And thank "God" for people like him[1]. Life is unbearable under Tim Cook's "vision", the greed, arrogance and pettiness is at an all-time high, and it's not like it was low before..
[1] Also, nothing is black and white, of course Tim/Epic were looking to get more money from what their customers paid.
I dokt fully understand the dynamics here, but are those complaints independent of the issue being fought out between Apple and Epic? Ie, couldn't Epic still be engaging in "undercutting and delaying releases" whether or not they're paying 30% to Apple, or is that behavior somehow tangled up in this issue?
If it's not, then I don't see the contradiction here. Leaving aside people who make issues like this part of their identity, you can root for Epic in this specific case without deciding that you love Epic, with the focus on the impact of _this case_ on the industry. Just as you can root for Google in Google v Oracle without becoming a superfan of Google's.
My life under Tim Cook's "vision" is pretty sweet when it comes to electronic devices.
With a tap of a button I fill my house with lossless quality of music that is playing on astonishingly capable speakers. Those speakers also answer my questions and run automations on my phone which I can create in a very nice and user-friendly interface.
I'm currently watching an episode of a TV Series that is playing from my NAS on my mac through the only player on my Mac (I tried mpv, IINA and VLC) that is capable of playing 8k MKVs without hiccups - Infuse. That player is a port from an iPad app btw.
When I finished with my work I say "Hey, Siri, I'm done" and leave the room. Monitor's lightbar, other lights turns off. When it is getting dark my chosen lights turn on automatically, provided somebody's home. My printer doesn't consume electricity in the night because HomeKit automatically turns it off in the evening and turns it on in the morning. I don't need to worry about my daughter putting her fingers into shredder because it is always turned off. When I need it, I say "Hey Siri, turn on shredder". The shredder turns on and it then automatically turns off after 90 seconds.
When I get in my car I have a very nice screen on the dashboard that most of the time is capable of guessing where I'm about to go and suggests one-tap navigation. And the music starts playing from where I left off.
My photos are downloaded on several devices and backed up in the cloud. The albums are shared with my Mom who is very happy every time when I upload new photos of here granddaughter.
My private drm-free music collection is also uploaded to the cloud and synchronised to every device I've got.
I can say "Hey Siri, facetime Mom" and I'll see my mother's face over the distance of 17000km in a magnificent quality.
My books are synchronised and downloaded across all my devices as well and whenever I feel like reading one, it's right here. None of those books were bought from Apple btw, they are DRM-free.
The other day I was wondering if I should buy an iMac for my wife - would it fit in the kitchen or not? Well, there's AR technology on my phone that had no troubles presenting me how it would sit on the counter. Now there's also an AR app that helps me manage my arachnophobia.
I am an immigrant. In the past 5 years I had to do so many paperwork that it could fill a little closet. Luckily, compared to my peers I didn't have to print all of those PDFs out. I was able to sign them from my MacBook in Preview and using markup feature on my iPad.
I am also a software developer. I value and appreciate Unix core utils. Turns out my Mac is a certified Unix and I am able to automate a lot of things in my day-to-day job using small Unix tools that are imprinted into my fingers. All that while looking at _magnificent_ 4k monitor that delivers 100% of Adobe's gamut and doesn't make my eyes with weird font issues.
I love travelling into Australian Outback with my wife and we take some magnificent photos there with our iPhones without having to carry a lot of heavy equipment. We then are able to send this photos to each other whilst being completely off-the-grid, some hundreds of KM from nearest cell tower using AirDrop. It takes milliseconds. On the long drives my daughter can pick up here iPad and just watch some cartoons. iPad connects to the internet using my iPhone automatically when there's reception and Infuse has stuff that it downloaded form my Emby installation when there's none.
My podcasts are downloaded automatically without my intervention and put onto my watch. When I go for my walks I don't have to carry my phone. My watch and headphones suffice.
When I browse the web using my phone or my mac I don't see any advertisements and popups and auto-playing videos. Safari on my phone and mac is capable of having extensions and has APIs for adblocking applications. 1Blocker takes a good care of me when it comes to ads.
My phone provides me with tools to take care of my digital well-being. It lets me know which applications I used the most and when and lets me to block those applications for certain periods of time if I find an unhealthy habit.
I write my notes on my iPad. I don't need to cut trees anymore and it is more comfortable. With Notability I can zoom and cut my handwritten nodes and move them around and do all sorts of stuff I can't with regular pen and paper.
I recently bought an iPad for my Mom and added her into my Apple One subscription. Now she's in Russia and I'm in Australia and she is able to listen to her beloved old soviet decedent music virtually for free without needing to download it anywhere. I am calm and confident that she's safe using this device and probably of her getting scammed is quite a bit lower compare to any other device.
I'm looking forward to what other quality of life improvements Tim Cook's vision will bring to my life. I feel privileged that I have access to this magnificent technology and thankful for that.
If I pick up my Motorola I'll see that I can't even have an adblock for the default browser. And yet very soon my iPhone will receive an update that adds generic extensions support into safari. There's an extension that automatically changes amp links to real pages for example.
Android is open as it gets and yet somehow the diversity of software there is lacking. Try finding decent email client that is not Gmail and doesn't suck your data into cloud. iPhone has got multiple and one is OOB.
Thank you for not judging. In April this year one Sunday evening I realised that I've just spent about 40 hours over that weekend tinkering with my mutt and notmuch configuration instead of practicing smoking that beef roast as I wanted for some time
Monday morning I did several things:
- ordered mac mini M1 to replace my ThinkPad with Arch
- ordered iPhone to replace my rooted Motorola 5g Plus
- filed a ticket at work to switch myself from company issued precision 5540 with Arch to company issued 16 inch MacBook
- promised myself to never go that way again
I still am experiencing cravings sometimes. I saw someone made a Wayland port of dwm and immediately wanted to try it. Took a bit effort to distract myself from that and read a book instead.
I am a recovering addict and Keyboard Maestro is my replacement therapy
I did consider this. Having a single vendor is a risk factor. In my case it is mitigated by the fact that everything that is in their cloud is downloaded locally. Then it is backed up using time machine to my Synology and additionally syncthing also duplicates it there as simple files with history enabled. I believe our mitigated most of the risks. If I pull the router plug I'll still have access to my data. If my house burns down - I can download it from their cloud again.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
I really don't understand how people still think it is Sweeny's ideology playing here, when he literally emailed Apple for an exception for Epic alone.
