I want to talk about this because of a conversation I had with a colleague on a lunch break a few days ago. I am a doctor, and I was talking to him about how angry I was (and still am) about the fact that the COVID vaccines, when they were first invented, were not made public, but instead were patented and sold. This basic fact made millions of people around the world suffer. I was rambling about how scientific information should always be free. How we should be able to use the internet as the greatest library our ancestors could have only dreamt of, instead of putting information behind paywalls. Even back in med school I was an avid user of sci-hub and I wasn’t ashamed of it one bit. I still use sci-hub to keep up with new researches so I can treat/inform my patients better. And I hate how some of my colleagues think that I am stealing others’ work.

Anyways, so I was rambling on and on. I sometimes do that. And my friend said something so strange and unrelated (in my eyes) to the conversation. He said “Look at you, defending open access to medical information for everyone, yet you only use Apple products.” I was like, “What? What do you mean?” He explained, “Man, all the things you use are made by Apple. Your laptop, tablet, phone, watch, earbuds or whatever, made by the company that is one of the main adversaries when it comes to right-to-repair and open source software.” So you need to see here, I’m not a tech guy. It’s just not my field. My job only requires me to read textbooks and keep up with new researches in my field, which any device can do. So I was like, “I… I don’t think I follow.” So he briefly explained what open-source software is, and how it’s related to my idea of free and open access to information for everyone, but this time it’s not in our field but programmers’. And when I almost reflexively said “Well we’re not programmers” he said “I mean, when it comes to software, it’s the programmers’ and developers’ thing. But free and open source is an idea. It applies to everything. And I think you’re supporting a company that opposes your views by buying their products.”

We didn’t have much time left so that was the end of that conversation. And I have been thinking about it since. When buying tech products I mainly care about if they are integrated with each other or not. Like if I turn on Do not Disturb on my watch, I want my phone, tablet and laptop to go quiet as well. Or I like being able to answer a phone call on my laptop. And I love the aesthetics of Apple products, at least more than what other companies have to offer.

Every evening since that conversation I’ve been looking up stuff related to open source software. Linux, distros, the philosophy behind it all, Linus Torvalds, Steve Wozniak, Arch, “read the wiki”, terminal, GUI, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA my brain is filled with so many things at this point that I don’t understand anything at all.

So, TLDR; I’d love to hear your opinions about Apple. Most people (myself included) buy Apple devices because of the ecosystem, the design, privacy (?), consistent updates (especially on mobile), or for you might say, a lack of knowledge in the field of tech. Do you support Apple or are you against them, or are you indifferent? Do you think people who are not in the tech field as well should look into and use open source software? Leave your thoughts below! ^^

    • cryball@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      I agree. This is not only limited to the users, but also intentionally makes life difficult for those trying to develop multiplatform products and services.

      Locking down the publishing routes and development tools for apple platforms is not such a big issue for parties that develop solely for apple products, but that is often not the case. Instead apple users often make up a minority of users, but maintaining and testing applications, websites and services so that they also work on apple devices can take up a disproportionately large amount of development time and effort.

  • Juniper@skein.city
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    1 year ago

    As someone who went from FOSS -> Apple -> FOSS, I fully understand the love people have for the Apple ecosystem. In terms of proprietary hardware and software, they have a sheen and an inter-operation between their products that is genuinely unmatched.

    That said, what ultimately pushed me out and back to Good Ole FOSS™ was the lack of any control, and the lack of any transparency. The idea of trusting a for-profit company with anything beyond my email address and sometimes phone number is just something I dislike doing. Apple’s processes are extremely opaque, and the last thing they want to give users is any control over their products, it’s an antithesis of what I desire from digital electronics.

