Apple downturn
Six Colors gives Apple an annual report card covering 14 different aspects of the company and its products. Topics range from Mac, iPhone, and iPad to developer relations and world impact. This is not a scientific poll; it's distributed only to people Jason Snell considers opinion leaders in the Apple (really mostly Macintosh, I think) community.
The results are declining, which is in line with what I've been feeling about Apple over the past months: enshittification may be setting in. I've been using Apple products since the 1980s, although not without some gaps. I've even worked at Apple, back in the 1990s. Those logo stickers they used to ship with Macs? I used to put them on my car. (OK, my primary motivation was trying to think of something to do with the damn things other than a landfill). I don't think they ship stickers any more (do they?), but I would not put one on my car now. And I find myself slowly extricating myself from the Apple ecosystem.
What I mean by the Apple ecosystem is not just Macs, iPads, and iPhones, all of which I use, but their online services too. iCloud storage, online music, email, and Apple TV (the service, not the hardware). Here's the list:
- I've minimized my iCloud storage by setting up a network-attached storage system at home. I still use iCloud for synching across devices, but my main storage file system is a multi-terabyte system right here in my office.
- I've never been a heavy consumer of any music, but I'm returning to the world of CDs. I even have a cassette tape! Only one, and I only bought it to see if the cassette player in my nearly-antique car still works (it does). Every few weeks I visit a consignment shop up the street where they have a whole room full of CDs and even vinyl LPs. I don't have a turntable but the CDs are just a dollar each, and I store them in my locally-archived music library. Then I pile them somewhere in the office (that's a problem, but low priority).
- I very much like my MacBook Air, but I find I'm turning to my other laptop more often. It's a Thinkpad X220 that's almost as old as my car, running Linux. It works perfectly, although it's heavy and the battery life is maybe a third or less of what the MacBook offers. I find myself seriously considering retiring the MacBook in favor of a modern Linux system. It doesn't make financial sense in the least, but I keep musing about it anyway.
- I still have my iCloud-based email address, but I use my gmail account more, and I'm gradually listing my (new-ish) Proton Mail account in more places.
- Like music, I don't consume video/TV that much. There are a couple of YouTubers I follow, which has nothing to do with Apple's system. I have enjoyed some of the Apple TV productions, though. Ted Lasso is at the top of my list, and Pluribus is pretty good. That said, I can't manage to drum up much interest in their new Formula One coverage; watching immensely expensive vehicles with hardly anything in common with "cars" is not something I enjoy, and of all sports (the Olympics are a possible exception), Formula One is an endless pit of corporate logos, advertising, and mindset. No thanks.
The main drivers of disenchantment with Apple, based on the report card and my own thinking, are the actions of the company and the CEO over the past year, the drastic decline in quality of their UI design in the newest editions of their OSes, and the ongoing issues they've had with their labor force in China (technically it's FoxConn's labor force, but come on). A less critical side issue is what I've learned about the way the retail staff in Apple Stores are treated. It's not the worst job in the mall, but back in the day it would have been the best, and it's not anymore.
I'm not ditching all my Apple hardware and services. But if I need a new laptop in the near future (unlikely), Apple is no longer the only choice I'll consider.