Are we seriously going to pretend that Google hasn’t been just as evil for years now? At least Apple is able to provide a halfway-decent UX…
Splitting detected.Are we seriously going to pretend that a single person can be wholly evil? Much less a company of 200k people.Even if Google takes this huge step of requiring their blessing for every Android developer (which Apple has ALWAYS had on their side), they will still be better (by my estimation) along the freedom dimension than Apple. Maybe too far removed for my involvement, but better nonetheless. For example, one interesting metric may be the number of useful open source projects they publish.
edit: misread “just as evil [as Apple]”
they’re only good to the extent that they’re forced to be by the GPL
Fair, but I think that while Apple is generally more authoritarian with regard to developer experience, they’re less user-hostile overall and generally strike a good (at least compared to the current alternatives) balance between freedom, privacy, and usability for most people.
I think Google (and Silicon Vally writ large) is coming to terms with the fact that past a certain size userbase, authoritarianism is necessary to maintain control, consistency, and (very importantly) safety… where Apple has pretty much always embraced it; for better or worse.
I could easily turn this into a larger critique about society and governance, federated republics being necessary in the long-term versus corporate monoliths, and the “10x everything” culture being the root of the new tech-right, but I will digress, lol.
In terms of freedom, Apple is the most user-hostile company in the business and has been forever. People are screaming in justified outrage at Google taking out sideloading in 2025, but when was the last time you could sideload something on an iPhone? Oh, never? Right.
The passes Apple constantly gets, even here, are absolutely fucking insane to me. “Oh well, at least they’ve always been authoritarian!” What??
Golden ducking handcuffs. Is that the right expression?
i couldn’t find that, but I found this as consolation
I make no claim against the lack of freedom on Apple devices, but “un-free” doesn’t mean “user-hostile”. We’re talking about the perceived quality of experience for the user, not anything else. Like, look, don’t get me wrong, I still hate Apple (and all the big tech corpos) out of principle- but they provide an objectively better user experience for the vast majority of people.
- Apple has been, while extremely restrictive, very consistent on what users are allowed to do with devices… Google has repeatedly shown that they can’t be trusted to actually commit to popular features or services that they put out.
- Apple has put forward several measures to increase [perception of] user privacy where Google has repeatedly shown that they have no interest in doing anything other than collecting as much of your data as possible and using it for their ad business.
- iOS/iPadOS accessibility features blow Android’s out of the water in terms of breadth and quality; where with Android you often have to rely on third-party apps that may or may not work consistently or break with an update.
It’s the lack of choice on what to do with your hardware after EOL that always rubbed me the wrong way with Apple. Unless there’s a known exploit to unlock the boot loader, you can’t install something like postmarketOS or LineageOS to continue using it, so you just feel compelled to treat it like e-waste and buy a new device.
I’ve had 3 android phones total in my life, and one of them I only replaced after it got crushed in a roadside accident. The other 2 are still useable.
To be fair, unlockable bootloaders seem a bit exceptional on the Android side too…
That might because many people (at least in the US) get their phones through payment plans with a cell service carrier, and those usually aren’t unlocked unless you pay for the whole phone + if they care enough to give you the code after.
I always bought unlocked phones directly, so I guess I never had that issue?
freedom
Literally the worst
privacy
Bad. Regularly snitches to the bad guys.
usability
Arguable. If everything you own is in their ecosystem and up to date.
Nobody uses apple because of this shit. It’s all dtatus and branding.
I seem to remember a very high profile case where the FBI wanted access to a suspect’s iPhone, and all Apple had to do was give them an iOS side release that bypassed the unlock system. Apple refused to do it since it would break user security.
It’s very possible things have changed since then.
On privacy, google is much worse
Never read Apple’s privacy policy, huh?
I would agree insomuch as Google’s privacy issues are better known.
Nonetheless, we are comparing two jail cells. One has a finger-puzzle that opens the cell-doors (and an obvious surveillance camera), and the other one is securely locked with a less-obvious/hidden camera (iphone backups)… and the issue at hand is akin to removing the finger-puzzle because the captives keep opening it to let baddies join them.
iphone cloud backups are encrypted, and can be turned off very easily. Local backups to a pc can also be encrypted if you want.
Encrypted doesnt necessarily matter. I dont trust apple to not give up the keys.
They’ve always refused in the past…
I know for a while that was true?
That didn’t stop Apple from handing over backups to the FBI that were swiftly decrypted after several high profile incidents (like the San Bernadino shooting), and I assume it would be even less difficult for them to fork over info for another Snowden if they use Apple products.
Didn’t Apple deny the FBI access for the San Bernardino shooting?
