Not to defend a multi-billion corporation that’s currently being raked over the coals for anti-competitive practices, but here’s the thing about all Apple products:
Apple under and since Jobs has been all about selling appliances, not computers. A bicycle for the mind, but one that gets serviced at the bicycle dealership. And while technical users would love to use their devices as the general purpose computers that they are, that goes contrary to the device’s designated purpose. The iPad is not supposed to run desktop software because that’s not what it’s supposed to do. You don’t see a lot of complaints that you can’t play Doom on your smart fridge, but it’s the same thing, except for the fact that the iPad is such an awesome form factor and combination of hardware. But once it stops being an appliance, that opens it up to a whole class of support issues and usability problems that don’t affect it in its current state.
As soon as you put a toggle in settings that says “yes, let me break things”, then you get YouTube videos that tell kids to go in and turn on the toggle so they can mod a game, or install some spyware, and break their iPad, and the one to bear the brunt of the blame for the iPad being broken is not the random YouTuber, but Apple, for allowing their product to break. That’s how the general public sees it.
Apple is not a hardware company, or a software company, they are both. The two are tightly integrated. That is one of the best things about the entire Apple ecosystem, the amount of iron-fisted, high-walled control they exercise means that the level of integration between their devices is unmatched anywhere else in the industry. Break that bond, and a lot of the appeal in Apple products goes away because yes, the hardware is overpriced. But if you look at it from the standpoint of a product that is a tightly integrated bundle of hardware and software, and that you are paying for the software as well, when you compare it to a lot of the other commercial offerings out there it starts to look like not such a bad deal.
All this is to say: if you don’t like it, then buy something else. Requiring jailbreaks is by design, not just because Apple is greedy or lazy, but because it completely changes the purpose and usage of their product to allow the installation of general-purpose software.
>As soon as you put a toggle in settings that says “yes, let me break things”, then you get YouTube videos that tell kids to go in and turn on the toggle so they can mod a game, or install some spyware, and break their iPad
I don't buy this argument at all. If Apple is indeed a top tech company, then they can also figure out how to have advanced PRO toggles that don't easily result in breaking things. Otherwise why do they call their devices with the "PRO" suffix?
Assuming that locking everything down till you aren't even able to change a ringtone or a wallpaper, is the only way to prevent the user form braking something is just lazy: lazy engineering on behalf of Apple, and lazy form their apologists who defend such a baseless claim.
That's like saying, the only way the state can guarantee your security is to put a policeman in each of your homes following you everywhere and tap all your wires. Very lazy explanation to justify what is ultimately a nefarious policy.
To compare it to wiretapping is taking it too far. You don’t have a choice whether or not your government forces a policy on you, but you still have a choice of which ecosystem you buy into.
Complaining about the lack of freedom you have in Apple’s ecosystem is like moving to a totalitarian country where the streets are clean and the buses run on time and then complaining about the lack of freedom of speech.
The iPad can replace a computer for the average user. Hackers and developers make up a tiny, tiny percentage of people who buy iPads. There is a huge library of business-class professional software available on the App Store that fits all the needs of the average user. Graphic designers rarely lament the presence of a proper terminal.
A device that fails to offer the "average user" even the possibility of becoming power users, hackers, or developers, and stops them from even trying to explore the vast potential of the tools at their disposal, is a device that cannot conceivably function as a replacement for a general-purpose computer.
I'm sure many HN participants can recount personal stories of how childhood computers purchased by their families for "average user" purposes ended up becoming things that expanded their horizons far beyond initial expectations. It sucks that current generations are being deprived of that experience by people who can't possibly imagine that anyone would ever use a computing device for any purpose other than the narrow use cases the manufacturer conceived of in advance.
I’m very aligned. I don’t love Apple , but I buy their hardware because of their vertical integration and closed systems. I get the argument that many eyes make bugs shallow , but if you want a tightly managed supply chain as a consumer , I don’t think you can do better than Apple in today’s market.
From the foundation of the open-source movement, hackers have always had an adversarial relationship with manufacturers. It is that relationship that motivated the creation of GNU in the first place.
At least Apple allows developers to sow in their walled garden, even if they ultimately get to decide what is allowed to grow.
That basically never happens. Something about the Apple ecosystem is good enough that people who honestly should not be using Apple - because they want freedom and configurability - continue to use it anyway.
Apple is literally the only vendor selling a 13" device with 4:3 aspect ratio, high resolution and fast refresh OLED display. It's bizarre that no vendor has a competitive offering. Minisforum v3 is getting there, https://mudkip.me/2024/04/14/A-Brief-Review-of-the-Minisforu...
I mean you say all this, and then in every iPad keynote Apple hypes the performance for power users, content creators, photographers and videographers, and even gaming!
Case in point, the latest iPad Pro has an M4 chip which no other Apple device has.
The problem is Apple just don’t want to give any of those demographics the ability to run what they want - instead only what Apple thinks they should run.
Except that the iPad does run what they want. Just because the App Store doesn’t have X piece of software doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have Y suitable replacement. In fact, most of the functional equivalents in the App Store are better optimized for the iPad’s unique hardware than a piece of software developed for another platform.
As somebody who has recently (within the last year) replaced his Android devices with Apple equivalents, I initially lamented the lack of some of my favorite apps, but at this point I actually appreciate the functionality and quality of the apps I’ve replaced more than the ones that I miss.
> App Store doesn’t have X piece of software doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have Y suitable replacement.
Apple blocks JIT, causing the iSH and aShell emulators to make the iPad too hot to touch, and too hot for the battery to safely charge (you'll get a message that charging has been stopped until the iPad can cool down).
Apple under and since Jobs has been all about selling appliances, not computers. A bicycle for the mind, but one that gets serviced at the bicycle dealership. And while technical users would love to use their devices as the general purpose computers that they are, that goes contrary to the device’s designated purpose. The iPad is not supposed to run desktop software because that’s not what it’s supposed to do. You don’t see a lot of complaints that you can’t play Doom on your smart fridge, but it’s the same thing, except for the fact that the iPad is such an awesome form factor and combination of hardware. But once it stops being an appliance, that opens it up to a whole class of support issues and usability problems that don’t affect it in its current state.
As soon as you put a toggle in settings that says “yes, let me break things”, then you get YouTube videos that tell kids to go in and turn on the toggle so they can mod a game, or install some spyware, and break their iPad, and the one to bear the brunt of the blame for the iPad being broken is not the random YouTuber, but Apple, for allowing their product to break. That’s how the general public sees it.
Apple is not a hardware company, or a software company, they are both. The two are tightly integrated. That is one of the best things about the entire Apple ecosystem, the amount of iron-fisted, high-walled control they exercise means that the level of integration between their devices is unmatched anywhere else in the industry. Break that bond, and a lot of the appeal in Apple products goes away because yes, the hardware is overpriced. But if you look at it from the standpoint of a product that is a tightly integrated bundle of hardware and software, and that you are paying for the software as well, when you compare it to a lot of the other commercial offerings out there it starts to look like not such a bad deal.
All this is to say: if you don’t like it, then buy something else. Requiring jailbreaks is by design, not just because Apple is greedy or lazy, but because it completely changes the purpose and usage of their product to allow the installation of general-purpose software.