Glyph@khm @xgranade I take it you're referring to batterygate? I think it's probably good that apple had to pay out a settlement there because I do think that they ought to be forced into a degree of transparency about what software updates are doing, but the actual meat of the lawsuit is about a tradeoff which, while it SHOULD have been explained to users, is also a setting which 99% of users really ought to have turned on
@khm @xgranade what the software update did was to change the behavior of the device from "when the battery is degraded to the point where it is no longer providing the necessary level of power to keep the phone running properly, instead of randomly shutting off at low-but-unpredictable charge % and losing the users' data, cap the CPU performance so it won't do that". The change would let most users keep their device *longer* and give Apple *less* money.
khmyes I also read their bullshit justification. weird how they're the only company who has to throttle devices to stop them from fucking themselves up, but I guess that's what it takes to convince people you're the best
between "we'll dry-gulch you behind the scenes" and "all third-party development stops when our xcode cert stack shits the bed" there's basically no combination of words that will convince me apple is anything but user-hostile
CC: @[email protected]
between "we'll dry-gulch you behind the scenes" and "all third-party development stops when our xcode cert stack shits the bed" there's basically no combination of words that will convince me apple is anything but user-hostile
CC: @[email protected]
@khm @xgranade not something I have any interest in convincing you of. the only reason I talk about this stuff is to try to help the free desktop community properly understand what you're up against. if the model of the world is just "apple is acausally evil and makes inferior products; people buy their devices only because they're stupid" then there's no hope of ever competing with them realistically
"competing" is the wrong model for free desktop / foss / open computing. the resources necessary to achieve technical competition do not exist, there is no physical logistics entity, and the marketing is toilet-grade diaper dumps.
free software is a political movement, not a market participant, and the way to achive success is to focus on making it politically impossible (via legislation or public opinion or both) for companies to rely on hostile hardware-based control mechanisms, so that people can run whatever software they want.
"apple is causally evil and makes inferior products; people buy their devices only because they're apathetic" is absolutely correct and the solution is to compel apple to stop making garbage. apple is hardly unique in this. in fact, they are not unique at all; they're just another garbage factory in a market that is rapidly ensuring that all remaining SKUs originate in the landfill. demanding better is the only path forward.
CC: @[email protected]
free software is a political movement, not a market participant, and the way to achive success is to focus on making it politically impossible (via legislation or public opinion or both) for companies to rely on hostile hardware-based control mechanisms, so that people can run whatever software they want.
"apple is causally evil and makes inferior products; people buy their devices only because they're apathetic" is absolutely correct and the solution is to compel apple to stop making garbage. apple is hardly unique in this. in fact, they are not unique at all; they're just another garbage factory in a market that is rapidly ensuring that all remaining SKUs originate in the landfill. demanding better is the only path forward.
CC: @[email protected]
Cassandra is only carbon now@khm @glyph OK, I even agree with some of what you're saying, but... how does that help?
Like, free software shouldn't have to compete, it shouldn't be the case that not only does free software avoid DRM, e-waste, AI, and whatever other fuckshit is going on in the tech industry, it *also* has to be easier to use and in an environment that's designed to be hostile towards free software.
But wow if saying how things should work got us there, I'd be a *much* happier person.
@khm @glyph Hell, my experiences trying to get Windows to do even basic end-user stuff makes me very firmly convinced that Linux is, on the whole, easier to use. But then Zoom ships broken software that doesn't work right on Linux, the whole world uses Word, and and and.
I haven't used macOS in six years or so, but I have the first Apple computer I've ever bought in the mail so that I can try and make cross-plat software. I doubt I'll find it easier to use, personally, but who knows.
I used linux exclusively for work in the federal government between like 2011 and 2026. only in the past month have I been required to use a non-linux workstation, and the experience is strictly worse. zoom, word, all that shit works fine in a browser, and has for years.
if the problem were linux, chromebooks would not exist. instead they very much do exist, and the only reason their proliferation wasn't a massive boon for linux as a workstation os is the stupid code-signing DRM shit embedded in both the hardware and the software, which reinforces my point that software licensing is completely orthagonal to market success. ease of use is also unrelated to market success, but that wasn't really the point I was making.
CC: @[email protected]
if the problem were linux, chromebooks would not exist. instead they very much do exist, and the only reason their proliferation wasn't a massive boon for linux as a workstation os is the stupid code-signing DRM shit embedded in both the hardware and the software, which reinforces my point that software licensing is completely orthagonal to market success. ease of use is also unrelated to market success, but that wasn't really the point I was making.
CC: @[email protected]
@glyph Eh, I just went on and blocked.
@glyph I try to be more diplomatic normally, but I am out of fucks right about now. Regardless, you're more patient than I am.