What would make you leave Apple?

[QCassidy352]

It’s pretty hard to imagine. I’ve been an Apple user since the LC III. I don’t think they get things 100% right, but I think they come a lot closer than anyone else (certainly than Google, which is the main alternative).

 

[Mrbiggestman]

My biggest gripe with Apple in recent years is all of the security overhead. I feel like I am constantly entering a password, confirming my identity, etc. Perhaps it's just as miserable on other platforms, but I've really grown tired of all this security theater in general, whether it's in the TSA line or on my Apple device. I'm also really tired of constant UI changes. Every major version gets tons of unnecessary marketing-driven UI tweaks. Today's Apple is totally undisciplined when it comes to UI/UX and it really shows.

I was a huge Apple fanboy for many decades, but I've lost my love for the company and would definitely switch if something better existed. More than anything, what keeps me in the Apple ecosystem are the Apple services like iCloud Photos and iCloud Music Library. I have a huge collection of audio files (ripped CDs, FLAC, etc) and Apple's Music app is the only app/service that integrates one's personal library with streaming. I love how seamlessly Music and Photos manage my music and photo libraries across all of my devices. I have yet to see apps/services on other platforms that work this well.

That said, I'm an Apple customer because of the Mac. I could easily switch to an Android phone and I wouldn't notice much difference, but the Mac is still the best desktop experience. Unfortunately, each version of macOS is more locked down than the previous one. The writing is clearly on the wall. I'm tired of all of the bugs. I'm tired of the constant UI changes that don't improve the user experience. But, despite how far Apple has fallen, it's still the best platform so I stay, for now.

One thing I am ever grateful for is not going into tech ecosystems cause they are the biggest financial and psychological traps imo.

 

[Brother Cavil]

I buy my phones outright and unlocked from Apple. On a 3 to 4 year refresh. I do this so I can change carriers at will and not enter carrier contracts. I went from paying $145 or so per month for two lines with Verizon to $46/mo with US Mobile in 2020 (plan is unlimited talk/text/high speed data and 50GB tethering - and more tethering data and international data are dirt cheap). US Mobile lets me switch to which network I want whenever I want to and they offer AT&T, Tmo, and Verizon networks. I currently use Verizon’s network but when I visit Seattle colleagues, I switch to Tmo as it seems to work better downtown. There may be use cases for people to use/pay for AT&T, Tmo, or Verizon, but I’ll never use them again as the service I get with an NVMO has been just as good at least in my case.

I do the same. Unlocked phone and keep it for 4 years. I'm going to check out US Mobile. I like the idea of being able to switch networks, although Visible has been very reliable for me where ever I go. I use a lot of bandwidth and performance has been great. When my cable service goes out at home during a storm, I switch to my phone's hotspot and have no problem watching TV. Like you, I'll never go back to AT&T, Verizon or Tmo either. I basically save enough every year to buy a new iPhone every year if I wanted to.

 

[Lioness~]

🤣🤣🤣

Left the users? So who is spending all of that money on Apple products, producing record sales quarter after quarter??? I'm baffled!!

It's totally possible to buy some products without having any attachment to the company, whatsoever.
I buy a lot of products without caring or even have any interest at all about the company behind products.

 

[ab2c4]

I haven't left "Apple" as I still have and enjoy using my Macbook Pro and Apple TV, however yesterday I left iphone and switched to Samsung. My deal breakers with iphone were the poor typing experience and the lack of an on screen navigation bar. I have been using iphones with gestures for 6.5 years, hated the gesture navigation back when I got an iphone 11 at the time, and hated it all the way up to yesterday when I got rid of my iphone Air. I do not understand why Apple can't offer as an option that its up to you if you want to enable it or not, an on screen navigation bar at the bottom like Android has.

So not only is Apple loosing my iphone purchases, but also Apple Care, earbuds, and watch purchases as well. Now that I have a Samsung phone there is no point even buying future AirPod Pro's. All because they insist everyone uses their gestures instead of offering a simple, optional, navigation bar.

 

[Brother Cavil]

One thing I am ever grateful for is not going into tech ecosystems cause they are the biggest financial and psychological traps imo.

I don't share that view. I think it's a bit cynical. These tech ecosystems provide a lot of value. I find a great deal of value in Apple Music, for example. For less than the cost of a single CD back in the day, I have access to most of the world's recorded music. I used to buy a lot of CDs. Apple Music is a much better value. Unlike other music services, Apple's music service integrates perfectly with my massive ripped library too. I don't feel trapped. I could switch to another music service or I could stop using a music service altogether.

