Asklemmy

• if you want to upgrade the OS, you have to pay once again,

That used to be the case for Mac OS, but it hasn't been true for a number of years.

but this doesn't work if your hardware model stops being supported. Why pay for something with a limited life expectancy?

That's an issue with all IT products and a lot are worse than Apple products.

Also, if you're talking solely about Macs, then be aware that Mac-specific Linux projects exist to keep older machines running for longer.

• you cannot get rid of bloatware, only hide it

That's also true on other OSes, like Android and Windows 11.

• software is made specifically to be only compatible within their ecosystem. If you want to build up on existing software and hardware, you either stay in their system and keep paying them or start anew with a freer alternative.

The idea is that in the best case, everything works out of the box. You often don't get that with less-integrated solutions.

• I find it ridiculous they use fancy names to name even their support staff instead of just calling it support staff. Why make things complicated?

That is presumably to try to market Apple as an upscale brand. But does it actually bother you as a customer?

• I don't understand why they use pentalobe screws instead or regular ones (with a line or a cross section)

Apple wants you to pay for repairs, I think we can safely say that. They're not unique there either, though maybe more persistent on that front than most other manufacturers.

A friend who's extremely technically competent told me he's happy to have someone else be the sysadmin for his phone, and finds Apple more trustworthy than Google in that role.

iPhone/ipad user here. I also have managed 1000’s of mobile devices for over a decade.

I’ve never paid for an OS upgrade.

Apple supports devices longer than most large android OEMs.

Not much bloatware that I can think of.

Yes, software built for one OS doesn’t usually go to another OS without much issue. If it does it’s because it’s a PWA. Also, I have money.

Who cares what they call their staff?

Flat/Philips head screws are the worst. Nearly anything else is better. Years of working with HP/Compaq, Dell, BlackBerry,super micro,Nortel, Cisco, Ford, Mitsubishi, bmw, Suzuki, Yamaha equipment has made me realize that.

This is a low effort troll post.

os upgrades are free

bloatware is less on ios than on any other mobile os

the rest is idiocy.

save your time. Move on.

I was a die hard Android fan boy switching my phones every 9-12 months, rooting them, flashing custom ROMs and customising them in general. I was basically the most anti Apple guy you can imagine and mocked everyone who bought Apple devices.

4 years ago I got my hands on an iPhone XS Max for a few quid. Thought might as well try the device out which I’m making fun of just for the sake of it.

4 years later I’m sitting on my iPhone 14 Pro Max, my 2020 iPad Pro 12.9, AirPods Pro 2, Apple Watch 6 and 2 Apple TV boxes.

Apple really knows how to hook their users. The ecosystem is by far the best and won’t ever be reached by Android due to the simple fact that every device is made by one manufacturer.

For example: you setup the Apple TV box and it detects a nearby iPhone and offers quick setup. Setting up the second Apple TV box it even asks if it should mirror everything from the first Apple TV. I put my AirPods in my ears and Apple TV detects them and asks if it should connect to them even though they were never connected.

Another example: I’m watching a movie on my iPad with my AirPods in ears. I get a voice memo on WhatsApp on my phone. I play the memo and the AirPods switch instantly to the iPhone and after playing the memo back to the iPad.

These are only two examples about how well the ecosystem works. Yes, it’s kinda a loophole, once you’re in it, you can barely escape it. But I appreciate that shit just works. You have to experience it to really understand. Also I don’t feel the urge to switch the phone so often anymore, not only because there are not many models to choose from but the UX is so nice and smooth feeling, even on older devices. Not to mention the clean UI that isn’t cluttered and packed with ads like on some Android phone OSs or the Fire TV OS (I believe Xiaomi does this?).

To clarify a few of your points: No you don’t need to pay for OS upgrades. Support for older devices is good. The latest iOS 17 is available on the iPhone XR from 2018. Not to mention that you don’t need the latest OS version to have a fully functional device. Apple devices don’t really have bloatware on them. Only some Apple made apps like Books, Health etc. which can be fully uninstalled. Ecosystem is pretty closed yes. While you can use, let’s say, third party smart watches or Bluetooth headphones, the experience will not be as smooth as it’d be with AirPods. Apple finding fancy names for normal stuff is just their marketing strategy of making you or their products feel special. Not a fan of it either but don’t really care tbh. Also never really cared about the screws they use on the devices since I never had the urge to open them.