Quick edit; yeah, you can stop spouting bullshit, the FBI hacked in WITHOUT Apple’s help.
Apple provided the icloud backups off of the device. Apple did not provide the decryption key for unlocking the phone directly.
Google was only pro freedom and open source as long as it hurt Microsoft more than them.
That is not the case anymore.
What I’ll say in Apples defense is they largely are what they say they are. You may not like what Apple provides, which is fair, but at least you know what you’re getting.
I mean the reason Apple AI sucks is because they violated their users privacy way less than Google, which is, good? I guess?
I fully agree with that sentiment, for what it’s worth. Apple is authoritarian but at least they’re mostly transparent about it.
Hence why I have never owned and never will own an apple product. Google used to have the company of motto of Don’t Be Evil. Everyone should have jumped ship when they deliverately removed that from the record.
Dont defend either of them please.
If there were any alternative, we wouldn’t have these problems.
If there were any alternative, we wouldn’t have these problems.
Most of lemmings are technicals: where alternative? Build LemmyOS xD
“It’s not fragmented, it’s federated!”
Ugh, hard disagree on apple UX.
Reminder that Orwell has an exclusively anti-Stallin grudge, was pro-British imperialism, and that 1984 barley qualifies as science fiction. Issac Asimov wrote a scathing review in the 80s.
anti stalin grudge
Which he picked up from a soviet commisar while fighting fascists in the 30s in spain. Known for his talent with grenades. Suffered sone pretty severe injuries.
pro british imperialism
Okay so i don’t know everything abput the man but did you read his account of being a colonialist shitbag ‘on the occasion of the killing of an elephant’? It’s not a fucking endorsement.
not SCIENCE fiction
Sure, yeah, psychology and sociology don’t count. Le’guinn never wrote a scifi novel except the fairy tale about the princess who didn’t understand the difference between general and special relativity, which was peak sci-fi.
It’s the lasers and rocket ships that make the stories good, not the new relations and forms of person and society rgat they enable stories of or lense a speculative technology might allow us to see ourselves through. Obviously. Star wars is the most sci-fi sci-fi because it has ALLTHETHINGS.
talking about how he sucked as a person to criticize an idea an author expressed, then citing asimov
So do you hate women and think rape is fine and asimov was just a cool guy, or are you the dumb kind of tankie who never learned to think for yourself and just repeats shit to sound smart and indicate group membership without ever actually understanding what any of it means?
I don’t know why people write these emotionally charged comments that are dripping with sarcasm. Your entire comment is a series of strawman misrepresentations that you’ve erected to unceremoniously “dunk” on the opposition instead of actually arguing with any nuance. You give one piece of evidence in your favor and conclude that you’ve had the final say on the matter. This sort of discourse boils down to “You’re an idiot!” … “No, YOU are!!”
My point is that Orwell is more anti-Stallin than pro-leftist. People on the left may be tempted to interpret Orwell as arguing against right-wing fascism. But he is actually depicting a fascistic socialism. This explains why our governments are so quick to hail 1984 as some literary achievement. In reality, the novel slows to a crawl in the middle and is not inventive at all; especially when compared to the great works of science fiction such as The Time Machine, The Dispossessed, Roadside Picnic, Necromancer, etc. (Manual surveillance of millions of people through their TVs? Seriously? 1984 is not fit to be compared with any of Ursula Le Guin’s works. As a fan of the genre, I question whether you actually read science fiction at all.)
By the tone of your comment I can see that you’re pretty entrenched in your position and don’t care about Orwell’s character or motivations. Everyone else can make up their own minds:
I want to take this apart piece by piece because i think every singke thing you say here is wrong, but reading this i get the impression you haven’t read a single fucking one of the things you’re talking about, including my comment.
Still skipping the asimov thing too, while you retreat into ‘rationality bro’ and defer to someone else.
You’re not correct, but you’re not even wrong; you’re just parroting.
I’ve read one of their links, and although it shows Orwell to be an asshole, racist, bigot, and anti-Stalin; it still doesn’t make sense as a ground for other statements, especially him being imperialist.
I would think that the whole thing comes from conflating communism and whatever the Soviets were doing, and if anyone thinks that USSR was not the heaven on earth, they are damned
Well yeah, communism is when stalin.
Even on a literary level, asimov had some great ideas and concepts, but the actual writing isn’t particularly gripping stuff.
Even the ideas were nothing too special. His writing was fine, but yeah, not really more than ‘fine’
And he was, to put it mildly: extremely shitty to women, whom he did not consider to be people, to a degree that stood out even in the like 1950s.
Might’ve also done some huac snitching? But definitly check that, low confidence.
