I am in the same situation. French citizen living in the UK. I never owned a credit card and I have no use for it.

I can't pass the age-verification. I am 49. This alone is quite irritating, but the overall developer-hostility of Apple and the quality drift of their software is convincing me to never buy an iOS device again.

And I'll probably not release any software on their platforms either.

> Apple been tightening that control over time. For a long time on MacOS X you could simply run apps. Then came notarisation, but you could still disable it. Now, even with a certificate, it still shows a dialog.

Notarisation is just proof that the app went through an automated malware scan.

Windows, Mac, and Android have all adopted measures intended to warn and attempt to protect users from malware.

As far as age verification goes, this is a restriction being forced on companies by governments.

Apple previously allowed parents to set age restrictions on their children, or not, as they saw fit.

Are you ruling out sending a photo of your driving license?

It's absolutely nuts that you have to. But it's an option?

> As of now, my only way to verify it is by literally ordering a credit card from my UK bank when I'm pretty happy with my debit cards already.

This is not true. On the screen where it wants you to scan a credit card, tap “Enter details manually”. Scroll down. Tap “Try other methods”. And there, you’ll be offered to scan an ID or your driver’s license.

If you can use a debit card to buy stuff online, then it’s probably a visa or Mastercard, which would qualify as a “credit card” for identity verification.

Before people in other countries started popularizing the term “debit card”, most of my visa and Mastercards were hooked up to take money direct from my bank account, but they were still called credit cards.

I thought it was amusing that you said Apple was a "stupid American company with American values", even though you're actually complaining about a UK law. You do know this isn't a thing in the US, right? Just your country?

Apple has shown a warning on downloaded-from-the-internet apps since Mac OS X Tiger. That's the only reason it's being shown, there is no scary warning that users need to step-through in some basement in System Settings as they would for a non-notarized app. The popup even says "Apple has checked this application for malware". It is the smallest of friction present to get apps to run, as I'd argue that the sandboxing requirement for App Store apps and the need for a sign-in make the App Store a worse experience.

And I say this as someone more or less utterly in the same boat as you. I bought a used Thinkpad last June after seeing the first Tahoe beta. It's clear Apple is not the platform for us anymore.

>Apple been tightening that control over time. For a long time on MacOS X you could simply run apps. Then came notarisation, but you could still disable it. Now, even with a certificate, it still shows a dialog. I wish that apps that went through notarisation would simply run like the ones from the app store without a dialog showing.

The thing is, Apple has never been about developers, its main thing was to basically sell an image since its inception. A lot of people were excited about the iPhone when it first came out, and then they quickly realized how locked down it was, and how it didn't even have basic copy paste.

Even now, if you look at the AnE in the age of llms, all of it is locked down specifically because its only for Apple to use.

TBH most of these seem like minor complaints. I've been using Apple since system 5 and I don't really see the issues you highlight as valid, they're annoyances to you but they're for other types of user.

>Gatekeeping

It's a one button dialog, hardly the end of the world, and for users like my 80-year-old mother (An Apple user since the Apple II) who rarely needs to stray outside the App store it improves her security. It's not for you, it's for users like her.

They're tightening security because security needs to be tighter. My bugbear is the implementation of privacy and security permissions because I have to walk people through it continually, it makes no sense, but it's hardly a big deal.

>Liquid glass

It makes a lot more visual sense after my upgrade to a 17 Pro from a 13 Pro, but it also ran faster on the 13 pro than the previous edition. I'm not a fan, but I haven't always been a fan of Apple interfaces since the 1980s, I wasn't into the skeuomorphic era, and people love to have a moan.

It took 5 minutes to turn the all the features off on both mac and phone, the only bugbear is the 3D border, and the contacts background (solved by turning on high contrast mode).

It was a big release, they know where the bugs are, and have already said the next release is about bugfixing and streamlining.

>But not everyone has a credit card.

68% of UK adults have one, and there is an option to scan and upload an ID. IRL law is catching up to the internet at last, and as the father of a daughter who got her first dick pic at 12 this is a good thing. It's not for you, it's for her.

You're not always the primary user these features target so you may not see the logic behind them.

> They didn't start locking things down until the iPhone.

They sure have tried since forever though. My uncle complained about Apple for this very reason ~20y ago…

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I assume they are talking about the "This application was downloaded from the internet" warning, which I also don't like. Requiring dollars for signing and then _still_ showing a warning when someone installs your application seems crappy to me.

