Rather long thread coming up, but I just need to get this off my chest and Twitter is too short form for it.
While I play a lot of PC games, most of my general work/creativity has been done on Apple devices for over a decade. I got hooked when I bought a 2008 MacBook for university, and never looked back. When it released I bought the iPhone 3G and not long after that Apple began pushing the ecosystem of devices and services really really hard.
I look back on all I've spent on Apple hardware and services over the years and it makes me shudder. In the last five years I have spent, at the very least, upwards of £1000 each year on that company alone. They really get you on the lock-in.
"I might as well buy the new iPhone, my current one is showing its age and I want some of my iPad features on my phone..."
"My new iPhone's great, but now my iPad's screen looks decidedly old-hat and I want Face ID."
"I've had my Mac mini for 7 years, I think it's time to retire it and get a new one that can be unlocked by my Apple Watch."
"Well, now I have a new Mac mini which can be unlocked by my Apple Watch, my Apple Watch feels sluggish. Maybe it's time for a new one?"
And so on. While none of these thoughts have ever pushed me over the edge to buying a new device, they are the spark that gets me thinking about it. And I'm fed up.
Why? Well, the money is a big one, but the other is that Apple stuff just isn't as good as it used to be. I'm talking more about Macs than iOS devices, but since Apple promotes its ecosystem as an interlocked chain, if one link in the chain breaks then the whole thing feels bad. And that's exactly what happened.
The 2018 Mac mini is, without question, the worst Apple product I've ever bought. The number of issues I've had with it, ranging from wireless/bluetooth dropouts to the fact that the new Catalina OS update is practically broken on the newer machines, have soured me on the entire Apple ecosystem. And once the illusion of them being great products breaks down, you realise how much fucking money you've spent.
Catalina was the moment I fell out of love with Apple, but I had been having doubts for a long time before then, however. I switched from my amazing, long-time driver, the 2012 Mac mini, to the well-reviewed and highly-regarded 2018 model. What reviewers didn't notice, however, were all the issues with it. Obviously Apple gave them the i5 or i7 models, as the i3 version barely functions. All I have to do is have a couple of apps open at once and the thing grinds to a crawl. After a few months of use I got fed up with it, and then it occurred to me: the fact that Apple are charging £800 for this piece of shit is bonkers. Steve Jobs once said Apple couldn't ship a $500 computer that wasn't a piece of junk, yet in 2018 (an era of proliferation of cheap silicon that gets the basics and more down) Apple shipped an $800 computer that was a piece of junk when other manufacturers produce snappier machines at a lower price.
But I persisted. Maybe an OS update would make it faster, as Apple has accomplished this in the past with macOS updates (I remember my 2008 MacBook getting a whole new lease of life after one major OS update). But Catalina was garbage. Upon first boot, my machine felt no slower or faster, but all of a sudden iTunes had been replaced by three different apps, none of which worked the way they should. The worst offender was Music, which hanged when "importing" my music library (meaning I actually couldn't listen to my music library). And then I noticed compatibility with a whole bunch of infrequently used apps broke - 64 bit apps were no longer supported. I kind of get that, but it's still irksome. However, others stopped working too due to how Apple's snake-like constriction of non-App Store apps makes them break.
The one that stood out to me most was BalenaEtcher, which was denied access to write to an external drive by the OS unless I copied the image I wanted to write to my SD card into the App container (I literally had to drag and drop it in) then run the app via a sudo command in Terminal because there is no longer a way to launch it via the UI with the necessary permissions. And that's just to write an OS image to an SD card for my Raspberry Pi.
And the wireless issues got worse. Now, my Apple Watch would, 50-60% of the time, fail to unlock my Mac. Keyboard dropouts were significantly worse. I tried to do a restore to plain old vanilla macOS Catalina and start afresh to see if that helped, but the recovery mode commands now fail to work with wireless keyboards because they don't connect at the initial boot phase. I had to borrow a wired keyboard from a friend just to boot into my system's recovery menu.
This machine has just been downright unpleasant to use from day one, it was only getting worse, and I'd paid £800 for it.
And this just got me thinking: why do I need so many Apple devices when there are cheaper devices that combine functionality for my use-case?
My iPhone XS is nice, but all I use it for is texting, noodling on the web and music. Why did I drop a grand on this?
My iPad Pro 10.5 inch (2017) is amazing for editing my writing with the pencil, but the iPad will never be a good laptop replacement so it could never be my main driver. Plus the keyboard cover is flimsy and breaks (thankfully replaced by Apple for free). Why did I spend nearly a grand on this and its accessories?
My Apple Watch is something I wear every day, but I literally use it to tell the time, receive my notifications, check my heartbeat and control the music on my phone. I can do that with a £35 Xiaomi fitness band. Why did I spend £250 on it?
