syxApple Just Lost Me
I found this to be a very odd and strange rant. The author's three issues with Apple are:
1. Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user.
2. mac OS26. I totally agree that this is a total fiasco from a design perspective, and liquid glass is unqualified shit. Still, I see Apple at least somewhat moving in the right direction by getting rid of Alan Dye.
3. Apple had a bug in their age verification protocol. Again, valid point, but Apple needs to follow UK law. I've seen a lot more missives arguing against requiring things like driver's licenses and other government ID, and so it seems like Apple is at least trying to go the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification.
To emphasize, I'm not apologizing for Apple here. In particular, much has been written about how Apple has lost their way regarding the "it just works" philosophy. But it seems like the author's main beef is against Apple's level of control, and this is just a fundamental difference in Apple's stance that has existed for about 2 decades.
> but Apple needs to follow UK law
The Online Safety Act does not require device manufacturers to enforce age "verification" at the OS level. If Apple had not implemented this, it would still be in compliance with UK law. Apple is displaying anticipatory obedience here, which is the opposite of good citizenship.
Two things stand out from this fiasco:
1. Apple, and those who praise them for what they just did, don't appear to have learnt from history. Anticipatory obedience used to be known as "vorauseilender Gehorsam" during a particularly dark period in the history of a country a few hundred miles southeast of the UK. It was one of the factors enabling the darkness.
2. The UK is a small enough market for Apple to treat it as a test bed. Which it probably is in this case, and which means that removal of anonymity aka "OS-level age verification" is coming to a lot more devices in a lot more countries soon. See also the uncanny coincidence of lots of OECD countries pushing for online age verification at the same time.