I found this to be a very odd and strange rant. The author's three issues with Apple are:
1. Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user.
2. mac OS26. I totally agree that this is a total fiasco from a design perspective, and liquid glass is unqualified shit. Still, I see Apple at least somewhat moving in the right direction by getting rid of Alan Dye.
3. Apple had a bug in their age verification protocol. Again, valid point, but Apple needs to follow UK law. I've seen a lot more missives arguing against requiring things like driver's licenses and other government ID, and so it seems like Apple is at least trying to go the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification.
To emphasize, I'm not apologizing for Apple here. In particular, much has been written about how Apple has lost their way regarding the "it just works" philosophy. But it seems like the author's main beef is against Apple's level of control, and this is just a fundamental difference in Apple's stance that has existed for about 2 decades.
Author here. Thanks for engaging is such gentle way, this is rare these days. Let me address some of your comments and maybe you'll understand my position a bit better even if you don't agree.
> 1.Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user.
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.
> 3. (...) the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification.
But not everyone has a credit card. Those are not something you're born with or required to have or even required to have them issued from the same country you're living in. That is not the least restrictive, that is a very large assumption. What I would have liked to have seen is them providing you with options: "do you want to use credit card verification? National ID? Passport? Credit check? Etc" and then it is up to each user to decide on their risk profile and what they are okay with.
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.
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.
First iPhone was 18 years ago, but yeah it around the time of the first iPhone. IIRC he actually mentioned that because he had already been confronted to Apple’s lockdown before the iPhone. It was a long time ago and I was young, so I don’t remember the details.
Before the iPhone, what was their attempts at that? I remember using OSX a bunch before the iPhone was public, but never remember any of the ways they tried to lock it down, I might have been too young then.
Their previous lock-downs were on the hardware level, not offering ISA slots and stuff. The original Mac (then Mac+ and classic) had no expansion slots at all, and they started adding them only later.
Getting music on an ipod was always a pain unless you bought the music on itunes or ripped a music CD directly with itunes (yes, that was an actual feature. hard to imagine these days).
No simple drag and drop onto a mounted USB drive like all other mp3 players back in the day. Maybe more of a lock-in attempt instead of lock down, but related imo.
"locked down" is a vague, moving target. The criticisms of pre-OSX MacOS was that it was an operating system for little babies, and not serious tech enthusiasts and power users. Also they were too expensive, and you can build a PC that is 100000x more powerful for cheaper. This literally hasn't changed.
I'm in my fifties, have been involved in computing since I was a kid and I like Apple's stance on this because the threat landscape has changed, particularly for non-tech-savvy people. If you want that freedom there are various *nix flavours to choose from, you're not compelled to use Apple.
All the reporting I’ve seen indicates that he left of his own accord and that Apple was blindsided, indicating that they didn’t even consider getting rid of him.
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.
I hope the author reports back in a year. Getting off the Apple train appeals to me, the reality of doing so looks bleak.
Full disclosure: I've been in the Apple ecosystem since System 6, worked as an engineer there for 25 years. But I am as frustrated by many of the decisions Apple has made as many people I see posting.
Liquid glass? This too shall pass.
Locked down ecosystem? I imagine the blowback if they unlocked it and people's devices were suddenly being compromised by malware.
I guess I prefer the frying pan to the fire that I feel awaits me if I jump. As I mentioned though, seeing blog posts after the jump will be interesting.
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.
People had the same reaction to iOS 7. They cleaned up some of the excesses over the next few years, and now the same basic concept is what people want Apple to RETURN to. They'll be fine.
I’d still want Apple to return to an iOS 6-like design. Not the super-skeuomorphic stuff, but the regular UI with discernible controls clearly separated from content.
It's a leadership failure. They obviously have a UI/UX dept. Those people want to be considered productive. Hence, they need to force a major redesign every now and then. Without a Steve Jobs like leader, those things will happen due to fundamental laws of corporate bureaucracy.
Yeah, agreed. Gatekeeper is nearly 15 years old now, and has progressively gotten more aggressive, but AFAIK there isn't much new in the past year or two. macOS 26 is bad, but so is Windows 11...so unless you are willing to jump into Linux for desktop, there aren't many other options. And age verification is likely going to be an issue with any platform he chooses - are other companies not using credit card?
Criticize gatekeeping all you want, but I feel it’s safer to recommend a Mac or iPhone to an older, non-technical person than the equivalent Windows / Android machine.
And I’m still able to install any app I want with minimal fuss.
I had the UK Age verification popup today. It verified immediately based on the age of my Apple account, I didn't have to take any further action. I am much younger than the OP, and probably than their Apple account. I am surprised that this didn't happen for them.