    As for if non-technical people should look into FOSS. I think FOSS can really give people a fundamental baseline of digital computing, and in the modern world such a baseline is extremely valuable. If they decide afterwards they prefer their proprietary ecosystems, Apple or otherwise, that’s their prerogative and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

  • lightrush@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Your friend is right. Listen to them, read and understand. Don’t feel obligated to necessarily change your habits. If you get the time and desire to make a change, that understanding and knowledge will inform your actions. ☺️

  • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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    I’ll preface this by saying don’t beat yourself up for using Apple. You can be critical and still use their products. I am typing this on Windows 10 and have a macbook for work. Microsoft and Google are far from perfect in this space. As the saying goes, “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” lol.

    I think you should use open source software but I don’t think you should force yourself if good alternatives don’t exist for your use case. A good example is Photoshop. The open source version is GIMP. I use GIMP mostly because I don’t want to pay for Photoshop but from what I’ve heard from people who edit pictures professionally it is not even a competition.

    Compare that to Audacity, my understanding is more people in the audio world use it. Or VLC Media player! It can basically open any format of video, it’s crazy!

    If you’re curious to try a linux desktop operating system the choices will become overwhelming like you said. Ubuntu is the go-to suggestion usually. There are ways to create “live USBs” to run it from the USB like a test drive (but it may be slow). I’ve decided my next computer I build I’m going to run Linux primarily but I haven’t got around to building it.

    • metaltoilet@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Just FYI vanillaOS is an awesome system to suggest to both new users and experienced ones. None of the snap BS but still based on Ubuntu. It also makes it really hard to mess up your system. Vanilla Gnome too. Check it out.

      • Steamymoomilk@lemmy.world
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        YES!! I love vanilla OS its so good benefits of arch rolling release and AUR and Ubuntu with stability best of both worlds

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        I suggest Ubuntu because it is so widespread and one of the ones that “just works”. Also I don’t want to introduce a newbie to the snap debacle. It won’t affect them much to be honest.

        • Shareni@programming.dev
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          Mint > Ubuntu if you really want to stay in the Debian space. Canonical is without a doubt the dodgiest Linux company, and Ubuntu is only being recommended because it became popular almost 20 years ago due to the easy installer wizard and free CDs.

          Fedora and openSUSE are also amazing “just works” distros. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen proprietary software company provide a deb binary but not an rpm/dnf one.

          • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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            There are definitely reasons to not like Ubuntu but I still believe it is the best recommendation for beginners due to the massive community. I’m not saying Canonical is faultless. Mint has its problems too, in 2016 a hacker got an ISO with a backdoor onto the website (link).

            • Shareni@programming.dev
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              I mean, how much of the Ubuntu info won’t be applicable to mint problems? And how often is a Debian/Ubuntu derivative user going to need distro specific help in the first place?

              A hack from 7 years ago is not the same thing as a company constantly trying to exploit its users. What other distro thought it was a good idea to sell user data to Amazon, show ads in the terminal, or team up with Microsoft to EEE Linux?

              Most people aren’t going to distrohop all that much. So what they start with is going to be what they stick with for a while. Nobody should have to learn Linux in a snap infested canonical world.

              • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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                Like I said, I don’t believe Canonical is perfect by any means, it’s just that Ubuntu has the largest community and is easy to use. That’s it. I’m not saying anything else you’re saying is wrong, I just find these things more important for absolute beginners. I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, I just believe different things are important for the absolute beginner is all.

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    I think it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Their ecosystem may be good and all but they deliberately don’t interoperate very well with others. Example: if I plug my iPhone into my windows laptop, it will only expose the gallery, unlike with Android where it will allow me to transfer non image files. I have to download another app (iTunes, and now the Apple Devices App which is currently in preview) in order to be able to transfer files via cable (KDE Connect or Localsend are also good options for this). Then there’s their sticking with their own cable when everyone else is going to USB C, and their refusal to implement proper messaging with Android users/integrate with RCS - granted, RCS has its own set of issues, but still. And of course there’s their refusal to allow sideloading, which has led to governments being able to censor apps from the app store. It doesn’t help that App Store review isn’t the best at catching security issues, as scam apps slip through from time to time. The EU seems to be trying to fix this with their new regulations, but it’s now speculated that Apple will be petty and region lock sideloading.