 

[conmee]

I do the same. Unlocked phone and keep it for 4 years. I'm going to check out US Mobile. I like the idea of being able to switch networks, although Visible has been very reliable for me where ever I go. I use a lot of bandwidth and performance has been great. When my cable service goes out at home during a storm, I switch to my phone's hotspot and have no problem watching TV. Like you, I'll never go back to AT&T, Verizon or Tmo either. I basically save enough every year to buy a new iPhone every year if I wanted to.

Just FYI: I pay annually $276/line. I think it may be $25 or $27 per month if you pay per month. They give a small discount for annual payments.

 

[ab2c4]

I want to switch right now, and just haven't got around to it. Leasing an Iphone 18 pro might keep me in Apple for another year though.

I was like you the last two years. I kept wanting to go back to Android but I kept giving iphones "one more chance" over and over again. I switched to Samsung yesterday and honestly I should have made that switch sooner.

 

[Brother Cavil]

It's totally possible to buy some products without having any attachment to the company, whatsoever.
I buy a lot of products without caring or even have any interest at all about the company behind products.

What's your point? You said Apple left its users and only cares about shareholders, but I don't see that. I see a ton of people who love their Apple products. Apple is obviously delivering great products for those users. The tired "only cares about shareholders" refrain is really played out. Apple's #1 priority is their users. No users, no sales, no company. The fact that people love the products and keep buying them says it all.

 

[conmee]

I was like you the last two years. I kept wanting to go back to Android but I kept giving iphones "one more chance" over and over again. I switched to Samsung yesterday and honestly I should have made that switch sooner.

Did you go foldable?

 

[Lioness~]

I haven't left "Apple" as I still have and enjoy using my Macbook Pro and Apple TV, however yesterday I left iphone and switched to Samsung. My deal breakers with iphone were the poor typing experience and the lack of an on screen navigation bar. I have been using iphones with gestures for 6.5 years, hated the gesture navigation back when I got an iphone 11 at the time, and hated it all the way up to yesterday when I got rid of my iphone Air. I do not understand why Apple can't offer as an option that its up to you if you want to enable it or not, an on screen navigation bar at the bottom like Android has.

So not only is Apple loosing my iphone purchases, but also Apple Care, earbuds, and watch purchases as well. Now that I have a Samsung phone there is no point even buying future AirPod Pro's. All because they insist everyone uses their gestures instead of offering a simple, optional, navigation bar.

My next phone will most likely not be an iPhone, but as I gave my mini a new battery resently, I'm good for awhile. I came from Samsung to iPhone, and I like what I see in Samsung Flip-phones today.

 

[bbrks]

For me it's very simple....I am to old to change anything...it's simply all Apple I have.

 

[AppleTO]

If a better ecosystem comes along I might try it. Right now it's either Apple or Google, and Android tablets and Chromebooks are nowhere near the quality of iPads and MacBooks. It's as simple as that.

But I don't only use Apple. I also have a Windows desktop that I use for a lot of software that doesn't run on Macs. I can easily remote into it from my MacBook wherever I am.

 

[Mrbiggestman]

I don't share that view. I think it's a bit cynical. These tech ecosystems provide a lot of value. I find a great deal of value in Apple Music, for example. For less than the cost of a single CD back in the day, I have access to most of the world's recorded music. I used to buy a lot of CDs. Apple Music is a much better value. Unlike other music services, Apple's music service integrates perfectly with my massive ripped library too. I don't feel trapped. I could switch to another music service or I could stop using a music service altogether.

yes but that's one part of their services that apple provides in which it doesn't affect you, i mean I don't use many of apple's services myself. it will only affect you once you move out from their hardware products then it starts getting difficult because there is a component that is missing. Its much of the same reason why I use a macbook air and 3 different android branded phones/tablets since I can leave one brand and hop to another to another without burden.

 

[Brother Cavil]

yes but that's one part of their services that apple provides in which it doesn't affect you, i mean I don't use many of apple's services myself. it will only affect you once you move out from their hardware products then it starts getting difficult because there is a component that is missing. Its much of the same reason why I use a macbook air and 3 different android branded phones/tablets since I can leave one brand and hop to another to another without burden.

I don't really see that. If I leave Apple, I still own all of my ripped music and could move that library to another device or platform and use a different music service. Same with my photos, my documents, etc. None of these files are locked to Apple in any way. I can move my iCloud Drive documents over to Dropbox. I can dump my photo library into Google Photos. Etc. Since I use Apple devices, I choose Apple's ecosystem for obvious reasons, but I'm hardly trapped.

 

[ClaraStahlbaum]

I was like you the last two years. I kept wanting to go back to Android but I kept giving iphones "one more chance" over and over again. I switched to Samsung yesterday and honestly I should have made that switch sooner.

What is still holding me back is the fact that if I go back to Samsung, I will have to have an all new family group chat created because of Imessage. Apple's grip on messaging is unfair to consumers and I strongly dislike how they have made it difficult to switch.

