Other ex-Apple users - why did you leave?

General Topics
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I was quite surprised to see how many folks over on the FW12 section are ex-Apple users like myself. Given that these machines from Framework are the anti-MacBooks, and that nobody in general buys one by accident.. that it would be worth asking the community…

What made you leave?
If you’ve already left, how has it been since?

I’ll answer for myself there to get things going - left mainly because of ARM incompatibility, expensive repair costs, needing multiple devices (no 2 in 1s or folding phones, nor on the horizon) and because of moving my career in a programming direction where Apple is far from key. So far… they are making it the biggest b*** ache to get my files and photos out… with data export links randomly failing. Glad I’m leaving after 16 years with them. Not the company it was back then.

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Their user hostility, primarily. That and the conscious limiting of software (and therefore the hardware) in the service of greater rent-taking. They keep saying things aren’t possible, when they clearly are, they just don’t want to do them.

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Used to run Windows on desktop and a MacBook (all the way to the M1).

Switched to Linux on the desktop after the constantly increasing user hostility made it unbearable to deal with for me and worth the pain to jump through Proton for gaming (and, well, for far Proton has evolved since I last tried it).

And then, given how far Linux has come from when I previously tried to main it, I finally had the confidence to run a laptop that isn’t macOS (Windows on laptops was always a bad experience for me, random wakeups, hibernation making the OS slower with every cycle, etc).

I do miss the Apple Silicon battery life, and the ultra-quick suspend and wakeup rather than full suspend-to-disk, but that’s worth it to me to have an OS that does exactly what I want (and nothing else).
And by now I added so many little custom tweaks I can’t imagine going back (ported the keyboard LED dimming on inactivity I loved from macOS, made my own UI daemon with dual LED matrices to show port status and module loadout, scripts to turn off the power LED at night etc)

TL;DR: I finally had enough confidence Linux is ready for prime time use for myself

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I could write a book on how disappointed I am in post-Jobs Apple. What is relevant to my FW12 pre-order: I want hardware that is fun again.

Apple has somehow “evolved” from colorful computers, cheerful installation videos, and beautiful operating systems to the standard Silicon Valley look of “black Helvetica on white ground”. We are lucky that they kept the apple logo and didn’t replace it with a soulless word mark like all the other companies.

That is also the reason why I didn’t buy a Yoga or Asus X13 Flow/Z13 (whichever model works best with Linux), in spite of their much much better specs.

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I had everything running on apple devices - the mac mini however running linux etc..
Then I realized that listening to music and watching video’s would work only on apple enabled devices.
Coming from the Linux free (Free as in free beer) world, I looked for a possibility to play back the music/video’s under linux or raspberry PI´s. Especially when Apple removed some movies I had “bought” from the shop that disappeared from my devices, I realized that

  1. You only bought the “right” to watch/listen to music indefinitely as long as they have the “license” to do so.
  2. DRM was the issue so went on a personal campaign to circumvent the DRM from the downloaded titles.
  3. They have the master switch. They can switch it and you’re disconnected from everything you “supposedly own”

Since then, everything that requires DRM is something In avoid. This is valid for eBooks, Music and Video. I buy the physical media, backup the media and put it onto my media-player and my entire family can access it if they want. Like a book I can hand over.

The other part I was really p* about was the “lock-in” into their hardware/software/shops - you are the cow they milk for everything.
Couldn’d stand it.

I converted my family quite easily. You want help, I’ll give it to you under Linux.
You want Windows, Apple? You deal with it yourself. That was quite effective :}

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I moved away from a MacBook Air M1 to my FW 13. I got similar performance, worse battery life, and more heat. But I like Framework’s mission, and pretty much all the big companies frustrate me in one way or another on an almost daily basis, lol.

MacOS is getting more and more “mobile” and “social media” focused, with attempts to fully integrate everything in your life and adopt a cloud-based and constant connectivity based workflow. And yeah, so is everyone else. But that’s just so not my style. Plus, I wanted to support Framework’s mission of repairability, and I like being able to run Linux.

And then there are bigger frustrations with Apple, like the fact that all my iTunes, iBooks, and Apple TV purchases can ONLY be accessed on Apple devices. There isn’t even an app to be able to watch Apple TV purchases on a Windows or Linux machine. At least, not that I’ve found. You would think that’s an incentive to keep using an Apple product, because I won’t otherwise be able to watch the shows or listen to the music I’ve purchased over the years. On the other hand, sc*** you, Apple, for trying to lock me into only buying your stuff, and for making it impossible to watch or listen to the stuff I paid for on other devices that I own.

