> No matter how you frame it, x86 is still the performance and compatibility king.

I'm not up to date with the latest benchmarks, but last time I checked, the M1 family is near the top in raw performance, and completely destroying everything else in perf per watt (CPU and GPU) - at competitive prices.

The compatibility angle is pretty interesting. I've been using an M1 Mac for about a year, and the only time I notice that I'm not on an x86 system, is when I run Electron apps compiled for x86 only. (I think it shows just how bad of an idea it is to ship JIT kitchen sinks as "native" apps, but it's an entirely different topic.) Surprisingly enough, the ARM build of Windows 11 in Parallels also does a pretty good job of running x86 software, including even some pretty dated games (like Soldat). GPU works really well too - Edge in Parallels beats native Safari on shadertoy.com.

Of course I'd rather see software that is actually portable and built natively, but honestly, I'm just impressed with what these companies have pulled.

> I think this is more about Apple increasing their profit margins by re-using their ISA licensing from their phones/tablets.

I don't mind Apple increasing their profit margins, if other parties benefit as well. Consider the impact on the wider software ecosystem. Software is usually difficult to port to a second platform, because the developer was hardcoding some assumptions. Often porting to a secondary architecture, OS, or platform will lay the groundwork to remove many of these assumptions, and enable porting to other systems. Portability tends to contribute to software quality, and having more software available benefits the users of the secondary platforms. As I said: everyone wins.

> [...] in that sense the App Store does prevent you from ingesting third-party software or running arbitrary code on your own device.

This is technically incorrect. You don't need the App Store to run arbitrary code on your iPad/iPhone - you only need a Mac and XCode. Which is either better or worse, depending on your POV.

And again - you can now write iPad apps on an iPad. You still need to jump all the hoops to distribute it on the App Store, but if you consider the work it takes to e.g. have it included in Debian repositories, or OpenBSD ports, it's roughly equivalent. "You can bring your toys to my playground, but we still play by my rules."

> They say they're protecting user privacy by hashing your cloud photos with a neural network.

I 100% agree with you on this one. The premise looks innocent: iCloud Photos is opt-in, and Apple is doing Apple by moving their CPU-bound workloads away from clouds and onto user devices. Technically this is fine: nothing is being scanned that wasn't already being scanned server-side. But just having the mechanism at all is scary, it has a lot of potential to bring harm, and it's a very dangerous precedent.

> If they give you less capabilities with each update and say it's making you safer, I don't think I'd take their word entirely at face value [...]

I'm not taking that at face value, but I will blame their "honest" incompetence, carelessness, and ignorance before I will accuse them of malice. They often rewrite stuff for the sake of rewriting it, and break "edge" cases that thousands of people rely on. The cries the the thousands drown in a billion sales though.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Ajwz.org+fucking+apple

> Want the standard GNU coreutils? Of course they're not built in, go grab a package manager and download them posthaste!

Same on every BSD. macOS is just staying true to its roots ;)

> Oh, you wanted Bash to be up-to-date?

Notice that macOS' Bash is the final GPL-2 release. This is entirely on FSF working overtime to make redistributing their software more annoying. One of the reasons why I'm a big fan of the BSDs, is that they take this no-bullshit approach to redistribution: the license has to answer one simple question, "can I use this?", preferably in a few very short sentences.

Personally, I'd stay away from Bash. If an otherwise POSIXly kosher shell script becomes hairy enough to call for Bash's extensions, I will label it a monster and rewrite it in Python. ZSH and (OpenBSD) KSH both make much nicer interactive shells too.

> Apple is flighty, they do crazy things in the blink of an eye and everyone else is forced to just go along.

Agree on that. "Our playground, our rules", often taken to an extreme. Which is also why I like voting with my wallet, and keeping an alternative around (OpenBSD on my laptop). If I don't like an Apple toy, I simply don't buy it.

> It's why I end up developing more on Linux than I do on Mac.

Which explains why you're having such a hard time with systems that don't include the non-standard GNU or Linux extensions. I develop and/or test across five different OS+arch combinations, which often catches bugs and hardcoded assumptions. I often wonder if it's worth it, but then remember how monocultures tend to just rot.