3D printers
Torrent clients
Unlicensed radios
DJI drones
Custom firmware
(FOSS in general)
(Seems like the site was hugged to death HN)
All of you saying "My wallet is not big enough" are suffering from the individualization that the internet created.
Our wallets, collectively, are what gives them the money. What needs to be taught to people is the benefits of sacrifice. This is an easy thing to teach Christians.
You need to do more than just boycott, you need to be evangelical. You need to show people the sacrifice is not only easy, but beneficial. The bigger sacrifices will come from those working in tech and we need to support them with GoFundMe's when they lose their jobs.
I think the best strategy is having competitors, at least 4 worthy ones, it’s only when the consumers have an upper hand.
When you make the mistake of voting with your wallet, you play a game you are bound to lose. There are people with billions of dollars that can outvote basically anyone with an opinion about this. And most people buying consumer products are not treating it like a vote, they are treating it like a purchase of a thing they need, and the monopolistic autocrat of trade that is Apple happens to be very good at producing those things. The base of their power are people who don't care, or people who cannot afford to care (i.e. they need the hardware no matter how bad Tim Apple pisses them off).
The advantage of voting with your actual votes is that there is no malapportionment: one vote is one vote. You don't get more votes by being richer. Your vote is not conditional upon buying a product.
And to be clear, I'm writing this on my Framework laptop which I deliberately bought because I like the concept and I didn't want to deal with Apple's nonsense. I grinned and bore several years of Intel mediocrity, broken sleep, a fingerprint reader that only works half the time, and an increasingly unreliable[1] trackpad until I could buy a new motherboard[0] that gave this thing reasonable amounts of battery life. I have voted with my wallet, I just don't think it's actually good for any political change.
In contrast, the EU managed to get Apple to piss its pants multiple times, and has done way more for rolling back Apple's monopoly than a handful of turncoats ever could.
Does it look silly that Theo is using Apple while complaining about Apple? Yes.
Would Theo chucking all that Apple tech out the bin to be politically consistent do anything? No.
also
> In it, Theo spends an hour ranting about how terrible the experience of developing apps for the iPhone/iPad is, how Apple takes 30% of all app store and in app purchases, how awful Xcode is as a development environment and how even as a developer you have to get Apple's approval to run your own app on your own device. And how you need a second device (MacBook) to build an app for your target device (iPad) because Apple won't allow you to build the app straight on the iPad itself. And a lot more.
The funny thing is, basically all of these have been Apple edicts from day 1. Xcode was never good. But what I find really galling about all this is that Apple actually does have a way to build apps on iPad... if you're willing to totally marry yourself to Swift and SwiftUI. When Apple announced real app development on Swift Playgrounds, I assumed more improvements and capabilities would follow, but Swift Playgrounds is such a low-tier priority for Apple they can barely even keep it up to date with the iOS SDK - it wasn't until months after iPadOS 26 where you could actually build apps to work on Liquid Glass. Then again, that's symbolic of basically everything Apple does with the iPad: it's an aspirational computer, something that exists mainly for Apple to dream of a world where all work can fit inside nice containerized and locked-down workflows and nobody ever needs to go off the golden path.
[0] Intel Core Ultra Series 3 specifically, as a friend of mine informed me it could idle better than the AMD one, even though the AMD had better peak perf.
[1] The diving board mechanism on my Framework 13 has worn to the point where the activation point does NOT coincide with the click anymore, and it's also developed a significant keybounce problem. I have to click multiple times and really reef on the trackpad to get it to register. I've also damaged the bottom cover... so I'm really just waiting for the battery to cack out before I just buy a 13 Pro bottom upgrade kit and replace all of it.
For example I moved off cloud services for my media in favour of fixing up a $25 BDP-CX960 400-disc bluray player with a few bucks in parts and a few weekends. When someone complains to me about modern tech, I can't in earnest recommend it though because its not easy. But I can write about it or tell them about it to expose them to the mindset more. Articles like this help IMO.
The reality is that asking people to vote with their wallets does not work. But this specific case is even worse, because it's not possible to "vote with your wallet" to begin with.
The specific things the blog post notes are "how terrible the experience of developing apps for the iPhone/iPad is, how Apple takes 30% of all app store and in-app purchases, how awful Xcode is as a development environment"
So let's say you want to build a mobile app that actually reaches people. There's a duopoly, so you have to support Android and iOS. What are your options for "voting with your wallet" then? There's nothing you can buy that lets you reach iOS with your app without using Apple's ecosystem.