    Their hardware is nice and performant, but unfortunately they’re against upgradeability as well as right to repair. I don’t watch him much, but I think Louis Rossmann’s youtube channel is recommended for learning about this.

    I don’t have strong opinions on their hardware/software design and aesthetics, it works for me, but I can see why others don’t like how opinionated they are. I don’t like how Android phones have been getting bigger, but it’s not the end of the world for me should I switch to a Pixel.

    Privacy and security wise they overmarket too much but they do have some advantages:

    • No OEM bloat/telemetry. With Samsung phones for example, you’ll have to put up with Samsung telemetry and Google’s data collection. With Apple, you only have Apple nonsense to put up with.
    • iOS devices tend to get updates for longer, and they backport critical patches to older devices. While Android is more modular (allowing Google to update certain parts of the system through google play services), and the situation is improving (newer Google Pixels get 5 years of security updates now), iOS still has a slight edge.
    • For Macbooks, I’ll just quote the Asashi Linux documentation:

    It would be remiss not to briefly cover where these machines stand in terms of user control and trustability. Apple Silicon machines are designed first and foremost to provide a secure environment for typical end-users running macOS as signed by Apple; they prioritize user security against third-party attackers, but also attempt to limit Apple’s own control over the machines in order to reduce their responsibility when faced with government requests, to some extent. In addition, the design preserves security even when a third-party OS is installed.

    From a security perspective, these machines may possibly qualify as the most secure general purpose computers available to the public which support third-party OSes, in terms of resistance to attack by non-owners. This is, of course, predicated on some level of trust in Apple, but some level of trust in the manufacturer is required for any system (there is no way to prove the non-existence of hardware backdoors on any machine, so this is not as much of a sticking point as it might initially seem).

    • Lockdown Mode, which apparently has somewhat protected against zero click exploits.

    • For iOS Safari (no clue on Mac), they allow adblocking without having to grant the extension privileged access to the page. This includes cosmetic filtering. (Somewhat hit and miss on Youtube tho). Malicious extensions and filter list exploits are a problem, and while Google is attempting to fix this somewhat with Manifest V3, it’s not perfect. From my experience with Ublock Origin Lite in Edge, you don’t currently get cosmetic filtering without granting privileged access, which defeats the point. Otherwise, it appears to be as effective as DNS blocking.

    • The App Privacy Report makes it super easy (provided you’re not connected to a VPN) to see what domains an app connects to. I can check the entry for my offline password manager for example, and see that it isn’t pinging anything other than inappcheck.itunes.apple.com. I think this is used to query the in app purchase status.

    For disadvantages:

    • Telemetry: even with everything opted out of, Apple still collects hardware data, local MAC Addresses (for their location services database, this is also noted in their documentation). Also, for some reason they insist on tying collected click heatmaps in the app store/books/stocks app directly to the Apple ID. (This is just off the top of my head, I may be missing something). I don’t personally consider this a deal breaker (Apple already knows what apps I download), but I can understand why they’ve been raked over the coals for it given how much they market privacy.

    • While iMessage is touted for being end to end encrypted, the defaults have it backing up unencrypted to the cloud, which defeats the point. There is Advanced Data Protection now, but both sides of a conversation would have to turn it on.

    • VPNs on iOS leak. This is different from Android where it can be argued that connectivity checks are a good thing and don’t send personal data, but with iOS certain system apps appear to just straight up bypass it.

    • Without sideloading, it’s basically impossible to use an iPhone without logging in.

    • Some stuff such as the gyroscope still doesn’t require a permission to access.

    • Allowing carriers to do this.

    Some other points I’d like to make:

  • klangcola@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    You should look in to openstreetmap.org . It’s open and free map data. Having a single giant company (Google) control all the maps is not good for the commons.