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.
There's a bizarre trend, especially on HN, of unjustified criticism against Apple. There are so many YC companies committing outright fraud, Palantir is building a surveillance state, a bunch of well known founders and VCs openly promote white supremacist ideology, but you'll never see more vitriol on this forum than someone complaining about the liquid glass UI or app store take rate.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The author is complaining about the fact that there are a myriad of issues with Apple's ecosystem that have built up a level of frustration with their ecosystem where they can no longer tolerate it.
I find it infuriating I have to verify that I am older than 18 when my gmail account is 20+ years old.
Him moving to Android will do them no good as Google will be implementing similar controls in it. I suggest they get a Pixel Phone and install Graphene OS.
> 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.
> 3. Apple had a bug in their age verification protocol. Again, valid point, but Apple needs to follow UK law.
No they don't. They need to grow balls. They pay hefty tax rates in UK. If they would announce they are leaving UK market in 90 days, I bet you would find enough politicians to change the course of this terrible law.
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.
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.
Should Apple be responsible for righting the wrongs of legislation in every country it operates in? I don’t think so. Ideally it would mettle as little as possible, even though they clearly don’t (see right to repair).
Hmm. I don't think the point is that Apple has to "fight". The point is that Apple needs a moral high ground and is willing to completely give up the UK market (which I understand but don't necessarily agree with). I don't see that happening with today's environment, considering that shareholders will happily fire Cook over that.
Apple paid 304m in taxes on 1200m in profits in the UK. That's ~25% tax rate on profits. It's entirely subjective to say if that's a "pretty hefty" rate or not, but it seems to be pretty standard for G20 countries.
I suspect the UK wouldn't love losing that 304m, but Apple would also probably not enjoy losing the 1200m of profits either.
It's almost like international companies having to deal with legislation in every country they operate in is a more complicated topic than could ever be hashed out in the comment sections of a tech news site...
Why are you so deeply invested into defending the honor of a massive corporation that's callous to its users? Especially corporation that's supposedly proud of their UX?
Any system of age verification will fail to satisfy the writer, because it is fundamentally the UK’s fault by requiring such draconian measures. Credit cards don't work ever time, but the other options of using AI or sending your data to a third company who will resell it are also not great.
The only other complaint seems to be liquid glass? It really feels strange because Apple feels on the upswing with their new office and their cheap, repairable mac.
Reading between the lines, the author of the blog post would have gone along with the verification with annoyance if the verification had worked. What seems to have prompted everything is the credit cards failing. The fact that they couldn't use Wallet and then tried manually with all five sort of illustrates that they would have gone along with it.
Edge cases like immigrants in a different land are typically unmet for these things. I remember once trying to re-activate my Google Fi SIM from my home in the UK before I returned to the US and getting a strange error message that didn't allude to the region. I got the rep on the line and they said "You're in the US, right?" and I had to bullshit something about "oh I had my VPN on" and then turned it on so I would like I was in the US and it worked then.
Anyway, there's clearly one cause and the rest is just kitchen sink argumentation.
It’s a brutal faux pas from Apple to consider immigrants an “edge case”. We are a significant group in many countries. (That said - I don’t have any banking products from my country of origin anymore)
I think it's unavoidable to end up triggering these since we're not really that common once it lands up with the specifics. It's rarely "immigrants" as a class but more "people with ID A in country B". I'm an Indian national with permanent residence in the US who lived in the UK. I have bank accounts in all three countries and I really don't expect them to work cross nationally reliably. If anything would, it would have to be the US stuff but I wouldn't count on it.
I mean, I'd consider it important for it to work, but when it doesn't I wouldn't consider it a brutal faux pas so much as a moment of frustration at the kind of engineer who only happy-path builds.
> it is fundamentally the UK’s fault by requiring such draconian measures
It would appear the UK doesn't:
> 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.
Apple has done this sort of thing before, where they don't like a law, they'll implement some unnecessary and shitty feature, and then say "hey don't blame us, blame your MPs!".
I think Apple's hardware has good to great since the end of the "butterfly" keyboard fiasco, but their software has been in a persistent, slow decline - both in terms of quality and design. So depending on what you look at/care about you could make the case that Apple is getting better or Apple is getting worse.
That covers the good and the bad. The ugly is the increasing presence of ads in Apple software - Maps being the latest example. Something that's going to push me out of the ecosystem eventually. I'm probably ditching Apple Maps for Google Maps this summer, because if I'm going to use an ad-infested product I at least want to get reliable directions out of it.
> The fact that you think American corporation punishing foreign users for their laws is acceptible is sick upon itself.
Not really. I was hoping more large US corps would just not comply and force a big kerfuffle and force the UK government to rethink the OSA and other ridiculous legislation.
