Strange opinion. Anyone that holds the SP500 (which is probably 99% of HN users between 9am and 5pm PT) are Apple shareholders, and what’s good for Apple is entirely aligned with what’s good for them.

Taking a further step back, this same group of HN users probably understands the straightforward idea that what’s good for Bay Area tech companies is beneficial to them in a much broader sense, since they’re generally employed by them or by a very small group of other companies closely related to them.

You can accuse them of being greedy, selfish, or whatever, but certainly not that they’re unaware of where their interests lie.

Your comment is absolutely spot on, no notes. Wish your attitude was more popular and prevalent around here. My guess is that before 2017 or so it used to be.

> I don’t see it as a matter of defending Apple, it’s really a matter of technical understanding and competence.

So do I. And my >20 years in the business gives me the experience and knowledge to see through Apple’s FUD.

> […] but also wanting to benefit from all the work and focus that went into creating it, is understandable to me.

It is my device. I paid for it. If Apple thinks they deserve more money for what they did they are free to ask me, the customer, for more money.

> […] unelected bureaucratic despots

Aha, the dog whistle of the AfD brand of conspiratorial bullshit ”unelected” nonsense! Career bureaucracy is supposed to be certified and educated, not elected, because that is the only way they can properly implement the laws of the electorate. Bureaucracy still answers to elected officials, but they are supposed to act without political interference and provide specialist knowledge. For the same reason you do not vote on every captain and colonel in the military hierarchy, or every tax collector/auditor in your IRS equivalent, you do not vote on every bureaucrat in the Commission tasked to execute and implement law.

Your whole post is an ignorant, ugly and hate filled rant of little value, but I will pick out this one trope:

> Not the EU and its blob of unelected bureaucratic despots and unelected Commission of dictators

EU haters have two complaints, that it is unelected and that it takes away sovereignty, yet it consists of the members of national governments that not only elect the various officers of the EU (including the Commission) but also vote on all major decisions of the EU, as well as the directly elected EU parliament. So in fact the EU preserves both sovereignty and the votes of EU citizens, both member governments and citizen representatives must approve all EU actions.

It's a little complicated sure, apparently too complicated for some to understand.

> Frankly, I wish Apple had the non-binary balls to simply just cut off all iPhones in Europe rather than bend to EU despot dictates

Perhaps you should come back when you’re less emotional. Suggesting incredibly poor value for shareholder decision while also being hateful (non-binary balls, indeed) is showing the whole ass. Never go whole ass.

You're getting downvoted but it's absolutely true that people simply don't want to (or are incapable) of considering second and third order effects that arise from applying interventions on systems that they do not understand.

> always ends up catastrophically.

Government intervention like forbidding led-based paints or asbestos in homes? Or government intervention like doing something about the ozone depletion? Government intervention like forbidding roaming fees? Intervention like requiring 3-point seat belts? Like progressive taxation? Like forbidding discrimination based on skin colour? Like air travel safety? Like a max ceiling on credit card fees?

Always?

You call it government intervention, we call it good government.

Hopefully this uniquely American push for dysfunctional government stays on their side of the ocean.

Because a monopoly extracting 30% of every purchase you make is a dream scenario?

They have nifty apple-only features, like you can hold them close to the iPhone and they'll pop up and pair with a neat UI.

It's mostly gimicky, but it does give the user the impression that the apple Air pods are higher quality because they have all these things thought out. In actuality, Apple just made it so they're the only ones who can do that.