I found myself wanting to buy a new version of each every couple of years or so, as the current one I had was just old enough to feel too ancient compared to my newer devices, to the point where I was spending thousands. But one bad product broke that, and I'm feeling kind of foolish now. Also kind of relieved, because I know what I have to do.
Sell it. Sell it all and don't look back.
So I have. The iPad and Mac mini are reset to their factory defaults, and will be going up on eBay over the weekend along with their accessories. I've already purchased and set up my new main driver: a clearance Surface Pro 6 (with pen, keyboard cover and dock) that outperforms the 2018 Mini in all the tasks I've done with it, and triples up as a tablet for editing with the pen, and as a laptop with the keyboard cover. And all of that comes in at almost half of what I paid for the iPad Pro, pencil, keyboard cover and Mac mini. Selling all the Apple stuff it replaces should, in fact, cover the cost of switching and hopefully leave me with some cash left over. And even if I lose money now, it'll be worth it when I don't have that nagging feeling in the back of my mind to constantly upgrade.
So all I have left to get rid of is my iPhone XS. I decided to grab the OnePlus 7T, which arrives tomorrow and will hopefully keep me going for a long while. Because all I do on a phone is basic stuff - I don't take many photos and I don't play games. All I want is something to take calls, text, and fuck about on social media on the bus to work. Looking at how much iPhone XS sells for, I should have cash left over from that too.
And it's a nice feeling. Of course I will probably want to update these devices sooner or later, and I know Android still has lingering issues regarding OS updates that might mildly irk me down the line, but looking at the devices and what I do with them from a purely utilitarian point of view, Apple's stuff is overengineered crap and the new features never bring me the kind of joy that Apple promises. But they're just good enough to make my older devices feel obsolete. It's all superficial and I feel like a complete idiot for being hoodwinked by for a whole third of my life to date. I can get what I want outside of Apple's ecosystem trap, while feeling none of the pressure to constantly sink more cash in.
I have three Apple products left that have value to me: the 2012 Mini (which is a fucking amazing Plex server and will continue to have that role for as long as it switches on - even if I need to change the OS for security reasons), the AirPods (hands down the best wireless earphones I've ever used - and they will happily play with my new devices), and the Apple TV (the UI is so clean and simple compared to the alternatives), so I'll be keeping those (and in the case of the Apple TV, potentially upgrading it to a 4K when I make that jump), but not feeling like I need to be locked into their ecosystem on some tick-tock of one device making the other feel old is so liberating.
In short, fuck Apple.
While I play a lot of PC games, most of my general work/creativity has been done on Apple devices for over a decade. I got hooked when I bought a 2008 MacBook for university, and never looked back. When it released I bought the iPhone 3G and not long after that Apple began pushing the ecosystem of devices and services really really hard.
I look back on all I've spent on Apple hardware and services over the years and it makes me shudder. In the last five years I have spent, at the very least, upwards of £1000 each year on that company alone. They really get you on the lock-in.
"I might as well buy the new iPhone, my current one is showing its age and I want some of my iPad features on my phone..."
"My new iPhone's great, but now my iPad's screen looks decidedly old-hat and I want Face ID."
"I've had my Mac mini for 7 years, I think it's time to retire it and get a new one that can be unlocked by my Apple Watch."
"Well, now I have a new Mac mini which can be unlocked by my Apple Watch, my Apple Watch feels sluggish. Maybe it's time for a new one?"
And so on. While none of these thoughts have ever pushed me over the edge to buying a new device, they are the spark that gets me thinking about it. And I'm fed up.
Why? Well, the money is a big one, but the other is that Apple stuff just isn't as good as it used to be. I'm talking more about Macs than iOS devices, but since Apple promotes its ecosystem as an interlocked chain, if one link in the chain breaks then the whole thing feels bad. And that's exactly what happened.
The 2018 Mac mini is, without question, the worst Apple product I've ever bought. The number of issues I've had with it, ranging from wireless/bluetooth dropouts to the fact that the new Catalina OS update is practically broken on the newer machines, have soured me on the entire Apple ecosystem. And once the illusion of them being great products breaks down, you realise how much fucking money you've spent.
Catalina was the moment I fell out of love with Apple, but I had been having doubts for a long time before then, however. I switched from my amazing, long-time driver, the 2012 Mac mini, to the well-reviewed and highly-regarded 2018 model. What reviewers didn't notice, however, were all the issues with it. Obviously Apple gave them the i5 or i7 models, as the i3 version barely functions. All I have to do is have a couple of apps open at once and the thing grinds to a crawl. After a few months of use I got fed up with it, and then it occurred to me: the fact that Apple are charging £800 for this piece of shit is bonkers. Steve Jobs once said Apple couldn't ship a $500 computer that wasn't a piece of junk, yet in 2018 (an era of proliferation of cheap silicon that gets the basics and more down) Apple shipped an $800 computer that was a piece of junk when other manufacturers produce snappier machines at a lower price.