You use apple products because you like the aesthetic, the user-friendliness, and clout.

I use apple products because I get them as hand-me-downs from work every tech refresh.

We are not the same.

I like Apple's hardware but their software is not ideal.

I have an M1 Macbook Air that is honestly the best laptop I've ever used. I will run this thing until it dies. I'm running Asahi Linux so I don't even have to deal with MacOS anymore.

As for my smartphone, while I am concerned with privacy and control over my devices... I think privacy is more important. While I do not trust Apple with my privacy, I trust them over a literal advertising company.

At this point I'm just one more person on the pile but:

I used Android for years because I like open stuff, but iPhones are just straight-up better. There's all kinds of weird broken stuff on Androids, things that don't quite work or where the interface separating two parts of the device is a little awkward... my iPhone just does what it's supposed to do. It's hard to explain but there's just a clear difference in the quality level of the software. They seem like they polished it until it was genuinely done, as opposed to just shipping the thing and moving on with something else. Also the photos are better (same thing -- they clearly make it a priority). Also the security is much better, weirdly enough. I had to fight with the iPhone for quite a while trying to get a dashcam app, until I finally realized that the issue was that there was absolutely no way for an app to access the camera if it wasn't the foreground app with the camera light on. Android? Fuckin'-a Mr. App you can watch this person sleeping, just make sure you ask about it when you're first installed (and then refuse to install if the person says no).

Etc etc.

MacOS computers are pretty similar; good hardware, software isn't perfect but mostly solid, BSD backend with lots of solid tooling. They just generally are high-quality and reliable.

I think mostly the reason is, they have this weird cultish following that means they can charge a high price for their stuff and don't face constant pressure to make it a little crappier in hopefully-they-won't-notice ways to save a buck. So, you pay a little premium but what you get is good.

I have an iPhone, MacBook, and run Linux on a desktop pc. Only thing I have to add is that on iOS the only apps you can’t remove is phone, messages, settings, App Store, and safari which I wouldn’t consider bloatware. On macos I think u can remove pretty much anything using workarounds. Rn apples arm laptops are some of the most efficient on the market, iPads are pretty good tablets, and iPhones work great with both of those products.

OS Updates have been free since 2013 and pretty much all software as well, except for services and pro stuff like Logic. So you got something wrong there.

Support for older hardware goes pretty far back, compared to Android (though that is getting better from what I read). At some point they just gotta let it go or it will hold back development. I don’t see why that’s such a big problem. You can still use everything and get security updates just not the latest features.

Bloatware, I don’t know what you’re comparing it with. Windows laptops are often filled with crap from the manufacturers and I hear Windows 11 even drowns you in it on a fresh install. Apple products come with all the basics and all of it is at least pretty good. They have a lot of extra software available to download but it won’t preinstall that or even nag you about it. And most of the time you can just delete even the main apps.

I’m all in on Apple hardware. I’ve got a Macbook Pro, iPad Air, iPhone, Watch, Homepod Mini and Apple TV. I started with Apple in 2010.

I used Windows before and until about 5 years ago for work. The later Windows versions became more and more confusing to me. For my work it is a horrible experience since you always have to go many extra steps to do anything (reason is that web development is mostly unix based). For gaming it is of course the best option but I lost interest in PC gaming and even back in XP times I used to customize Windows to look like OS X. But it was fine back then. I tinkered with it a lot and had fun times. But now I just want to be productive.

Why not Linux? Because I don’t want to tinker anymore for my main computers and I’m happy with what I have. I used it a few times on a Raspberry Pi and it’s not my thing.

Why not Android? For testing stuff at work I have an Android device and I hate everything about it. Also I would miss the ecosystem of iOS and interoperability with my other Apple devices.

