Just wanted to say that I like your username :)

OK, no worries.

(Also, I didn’t downvote your comment btw)

Are you sure that Feedly is open source? I can’t find any mention of it on their website.

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.“

Haha. I thoroughly enjoyed this comment. It was so well-written. Thank you for writing this.

Apple devices are only more “private” in the sense that the prevent third parties from collecting your data (don’t get me wrong, this is great), but then proceed to go and collect the same data for their own uses instead.

While I accept that Apple are far from perfect, my understanding is that even their data collection for their own purposes is still less than the data collection that Google use for their own purposes. And since their are only two major phone OS (Android and iOS), we can only choose between the lesser of the two evils.

After all, do you want to give your data to a company which is the world’s biggest ad company? Or instead give your data to a company whose business model is convincing people to buy $1000+ phone every year?

But yeah, I agree that Apple’s anti-consumer practices are awful. I wasn’t aware of the aftermarket parts re-using chips just for the serial numbers and I’m not even the least bit surprised. We need governments to bring in legislation to protect right to repair, because companies like Apple can’t be reasonable.

I hate the tribalism regarding Apple products. There are loyal fanboys who won’t hear a bad word about Apple, and then there are Apple haters who criticise everything about them.

I wish we had some more nuance in this debate. The reality is that there are advantages and disadvantages to Apple products. I’ll outline a few:

Advantages

• Long iOS support. Typically you can expect an iPhone to be supported for 5-7 years, which is well above the average in the industry.
• No bloatware or adverts on the iPhone
• Better privacy than Google Android/Microsoft Windows
• High-end hardware, e.g. M1 chip in MacBooks.
• User friendly design. Nice user experience.

Disadvantages

• Overpriced. Seriously all Apple products are more expensive than the competition.
• Anti-consumer business practices that influence the industry. They normalised removing the headphone jack and using non-removable batteries, which other manufacturers followed. Another anti-consumer practice is using their proprietary Lighting port, rather than USB (luckily the EU should be forcing them to adopt USB-C and removable batteries soon). Also, no SD card slot because they want you to use iCloud
• Walled garden. No support for side-loading apps
• Required to use iTunes to add/remove music to the iPhone, which is a problem if you use Linux (you’d have to use Wine to install the Windows version as a workaround)