> Remember: the only people who could use an alternative iOS store are Apple customers. Moore – a Minister from the Conservative Party – went on record saying that if you want to use your private, personal property in ways that the corporation that manufactured it objects to you, the government should step in to defend the corporation from you.

If anyone actually really cares that strongly, then eventually Apple will add support to replace the main App Store, but only for apps that are actually installable on the architecture for M3 or Rosetta...there may be legitimate technical constraints. Remember, these are products. If you're buying the machine with the expectation that you can install and do everything from source and customize everything, then you need a different product.

Should a MBP with Mac OS be customizable in every setting? That's not something the users, even the power users, really seem to care about otherwise you'd see them asking for it. Instead I see more commentary from those who want the access for other reasons...

As long as developers are not blocked from releasing their code, assuming it isn't malicious code, then users will not care if they can't install something from the Android Store or other stores...

> This is not the property-worshiping, market-based ideology the Conservative Party claims to support. The only way to square that circle is if somehow, the people who want to install apps on their phones without the manufacturer's approval are not really customers.

Is there data on how many iOS users actually care about another store?

> Think of Apple's years-long war on repair. When Apple gets a veto over where you fix the small, slippery, glass object you carry everywhere and hence break a lot, they can get up to all kinds of mischief. They can gouge you on parts and service charges, sure. But they can also simply rule out fixing your device at all, declaring it beyond repair.

> This prompts you to buy another gadget from them, and they get to offer you a trade-in. That means that your old gadget gets "recycled" by Apple, who – uniquely among electronics manufacturers – drops all its "recycled" gadgets in giant shredders, ensuring that parts from old phones don't find their way into the secondary market for use by independent repair

Sounds good from a security point of view. I want anyone who touches my devices for repair to follow documented, monitored, understood processes for what to do with the device during repair and how to dispose of the device if being recycled. Bummer in the edge case where sometimes they won't repair something...that happened to me with my M1 MBP back when the keyboard was completely gone. I could've repaired it myself with a new keyboard but I did decide to upgrade because it was time even though it wouldn't have been that bad to replace the keyboard myself.

If you want something truly wild weest and open, why not aim for a Linux machine that you maintain on your own? If expecting something from someone else's labor, you'll need to accept that sometimes they can decline to work on your projects or repairs if it's deemed reasonably beyond what they repair...

> Apple's religious adherents stepped into insist that Apple customers preferred to get their iPhone fixed by Apple and its approved depots.

I personally prefer Apple to handle all repairs and if they make a judgment that something is not feasible or not supported on their end, I'll make a call if I repair it myself. But I don't care about using third parties to repair an Apple device, or for that matter any computer I have. I will even repair screens myself if I have to, because I prefer that versus risking my code or projects or keys leaking or being tampered with in any way. Sounds to me like Apple's approach guarantees customer security this way and having gone through three support needs so far for a repair, a reset, and a request for a repair that got rejected, I will keep giving Apple money for new products when it's time to upgrade again. Apple makes great stuff.

> The chorus of credulous, faithful shouters gives Apple enormous cover to get up to the worst behavior. Apple keeps making announcements about its commitment to repair that get trumpeted to the heavens, even though these announcements barely bother to cover up how Apple will continue to block repair in practice:

I have AppleCare on the 16" M1 MBP I have right now and they paid for an expensive repair for me. They did reject a past repair as mentioned before but that's when I agreed and upgraded to this one. I trust Apple's judgment so far based on my experiences with them. Great products.

Microsoft had a great policy too back when they had Microsoft Stores.

> Apple refused to weaken its security for the FBI, but when China threatened its access to cheap manufacturing and hundreds of millions of customers, Apple eviscerated its products

I believe this is very over-stated considering that Apple is also employing a lot of Indian firms and technologists to build more and more there and in other places as well. In the long run I do not see Apple risking their largest customer bases for the slower Chinese market if they end up having to choose. This is because they know that this choice would represent a bigger supply chain risk.

Not sure about Apple's data harvesting practices, I rely on the official product promises on their product pages for this and if there are higher quality sources showing proof of nefarious behaviors or excessive data collection, I'll definitely pay attention to those.

> And then there's iMessage, Apple's default messaging service – "default" in the sense that there's no way to use other messaging apps without taking additional steps. IMessage has end-to-end encryption – but only when you're communicating with other Apple customers. The instant an Android user is added to a chat or group chat, the entire conversation flips to SMS, an insecure, trivially hacked privacy nightmare that debuted 38 years ago – the year Wayne's World had its first cinematic run.

You can install other messaging apps and I believe that Apple has been upgrading iMessage when it is used in groups with Android users recently.

> This is not good for Apple customers. It exposes them to continuous, serious privacy risks. Our mobile devices are keepers of our most intimate secrets, and when mobile security fails, the consequences are grave, as Apple discovered in the hardest way possible, ten years ago:

This is precisely why cracking open MacOS or iOS to facilitate additional stores and installs of apps that may not even support the target architecture well is risky, and I'm glad that you agree that mobile devices in particular need to be secure.

In any case, that's the end of the post mostly. I think I addressed the main things, but over-all there's a lot of lashing out at Apple products...realistically based on my own usage over a few years now, I'm not convinced by your arguments. I think in general Apple stewards their customer base very well and produces quality products and services across the board. They'll keep improving too.