The good:

I like the build quality and focus on details. Apple had a rough phase after Jobs passed and Jony Ive had too much power over the design. In that time it was very much true that Apple was all about form over function. That is not true anymore since he left.

Their main apps and services are kept fresh and improved so much that a lot of them even became my apps of choice for the category. I use Notes, Mail, Music, Podcasts (but I’m unsure about that one), Calendar and Safari. In other categories I prefer third party apps, like Things, 1Password.

You can feel pretty safe from malware or spyware because everything is sandboxed and access to user data is kept behind bars until explicitly allowed.

Resell value is pretty high even for older devices.

The bad:

Apple sometimes introduces some new service and then basically stops improving it. Siri is the best example here and it has become a laughing stock even inside the Apple fanbase. Homekit is another. It gets a few very tiny updates here and there but the only big ones were a visual overhaul of the Home app and the introduction to Matter, which so far had only little impact or even made it worse for some users (luckily not me).

Fancy names, yes it’s a bit weird, they want to brand everything.

Their presentations feel very cult-like and have lost their charm since Jobs is gone.

Repairs are expensive. I’m lucky so far that I never needed that .

I hate Apple Stores. They are crowded, boring and have less and less third party products available. Staff there is annoying but that’s true for any store these days.

To conclude, I like it, I don’t see the appeal in current alternatives.

I used Android phones since the G1 and decided to give it a punt after a few phones in a row developed problems less than 2 years old. Well it turns out Apple devices just work and keep on working so I now have a few.

Still don’t want a Mac though.

After having read the title I was gonna say I make my own applesauce and dont use apple jams or jellies. Good thing I read the rest of the post

I’ve never used an Android that felt like it was out of beta testing yet and they stopped making Windows phones and BlackBerrys (BlackBerries?). I only used my phone for texting and email and my significant other talked me into an expensive-ass iPhone 8 and I’ve just kinda kept going with them. I have an 8 and a 12 and I plan on using the 12 until it falls apart and then go back to the 8 until that one dies too. If e-ink phones aren’t a thing by that time I’ll get a dumb phone and separate device for Authenticator passcodes.

As for why - I don’t need the latest and greatest features on my phone. It may be an old way of thinking but I’d rather use a computer and dumb phone over a smart phone on its own.

I use an iPad, am subscribed to Apple Music and also use a Hackintosh setup (aiming to replace it with a MacBook of some kind in the future).

• The tablet market is pretty much "ignore everything else and just buy an iPad". There is no tablet really worth your time on Android, most of it is due to Google and the Android ecosystem practically abandoning the tablet form factor. Meanwhile Apple still supports the iPad to this day and there are plenty of great apps that support the iPad form factor, such as Mona for Mastodon
• I used to use Spotify for streaming, but found that it was getting increasingly annoying to use. So many long-standing bugs including one where if I download even one song on my phone that's in my Liked Songs list, the entire app takes like 30 seconds trying to load it. Apple Music handles large lists so much better. The library management is also so much better than on Spotify too, with it basically just being "iTunes but as a streaming service" and I can have smart playlists for whatever purpose I want. Their consistency with regards to UX across the different target platforms aren't great (iOS and Android can't create or update smart playlists, Windows and Mac don't have word-for-word lyrics) but even with all that, it's the least annoying streaming service for me right now. (and yes, I maintain a local music library with MusicBee - streaming is helpful for discovery)
• I've been recently using my Hackintosh more and it was really comfy using it. I have issues focusing on a single task (which might be ADHD, might not be, idk) and the full-screen mode allows me to focus on the tasks on my screen.

As for your point on bloatware, this happens on Android too. I can't remove Facebook, OneDrive or YouTube from my phone, only "hide" it. (Samsung btw)

I'm a bit confused, OS upgrades are free... I've been back and forth between iOS and Android a few times, I avoid lock-in to either ecosystem by using 3rd party cloud services like Bitwarden, Signal, Dropbox free (10GB), etc. I can switch over in half an hour. Most recently they started supporting the open standard Matter so they can use same smart home things as Google or Home Assistant.

