Free “as in free speech” or why I don’t buy Apple’s products

http://longtermlaziness.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/free-as-in-free-speech-or-why-i-dont-by-apples-products/

by knitatoms • 15 years ago

13 4 15 years ago

longtermlaziness.wordpress.com

mise• 15 years ago

I'm not an Apple user, I just look in from the outside.

I don't understand this seeming tension where Apple restrict choices in their systems for usability, homogeneity, etc, while also being the system of choice for many hackers.

How come Apple machines are still geek-friendly?

sbmassey• 15 years ago

It's a Unix with most of the bells & whistles (albeit a different flavor to Linux), plus you get to use a decent selection of commercial software.

danudey• 15 years ago

This is a perfectly fair point of view, and I definitely see the author's point as far as freedom goes. Still, a counterpoint.

Part of the problem I've seen with this point of view, though, is that the people who espouse it that I tend to deal with (which I won't claim is representative) all tend to have some other form of 'giving up freedom' instead.

For example, people who don't buy Apple devices because they want control over their devices, but then buy Android devices and keep all their data on Google's services, tying everything together (Picasa, Gmail, Google Docs, etc). Putting all of your personal information in one place so that a company can comb through it all and learn everything about you, especially when that company can just turn off your digital life arbitrarily, and provide you no recourse.

Case in point: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2794529

It's really just the other side of the coin, and I know a lot of people that are ok with that tradeoff. Still, the idea that some giant, faceless corporation's algorithm will one day return true instead of false for some blog post I wrote and suddenly erase my (access to my) contacts, photos, email, documents, and everything else I've built up just rubs me the wrong way - much as I'm sure the idea of a closed ecosystem bothers people like the author.

gujk• 15 years ago

Are fou familiar with Google Takeout? Google doesn't hold your data hostage, but they do offer convenient hosting for the time being.

Free “as in free speech” or why I don’t buy Apple’s products

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