"Voting with your wallet" is what people tell you to do if they don't want you to do the things that actually work, which, in this case, is regulation. We have two companies controlling both viable mobile platforms. There is nowhere else to go for 99.9% of people. You can have a billion dollars, and you still can't "vote with your wallet." You're still going to own either an iPhone or an Android phone, and support both if you want to publish an app.
The obvious answer is that the two companies that control these platforms need to be regulated. Apple can play dumb if it's only Europe, but even so, the cracks are starting to show (e.g. Apple's recent copy/paste interoperability announcement). If the US joined in, the dam would break.
Don’t forget that option C) “none of the above”, is no longer viable since we’ve reorganized the world around the smartphone. The analog alternatives for basic, vital life transactions are dwindling or eliminated in many circumstances.
What we need is antitrust enforcement, breaking of digital locks, and adversarial interoperability. This can be accomplished through certain forms of regulation, but you need to be specific or you’re going to get the bad kind of regulation.
I did have to borrow a mac and use xcode to set up my project, I wish that weren't the case.
I'd love to tell iOS users to just use the web version, but in-app purchases on web are a real headache compared to mobile and I haven't set up Stripe or equivalent. And Apple has crippled the web experience on iOS anyway with Safari.
Does any of my approach "vote with my wallet"? No. It's just for me, to avoid the horrible experience of Apple to the extent possible while also reaching users that choose to use iOS.
But most of tehse companies make money off of the services. So if you want tos end Apple a message, cancel all your services...Music, iCloud, etc.
Android phones are easy to use without a google account.
Vote with your vote! Our system is dysfunctional in the united states, but if you look at the political unity behind something like blocking datacenter construction and how much of a headache it's causing for big tech, it's clear we still can have an effect. Most of the problem with big tech are solvable through existing anti-trust institutions IF we actually empower them. Things got bad because we stopped enforcing the rules; the rules used to work.
Voting in federal elections in the US lets you send a message of less then one bit per year. It's a horribly ineffective method.
Apple exists because plenty of people vote for it with their wallets. I don't. But I don't mind that it exists.
I vote against Google when I can. I block ads and use Duck Duck Go as my default search engine. But the results are so poor compared to Google that I switch to use Google often. That's a sign to me that their product is worth my occasional, small "vote", and I'm okay with that.
Our collective wallets are HUGE. You need to do more than just boycott, yoiu need to spread the word.
> Vote with your vote!
My wallet is bigger than average. My vote is not.
Of course in neither case are they big enough to make much of a difference by themselves.
It's not enough to "vote with your wallet", you also need to make it very public and very clear "why" you're casting that vote at all.
Otherwise execs are typically more than happy to infer a completely wrong "why", and are very happy to not understand the real reasons, because a) either the real reasons are not actually necessarily that obvious in the first place, and b) even when they are, unless they are made too obvious and public to ignore, then people will happily fail to understand the things that they stand to benefit from not understanding to begin with (Upton Sinclair's law). All while collecting fat paychecks and bonuses.
Turns out, you need to also convince a whole lot of people to vote with you to have an impact. And then you have the whole group of people who would rather put up with Apple's annoyances than switch to something unfamiliar and annoying in its own ways.
Voting with your wallet is only step 1.
Abstaining from buying from companies you disagree with can help, but it is only one part of the broader solution. When there aren't alternatives yet "on the market" you may be forced to hold your nose for a while and buy from the vendors you hate while advocating for change and working toward their replacement. You don't have to solve every problem in your world at once so long as you're building in the right direction.
People are saying to "vote with your wallet" regarding Sony's poisonous murder of physical games media. I haven't ever owned a Playstation and have "voted with my wallet" for 30+ years. Doesn't stop anything.
If you don't participate, someone else will, or a large investor or some entity will fill the void.
For things like these, change needs to happen a layer above the individual. This article's advice is just false and wrong.
So yeah, it's a crappy situation, that is obviously engineered in Apple's favor.
1. Samsung (KR)
2. Apple (US)
3. Xiaomi (CN)
4. Oppo (CN)
5. Vivo (CN)
Yeah, it worked so well for EU at ensuring that they can't compete against the US and Asia. The rest of the world should be very grateful to EU voters.
1) alternatives may be more expensive by dollars
2) alternatives may be more expensive by time
3) time/money lost to altered consumption has proportional opportunity cost
Market consolidation reduces the cost of using “bad” services and increases the cost of using “good” services over time.
It's actually quite the opposite. It became easier to create apps for Apple platforms, Apple also reduced the commission to 15% for small businesses.
Fast forward 20 years(!?!?!??!???), we did lose software freedom. Did the world really have to wait 20 years?
