The walls of Apple’s garden are tumbling down

lol. No they aren’t.

Seriously, windows is about to release forced advertisements in the Start Menu. Windows 12 is going to be a shit show. People aren’t going to flock to Linux, they’re going to Apple. Think they have a lot of money now? Wait until they get more desktop market. They can afford to build another garden.

Say what you want about Apple, it’s probably true. But don’t pretend they don’t have gardens inside gardens.

The only way Apple will fall is if there is actual competition, and nothing is on the horizon.

The number of people who will leave windows over this stuff is trivial.
Apple has practically zero presence in enterprise (where one company can have 60,000 computers), and also practically zero in SMB.
Business software is written for windows. Even trying to use a Mac with the most basic office software is challenging - even if the exact same product exists in both.
People aren't flocking anywhere when their work machines are windows. Damn few people can be bothered with learning 2 ways to do things, especially when they're not interested in computing. I've been at this since before Mac existed, and while I can use OSX or iOS, I'm not wasting my limited learning time on something I rarely use, and can't really integrate with much of the rest I use.
Now let's look at some other arenas:
Legal - they all use a small set of document apps (which until recently was wordperfect), and some legal database apps. None of the database apps run on Mac as far as I've seen.
Engineering - there are practically no CAD apps for Mac. Some do exist, but again, even the ones that are on both Windows and Mac are problematic at best on Mac, typically unable to integrate with the back end.
Most people don't have the bandwidth to learn a new system just to avoid the shitty part of Windows (which only affects home users anyway). It takes less effort/time to figure out how to mitigate the Windows issues than to deal with a completely new system, that will also have issues integrating with other stuff they already have.
- Apple has practically zero presence in enterprise
  And they're not even trying as far as I'm concerned. Windows is dead easy to integrate something like device management software into or tie into central authentication or all sorts of enterprise goodies.
  Apples enterprise software and integration is complete and utter trash. The it just works "magic" only applies to consumer things, the magic is gone the second you even think about doing anything remotely enterprise.
  Got an Active Directory you want to integrate macOS with? Good luck. Want to use an apple alternative instead because you think it'll be better? Better get a time machine. Device management? Better get ready to jump through hoop after hoop for a maybe half working solution.
  I always say, Windows is an enterprise OS with consumer features and MacOS is a consumer OS with (half assed) enterprise "features".
- The issue in that whole proposition lies within this one single sentence
  Business software is written for windows
  Nowadays, practically all companies are moving towards either SaaS, or in house web services. The pandemic has killed native enterprise apps, for better or for worse.
  Windows only has decent presence because it's reasonably easy to integrated Windows machines into corporate structures. The moment Apple taps into that market, it's all over. We've seen that with Google basically ruining the school market for Microsoft by doing that, and it will happen again.
- Engineering
  Add to this lack of CUDA support, which is what pretty much all CAD runs on. Apple's Metal may be interesting, but that doesn't matter if the apps don't port to it.
  It'll be especially interesting to see how AI plays out. If NVIDIA ends up winning (they're currently way ahead), it'll be the same issue as with engineering, but in more disciplines.
- Well those people will just be ok with windows then. Heck, some people still run windows xp.
A good portion of windows users are corporate/business users. They're not going anywhere.
- https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/german-state-gov-ditching-windows-for-linux-30k-workers-migrating/
  We’ll see.
Hmm interesting thought. But how many people are going to actually buy new computers when they don't get updates? And of course how many will keep trucking with out of date windows? So for the one that buy a new computers, how many will just buy windows again? How many will have a tech savvy relative that can install Linux for them (because they can't afford a new computer)? How many will go to Chromebook because it's cheaper? Personally I never understood luxury brands, which I consider Apple to be.
- Chromebooks aren’t really a threat. People who can use chromebooks as a daily driver probably already are. Also, most of the hardware is absolute garbage.
  Apple isn’t all luxury. The Mac mini as fast af and starts at $599.
  Apple just doesn’t have a “shit” category, like many other manufacturers.
  Sure, a lot of people will choose Linux, but that won’t be a majority.
My neighbour randomly asked me a few months ago if I was familiar with Linux and if I could could get him some boot USB or something. I got him one with several options. He didn't have any Linux experience before, and isn't exactly a nerd.
It's much easier nowadays for someone to get familiar and use Linux than it was before, and it's much cheaper than reworking your whole tech ecosystem to accomodate Apple's monopoly.
- My elderly neighbor needed a computer to do accounting, I set her up with Mint on a T430 w/ LibreOffice and told her I'd giver her free support till the laptop died.
  5 years on and the only time I've had to fulfill my side of the bargain was when her printer was out of paper and she couldn't find her eye glasses to read the error message.
- In some cases this is true.
In addition to the other great points in this thread, Apple has a cost barrier that other operating systems don't.
In an economic climate where everything is getting more expensive, a consumer isn't going to fork out $800+ on a MacBook or an iPhone without first actively wanting to be part of the ecosystem, especially if the hardware they have gets the job done.
The reason Apple isn't growing as fast as it's competitors right now is exactly that. Apple is expensive to get into. No amount of enshitification on other OS's is going to change that.
- $599 is the entry point and the OS upgrade is free. Every app you might need is free. Like Pages, Numbers, Keynote. Etc.
  So, it’s a pretty good package. You can also run all the apps Linux would have.
  And while you might say they aren’t as popular, they sure have the money to ensure their products are up to date and secure.
  Also, my 2013 MacBook Air (i7, 16gb, 512gb)—Running Neon now—is still very usable. Find me a PC laptop that holds up like that for less money.

