They are gate keeping

Their hardware is just poor. They can charge whatever they like, I'm fortunate enough to not look at prices for that type of kit. Objectively, their hardware sucks compared to many other brands, especially at the same price point.

Their OS sucks for 90% of my use cases. If your "work" involves you just using a browser then yes you can use a big phone to get your work done. Slap an arm in a big case with a keyboard as a "pc" or a big screened arm for a tablet, or a small screen for a phone. But if you do anything where you use a computer, you need an x86 architecture and you need certain hardware capabilities. Over the time, they have all been lacking in performance even at the highest tier, and the price has been high end. Overall makes zero sense. The locked down *nix systems hide everything useful to make it pretty. Isn't compatible with real software. And isn't backwards compatible. I can install windows and my software from the mid 90s or 2000s or today and it just f'cking works. That's why Windows is king. Bloated absolutely. But it just works.

That doesn't make me hate the company. That just makes me sad for the uninformed people that get fooled into spending their hard earned money on sub optimal pieces of kit.

What makes me hate them is this game of "we just invented this new feature from 10 years ago!" and then all their fan bois go apeshit over it like they just stepped into the future. And they're too stupid to know they're being lied to and manipulated for profits. But they are also vocal and arrogant about their stupidity and ignorance, so I don't like them either.

My phone has more RAM, more storage, better screen, better camera, faster charging by an order of magnitude (120W wired, 50W wireless...), more radio transceivers for global connectivity, better battery life, and honestly looks better. There is not a single thing I prefer about an iPhone and there is not a single qualitative metric an iPhone beats my phone on.

My laptop has more RAM, more storage, better screen, better camera, faster and more charging, more ports, upgradability, and is a BEAST that will eat even mid range desktop computers. There is no equivalent Apple product. Not even close. And when you factor in the best and beefiest new macs can't even run my software, it's not even an option. Now my battery life sucks and it looks like a zombie movie prop, but it is actually functional. I can run a simulation or a LLM/ML algo that stresses the CPU at 100%, the Quadro RTX5000 at 100%, and gobbles up 120GB of system RAM plus the 16GB of VRAM writing TBs of data to the 5 internal M2 drives. And I can do so indefinitely with the temps peaking to 100C and limiting to about 300W of power draw. It blasts air out of 3 sides that I could probably cook an egg in. But it doesn't thermal limit after 5 mins of web browsing like the Macbooks or the Airs. It's a beast that is made to beast and it does. Apple can't even compete in the class.

For a tablet, I don't have a need. My phone gives me a giant screen and my tiny auxiliary laptop does everything I need. My aux laptop is beefier than most, but it would be slower than a top of the line mac doing basic tablet things of web browsing. If I did need a tablet I'd just get a Xiaomi Pad. But in general I feel that the entire tablet market is a solution looking for a problem that only exists because Apple and fan bois are idiots again. I've been taking notes on TabletPCs for 20 years now. Seriously, Windows XP had a tablet mode. As did every one after. My laptops have touch input. My laptops in university the screen swiveled and then laid flat on the keyboard with a stylus to write on the screen. All of those fancy new Apple pen features? I had them in 2005. Pressure sensitive, gyro enabled for brush strokes/widths. Eraser on the other end. It was capacitive and needed a proprietary pen which was evil to say then. Now that's Apple motto and they stole the idea and people are believing it's new.

If they release a good product, I'll try it. I'm not brand loyal. If they keep releasing shit, I'm going to keep calling them out.

Decide what good for me

OS and hardware potential to best the best but always something stupid and limiting

I’m not an Apple apologist, but I feel there are some things Apple does that are privacy focused.

• The ability to E2EE encrypt iCloud is a very simple privacy feature that is accessible to the technical and non-technical alike.
• Private relay provides a double VPN architecture that doesn’t cause constant captcha hell and again just works for non-technical people.
• Hide my email, while not being perfect, is a pretty straightforward method to make throwaway email addresses.

The things I hate about Apple are generally not privacy related.

• They are a mega-corporation that stifles innovation
• They don’t allow other browsers
• They are puritanical about what is allowed in the App store

In terms of privacy? What's the alternative? I'm sure that stock Android phones are way way worse in terms of privacy than any Apple device ever made.

Android is great in theory but the amount of pre-installed garbage, material design and Google / vendor powered spyware is way too much for my liking. I’m not saying that Apple doesn’t track things, because they do, but at least there’s no vendor garbage and you can go through the Settings and disable everything you don’t need, restrict Apps from running in the background etc. If you don’t upload your data into iCloud it will be way more private than the average Android phone.

Another thing I dislike about non-Apple phones is that, besides the Pixel and a few others, their bootloader and storage security is a joke, if someone gets your device you can assume they’ll get to your data.

GrapheneOS is great, it would be the one and only alternative to the mess that Android is however I can't daily drive that as it lacks features (nice things) I do want to have.