As for "bloat", well there's a few apps I don't use, most can be uninstalled, if not it only takes up a bit of disk space, not RAM/CPU so they don't impact performance and I keep my phones for many years. Right now I got an iPhone 13, it runs like new, it'll last for a long time.

Are we upset about what they call support staff? All companies do weird marketing stuff, it matters not.

I don't use a Mac, I run Linux on my gaming PC. If I didn't game I'd be equally happy with a Mac, the new hardware is great and the OS doesnt get in my way. In contrast with Windows where one feels like a hand-puppet.

Only recent Apple product I have is an iPad. Android still isn't that great when it comes to tablets and doesn't have many tablet optimized apps. The iPad is nice for drawing using the pencil and Procreate, watching movies and reading the newspaper. I don't use any of the Apple ecosystem stuff like iCloud etc. Some things are mildly infuriating though, like having no real browser choice (hopefully soon to change).

Phones and computers. I don’t exclusively use apple stuff, but I do use it. I use it because it’s useful and does what I need.

Everyone replied to all your points already, so I won’t. Out of curiosity though, what were your expectations? All software and hardware has limited life expectancy, all software packages have bloat you can’t get rid of, no software from one platform will work easily on another, companies call standard stuff goofy names all the time and security screws have been around forever. What were you hoping it would be like and what is like that?

As always, holler if you need a hand. It’s mind melting trying to adapt to a new system.

Popular alternatives really are that bad. If you just walk into a phone store and get an android its going to be loaded with far more bloatware from google, the manufacturer, and the telecom. It's just a visibly worse product. You can always research, buy direct, or flash your own android and get a better experience. Or you can just buy the apple product which - for the average user - is not crap, it just works. Same with buying a laptop from Best Buy or a prebuilt desktop. Apple designs their products to be like an appliance, something that just works and you dont really care how.

I use a hand-me-down Macbook Pro 2012. It's a fantastic piece of hardware. Especially after I nuked macos and installed Debian.

I wish all windows users a very 65 decibel fan noise on opening 3rd chrome tab.

This message brought to you by ARM gang.

I've never bought an apple product in my life, but even my android phone drives me nuts at times...

I use a Macbook Pro because they are much more performant and have way longer battery life compared to a similarly priced Windows laptop, no other reason. There is just nothing in the x86 realm that is even comparable to what Apple silicon offers, and Windows on ARM offerings just aren't really there yet. I use a Windows desktop and an Android phone, though.

I use an Apple phone and laptop along with a Debian server and distro hopping laptop.

The first benefit I get is social integration—I’m not looking for FOSS alternatives to some things because the mainstream source definitely runs on it (Adobe products primarily). Never underestimate the social utility of those blue bubbles—it tells a certain brand of person that you are part of their herd, and my family heavily falls into that group. Nobody ever bats an eye at my MacBook Air in public—people don’t see me for the 1337 hackerman that I am inside, and I like it that way sometimes.

The second benefit is hardware support. Say what you will about the price of Apple Care, but knowing I can walk in to an Apple Store and walk out with a replacement is extremely useful in a pinch.

Finally, I like the feel and look of their products, and there is a convenience in their ecosystem. You know what you’re getting with Apple, and it all works together out of the box. I could recreate their built in features with FOSS alternatives, but I simply don’t have to because it is already designed to work.

With Apple you pay a lot up front and then nothing for the software over time—that is an easy budgeting calculation for me. I don’t have to worry about what card I choose or niche incompatibility, Apple already took care of that.

I’ve flirted with fully transitioning to Linux many times, but I have always found a reason to keep one mainstream OS around, and Windows sucks. MacOS is a happy medium for power users who are comfortable with it and enjoy the UNIX family.