What we need is to vote for standards. A floor that no product must fall below. Markets are useful when competition can actually discipline companies. When market forces aren't enough to make competitive products, other forces must pick up the slack.
The trouble is finding them. Writing or sharing product reviews, etc. will help get the word out.
You shouldn’t expect to change the world this way. If they become generally popular, it will mostly be due to other people becoming customers, and that’s not up to you. Also, there are reasons why the leading products are popular. Such as, some people are probably happy with them! But at least you did your bit.
So far AI has democratised SaaS based products. I’ve vibe coded many niche web apps that is very specific for my use case rather than paying for a generic service. However, I cannot do that with iOS. I practically cannot install and keep on using an app that I created without any interruption on the phone that I paid more than 1k$ to buy.
Vote with your wallet works when you’re talking about local businesses. It doesn’t work when the only factor that determines where the money goes is the executives signing the contracts.
I'm not here to bash Linux, Android, Apple, or Windows. I like windows (10 at least) better than OSX or any distro for desktop use. I like iPhone better than Android.
Voting with my wallet just means I'm not as happy as what I currently have chosen.
It's not good enough now to vote with your wallet, you need to vote with your time and wallet.
It created a tech environment where there is no money in good (as in good intent, socially responsible, user-focused) tech. Everyone expects good software (in the social/moral sense of good) to be free.
So we get an environment where the good people have no economic forcing function and no resources, and the exploiters have a business model.
We should not be surprised at what happened next.
You get what you incentivize. Always. We got what we incentivized.
It’s also possible to run service businesses that produce FOSS, like Bitwarden for example.
“Good” businesses get outcompeted on price by “bad” businesses, not by FOSS. Want a powerful workstation that is 100% open POWER architecture? Only $10k from Raptor Computing. Willing to go a little lower spec and use x86? Get one from Purism or System76. Reasonable, but still more expensive than mainstream alternatives, and user support on the software side is still mostly driven by the community.
Most FOSS is still finicky and geared towards power user amateurs who wouldn’t be paying for a license or subscription anyway. It’s getting better in some areas, but it’s generally not there yet.
There's a reason Tim Apple gave Trump a golden trophy.
App store fees is a much more obvious example of something subject to regulatory scrutiny vs what much of what Biden's FTC under Lina Khan was working on.
So yeah there is a weird pass this company gets
Now, say I buy a MacBook Pro, and compromise on just a few things I didn't like, but that don't critically impact usability. I mean things like full-size function keys, or only 3 Thunderbolt ports (only one on the right!), small stuff. I don't feel especially limited by speed or memory capacity nowadays (although memory bandwidth is still about an order of magnitude off for local LLMs).
I'm still upset that it won't play games, but at least a capture card lets me pass through my Windows machine, and I heard Nvidia support in SteamOS might happen in the next year or two. Maybe Asahi might also grow to support my hardware before it expires (unlikely but possible)
There is still a subset of people who still think Apple's 30% is a religious tithe to keep the App Barbarians out rather than an usurious tax, but those people got a lot quieter once Tim Cook started bribing Trump with shiny plaques.
One other issue with antitrust action against Apple is that, strictly speaking, Apple did nothing (legally) wrong. The mistake we made was in the 1970s when we decided to grant the protections of creative expression to computer code[1]. Apple's argument - which, so far, courts have been willing to accept without issue - is that they are allowed to charge whatever they want for their work. It is very difficult (though not impossible) to argue that Apple deciding to bill developers for the OS instead of users is anticompetitive - in fact, Epic's lawsuit failed specifically on those grounds.
Anyway, you should probably bug your politicians to sponsor OAMA, or whatever new bill is being introduced to replace OAMA. The solution to Apple has to be legislated, not litigated.
Aside from that, the rest of Big Tech is significantly more vulnerable to antitrust than Apple is. Breaking up Facebook would actually be way more consequential than you think. Basically all of Facebook's apps were things bought specifically to destroy competition. They control the political narrative in every country in ways most newsmedia would only dream of[2]. There's a book you ought to read - Careless People - written by an ex-Facebook exec that Mark Zuckerberg is currently trying to sue into the ground.
[0] "Super apps" and third-party Apple Watch pairing
[1] To be clear, I do NOT believe code should be considered expression and I have far less qualms about AI slop code than I do AI slop art.
[2] This is also why Elon Musk bought Twitter - although, in that case, he was a lot less successful than Zuck was.
[3] To be clear, if any DOJ attempted to sue Apple over the 30% today, it'd probably fail at the pleading stage.