 

[capamac]

100%. The Board ultimately runs the show and if they're not happy with the CEO's performance, they'll fire him. Apple is a very mature company at this point. Untold millions of people are invested in Apple through their retirement accounts. Apple prints money, breaking records quarter after quarter. Ternus might prove to be a great CEO, but he certainly isn't going to make any major changes to how Apple operates.

A few quotes:

“Hewlett Packard … was the ethical basis of how you wanted to build your company. A company that was based on values. Not based on just making money. HP had the “HP Way” and they had a list of their values. And the first one was we need to make a profit or we can’t keep this company going. But after that they got into how they want to treat individuals and conduct their corporate life. And it’s very idealistic in my opinion. so we [early Apple] were very much influenced by that. “ - Steve Jobs.

"When Jobs and his small team designed the original Macintosh, in the early 1980s, his injunction was to make it “insanely great.” He never spoke of profit maximization or cost trade-offs. “Don’t worry about price, just specify the computer’s abilities,” he told the original team leader ... in the long run he got the balance right: Focus on making the product great and the profits will follow."

“John Sculley, who ran Apple from 1983 to 1993, was a marketing and sales executive from Pepsi. He focused more on profit maximization than on product design after Jobs left, and Apple gradually declined. “I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies,” Jobs told me: They make some great products, but then the sales and marketing people take over the company, because they are the ones who can juice up profits. “When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don’t matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off. It happened at Apple when Sculley came in, which was my fault, and it happened when Ballmer took over at Microsoft.”

Sources: https://tuck.dartmouth.edu/uploads/cib/documents/The_Real_Leadership_Lessons_of_Steve_Job.pdf

 

[Brother Cavil]

A few quotes:

“Hewlett Packard … was the ethical basis of how you wanted to build your company. A company that was based on values. Not based on just making money. HP had the “HP Way” and they had a list of their values. And the first one was we need to make a profit or we can’t keep this company going. But after that they got into how they want to treat individuals and conduct their corporate life. And it’s very idealistic in my opinion. so we [early Apple] were very much influenced by that. “ - Steve Jobs.

"When Jobs and his small team designed the original Macintosh, in the early 1980s, his injunction was to make it “insanely great.” He never spoke of profit maximization or cost trade-offs. “Don’t worry about price, just specify the computer’s abilities,” he told the original team leader ... in the long run he got the balance right: Focus on making the product great and the profits will follow."

“John Sculley, who ran Apple from 1983 to 1993, was a marketing and sales executive from Pepsi. He focused more on profit maximization than on product design after Jobs left, and Apple gradually declined. “I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies,” Jobs told me: They make some great products, but then the sales and marketing people take over the company, because they are the ones who can juice up profits. “When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don’t matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off. It happened at Apple when Sculley came in, which was my fault, and it happened when Ballmer took over at Microsoft.”

Sources: https://tuck.dartmouth.edu/uploads/cib/documents/The_Real_Leadership_Lessons_of_Steve_Job.pdf

Good quotes, but how do any of these apply to today's Apple? Apple was a 300B company when Jobs died. It's a 4.6T company today, so Cook's obviously no Sculley. The public obviously loves Apple products because they keep buying them and Apple keeps reporting record numbers quarter after quarter.

 

[ab2c4]

Did you go foldable?

No, I got the 6.3" S26.

 

[capamac]

I feel Apple's on the decline, so I'm exploring options to leave Apple at present. Currently trying out Xubuntu, Debian, NetBSD 11, FreeBSD on my machines. At present I am favoring FreeBSD, because I've been a NetBSD user since 1998 or so. But FreeBSD is similar and FreeBSD (and Linux) support tap-to-click and two-finger scroll on trackpads, while NetBSD does not support those trackpad features. Trackpad does work on NetBSD but it acts more like a standard mouse. In fact, if I were using a mouse, either on a laptop or desktop, NetBSD would be 100 percent fine. Thus I consider NetBSD to be more of an ideal desktop OS, and suboptimal for laptop use.

Also explored various desktop environments and window managers: Gnome, OpenBox, Sway, XFCE, several others. Currently focusing on LabWC, possibly using waybar for date and time and other information along with nwg-dock for launching favorite applications.

Such a combination is highly configurable, with a zillion options. Apple doesn't provide this variety; one gets stuck with Apple's questionable recent design choices.

For people who do not want to mess with a manual configuration, I like what XFCE does. Gnome also isn't bad. XFCE is lighter while Gnome is heavier.

These alternative OSes and UIs are getting better ... I think they're making Apple's moat less and less formidable.