1. me liek fancy design sounds and airdrip
2. in China, Android notification services are a hellhole and take up a ton of RAM
3. not sure if android has notification summaries
4. pretty good build quality

if you want to upgrade the OS, you have to pay once again, but this doesn't work if your hardware model stops being supported. Why pay for something with a limited life expectancy?

upgrades are free and last for five years, which is enough for me since older versions get jailbreaks and after 5 years it probably lags on all the third-party apps

you cannot get rid of bloatware, only hide it

the only apps you can't get rid of are app store, camera, messages, phone, photos, safari*, and settings, all of which are quite essential

*outside of EU, every browser is a safari skin, so it's what I use. inside EU, you can uninstall safari.

software is made specifically to be only compatible within their ecosystem. If you want to build up on existing software and hardware, you either stay in their system and keep paying them or start anew with a freer alternative.

you can backup stuff (i.e. download everything) from icloud, which is where they store most of the valuable stuff. integration is what makes things powerful

I find it ridiculous they use fancy names to name even their support staff instead of just calling it support staff. Why make things complicated?

1. Their name is Apple Support. If you mean the Genius Bars.... uhhhh marekting
2. It's not complicated, just say anything and people'd understand

I don't understand why they use pentalobe screws instead or regular ones (with a line or a cross section)

1. ackshtually, phillips screws aren't just a cross section
2. to screw (hehe) with people i think. you know the drill

I used to use a corer/slicer combo, but it was still just faster and easier to do the quarter and trim method.

No specific answer to every bullet point, but here it is. For reference, the last iPhone I owned before my current iPhone 15 was a 4S, so you can say it had been a while. I still like Android very much, and believe in the importance of there being a thing like AOSP, and I have used Android way more than iOS in my life. I used to be big into rooting/ROMs. IMHO, both stock Android and iOS were incredibly lacking as OSes, but Android at least had rooting and ROMs, and it was much less of a hassle to do it with that than iOS. I still fondly remember my bright red Nexus 5 w/ ParanoidAndroid and a sexy grey/black/red theme. Oh, and Xposed tweaks were neat too.

Biggest reason for switching for me was Android Auto. It’s either complete garbage, or my car’s head unit sucks, but I kept getting random disconnects multiple times per drive. Android Auto just stopped, then reconnected, like if I unplugged and replugged the cable. I tried changing cables for a bunch of different low and high quality brands. I cleaned my USB ports, both on the phone and in the car. I tried a wireless AA adapter dongle. I even changed from a Pixel 5 to a 7 and saw no difference. My nephew had the same issue with his Galaxy Flip in my car. Garage tried to resettle all connectors, etc.

Meanwhile, Carplay worked seamlessly on my wife’s iPhone 11. The last straw was when AA dropped as I was semi-lost downtown in foggy rain. From there, the thought process was basically: is there anything I do on my phone or think I may eventually like to do in this phone’s lifetime, that I can’t easily do with an iPhone? Answer was no. I can sign with Signulous for the odd app I want to sideload like emulators, but like 99% of what I actually need and use is on the App Store. Both stock Android and iOS are, for me, usable enough nowadays. Neither are perfect, but they’re fine as is, and so much less hassle lol.

TL;DR, I don’t really care any less or more about either one of the OS, both their UX is compatible with the things I use a phone for, and CarPlay works better than Android Auto for me.

if you want to upgrade the OS, you have to pay once again

they haven't charged for OS updates since 2010 or so

you cannot get rid of bloatware, only hide it

fair but unlike bloatware on other operating systems, it's mostly unobtrusive (doesn't run in the background, at least to the point where performance is affected). also this seems to apply to many OEM android ROMs?

they use pentalobe screws instead or regular ones

also a fair criticism but it's not like I'm opening it every day (some apple devices I've owned I never had to open) and you can get screwdrivers for like $5 if you really need one

anyways I have an iPhone and a macbook pro. the iPhone I like because the overall experience feels "smoother" even though some of the higher end androids might have better specs on paper and might be a little faster on benchmarks. idk I know this sounds stupid as fuck but it might just be way things are animated and the overall visual design, I just find it less annoying to use. at this point the most concrete advantages android has are the real file browser and sideloading, but I personally don't need those. I last used an android in 2021-2022 and almost never used them

the macbook I bought because my stupid job only allows remote work if you provide your own hardware, and at the time they started allowing remote work, I was working on an iOS app. I was a mac user a long time before, so I was excited about "returning" but honestly I found it underwhelming, mostly because it still has the problem that caused me to switch to PC in the first place - poor compatibility with mainstream software. the one nice thing about macbooks (or at least the specific one I got, the M1 pro) is that they're super quiet compared to windows laptops, the loudest it gets is on the level of the average windows laptop at idle. also they have better touchpads, though touchpads in general are bad. I don't hate it but I don't think I'll be buying another one again. If I have to get a mac for iOS development or something in the far future I'll just get the cheapest secondhand mac mini suitable for the job.

