It gets more sickening every day. I own every Apple device there is. But there has never been a company more anti-Steve-Jobs-vision than Apple.
The seamless experience has turned into a my fight against Apple's hatred of their customer.
The seamless experience has turned into a my fight against Apple's hatred of their customer.
I'm not sure anyone really ever "owned" an apple device, at least since the first iPhone or so, it seems to me we kind of redefined what ownership means. Apple owns every device they make, you are allowed to pay for limited and revokable usage rights. You have very limited knowledge or control over most of its proprietary hardware and software. Apple, the phone carrier, the apps you install, all have more, varying control over your device. The kind of freedom Stallman talked about for example has been lost for a very long time.
Apple's pro-user perception is an (amazing) marketing campaign.
Would a pro-user company use it's monopoly position to raise eBook prices 20-30% and simultaneously eliminate any competition in the eBook space, on the backs of their users? Apple did exactly this, directed explicitly by Steve Jobs and was forced to pay nearly half a billion dollars and be found guilty of violating antitrust law.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_Inc.
https://www.techemails.com/p/ibooks-is-going-to-be-the-only-...
Apple's priority is Apple - and that is the only priority. This is a perfectly reasonable thing too, they are not running a charity. They often build pretty good products, but I think folks are doing themselves a disservice to believe that Apple maintains some kind of user focus moral high ground. They want the dollars in your pocket, and if they can get more of them by acting against you they will do it if they think it's unlikely they will be called out on it.
This is definitely a backwards step contrary to that vision of career subordination.