> All of this was sold as a feature. “It just works.” Safety. Privacy. User experience. What it actually was, was control — Apple’s control over what you could do with hardware you supposedly bought.

Can't both of these be true?

Apple, Microsoft, and the evil tech companies us nerds love to vilify actually brought computing to the masses. In the early 1980s only tech geeks and corporations used computers—the Apple Macintosh changed that. In the early 1990s, only tech geeks and universities used the internet—Microsoft Windows changed that. In the mid 2000's, only tech geeks and business people used "smart" devices[1]—the iPhone changed that.

At every technological leap, business savvy entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to expand their markets by making their products enticing and useful to millions of more people than the previous generation of products did.

Unfortunately, this also came at the expense of the apparent "dumbing down" of computers, as every new abstraction hid more of the actual computer users had to interface with. And it also made things easy to control and lock down for corporations.

But I don't think we would've seen the explosion in the popularity of computing had this played out any other way.

I also disagree with the article's premise that power users are dying. We're still here, but we're a tiny minority of computer users now. We're both amused and frustrated at the insanity of where technology is taking us, and who is leading us there, but we still have our corners of computing we can retreat to.

And I also disagree that our favorite layer of computing is somehow more "real" than anyone else's. We scoff at Gen Z's inability to use the terminal as much as Baby Boomers scoffed at our inability to program in assembly. It's all relative. Except "AI". That is more of a disabler than an enabler, even though we're too hypnotized to see it now.

[1]: Yes, the BlackBerry was a cultural phenomenon, but it didn't have the capabilities nor mass appeal of the iPhone.

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its_ethan 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> It's all relative. Except "AI". That is more of a disabler than an enabler

Feels like there's some irony here given the rest of your comment. "It's always been this way and probably always will be... except for this time it's different."

I'm not trying to say you're wrong, just a funny thing I noticed that reminded me of an Arrested Development scene.

	▲	imiric 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		A technology that aims to replace all cognitive work done by humans seems fundamentally different than all past technology. Whether or not it will actually succeed at that is another topic, but we're not even ready for the effects of the things it can do today. If you don't see how all of this makes it a net negative for humanity, I don't know what to tell you.