Edit: as a user, it doesn't concern me how profitable Apple is, or how many retirement funds it pays into. I am only interested in the product, what it does and doesn't do. How "heavy" the OS is, with a lighter OS being preferable. MacOS 26/27 have both Liquid Glass and days-long Siri indexing bogging down these M-series chips, chips that *should* be snappy. Also disappointed with Apple's lack of backbone e.g. "Lake America" on maps.

 

[ab2c4]

What is still holding me back is the fact that if I go back to Samsung, I will have to have an all new family group chat created because of Imessage. Apple's grip on messaging is unfair to consumers and I strongly dislike how they have made it difficult to switch.

I am fortunately not in that situation. My wife is the only iphone user, my entire family are all Android users.

 

[ClaraStahlbaum]

I feel Apple's on the decline, so I'm exploring options to leave Apple at present. Currently trying out Xubuntu, Debian, NetBSD 11, FreeBSD on my machines. At present I am favoring FreeBSD, because I've been a NetBSD user since 1998 or so. But FreeBSD is similar and FreeBSD (and Linux) support tap-to-click and two-finger scroll on trackpads, while NetBSD does not support those trackpad features. Trackpad does work on NetBSD but it acts more like a standard mouse. In fact, if I were using a mouse, either on a laptop or desktop, NetBSD would be 100 percent fine. Thus I consider NetBSD to be more of an ideal desktop OS, and suboptimal for laptop use.

Also explored various desktop environments and window managers: Gnome, OpenBox, Sway, XFCE, several others. Currently focusing on LabWC, possibly using waybar for date and time and other information along with nwg-dock for launching favorite applications.

Such a combination is highly configurable, with a zillion options. Apple doesn't provide this variet; one gets stuck with Apple's questionable recent design choices.

For people who do not want to mess with a manual configuration, I like what XFCE does. Gnome also isn't bad. XFCE is lighter while Gnome is heavier.

I am fortunately not in that situation. My wife is the only iphone user, my entire family are all Android users.

The main reason why I got Apple Products is since at the time I was amazed at the idea of getting my texts on my computer. Now that Google has that, I can get my texts on any computer through google messages as far as I am aware. I have tried out Ubuntu in the past, and it seems like that would be the potential Linux path for me - though ther ease of the Mac with the touch ID is something I don't know that can be replicated on a Linux Machine, plus I like my Apple Mouse and Keyboard.

So it seems for me, I am only exploring getting out of Iphone. Whether I actually make that choice or not remains to be seen.

 

[BSDnostalgia]

I feel Apple's on the decline, so I'm exploring options to leave Apple at present. Currently trying out Xubuntu, Debian, NetBSD 11, FreeBSD on my machines. At present I am favoring FreeBSD, because I've been a NetBSD user since 1998 or so.

I think many are dissatisfied with Apple's direction right now-- it seems like it wants to become Adobe, with all revenue deriving from rent-seeking inspired subscription service lockins.

OTOH, I find it difficult to ignore Apple's success with Apple Silicon, using cell-phone SoC volume manufacturing to support an inspired line of architectural improvements, and, including security improvements, as summarized here: https://support.apple.com/en-lk/guide/security/sec87716a080/web The AS system I'm typing on right now is fast, cool, quiet, and, is part of a continuum of improving security features. I wish other companies could make as much of a goal of fast-cool-quiet-secure as Apple has.

 

[capamac]

I have read that Intel's Panther Lake cpus are comprable to Apple M-series in terms of performance and operating temperature. Apparently M is still faster per watt, but Panther Lake ain't shabby. And if Apple's bogging down it's otherwise fast M chips with Siri and "AI" and eye candy ... well that extra speed is essentially largely wasted right.

There's this great Jobs speech at MIT where he said "Hardware churns every 18 months. It's pretty impossible to get a sustainable competitive advantage from hardware ... and it only last for six months. But software seems to take a lot longer for people to catch up with." IMO, Panther Lake has proved this to be largely true. M's advantage is largely nullified now.

 

[BSDnostalgia]

IMO, Panther Lake has proved this to be largely true. M's advantage is largely nullified now.

To me, any system running Windows is at a disadvantage right there, but, "that's me". I'd much rather be on MacOS. As it happens, I had to do some Windows11 sysadmin stuff recently. It never fails to surprise me what people put up with on Windows. But, I am interested in seeing Linux get going on the new generation of ARM-based PCs that are coming out now. That should be fun.

Back to your comment: while not everyone thinks that hardware parity has been achieved: https://www.macworld.com/article/30...-388h-vs-m5-performance-battery-graphics.html , what it comes down to is whether you take "Windows" to be the default. https://www.pcworld.com/article/303...9-388h-review-epic-graphics-battery-life.html I don't. And, I see Intel at a disadvantage, in general, because cell-phone-processors are currently driving the hardware development process, and Apple, Samsung, and a host of Chinese companies are riding that wave, and, Intel and AMD are not.