    I’m so glad Wikipedia exists as a non-profit organizations. Imagine if Facebook or Google owned The Encyclopedia

    Speaking of, there is something called the https://creativecommons.org/ mostly known for the Creative Commons family of non-comercial Licences. It’s used by creators to licence and freely share their work, similar to how programers use FOSS software licenses

    There are a number of ongoing FOSS projects that will hopefully culminate in an ecosystem experience comparable to Apple. There are already some laptops being sold with Linux pre-installed, guaranteeing hardware compatibility (HP, Dell, System76, Slimbook, Tuxedo, Starlabs). KDE Connect integrates your phone and computer. Nextcloud can do much of what iCloud can do. Various phone projects are making the Linux phone possible, like Librem Purism, Pinephone, FOSH, KDE Plasma Mobile. And degoogled Androids like /e/ project / LineageOS and GrapheneOS. There’s the PineTime smart watch.

    Things often move slower in the FOSS world compared to literal TRILLION dollar companies. But when FOSS solutions get a foothold there’s no going back. FOSS projects are also virtually immune to enshitification

    While the Apple ecosystem is nice, it’s also the epitome of Vendor Lock-In. They deliberately make their products hard to integrate with other products (charging cables, green text bubles etc). As well as everything else people have mentioned here about right-to-repair, planned obsolescence, factory worker conditions

    So yeah perfectly understandable to use all Apple-stuff today , but I’m optimistic for a future where more people are free from the big tech giants

  • Klinkertinlegs@beehaw.org
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    I don’t like Apple because of their anti-user, anti-third party policies, but their quality, interoperability, and privacy make me pick it over google for my phone, tablet, and watch.

    Granted, it I could replace those things with FOSS alternatives that worked as well as Apple products do, I would in a heart beat.

    • YuzuDrink@beehaw.org
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      This is exactly my opinion. They’re not great in a lot of their stances; but they ARE better than most companies in most of their stances… and the open-source options just DO NOT WORK as well by far.

      I want my software and hardware to enable my hobbies, not to BE my hobbies getting them to work and keeping them working as new versions come out.

  • misguidedfunk@beehaw.org
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    Having languished for years hoping for new updates of android and being hampered by carriers or phone makers, I greatly enjoy the long term support apple gives to its devices.

    On then computer front I’m a huge fan of Linux distros. If I could I’d move on from windows.

    • Shareni@programming.dev
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      Oh no, my phone is not getting updates that purposefully slow it down in hopes of getting me to buy a new one. What will I ever do?!?!?

      Oh yeah, I can buy at three or more budget android phones for the price of a single iPhone, so that should cover me for at least a decade… Maybe by that time we’ll get good mobile Linux support, and I can ditch this proprietary crap altogether.

      • misguidedfunk@beehaw.org
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        I have no experience with my phone, tablet or watch slowing down. Getting major os updates is a major thing for me. It may not be for everyone, but I appreciate their attempt to update devices until they can’t. As for the price, my iPhone 12 was $700. Cheaper than my wife’s Samsung note and slightly cheaper than my galaxy s8.

  • DJDarren@beehaw.org
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    I’m an Apple user, and have been since 2007 when I bought my first MacBook. I have an iPhone, a Watch, a bunch of Macs, and Apple TV. I have an iPad too, but the screen’s broken, I can’t afford to repair it, and honestly, I don’t really have much use for an iPad these days.

    While I like how much these devices sync with each other, and I love how well they’re built, with every year that passes it sits less well with me how, if you can’t afford the latest and greatest, you’ll experience some level of OS-rot.

    I mean, my iPad is new enough to support iPadOS 16, but too old to support Stage Manager. That I’m not really bothered by, but it’s indicative of a problem. If the device is capable of running an OS, it should get all of the OS that its hardware will allow. Even more fundamentally though, say iOS 17 has some new additions to Notes.app that will also work in Sonoma, but your Mac isn’t recent enough to go beyond Monterey; does that mean you can’t view notes made on your iPhone on your Mac?

    And yeah, that doesn’t sit right with me.

