[seanw444]

Something I've come to understand is that just as we have "time vs. space" tradeoffs in, well, primarily computing (but can be applied to virtually everything), we can also reduce essentially all preferential decisions down to "freedom vs. convenience".

The kind of person that uses Apple products/services cares about convenience. The person that uses the third party Android ROMs, in particular, cares more about the freedom.

[ubermonkey]

FOSS people who see themselves as digital freedom fighters LOVE to trot this out, but I don't think it's true in any meaningful sense.

It's more accurate to frame it as preferring low hassle to high hassle. Or to preferring well-designed tools to haphazard efforts. Or, from the other side, preferring some degree of DIY to turnkey products. (In particular, I think this is a HUGE piece of it; lots of hackers want to build their own toolchain, and then they get to feel noble because they're doing it for "freedom.")

I'm pretty "all in" on the Apple ecosystem. Each step of the way, I thought pretty deeply about my choices, and still ended up with an Apple option. But to characterize this as me caring more about convenience than "freedom" implies that I have somehow given up or endangered MY freedom, which isn't the case.

I'm able to do anything I want to do in this ecosystem. Macs are general purpose machines; I can build from source, and I can run code from any repository I want.

iOS is closed by design, and the result has been a very stable and predictable platform that I do not believe is possible WITHOUT that closed nature. I can't hack code on my phone, but I also don't WANT to. There are lots of appliance devices in my life I don't want to hack, and that I just want to USE.

[seanw444]

You're right, you have the freedom to choose a device with less freedom. And that's fine. I'm not trying to be condescending to people who prefer convenience. It's a reasonable preference to have. I don't see how this disproves my point though.

I will admit, Macs are much better in the software realm, but the hardware has almost no internal upgradeability. There's some, but it's less. That's my point. And yes, many non-Apple computers also have that same problem. My gripe isn't with Apple. It's with companies who don't give maximal freedom with their devices, as I prefer more open systems, personally.

[ubermonkey]

"but the hardware has almost no internal upgrade-ability"

Sure. But this is also true of most modern, lightweight, thin laptops. And I'm pretty sure it's true of any phone worth using.

My experience is that a certain sort of FOSS person prefers theoretical freedom to actual usability.

[nehal3m]

I am one of those FOSS people. I was all in on Apple up until about 6 months ago (iPhone 13, 13" M1 MBP, AirPods, an iCloud+ sub and some peripherals). My wife still is.

The main reasons I left are repairability and upgradability; forms of freedom that you simply cannot deny Apple isn't great at, from design all the way up to policy. Privacy was also a reason. It is true that you have to place trust somewhere up the chain when it comes to the way specific software handles your data, but things like where it is stored and how it is encrypted are in your own hands when you DIY.

These things are not theoretical; if I want to use a different Wi-Fi adapter, a new SSD, RAM, a replacement screen, speakers or barrel jack then I can. There are parts available for very reasonable prices as well as the manufacturers' repair manual. It doesn't require solvents or esoteric tools.

Now I use a business notebook with Linux that is worse than the M1 in some respects, but in hindsight I'm willing to give up the battery life and cool runnings for the ability to repair and upgrade (and ports! Ethernet, yay!). Same goes for the phone (I went for a FairPhone).

It isn't as polished, very true. There's some rough edges and it takes a little more work, and yes, sometimes a bit of frustration. But the upside is tangible, it's not some form of feigned nobility.

[ubermonkey]

Wild. I can't imagine that transition. I can't imagine that thought process. It seems goofy to me. It's not just that you abandoned the high-polish, high-usability world of Apple; it's that you also had to bail from high-quality, high-polish hardware from any vendor. I've seen the kinds of laptops you're talking about; they're kind of awful, miles away from the best that Apple or even Dell or Lenovo are bringing to market. But you do you.

Honestly, I suspect you just like having to tinker with your stack to get work done. (I mean, I've been there - I use OrgMode.)

Sure, being able to swap out parts is theoretically nice, but you'll do that maybe once in the useful life of a computer -- but I haven't needed or wanted to do either in easily a decade. How often does this really come up? On the other hand, you'll confront that lack of whole-package QA and general polish every time you turn your computer on.

And I'm really curious about anyone's privacy needs if they abandon APPLE for roll-your-own. Yes, it's all in your hands now, but most people don't have the time or inclination to be sure they're doing all the right things, security-wise and privacy-wise, to stay safe. There's a good chance your DIY approach is less secure than iCloud unless you literally do this sort of thing for a living. I mean, this is why I don't run my own mail server anymore (hello, Fastmail!).

So yeah, I think lots of people say "freedom" when they mean "I just want to tinker with my toolchain a lot and occasionally feel superior about it."

[nehal3m]

>it's that you also had to bail from high-quality, high-polish hardware from any vendor. I've seen the kinds of laptops you're talking about; they're kind of awful, miles away from the best that Apple or even Dell or Lenovo are bringing to market. But you do you.

I use an HP 830 G5, a high end 13" thin notebook from 2018. It cost me 350 bucks. I sold my M1 for 70% of what I paid, and I can replace this thing for something similar, so it makes financial sense in my case. It's just a platform, I don't really care about the thing itself. It hooks into a thunderbolt dock for a lot of it's life anyway.

>Honestly, I suspect you just like having to tinker with your stack to get work done. (I mean, I've been there - I use OrgMode.)

I run Fedora 37 (35 and 36 upgraded without issue). I'm in the process of building a new house, which requires insane amounts of paperwork and communication as well as document storage and exchange. I need this to be rock solid, running E2EE on a NextCloud VPS in combination with this workstation setup does that for me. It's a little work up front, but it's been smooth sailing ever since setup was done. It just gets out of my way; I don't care about this WM versus that, this display manager, the whole systemd discussion. Everything except the fingerprint scanner just works, no tinkering required.

>Sure, being able to swap out parts is theoretically nice, but you'll do that maybe once in the useful life of a computer -- but I haven't needed or wanted to do either in easily a decade. How often does this really come up?

You can't predict breaking your computer. I managed a pretty large fleet of Macs for a living for about 2 years; build quality is great but they're not infallible. When they do break, you're at the mercy of Apple, and I simply do not have the time to wait for their repairs. With this setup, not only can I upgrade whatever, whenever, but anything that will run Fedora and has a modest amount of local storage can replace it for at least the time being.

Compare that to the situation I was in: Any repairs that I couldn't have DIY'd probably would have cost me at least the total cost of this computer (maybe even twice over) and would have put me out of business for a few days.

>And I'm really curious about anyone's privacy needs if they abandon APPLE for roll-your-own. Yes, it's all in your hands now, but most people don't have the time or inclination to be sure they're doing all the right things, security-wise and privacy-wise, to stay safe.

Sure, but I do. I simply hate surveillance capitalism with a burning passion; I honestly think there is a logical set of steps from that to political division and a worse world to live in. So I don't want any part in it. I must admit that that sounds like philosophical grandstanding, but I promise you it's a sincere belief. It's not so much about privacy from state entities; that's a lost battle in my threat model.

If you're locked into an ecosystem that you cannot easily get out of (and there's a BUNCH of dark patterns Apple applies to try and poke you to stay as well as the obvious loss of software licenses) you're a boiling frog. I see Apple going in a worse direction incentive-wise. Nowadays, I just don't care about where they're going anymore, it's not my problem.