Similar here. I like their products, their design and don't have anything better to my needs. I even find some sense about this whole DMA thing to their respect. But their user hostility and "you are wrong we are always right and we never accept that we are wrong" kind of gaslighting attitude of them as a company really makes me lose trust in them as a customer.

While I still use Apple devices, I wouldn't have thought of switching to another ecosystem, say, 8 years ago.

Now, if there was a good alternative, I'd seriously consider.

The reason I haven't bought into the Apple mobile ecosystem wholly is because of the power they could exert.

My friends' counterarguments were always that they did not currently exert that power to the detriment of users.

To which my reply was "Show me a few down quarters, missed growth targets, or a threat to one of their primary sources of revenue and see what they do."

Any company should always be expected to pathologically leverage all forms of control it can, if it needs to generate profit.

You are right and that’s something I knew when I bought. It’s not that I liked it but rather than in my opinion, it wasn’t better on the Android side (I mean, at least Apple don’t sell my health data). Windows is worse than everything else.

(In fact I’m really grateful that Linux is even existing because otherwise the situation would be catastrophic. But I digress)

The point is that now, Apple is exercising this control to (try to) actively defeat public regulators. I do believe It’s pretty serious when a company actively tries to circumvent the rules made by the public powers.

And I say that as someone who ideologically tolerates civil disobedience when needed. But corporations are not humans, they must respect the rules in all circumstances. Because respecting the stupid regulations and the stupid laws is the only thing that distinguishes them from mafioso systems.

> if it needs to generate profit.

And especially if it needs to retain control of its platform.

Just look at Microsoft’s dark patterns when it comes to browser control. And this is after the EU find them like a billion dollars on the exact same pattern 15-20 years ago with IE.

Well, they do exert that power to me. I have the Apple Watch Ultra because my Series 6 got water after 3-ish years of swimming and died (while I think it shouldn't have happened, that's OK, I know it hasn't been designed for that much water exposure), I decided to get the "more durable" Ultra as I was getting more serious on my swims.

I had the S0, S3, S6 and never had any problems otherwise. In Ultra, their flagship and most durable watch, it's problematic as I can imagine: the original loop started to wear out in 6 months, the action button sometimes just does nothing, GPS (which should have been more accurate due to more band support etc) goes crazy while swimming (which never happened with S6) and records incorrect data (I see physically impossible "jumps" in recorded swim daya) and most importantly, the screen sometimes goes black (after months of debugging I've realized that it is wrist detection, but no solution other than turning off always on display which for some reason "solves" the problem but I can't have always-on display).

Despite all those problems on the most expensive and "durable" watch which I didn't have on any other watch before, Apple support did a diagnostic and told me there is absolutely nothing wrong with the device, and don't offer a replacement.

A friend had similar problems and they "found nothing wrong" with his AWU either and refused to replace it too (he then switched to Garmin).

As Apple is a company that blatantly refuses problems with their own devices I now hesitate to buy another Apple Watch, or the AVP for instance, simply because I can't trust them anymore.

> They are actively and publicly fighting against my (their customer) interests.

If Apple allowed unrestricted sideloading or third-party app stores, then it loses its leverage to hold apps accountable to any guidelines.

A few major players would switch to using the alternative method (eg Amazon would want to sell digital items and use its own payment system), legitimizing it, and then everyone who wants to ignore the guidelines for less admirable reasons would follow suit.

Less technically savvy users would follow the prompts to install an app with extremely mixed results. And once there's no one way to install apps, it makes it that much harder for them to tell if an app is legitimate or not.

That's maybe fine for more technical users, but for people who just want to use their phone as an appliance rather than verify the chain of trust for an app, there's no discernible benefit. The time required to verify an app is non-negligible, and the risk is pretty much infinite with respect to what information they give it.

And sometimes you don't really have a choice whether to use an app or not. Your employer or locale may make or imply decisions on service providers for you, and the reason for choosing those service providers likely has nothing to do with how their app treats end users. They won't need to clear any quality bar to offer an app at all, and a locked-in customer has less negotiating power than Apple.

Apple has positioned itself as a premium product which is going to make things simpler (ie reducing executive overhead) by making decisions for you. Saying "no" to features to keep things focused for the largest group of users is hard, and those decisions are going to trend towards the largest demographic using the platform, which is probably less-technical users who don't hang out on HN. If you want to customize the platform, then that's Android's competitive edge.

You can even sideload apps with a developer license - that's essentially how UTM is installed: https://docs.getutm.app/installation/ios/

While that does mean you have to put down more $$, it also effectively narrows the people sideloading apps to people who "know what they're doing" (or at least have demonstrated a higher bar of tech-savviness and clicked through more legal waivers)

What do you want to do now that you can't do with the current state of affairs?

> What do you want to do now that you can't do with the current state of affairs?

I want to own the object I paid hundreds to own.

You are serving me the « you can still use android » argument. But that’s a false choice : I know both platforms, I know their pro & cons (at least relatively to my opinion). I choose iOS because Android had other cons that I couldn’t tolerate. Making this choice doesn’t tie me to agree with every decision Apple make on my device.

The thing is that I’m stuck between two actors and I don’t like any of them for various reason. Because those two actors actively used their previously accumulated financial power to block new competitors on the market. Your argument of « you can go elsewhere if you are not happy », would be valid if we still had Windows Phone, Palm Pre, Symbian OS or if it was doable for new actors to emerge tomorrow, heck I would even accept it if you could install Linux on my phone (in fact I do believe that regulators should enforce the right to install another OS ok any phone). But we are not in this situation of choice and that’s precisely why those regulations are coming.