In the UK More people have passports than have credit cards, the assumption otherwise is precisely the culture-clash that the article is complaining about.
They have just done the same to me. I spent nearly two hours on the phone with Apple support before I find they will not accept a UK passport as valid ID. They will only accept the national ID card that I also don’t have. I don’t have or want a credit card. I’m 65 so me being now unable to verify my age is embarrassing and insulting. And the way Apple messed me about earlier has put me off them now. I won’t buy another product or service from them ever again.
I've been using Mac for 15+ years now. I thought I would hate Glass so I avoided installing it across my ipad, phone, etc. But it was forced on my on my work laptop. Overall I don't notice the difference. There's nothing that outrages me, but I do find the changes useless.
The space allocated for "Apple has lost their way" has been maxed out for decades, so it bears stressing that this time is different. This Liquid Glass debacle has disillusioned everyone from hardcore Apple fans to normal people who otherwise don't follow tech.
Once the dust settles, this will be a case study for decades to come. Apple threw their hard-won reputational gains off a cliff for _nothing_.
My non-techie friends either barely notice Liquid Glass or go "ooo this is nice!". It has annoyed me on occasion, but I barely notice it any more. Much ado about nothing.
My non techie friends all hate it. I don’t think there is a single Apple user I talk to regularly that hasn’t complained about it, or ask me why it is that way (being the resident tech person for some).
And besides a few odd posts on x, I haven’t heard anyone techy speak positively about it.
Maybe I’m the one in a bubble, but I’m seriously considering switching from Apple as a lifelong Apple user, largely because of the UI changes (Liquid Glass et al), so I don’t think the complaints about it are overblown.
My personal experiences are the opposite of this. I have people in my life who are gen Z, millenials, and gen X who are befuddled by it.
We also have data to show people dislike this. Google Trends shows the largest spikes ever for "how to switch to android", "iphone revert update", "iphone fix battery", and "iphone slow", all only after the release of Liquid Glass (and particularly the increased tactics to get people to update starting in September).
Yeah I couldn't care less for liquid glass but it's not as horrible as people make it out to be. The amount of hate is irrational. New Coke vibes if you heard of new coke.
I don't understand the fuss around liquid glass. I've been using Apple stuff since before OS X and this just feels like another redesign; I understand that there are some accessibility issues (that I thought Apple had at least partially addressed) but I don't have any problems using it. In fact, I kinda like it. It feels like many people latched onto an extremely negative narrative early on, and can't let go of it.
I have much more of a problem with the terrible window management on the mac and ipad OSs. Not being able to snap and resize windows to the edges of the screen, like every other standard window manager that exists, is insane (I know they added some version of this recently, but unsurprisingly it sucks). And the entire mac OS is starting to feel slow, bloated, and janky. They completely ruined the cmd-space search in their most recent major release. They need to get their house in order.
> And the entire mac OS is starting to feel slow, bloated, and janky.
It appears you do indeed understand the fuss around Liquid Glass :)
The way I see it, "Liquid Glass" is used as a catch-all term to refer to all the UI changes across Apple's 2026 slate of user interfaces.
For one example, the annoying Apple Watch fitness app changes are "Liquid Glass" in my book because it exists only to show off the new wobbling refracting buttons,. The loss of performance and battery life is reasonably assumed to be tied to new Liquid Glass shaders Apple aspires to run 120 times a second on the phone.
The Apple universe seems to be
a place where sentiment is driven by tastemakers and small-group consensus, not the mass of actual customers. So it doesn’t need to be a dominant complaint to have a big effect.
The griping I read about Liquid Glass is from the unhip nerds on HN (like me). I don’t actually know what the industrial designers and graphic artists in their Soho lofts think. I asked an exec designer that I know IRL and got a shrug.
There are many things which are worse which cannot be configured. I can't get my battery life back, I can't get a version of Apple Maps which doesn't crash on launch back, I can't get my framerate back. I can't even get a refund for this $1200 phone.
I think people are using "liquid glass" as a blanket term that includes other changes in iOS 26, like completely breaking message delivery with the world's dumbest spam filter, aggressively waking some people up in the middle of the night, siri somehow getting even worse, breaking the incoming call state machine (again), bluetooth regressions, regressions to their (already poor) UI accessibility, and so on.
Those other things add up and are definitely noticed by non-tech users that don't care that things like the alarm UI are massively regressed.
Apple has gone from 68k to ppc to intel to arm. The look of their desktop has changed so much over the years that showing a screen shot instantly tells you roughly the date it was taken. A graphical change at this point isn't moving the needle significantly.
