Deactivating after life

My last post about Apple's issues mostly called out other people's issues with Apple - primarly Stella's. Before I get to what I have to say, I want to explain one of her issues in more detail.

A license, not a purchase

Ownership of Apple devices has been a topic discussed in many circles for many years. As time has crept on, this topic has come up more and more. New advancements in Apple's technology has lead to bigger consequences and more issues, with no rectification.

It's probably decently safe to say that... ownership is just a term used for authenticating with the Secure Enclave, instead of actually being your property in practice.

There are many ways to prove this, but Apple helped cover a pretty damning piece of evidence earlier.

While the DTK wasn't supposed to be out in the wild, it shows what Apple is capable of doing. It shows how, at any moment, the guillotine can fall and you will have no recourse. Apple can deny as they please with no reprocussions, simply because you didn't pay to own. No matter how much money you give to them, that won't change. If it has Apple silicon, it's not yours.

Otherwise, you would have the ability to install whatever operating system you wanted without needing to ask Apple to verify it for you. You'd be able to run whatever code you wanted, with as many entitlements as you could dream of, with as much JIT as you need. You'd be able to run virtual machines with full performance on T8101 and T8103 and later without worrying about losing it with an update. You'd be able to tune the OS' visuals to your liking, have more granular control over what you want out of your experience. And you'd be able to use it at all without needing to make sure Apple says you can.

During her iPhone and MacBook Pro experiences, Stella became more and more aware of this fact, and she couldn't deal with it anymore. She ditched her multi-thousand dollar ecosystem buildup to find something that suited her better, and she did. She's still rocking her OnePlus 12 with Windows laptops, and recently added a OnePlus Pad 2 to the collection for tinkering and low-level mods. She can run the things she wants to run - true desktop apps and games, and has enjoyed every second of her experience with the OnePlus since she got it.

She owns her devices now, and the guillotine will fall on an empty space. As for me...

A customer, not a shill

As I said before, I don't plan on switching. Android and Windows aren't in a state that I feel comfortable daily driving them right now, and it's not out of the question for the future. By saying this though, and regardless of how anyone looks at it, this is acceptance and cope. I can't deny that in the end.

I say it all the time that I like to not consider myself an Apple shill. The differences between an Apple shill and I are that I can accept that Apple has a lot of glaring issues, and ones that make it very, very hard to recommend them to others. Now that I think of it, I've stopped recommending Apple to others... entirely. My love for Apple devices comes from how it feels to get into the juicy parts that Apple tries to keep close to their chest, while my feelings on them as a company are very disgruntled and angered at what they have become.

I made a promise to Stella that I was going to support her initiative against Apple's terrible practices by not buying anything new from them again. Because of the DTK situation, I'm also going to be more open to sharing and learning about Apple's internal stuff, and about the work I do that breaks every *OS EULA (and who knows, if I end up finding a 0day or exploit, I'll be sure to pass it along to the right people.)

A friend, not a foe

This post is for the creative people I know that have been wronged by Apple. For the crazy ones. For the the misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently. The ones who are truly making a difference on this restrictive ass set of platforms.

For osy, who saw the opportunity to bring virtual machines to iOS, but the JIT situation kept it out of most people's hands. Even when he did have a build for the App Store, they initially rejected it - until they were caught with their pants down in front of everyone and reversed course.

For JoeMatt, who has been losing money on a paid developer account by Provenance being delayed time and time again by App Store rules. He's starting to call it quits on the launch, and even development of the app for a bit because Apple's yearly $99 is taxxing... (I would know.)

For dosdude1, who was restoring broken parts and giving the DTKs a new lease on life. He had a few more DTKs he could have fixed before the news struck that no other DTKs would be repairable - ever.

For Duy, who brought Minecraft and Java to iOS for the first time, but in a way that uses private APIs and JIT, without money to spend on a developer agreement, and no real way to reach a wider audience with what is an amazing project.

For Stella, who had to deal with a painful development experience with AppIntents - a lack of documentation and basically reverse engineering to get the job done. Who also paid thousands reaching 5 figures to invest herself in the ecosystem and was burned badly.

For the countless voices that I don't know, and will likely never meet, that have been denied access, denied capabilities, denied their ideas because they didn't fit in with the agenda.

I feel your pain, and I stand with you.

Fuck you, Apple.
- Eva