preferences and whether they're effective is up for debate (GDPR is a hilarious failure, USB-C mandate is a resounding success).

The hell are you talking about GPDR being a resounding failure? It's been pretty awesome. I love bills like that.

My experience is that GDPR added a lot of compliance activity at companies but did not materially improve actual privacy. Companies pretty much do what they did before GDPR, just with a layer of bureaucratic indirection in between now. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intent but that's where we are, and in that sense it was a failure.

It's not a "luxury good". That's just what Apple's marketing department would have you believe.

It's a handheld computer. That's what it is. That's what it should be. And we should own our computers. And those computers should run whatever software we choose. And they should be able to network with every other computer on the planet. No bullshit restrictions.

Libre Computing is an entirely different matter from whether iPhones are luxury goods.

I'm glad you agree. Because it's not about libre anything.

I don't believe I should "lose some of my standing to complain" after buying any product whatsoever. Cheap, expensive, "luxury", you name it. I believe I should gain standing after paying for something. I believe should fully own the thing after buying it. Especially $1000+ "luxury" smartphones. I believe I should never end up being a serf in the corporation's digital fiefdom.