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Woah, I heard the stories recently about Amazon / Sony doing this (and back tracking after the PR mess… I think?) but I did NOT know Apple resorted to this. Thought with all its money and weight, it could have kept the content management companies at bay by letting purchasers keep their downloadable copies.

Frankly… if I’ve bought an album… a DVD.. a piece of software outside of a subscription (so not including perpetual licenses or Apple Music in this) then I’ll download it again through any means possible and if I’m the unlucky 1 in a 1,000,000,000 that gets taken up for it I’ll state my case of morals and if they ruin my life and walk out with another win under the belt, that’s on their conscience… At least now, I’ll have my 2TB SSD locally to store it on and not iCloud where potentially Apple someday decide to monitor and report it.. or even just traffic via it’s Private Relay. I would trust them as champions of privacy and human rights… but then I remind myself that they don’t apply that in all regions so their ‘values’ mean NOTHING.

As for the family help… sadly, not sure how many others can resonate, my family now all use their smartphones for everything. Despite some of them having a laptop… some having iPads or the odd one owning a Mac too. They do everything on their phone and the meer suggestion of using a bigger device is too much hassle. DESPITE iCloud and Apple’s pretty seamless way of ensuring the files / apps / web history / password are waiting for you on the other device. Even my brother who is an artist making a living selling online, everything from an iPhone. I can’t get over how much they’re missing out. FYI, the same people mostly don’t even pay for iCloud space and if they lose or break their phones… goodbye years of data. Usually when I need to help them they’ve crossed some line of data loss, or device loss without basic features like ‘Find My’ turned on. In saying all of this… I’ve worked with actual companies with not much better of a digital strategy or back up. Thankfully GDPR sort of kicked them into achieving some sort of bare minimum.. Am I typing too much?!

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This is the usual problem.
My kids being on android devices and wanting to have it all online realized when the networks are down, that most they do is “linked” to a service being available. If it’s down, it won’t work. Was fun when they spent 2 weeks on holidays without internet :rofl: You heare the BOFH laughing. No music, no books :} They really had to occupy themselves differently.
And one lesson I taught them I’m quite proud they grasp: If it’s free, it’s you they want.
(with you, I mean their data and time.
So now, the have a 2 way approach. Important stuff goes on dad’s cloud (Nextcloud instance). The rest, they can do what they want.

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I haven’t specifically seen Apple do this, but I’ve had Amazon do it to me (purchased TV show no longer available).

By the way, I know iTunes has a Windows version, so I could probably get my music that way, even without an Apple device. But I don’t think movies and TV shows can be accessed through iTunes. Only Apple TV.

Apple still makes some really nice hardware…most of the time. My sister has gone through several iPhones, having nothing but problems. Issues with sound, the microphone, the display, call signal, etc. At one point she bought a new one to get away from the issues, only for the new one to be worse after a couple months. It was serviced under warranty once and replaced under warranty once, and it’s still terrible. I had a nearly brand new iPad where the display started to delaminate on one side, with sealant bulging out of the gap.

I’ve had good luck with the couple MacBooks I’ve had, but the fact that everything is soldered, the battery is glued in, and pretty much no “official” repair for anything results in anything less than a total loss of data (granted, you should have everything backed up), just makes me less excited about buying one. I’m just getting tired of the throw away mindset and how pervasive it has become (including in me for a while), even with bigger things (bigger in terms of cost and resource allocation). So I’m trying to get away from that as much as possible.

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Yeah, I feel you. For me too, I’ve had nothing but mostly good experiences, particularly since 2020 with Apple. My M1 MBP five years on, battery still outlasts every other Wintel machine from classmates around me from 8 til 6 in the evening and that was running Windows on Parallels with about 15% to spare. The quality is good - they know what they’re doing. Ordered a 13 Pro Max iPhone at launch and loved the thing, the lustre of it, the build quality, and sure enough never felt slow.

