I don’t care about whatever Jobs thought, but honestly I do care about apple forgetting that the walled garden’s walls are tolerated only because the experience inside is better.
Their hardware is still amazing, but I’ve had enough issues with software quality and Cook’s penny pinching philosophy that I’ve bought a second hand laptop to explore moving to Linux.
So far, the experience is making me question whether my next main driver will be a MacBook.
Yep. For the first time I'm really considering Linux as a personal / desktop OS. Currently I just use it for servers. But now for the first time I don't think I have much to lose by leaving the Apple ecosystem.
The main thing it’d take me to start considering switching to Linux is a laptop vendor taking battery life, power states, and sleep under Linux as seriously as Valve has with the Steam Deck. Once you’ve had real life 15h+ battery life, zero performance drop when unplugging, sleep that works correctly without “vampire” power drain, and cooling that’s effective and inaudible 80-90% of the time it’s hard to go back.
I already have a ThinkPad X series running Linux as a secondary machine, so I can see what that side of the fence is like and it’s going to take either a colossal screwup on Apple’s part or a massive improvement on the x86 laptop industry’s part of switching to be possibility.
> it’s going to take either a colossal screwup on Apple’s part
How hot does the water have to be before the frogs admit it's boiling? I feel like everyone forgot the macOS OCSP outage where your desktop apps wouldn't launch because of broken DRM. Or Ron Wyden's Push Notification whistleblowing. Or that gold statue Tim Cook gave out a few months ago - were those not real mistakes, yet?
I'm not opposed to a good Linux ARM laptop. I just can't tolerate Asahi-level driver support, nor can I live with macOS while running my workflow in UTM. The main thing stopping me from dailying Apple Silicon is Apple's complete neglect of macOS as a computing platform. macOS isn't just "bad like Windows" anymore, it's not even certain if Apple will support it in 10 years.
> How hot does the water have to be before the frogs admit it's boiling?
It's on its way, but it's not there yet. The extent to which other laptop manufacturers have been dropping the ball on building laptops that are excellent at being laptops cannot be understated, and that's without holding them to the standard that Apple has achieved where their laptops accomplish that while also blurring the lines between laptop and desktop in terms of power. Add in issues relating to build quality, Linux compatibility, etc and you're left with a tiny handful of machines that still aren't true peers to their counterpart MacBooks. Frankly, it's absurd.
Even formerly good manufacturers have been goofing around, like Lenovo's attempt to frog-boil its ThinkPad buyers until they're convinced that features like trackpoints and quality keyboards can be excluded or Dell faceplanting into the exact same follies that Apple did with the Touch Bar MacBooks.
Honestly, the XPS I bought second hand works close enough with kubuntu that I might not mind.
So far I get enough unplugged gas for a worrylesss morning/evening session, with lid movement causing instant sleep/wake and night battery drain of ~6%. Fans stay silent 90% of time, there is sometimes a weird sound on usage like a hdd read but it’s very subtle.
As a plus beyond the software, I get a touchscreen 4k display, larger storage, and disks/battery that can be replaced if it shits the bed. Considering that the device cost me less than one third of the price it’s not a bad deal at all.
Important to say, I tried 5 distros and only Ubuntu managed this. Fedora put fans on full blast, couldn’t wake from lid down and refused to talk to my external monitor, arch had weird scaling issues and popos desktop was working weirdly.
> Important to say, I tried 5 distros and only Ubuntu managed this. Fedora put fans on full blast, couldn’t wake from lid down and refused to talk to my external monitor, arch had weird scaling issues and popos desktop was working weirdly.
That is one of the offputting aspects of the experience, in my opinion. Some machines work better out of the box with Ubuntu (or derivatives), some work better with Fedora, some with Arch, etc. Of course it's possible to isolate what the distro that works best for a machine is doing that makes it that way so it can be applied to your preferred distro, but frankly who has the time for that?
yup. Honestly, I disliked the idea of ubuntu because it seemed they are borderline building their own walled garden, but after learning that my device had a 'developer edition' with manufacturer's support for that distro, I shrugged and went that way.
For the moment I'm trying to avoid an all-or-nothing approach, if I can get to a workflow I enjoy in such a cheap device it's already a great success. It means that I don't have to say yes to apple no matter the deal, and I'm having a daily 'outgarden' experience so that when the time comes that apple's no longer the best option, I'll notice it naturally.
I'd have loved to see the asahi team achieving full support of at least one device, but it doesn't seem to be on the table for the near future.
I also don't care what Jobs would have thought, but I do refuse to use forced advertising products, so...
Related to your second paragraph, I have a 2017 MBP that just end-of-lifed so we're gonna try Linux on that.
And the M line is fast. A pretty good computer for the money. That said, I hear getting Linux running on those platforms is troublesome and may be a path that Apple is actively fighting against. And if I can't install Linux, that makes the computer premature landfill fodder which pisses me off.
I love the Framework concept, but you'll pay for the privilege. Not sure what's next for me.
Yeah for me it has been degrading ever since the Settings app became an upsell app. I'm sorry I came here to change a setting not dismiss a notification on your latest failed service thing that requires 20,- a month.
It’s the push for services.
It’s the product ladder with artificial limitations like low fps screens or small storage to push you a bit more.
It’s bugs piling up because Marketing needs the next buzzword released.
It’s the aesthetics optimized for a screenshot rather than real usability.
It’s the feeling that their top talent is not able to deliver anymore, like their camera’s processing or AI features.
> It’s the product ladder with artificial limitations like low fps screens
This one really pisses me off as someone who just had to upgrade their 2018 iPad Pro. The air would've been great, if it had a 120hz screen. I really don't need any other "pro" feature but I refused to tolerate 60hz in 2025 when every other device I own including my big desktop monitor is 120hz or more. But no, I have to spend an extra $500 for a higher refresh rate. I didn't even want the pro, I want a 120hz air so I can get the colors I want.
Nonetheless, because my screen was broken and I needed a new iPad, I forked over the money for the pro. Conveniently, they use two different magic keyboards so now that I'm "locked in" to the pro ecosystem, I'm forever stuck buying iPad pros unless I also want to have to buy a new magic keyboard that works with the Air line if they ever release a 120hz air.
Apple can easily differentiate the air from the pro in numerous other ways besides refresh rate, and yet they still continue to ship 60hz screens.
Yep. I have two un-dismissable notifications in the Settings app for two different AppleCare products. Can't dismiss them - you just have to have a red notification icon until they expire. Just turn off badges for the Settings app right? Sorry, the Settings app is mysteriously missing from the Notifications options.
>> Yeah for me it has been degrading ever since the Settings app became an upsell app.
I didn't really notice this until I setup an iPhone from scratch for someone. I normally just move from one to the other. The nagging from Settings is outrageous. It will never stop telling you to setup Apple Pay and Siri and offering Apple Care. It was like the experience of buying a PC in the 2000's.
They don't actually have to be good. They just need to be better than viable alternatives.
> I do care about apple forgetting that the walled garden’s walls are tolerated only because the experience inside is better.
Why would they care if they can just lock the gates and put some barbed wire on top of the walls? What are you going to do, move to Android?
>What are you going to do, move to Android?
Why not? If ads are coming anyway why pay the apple tax.
But Blue Bubbles! And iMessage, and you will need to move your photos. Also Music, movies and other stuff.
iMessage is only popular in US, I rarely seen someone using it in europe or asia. For movies and music people have spotify and netflix these days. There is only small hassle for non-tech savvy to move photos.
Perhaps Tim Cook, like many of us, now believes users are so accustomed to the walled garden they won't think to question the existence of anything outside the wall.