The “walled garden” is both what the average Apple customer wants, and what technophiles despise. Most iPhone users want the full assurance that they can download any app without performing research, knowing it won’t crash their indispensable device or track their every move. Say what you want about the limits of customization, it’s probably true, but Apple’s tight leash on software is precisely why iPhone is so reliable and private.

private, bro? are u kidding me?
- Yes. Apple has the best privacy policy in the industry.
  https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/
It’s interesting, because for my iPhone that is true. I was a bit concerned with the walled garden, but made the switch from Android because of privacy (not that Apple is perfect, just much better than Google). I can’t recall a single time when i wanted or needed more than what the iPhone offered.
But with my iPad there are multiple times when i wished i could run a local web dev environment, or run MacOS apps (it is using the save M1 as my computer after all)
- Agreed. I’m hoping the move to M chips for iPad Pro will come with some macOS software compatibility in the future.
- What about discovering and installing private app that don't use proprietary big tech service, including sending push notifications?
  On android this is very easy, you can just search and install apps from fdroid, where all apps has been manually audited to make sure there is no telemetry and proprietary dependencies, including network service dependency.
  Fdroid also build all the apps in their app store to prevent developers from secretly inject backdoors (think xz backdoor, and xcode ghost).
  I don't believe the fdroid model works in Apple's walled garden.
I don't totally agree but you're definitely onto something there. I will absolutely never be simpathetic to that vision, but you're right that Apple knows their audience.
If you throw a linux OS to an average user, they would want to download app from the web instead of installing from app store. Average user don't "want" to download app from the app store, they do that because they are "told" to do so.
I don't believe most average user "love" anything, they only want their device to "work", no matter what the privacy, security, and environmental concerns are. Plus apple's repeated propaganda, which makes many people believe that Apple is reasonably private and eco-conscious.
I think one of the best decision apple has ever made is to start shitty and thus never enshittify. After a while, people accepted the shittiness of apple; yet Windows continuing to enshittify by putting ads everywhere, thus people feel like their old and good experiences have been taken away from them.
I an obviously not saying Windows is better than macOS, they are both shitty in different ways. But I feel like Window's recent enshittification in some way contributed to the recent decline of Windows and rise of macOS.

Apple's history of being walled garden is interesting.

So in the 80s and 90s, Apple tried the wall garden approach. And it absolutely failed. The IBM clones won out, with software and all that that worked across vendors and platforms. The hardware and software could be separated, so Apple's approach of both and closed didn't work.

Then Apple languished for decades.

Then with smartphones you had this product where the hardware and software needed to be tightly integrated. And tight integration was necessary to give a high functioning, small, compact device, where you needed the software to be highly optimized for the specific hardware.

I find it fascinating that Apple has stuck with the same formula for decades of wall garden and control of both hardware and software. That business model failed spectacularly, then treaded water, and then succeeded spectacularly. I think none of which was from an insightful or brilliant business analysis, it was just how the stubbornness played out.