I've got an 8 year old original gen iPhone SE that's just about holding on still and I'm keeping it because I hate how big phones have become since (I already hated the size increase of the 6 and that's why I got the SE instead)

For your first point I've owned a 3g, a 5s and my current SE and I've never heard about paying for OS updates so idk where you got that idea from but my phone is still getting free updates 8 years after release even if they aren't supporting upgrading to newer OS versions they're still patching IOS 15. Also do you think that iPhones are the only phone models with a limited life expectancy? Multiple generations of Android phones have been completely dropped in the life span of my single phone, Samsung is apparently the best android phone lifespan wise and apparently they drop support after 5 years.

I'm saving up for my next phone at the moment though and I'm defintely switching from apple over to an android phone but I've found that I can get a gaming phone for half the price of a mainstream device with specs that blow the competitors out of the water (even beating the iphone 15 pro max's camera quality) but I wouldn't be switching if my phone wasn't on the verge of death.

In addition to the things everyone else has brought up:

• MacPorts gives you everything on any BSD or Linux machine, on your Mac.
• iTerm2 is the best terminal on any platform, there's amazing capabilities in it. You didn't know your terminal was so inadequate!
• AppleScript, Automator, and every programming language on Mac; Shortcuts, Pythonista, LispPad, & Hotpaw BASIC on iOS; make automation of the system and programming little tools incredibly easy. Everything is accessible to the power user, it's not like Linux where some GUI features are scriptable, and others you'll be writing a C++ program to reach some API because it's not exposed to anything.

As the old ad says (which got me to buy in): Sends other UNIX boxes to /dev/null

Shit it took me so long to write this, it’s now totally redundant. I left it just in case you are bored.

I use a 2 year old iPhone, a 10 year old MacBook Pro as my daily driver, a 10 year old Mac mini attached to a tv and an apple tv. I also use a home build windows11 desktop for my home use and gaming, a hp mini running pfsense and a server running truenas core.

To touch on your points, You pay for the Mac hardware and the OS is included. This is just like you buy an Android phone or a dell Linux desktop. With windows computer you are paying for windows license within the price of the unit. the Yearly (pain in the ass)macos or iOS upgrades are free but they usually have a cutoff of 5-7 years because of hardware comparability. This does not mean you can’t use you mac anymore, it just means you just can’t upgrade to the latest version with whatever new features or fixes it contains.

The only bloatware is Apple software you might not need. Depending on the platform and the version you can remove it. Unlike an android pone manufacturer which will bake in some of its bloatware on top of Android, then the provider adding their own on top of that. This may or not be removable. Let’s not even talk about Microsoft and oems although at least with windows you can wipe the unit to reinstall with just the Microsoft bloat then take care of that separately.. linux is free of that

Most of Apple software is integrated with their iCloud service (overpriced for sure). Windows users can do a very basic integration with iCloud for windows but it does leave everyone else out. You can still use iCloud on any system through a browser to access any of that data. Almost all their software is Mac only. If you buy Final Cut or Logic Pro and you want to keep using it because you like it, you will be stuck on Mac.(I didn’t really understand your point on this part)

Yes they do like to give names to stuff. A lot of companies do it to try to differentiate themselves other companies. Some of it is like grocery store calling their staff “associates“ instead of staff. I really don’t see that as an issue.

I am not fan of all the types of screws they use, I’m looking at you freaking trilobe. I do like the pentalobe though, never stripped one of those. I think using torx is superior to flat head or Philips as those strip more often when you get to smaller size screw heads.

I am of the view of using the best tool for you for the job. I don’t like to tinker with my phone and my laptop. I need them to be reliable. I tinker on my windows desktop My server is rock solid and so is my pfense router.