The cracks (literally) started to appear last Autumn for me. Attended our local Apple Store grand re-opening, ended up buying a S10 Watch as my SE was slow and needed charging a lot, thought it was fine for 3 years of everyday use. Nice little upgrade. In November then I spotted a crack, took the phone out of the case, all cracked up the back glass - never happened to me before! No AppleCare of course… I wanted to keep the phone until it was 5+ years old - I justified it to myself as buying the best on day one, because year after year it’d pay off as a solid investment. And it was well on its way to doing just that, asked Apple for their price they wanted like £519 for a repair.. which they would honour ONLY for 90 days of warranty… I’m one of these ‘genuine parts DIY or dealer’ kinda guys, I don’t mind spending the money to get the job done right with quality parts. I’m like that with my cars. But with Apple… there was no quality, or genuine parts for DIY. Ordered a cheap replacement, thought I’d tackle it myself. Not only did I make a complete mess of the job, but the glass was COMPLETELY glued in to every square mm. All around the wireless charging coil. Ordered some basic tools for the job, came off in fragments, totally spraying shards into my hand. The coil then began to get damaged and ‘stringy’… and at one point a shard of glass must have gotten into the battery as it appeared to bulge a little… absolute nightmare, total write off. Sold it for parts on eBay. What did I do? Stupidly went out and bought another iPhone… 16, non Pro, non Max… wasn’t even excited about it despite the AI features and whatnot. Wow, dynamic island… no more sweet 120hz or steel build. It’s very much been ‘just a phone’, no more pride or love for it. But I was in the ecosystem, I needed a phone… so that was that.

My MacBook Pro is doing just fine and I bet will go another two years before it gets too slow to use. It’s more the x86 / ARM issue I’m having on Parallels as well as Parallels no longer able to smoothly do things like run Minecraft Bedrock anymore this last year. It’s gotten stuttery. With one more year of my course left and self learning now getting me into actual interesting tech-y experiments and projects I’m increasingly seeing workarounds like ‘if you’re running Ubuntu on ARM … or Apple Silicon this and this isn’t available you need to follow this and this’. I tolerated this for a while, after all, it’s good experience. But then say you want to send something like a config to anyone else in the world with an x86 machine it simply doesn’t work without yet more workarounds. I’m just done with it, and Apple aren’t coming back to x86 … ever. We have more chance of ‘AirPower’ than that. At the end of last academic year, I had to pay OVH a stupid amount to ‘rent’ an online VPS with Windows on it to run old SQL utilities and Wintel software needed for the course. Minimum 3 month commitment. It’s cost me enough…

I contemplated a fully loaded, 4TB… 48GB+ RAM, M4 Max or M4 Pro MacBook Pro but we’re into three or four thousand then. Where do they get off with the upgrade pricing? Seriously. I know their SSDs and RAM are some of the fastest and most reliable of most consumer computers you can buy yeah, but still at that, grossly overpriced. And to have a similar experience as with my iPhone, on something that will maybe in a year or two become a mission critical device for me - to go a week without it while the Apple Store fixes it? Absolutely not. Not when I’m now balancing money between life savings.. oh, let’s say a new bathroom or holiday - you know, there’s so much more competing for my money now. A computer is only a part of my life and I’d happily put that money in if it wasn’t so locked down and inflexible to work with when repairs or accidents happen.
The iPhone 16 is going to the other halfs brother. Gave her my Apple Watch S10, she wants to buy the MBP as well so that’ll fund half of the FW - glad it’ll be around somewhere given how long it has served me. The replacement setup for me is a mid range Xperia 10 VI (if Sony ever get around to shipping it…), a little cheap Garmin wrist tracker (not even a colour screen!) and the Framework 12 at the heart of it all. Sure, an inferior set up but then the freedom - proper x86 and supported technologies to get my teeth into, a tablet (something I’ve always wanted and dabbled in with Apple, but didn’t want to lug around a third device in my backpack) and the personal pride of being able to upgrade it, work on it, renew parts and service it, hardware AND software ultimate freedom, really.

Something about the FW12 gives me vibes of that first May 2009 white MacBook I started with as well, it really does. I wonder if it will feel that way in person too. So excited.

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Yeah, the M1 MacBook Air I passed on to my cousin when I got the FW 13 was still going strong when I stopped using it, and it is apparently still going strong for him now. So it’s hard to complain about that. But I’ll manage, lol.

Honestly, I think the M1 MacBook Air was a nearly perfect “general use” laptop in a lot of ways. Fast enough, light enough, fanless, generally remains nearly ambient temp in use, decent display, excellent battery life, built pretty solid. There are obviously going to be limitations with MacOS and with the ARM architecture. But it’s was great machine. But everything is soldered and glued, so it’s going to end up as scrap when any part of it breaks or fails. And Apple really tries to lock you into their systems. I suppose that’s understandable, to a point. But they are just one of the companies these days that I feel are taking it too far.

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