So as for where it will go from here, I think who knows. Phone hardware is now powerful enough that you don't need the same hardware and software vendor where it needs to be so tightly controlled. But Apple has built itself a nice market which is kind of self sustaining. Will people care about prices again?

So in the 80s and 90s, Apple tried the wall garden approach.
Wat. In the 90s Apple literally had officially sanctioned "clones". https://everymac.com/systems/mac-clones/index-mac-clones.html
- From 1995-1998, Apple authorized other
  So after they lost and were scrambling. I expect at steep control, licensing fees, and hardship coming from Apple. A measly 3 years, I can't see how they committed to the concept - I expect most people made the same judgment call (and were right). (Different read was Jobs was fired from Apple from 1985-1997, so maybe he killed it after returning). I also never heard of it (not that I'm an expert) so I expect it was a very big 'too little, too late' situation.

Or everyone is starting to figure out that the garden looks just as good outside the fence as it does inside the fence. Technology has been converging for many years now to the point where most devices especially smart phones have reached a bottleneck and no one can make things go any faster and there is really no big need for even more massive storage space for the average person. So phones have hit a ceiling and the place that Apple once had where they were one of the few manufacturers that made good phones is now overshadowed by lots of other companies that are comparable or near comparable. Does the average person really care if they have a high definition 20MP camera or a 22 MP camera. All they care about is being able to scroll through Tik Tok, FB or Instagram and no one really seems to care what device they use to do that any more.

Apple still has a pretty solid ecosystem that makes it hard to break out of. For example:
airdrop and sharing in general - experience sucks pretty much anywhere else
watch, phone, and laptop all working together - iMessage, notifications, etc
iCloud - the experience is essentially seamless if you use all Apple products
I don't think people will be leaving Apple anytime soon, and those who don't use it probably don't know what they're missing.
I'm personally on Linux and it works well for me, but I recognize that people tend to stay where they're at, and I think Apple is probably more attractive to people who decide to leave Windows than Linux is (unless they need games, and Linux still seems to have better compatibility).
- From a technical point of view I agree .. I have a few friends who work in music and visual arts and they swear by Apple products and software
  But to average users and people who just want to go online with social media, snap a picture, share it, forget it and do it over and over and over again ... they really don't care if it's an apple product or not. The family and friends I know that are not technically minded only understand one key technological specification when it comes to devices ..... PRICE and COST.
  If they can't afford a $1,000 apple phone .... they'll buy a $500 android phone ... or just stick to their five year apple phone and won't upgrade until they can buy a used $500 apple phone.
Next tech is probably going to be dedicated GPUs or similar to run personalized AI
- It's already here. I run AI models via my GPU with training data from various sources for both searching/GPT-like chat and images. You can basically point-and-click and do this with GPT4All which integrates a chat client and let's you just select some popular AI models without knowing how to really do anything or use the CLI. It basically gives you a ChatGPT experience offline using your GPU if it has enough VRAM or CPU if it doesn't for whatever particular model you're using. It doesn't do images I don't think but there are other projects out there that simplify doing it using your own stuff.

I'm glad we are finally treating phones like the mini computers they are, they should be free as in freedom just like'em.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

So it’s been doing the logical thing for years, which is finding other ways to make money, and it’s been largely successful, particularly as it added the App Store and services like Apple Music.

And smaller developers struggled to find a business model that worked between Apple’s commission fees and strict guidelines over how and when it could charge customers for their product.

Microsoft recognized that Java could make porting software from Windows to other systems easier, so it sabotaged Sun’s efforts and instructed its allies not to aid the company.

Apple responded to the pressure by promising to support RCS on the iPhone — a standard that updates the relatively ancient SMS/MMS protocol and includes more iMessage-like features.

The other shoe fell last month when the US Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple for operating an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market.

But that’s unlikely to be the end of it — app developers aren’t happy with the company’s “malicious compliance” to new rules under the DMA, and European regulators are investigating Apple’s response.

The original article contains 2,020 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 91%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Honestly I'd be truly thrilled if they were merely forced to open up iMessage. I'd be a huge quality of life improvent for people who don't want to daily drive an iPhone but have to keep in contact with Americans.

And for those living in the US with Androids.

Good.

Switched over to Pop!_OS from MacOS a few years ago. While there aren't a ton of open source mobile options, I decided to go with GrapheneOS over iOS. Fuck walled gardens.