Yes, I'm sure. Apple has taken a "walled garden" approach for a very long time now, and there are real, tangible benefits to this approach for end users. There are also real downsides, and if you wanted unfettered installation rights, Linux has existed for at least as long as Apple has limited software installation.

My point is that having both of these options is a good thing, as they both have pros and cons, so people can decide which of those pros and cons are most important to them, and then choose accordingly.

Would you be surprised that your sports car uses a lot of fuel and get mad about it? It was sort of the deal when you bought it.

Apple isn't shy about its gatekeepy behaviour, and some people believe that it's why Apples ecosystem is subjectively nicer than the Microsoft one.

> Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now

The point is this person has been dealing with Gatekeeper for a long time but all of sudden it’s a deal breaker?

As someone who has moved back and forth between Mac and Linux around 3 or 4 times since 1992, Linux is actually surprisingly reasonable. For laptops, I just buy from Dell, with Ubuntu preloaded, and everything works. (Dell's build quality isn't as good as Apple's, so I usually spend extra for Dell's next-day on-site service.) For workstations, it's usually pretty straightforward to get something that Just Works.

After that, I've got Chrome, Visual Studio Code, Steam and a full suite of command-line tools, which covers my personal essentials. But if you rely heavily on something like Photoshop or the MacOS X Omnifocus application, then you might find much larger holes on the Linux side.

As a matter of principal, I consider myself too old to troubleshoot Linux without getting paid for it. It turns out that I virtually never do that, so I'm pretty happy. Really, buying pre-loaded and fully supported Linux laptops eliminates 80% of the pain, and nearly all of the remaining 20% can be avoided by refusing to get clever.

I was in almost the exact same boat as the author. As a long-time Apple power user, I reached my breaking point about a year ago and finally migrated my workflow to Linux. I’m still letting my iPhone age out, but I’ve already stripped it of all Apple cloud services. Instead, I’ve replaced every stock app with self-hosted alternatives running on my own beefy NAS. If you have the technical overhead to manage your own stack, I highly recommend it, owning your data is a total game-changer for privacy.

It was probably a cascade of people but the question is whether we all realize Apple was right or if they just implemented it wrong or if it will just take a year or two to get things dialed in (but still prepared for an AR/VR world) and then we forget it ever happened.

The OP states they've migrated. That might mean that the field on their account database entry might be related to that move. The account is older, but when moving countries I've had to do weird dances to get my Google accounts to accept the new locale, and wouldn't be surprised if their computed account age coincides with me having done that change.

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To counter your downvoters:

> Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act.

-- https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-introduces-age-verif...

Why is it a US corporation’s job to unfuck UK laws? If they did get involved, you’d blast them for meddling.

I think this law is the wrong way about doing what they're trying to do, but I also don't want US corps deciding what is and isn't permissible in our country.

I'm not aware of any law or even terms of service that prevents Apple from saying "we don't like your politics, your iPhone has been disabled, account suspended, all iCloud data deleted." I don't think they would suffer any reputation damage either at this point.

> They pay hefty tax rates in UK.

Are you sure?

Apple holds itself to higher standards, thus its critics hold it to a higher standard than the ghouls at Palantir.

That's why I like Apple so much.

that's because those other things mentioned are quite irrelevant in every day life, but the apple products' quality or bad appstore practices are directly affecting the said complainer on HN.

Several things can be wrong at the same time.

Personally, I gave Apple many thousands of dollars, and then I had updates forced on me by Apple which made every Apple device I own worse.

One can be angry about things which directly and immediately make their life worse while also being angry about the other evils in the world.

This is surely not a trend, I am sure humans around the world throughout history have been able to criticize one thing even while something far worse is happening.

Maybe he doesn't live in the US?

Macbooks are standard fare for tech workers. Having reached the top of the mountain it should not be a surprise that there are heavy winds. Instead of behaving like custodians of the cathedral we get fast movement with breakage and an emphasis on pursuit of bold aesthetic novelty. If there is any bizarre trend here it is Apple burning billions to give people features they do not want while letting core functionality weaken and fail.

Our choice of phone isn't between Apple and Palantir but between Apple and Android. The criticism comes from the fact that the other option is better.

Internet memes and terminal Holy Wars take nearly zero thought, effort or intelligence to post about. Just emotion and hot takes, and you're almost guaranteed a response.

This comment is pure whataboutism