[tombert]

Yeah, I will definitely admit that I was guilty of this right up until I bought a Macbook Air in 2014. I had just assumed that Apple was a nickel-and-diming corporation, and just worked to extract cash from its customers.

But I really didn't experience that at all. Outside of Apple Music and Apple Arcade (both of which are optional and neither of which I use/pay for) what exactly are the ongoing costs for most Apple hardware? Yes you have to buy some of the software, but that's true of basically every operating system; my 2014 Macbook still gets free updates as of about 8 months ago (I haven't checked since then since I gave it to my sister in law).

In fact I actually have found that Apple-centric apps seem to give me more options in which to pay for them outright instead of ongoing costs. Most of the the Omnigroup's software has a "just buy it once and you're done" feature, unlike something like, for example Microsoft Office.

[Gigachad]

The only things Apple charges subscriptions on are actual content services or server usage charges which are inline with literally every other business. Many people, even on HN it seems, have a completely distorted idea on what the products Apple sells actually are.

[tombert]

Yeah, I can't really blame them for charging a fee for Apple Music or Apple Arcade. Presumably they have to pay a recurring fee to the record labels for the rights to the songs or to the game publishers for the rights to the games, even if we pretended that the server costs were free (which of course they are not) and since they are, you know, a business and not a charity, of course they have to charge a subscription fee for it, just like Spotify (ad free), Youtube Music, Deezer, etc.