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    It is with high confidence and with a straight face that I can state my opinion that Microsoft is a better partner of open source software than Apple. Microsoft contributes back, Apple pretty much doesn’t. They’re better than AWS, but that’s more a matter of damning with faint praise.

    Apple’s built up a vertically integrated market of disposable widgets which cannot be repaired or upgraded. Their sole positive is they’re better than the other guys at keeping older software updated, but I’m sure they did the math on having their customers not getting hacked at the time.

    I’m my opinion they’re worth looking at for anti-trust.

    • b000rg@midwest.social
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      A good recent example of Microsoft supporting the open source community is Orca. It’s a LLM that was basically taught by ChatGPT (GPT3.5) and GPT4 instead of training on its own dataset by having the chatbot explain its reasoning step by step, ELI5, etc. And it’s about to go open source.

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        Microsoft email address were collectively top contributers to Linux kernel patches for a few years, particularly as they were building out Azure and Hyper-V support. They’re contributed a service mesh to kubernetes. Visual Studio Code is open source. They’re backing GitHub. They developed typescript. Their developers are all over various GitHub repos.

  • Damage@feddit.it
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    In wise words of Commander Data: "I realized, it is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive to be more than we are, Lal. It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort "

    You now understand the importance of free software just like you already knew the importance of free knowledge. You don’t need to force yourself into shapes you don’t fit, but you can help move us all into a better future for everybody.

  • metaltoilet@beehaw.org
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    Guy was just converted into a FOSS nerd. Give it a few months and he’ll own a thinkpad with a custom i3 rice and be saying “I use arch btw”.

    Jokes aside, I think apple is a terrible company. Sure, their products are amazing but they’re grossly overpriced and not FOSS or compatible with anything else.

    The iphone 14 pro max costs $464 to make and retails for $2000. That’s not innovation, that’s grifting. Besides, the main difference between the Iphone 11 and 14 is the price (no, the camera is not that much better, i don’t care what you say).

    Apple also intentionally gatekeeps their products (Vender Lock-in) making the experience worse for everyone who doesn’t own Apple products. They could adopt the open standard that all other phones use for texting (MMS I think it’s called) but instead they use imessage to make your experience worse when texting people with Androids. This also makes it hard to switch to an Android even if it’s better. And don’t even get me started on the charger situation.

    Also, they use privacy as a branding statement but we have no way to verify that claim. They could be selling all our data and be well within their rights. If they were open source we would be able to verify that claim.

    I can’t really talk though because I own a (refurbished) Iphone. I do this because a) the messaging system and b) my whole family is in the apple ecosystem (with no way out) so I get benefits of our family plan like tons of storage.

    • DJDarren@beehaw.org
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      The iphone 14 pro max costs $464 to make and retails for $2000. That’s not innovation, that’s grifting.

      The material cost of a product is not the same as the cost of the product to the company. Granted, $2k is overpriced, but not by $1500.

    • El Duderino@partizle.com
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      The iphone 14 pro max costs $464 to make and retails for $2000

      I think this in particular is a spurious claim to make. First of all, that was for a phone that retails for $1,099.

      Second, a bill of materials is not the cost of a device. There’s research and development, user testing, patents to license, logistics, and of course, software development, unless you think all of those things are done for free.

      Apple’s actual profit margin is ~25%.

  • SebKra@feddit.de
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    So Apple is obviously an evil, profit seeking company that exploits users and developers, maintains a monopoly and actively hurts efforts towards openness.

    But bro, what else am I gonna use? Do you think Google is any better.

    And, as you already noticed, most open source alternatives suuuck. (Man, I’m gonna regret saying this on an FOSS community) With some research you’ll get a usable desktop OS for some use-cases, but phones such as Fairphone and Purism are another story entirely. Don’t even think about watches or tablets. I love the Purism Firefox demo, where they enthusiastically say: “With Settings unusable in Portrait, it’s time to switch to landscape mode”.

    The “you think … yet you buy …” argument is pointless, because it ignores the realities of monopolies and globalism. I’m sure his T-Shirt that day wasn’t made from ethically sourced cotton or whatever.