If you like what you use, that’s awesome you found the right gear for yourself.

I use an iPhone because I need two things to just work, and my phone is one of those things. (The other is my car, but that isn’t super relevant here.)

I think a lot of folks hate Windows and are intimidated by, or don't want to be inconvenienced by Linux.

You seem to be very enthusiastic about criticizing apple.

I just own an iPhone so I don’t think I can engage with you with all these critiques. I bought it because at that point in time, it was cheaper than a Samsung. I had concerns about privacy, and it seemed like apple had better control of their App Store and there was less crapware there.

I had tried a custom android rom before this (it must have been around 2013, cyanogenmod) but it was too early in development maybe, and it sucked. It might have been the phone I installed it on. At any rate, I gave up on custom roms for a bit.

My job uses iPhones for an industry specific dispatch software that does not use the cellular network. So I am glad Im familiar with iPhone software, though I wouldn’t have bought one just for this reason. They were using iPods for the software before that, but the iPods didn’t have replaceable batteries and had to be disposed of (which is a shame, they were much smaller)

My iphone is 5-6 years old now, I’ll buy something else when I have to. Probably something I can try lineageOS or whatever the new rom is.

Well, I got into them when I was younger. My school required a MacBook and when I started using one, I found it way cooler than my clunky Windows laptop. Part of that was probably the price, but it was also the OS. It was really smooth - and I freaking fell in love with the touchpad gestures. Then I got an iPhone, an iPad etc.

Overtime, I moved away from an Apple only ecosystem. Now I use Linux on an XPS. I also use a Galaxy Tab instead - iPad, while powerful, is really hampered by its OS. Galaxy Tab is far more powerful and capable of being an actual laptop replacement, at least for me.

But I still use an iPhone. I find it a lot easier to deal with than Android. I tried the latter in the past, btw. But I don't need customization on my phone, unlike with my laptop or tablet. So, for my headphones, I got the AirPods. The connection between the iPhone and AirPods is really good.

Will my next phone be an iPhone. I dunno. There are some really interesting Android phones out there, and the platform seems more mature now with many companies offering a simple UI that doesn't do too much - I still keep up with it all. I liked the OnePlus Fold that came out recently, for example.

I'll admit, I'm not your average Apple user. I made a very deliberate choice to not be tied down to Apple. I've taken conscious actions to have different OSes and software on different devices and not be locked down by any one company. I use FOSS wherever I can, and moved away from all the default apps pushed by Apple, Samsung etc. long ago. It's also why I won't get a Galaxy phone - I already have the tablet. The only concession I allowed was the AirPods.

But I can tell you another example. Over the years, my father has needed new products. And every time I've gotten him Apple products. Now, he has an all Apple setup. MacBook, iPad, iPhone, AirPods. Why? Because I've seen him use Windows laptops and Android phones in the past. I know just how many problems he's had with them - and how much I had to help him with them. Now that he has an all Apple set up, everything is dead simple for him. People underestimate this.

Hope this helps answer your questions.

Your first four points apply to Android as well. Your fifth point is just silly. Who cares what they call their support staff. Your last point is fine, but you can get around it by buying the right tool. If you’re not advocating for Linux phones, then you’re not advocating for the best solution. Android and iOS are both fucking garbage.

I have early-2015 13" Retina MacBook Pro with 512gb SSD

Hands down the best piece of tech I've ever owned. It's not without its flaws but the saying "it just works" couldn't be more accurate. That's exactly what my experience with it has been. I really like the concept of the Framework laptop but the truth is that I've been so happy with my MBP that I might just get another. Especially now that they brought back the SD card slot and HDMI port.

The only two issues I've had with it was the anti-glare coating on the screen that started coming off and leaving a keyboard imprint on my screen. I fixed that by rubbing off the coating using cotton pads and toilet bowl cleaner.

The another issue is the letter i that stopped working and replacing the keyboard would mean gutting the entire computer and ripping out the old keyboard that's attached by plastic rivets instead of screws. I'm just using an external keyboard instead.

In my experience, Apple makes computing products for people who don't like computing products.