![]() ![]() Apple began its life as an independent operator, competing with the very system that it now largely represents (along with Google, Amazon, and Microsoft). But the problem is, the system within which organizations like Apple participate is not a free market. And Apple has played a significant role in that transition.įor a time, I was willing to consume the corporate commercial offering because I naively thought that “the free market” would “work itself out”. ![]() Having grown up swimming in that ethos, I have become increasingly frustrated and alarmed by the centralization of control of technology, and the gradual surrender of basic concepts like free exchange and private property. This environment is partly what gave birth to reactionary notions like “open source” software, and the nostalgia for the understanding of ownership of that era is what is now driving the “right to repair” people. But even if it came to nothing, the prevailing attitude was one deeply entrenched in the assumption of private property and the implicit ethics of free market transactions. They were grown-up Legos, which could be mixed-and-matched and tinkered with endlessly, often with incredibly fruitful results. Computers were a playground for hobbyists and engineers. I grew up in a very different environment. Now, they’re going to be closing all the remaining loopholes. We’re all already familiar with the walled-garden approach toward software applications they adopted some time ago. In the coming two years, owners of Mac computers won’t have any access anymore to the root user, they’re already losing access to the kernel, as the OS is slowly being tightened up around the new Apple M processors. But they’re going above-and-beyond this in a number of ways. To be fair, there is an industry-wide tendancy toward “virtue-signaling” as corporate policy, and Apple is just jumping on the bandwagon. Apple no longer sees itself as creating high quality technical tools for creative professionals (including software developers), but instead sees itself as producing boutique personal appliances, whose utility is secondary to its fashion status (in particular, the cleanliness of the political messaging implicit in the ownership and use of their devices). But, more significantly, the change in mindset that has accompanied those design decisions. Among them, include several of the technology design decisions Apple has made over the last five years. Sure, there are a number of pragmatic reasons I am extricating myself from the Apple ecosystem. But the real reason, is because I know it will work with several of the more modern distributions of Linux, and it is engineered in a way that I can still do with it as I wish. ![]() I chose the Dell XPS 8940 for its excellent balance of price and performance. This coming February, I’ll be taking delivery of my first new computer since 2015, and it will not be a Mac. My last is the Macbook Pro 2015 on which I am typing this post. Since 2005, I’ve been working almost exclusively on Apple products. ![]()
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