But I persisted. Maybe an OS update would make it faster, as Apple has accomplished this in the past with macOS updates (I remember my 2008 MacBook getting a whole new lease of life after one major OS update). But Catalina was garbage. Upon first boot, my machine felt no slower or faster, but all of a sudden iTunes had been replaced by three different apps, none of which worked the way they should. The worst offender was Music, which hanged when "importing" my music library (meaning I actually couldn't listen to my music library). And then I noticed compatibility with a whole bunch of infrequently used apps broke - 64 bit apps were no longer supported. I kind of get that, but it's still irksome. However, others stopped working too due to how Apple's snake-like constriction of non-App Store apps makes them break.
The one that stood out to me most was BalenaEtcher, which was denied access to write to an external drive by the OS unless I copied the image I wanted to write to my SD card into the App container (I literally had to drag and drop it in) then run the app via a sudo command in Terminal because there is no longer a way to launch it via the UI with the necessary permissions. And that's just to write an OS image to an SD card for my Raspberry Pi.
And the wireless issues got worse. Now, my Apple Watch would, 50-60% of the time, fail to unlock my Mac. Keyboard dropouts were significantly worse. I tried to do a restore to plain old vanilla macOS Catalina and start afresh to see if that helped, but the recovery mode commands now fail to work with wireless keyboards because they don't connect at the initial boot phase. I had to borrow a wired keyboard from a friend just to boot into my system's recovery menu.
This machine has just been downright unpleasant to use from day one, it was only getting worse, and I'd paid £800 for it.
And this just got me thinking: why do I need so many Apple devices when there are cheaper devices that combine functionality for my use-case?
My iPhone XS is nice, but all I use it for is texting, noodling on the web and music. Why did I drop a grand on this?
My iPad Pro 10.5 inch (2017) is amazing for editing my writing with the pencil, but the iPad will never be a good laptop replacement so it could never be my main driver. Plus the keyboard cover is flimsy and breaks (thankfully replaced by Apple for free). Why did I spend nearly a grand on this and its accessories?
My Apple Watch is something I wear every day, but I literally use it to tell the time, receive my notifications, check my heartbeat and control the music on my phone. I can do that with a £35 Xiaomi fitness band. Why did I spend £250 on it?
I found myself wanting to buy a new version of each every couple of years or so, as the current one I had was just old enough to feel too ancient compared to my newer devices, to the point where I was spending thousands. But one bad product broke that, and I'm feeling kind of foolish now. Also kind of relieved, because I know what I have to do.
Sell it. Sell it all and don't look back.
So I have. The iPad and Mac mini are reset to their factory defaults, and will be going up on eBay over the weekend along with their accessories. I've already purchased and set up my new main driver: a clearance Surface Pro 6 (with pen, keyboard cover and dock) that outperforms the 2018 Mini in all the tasks I've done with it, and triples up as a tablet for editing with the pen, and as a laptop with the keyboard cover. And all of that comes in at almost half of what I paid for the iPad Pro, pencil, keyboard cover and Mac mini. Selling all the Apple stuff it replaces should, in fact, cover the cost of switching and hopefully leave me with some cash left over. And even if I lose money now, it'll be worth it when I don't have that nagging feeling in the back of my mind to constantly upgrade.
So all I have left to get rid of is my iPhone XS. I decided to grab the OnePlus 7T, which arrives tomorrow and will hopefully keep me going for a long while. Because all I do on a phone is basic stuff - I don't take many photos and I don't play games. All I want is something to take calls, text, and fuck about on social media on the bus to work. Looking at how much iPhone XS sells for, I should have cash left over from that too.
And it's a nice feeling. Of course I will probably want to update these devices sooner or later, and I know Android still has lingering issues regarding OS updates that might mildly irk me down the line, but looking at the devices and what I do with them from a purely utilitarian point of view, Apple's stuff is overengineered crap and the new features never bring me the kind of joy that Apple promises. But they're just good enough to make my older devices feel obsolete. It's all superficial and I feel like a complete idiot for being hoodwinked by for a whole third of my life to date. I can get what I want outside of Apple's ecosystem trap, while feeling none of the pressure to constantly sink more cash in.
I have three Apple products left that have value to me: the 2012 Mini (which is a fucking amazing Plex server and will continue to have that role for as long as it switches on - even if I need to change the OS for security reasons), the AirPods (hands down the best wireless earphones I've ever used - and they will happily play with my new devices), and the Apple TV (the UI is so clean and simple compared to the alternatives), so I'll be keeping those (and in the case of the Apple TV, potentially upgrading it to a 4K when I make that jump), but not feeling like I need to be locked into their ecosystem on some tick-tock of one device making the other feel old is so liberating.
In short, fuck Apple.