    • Litanys@lem.cochrun.xyz
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      While I agree that the options aren’t always great, there is a bigger issue. We are all just too enslaved to convenience.

      People right now wouldn’t be able to bear doing some of the difficult things we used to do. And the average Joe wouldn’t be caught dead using computers from 15 years ago. We have grown accustomed to our convenience. OP said what we looks for is being able to answer a call on his laptop and while I agree it’s a great feature, it’s a convenience. We can’t be bothered to pick up the phone.

      The reality’s you talked about are there but another is we think we need these things, but really, it’s completely possible to live without them. We’ve just become to lazy, entitled, and rich too make the open philosophy important enough to us. So I’d ask, do you care more about your conveniences or for a more open future?

  • Bluetreefrog@lemmy.world
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    I spent many years trying to be as FOSS as I could. I tried many different Linux distros, hunted for open source operating systems for my phone (at the time, none did even the basic things I needed it to do) until one day I decided I was sick to death of having to spend hours researching and trying multiple arcane cli commands to get even simple things to work (like WiFi). I realised that I was wasting an enormous amount of time being all-things-open-source.

    My next purchase as a macbook as it was based on a *nix and I’ve come to realise that while Apple is a walled garden and in some ways is ‘evil’, it’s less evil than Google is now, or Microsoft was back in the day.

    I also like the way that the various Apple devices work really well together. But I hate the fact that it’s harder to hack things to be the way that I want. Don’t get me wrong, I still love open source software, but I have too few years left to waste them on modifying config.org files, or whatever they do now, so I’m much more selective with what I use. I tend to use FOSS applications on MacOS where the software works well enough.

    Not trying to bash FOSS, just my 2 cents.

    • Bloodaxe@fosstodon.org
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      @Bluetreefrog
      @IronTwo
      I’ve got to say, Linux and FOSS in general has really come a long way just these few last years. For me it has gone from tedious and problem-ridden to mostly frictionless. But the times that I do stumble unto an issue, it still takes a while to figure out a solution 🙃 So, not perfect yet, but a looot more user friendly these days! 😃

  • kek_w_lol@lemmy.one
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    I hate the current state of Apple with a burning passion. At some point I had tried using their devices. They treat me like I am retarded. But if you like their interface, the interconnectivity and the workflow, more power to you. I myself have bought windows keys from shady websites for like 10% of the price (I am a gamer and linux wasn’t ready for gaming at the time). I have stripped the OS of all the tracking bullshit, used third party tools to disable everything I don’t like, uninstalled Edge (painful), installed tools to disable licensing checks in programs (sketchy), etc. I have never bought an iPhone. When I switch phones, I root the old one for shits and giggles. I use only open-source software and everything I publish (files for 3d printing) are openly accessible too and never paywalled. But not everyone can live like me. I have, at one point in my life, spent 18 hours at my PC screwing around with the registry in windows, to disable some slimy POS tracker. I do not have a problem with anyone choosing convenience over cheapness or open-sourceness. But I hope more people make the leap. Because your coworker is right. The problem is absolutely the same. I hope open-source gets more convenient to use. For example gaming on Linux is finally possible. You can’t change the whole world, you can only change yourself. And you won’t do it overnight, you have to wake up in the morning and make a conscious effort of making a change in your routine. I convinced my SO to at least try an Android phone after she was done with her iPhone. Now she can never go back. Now she has a Laptop with Windows on it. A custom PC, which she wouldn’t trade for a top of the line MacBook. In any case, OP: if you want to make a change, do it one step at a time. Don’t overload yourself. I was introduced to linux by my dad, where he helped me follow a tutorial on how to make a bootable usb drive for Ubuntu. It was fun and not complicated at all. Once you have that USB, try booting off of it, play around in Linux. Have some fun. It is closer to MacOS than Windows. It just doesn’t stop you from being dumb and doing dumb things :). And after that, if you like it, do some more research, try some more things. Be the change you want to see in the world.