The reality is that Windows 11 continues to get worse. I was an embedded Linux dev for 15 years, and even I don't really want Linux on my desktop. Apple has better build quality, long support periods, simplified updates, and for the most part just works. My personal computer is just an appliance and a means to an ends, Apple still is the best of many bad choices.
The liquid glass debacle seems minor compared to the crappy keyboard debacle five or ten years ago and that didn't really hurt them in the long run.
I don't have a Mac but my tablet and phone are both running liquid glass and it's... fine. I lost my favorite Sudoku app (Enjoy Sudoku) when my they updated and for me that's the worst thing about it.
I think on forums like this that tend to have a lot of Apple fans and haters, the impact of UI changes is overblown. Normies mostly don't care. They notice the change when it happens and then two days later they have already forgotten what the UI used to be.
Apple fans bemoaned the Settings menu changing from a grid to a list, or the battery getting a skeumorphic icon, but that doesn't really matter.
The Liquid Glass stuff was forced on users in ways their other OS updates weren't, and it has caused serious performance, stability, and usability problems throughout the entire OS.
I'm happy with it. My non-techie partner is happy (or more like "I don't care") with it. All my non-techie friends and family don't give a flying f*. I just think this site has recurrent issues with all redesigns and no, this time is no different.
I think this sums up the disconnect between the devotees (I’ve been on Mac since 2005 or so, just long enough to buy the last PowerPC after a decade of Windows) and any corporation. I am not a devotee of any particular OS’ church but Apple’s market cap suggests there was a whole lotta nothing they got in return. I am a firm believer in the way European football fans see their clubs as belonging to them, but the reality with any brand is their loyalty is to money, not you.
As someone who was inspired to buy their first Apple laptop by the "send all other UNIX boxes to /dev/null" ad I feel like Apple is already done and we are just catching the last remaining tail of that legacy.
Seems underlying features such as kerberos, NFS, auto mount and others are just bit rotting by now and its a matter of time before MacOS becomes Windows 8.
I've been using Apple since 1995 on System 7.5 then through OSX to MacOS & iOS. MacOS/iOS/iPadOS 26 and Liquid Glass do not bother me one bit. I rather still enjoy using my devices running these operating systems and think that the interface is great. I also know i am not the only one.
What keeps me in the Appleverse is the hardware, and the software that Just Works with the hardware (I find that "Just Works" has been rapidly eroding in general, but naturally it still handles the hardware well). The alternatives are Linux on much worse hardware, or the non-starter that is Windows on anything whatsoever.
I'm told ThinkPads are getting to parity and have primo Linux support, but barring accident, my M3 MBP will probably last me a decade. Another reason I prefer Apple hardware.
Apple Silicon was as potent a crack as SSDs and Chrome (both immense steps up from what we had before). I nearly left the Apple ecosystem but the M chips pulled me back...
I find Apple's refusal to patch iOS18 (other than for very old devices that do not support 26) to be more objectionable. I have a 13 mini and everything I've read says not to upgrade to 26. Yet Apple won't issue patches for known security issues that are actively being exploited in the wild? That's crazy.
It will only get worse. The bureaucracy has taken over at these companies. Contrarian viewpoints are severely punished, and you need contrarians to speak up when things suck.
Any age verification should come with an OAUTH style government run API. The idea being you verify your ID with the government, and the service that required age verification gets back a true or false for does this user meet this age requirement. That way the amount of data shared is kept to a minimum.
The UK, and Brazil who passed a similar law, 'cheated' by just forcing private companies to figure it out.
No, this is an absolutely terrible idea. You're suggesting a giant, centralized, government-run data silo, with all of your online activity tied to your real-world ID. This is far worse for privacy than any data broker, it's hard to even compare.
Honestly I'd rather have private companies figure it out. Then at least you'll get multiple options, including from privacy-first companies. But that still sucks, and my preference strongly goes towards OS-level Age Indication. Just as effective in practice, 100% private and offline.
Doesn't that exist in the U.S. already? DOGE worked to create the "one big, beautiful database" and now the federal government is buying information about citizens from data brokers.
> The UK, and Brazil who passed a similar law, 'cheated' by just forcing private companies to figure it out.
At least on the Brazilian case, it's outright illegal for a private company to implement the thing you are describing. So, if the government doesn't provide the service, there isn't much for them to figure out.
Wrong, because then that government knows exactly what services you have accessed. It's a huge and extremely dangerous privacy violation. The real solution to the age verification problem is not to have one. The Internet has existed for over 30 years without it; it's solution to a problem that does not exist.
Ironic that Brazil government tends to pay lip service to digital sovereignty while forcing their own citizens to handle their data to Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel.
Fuck that. California's way is the absolute maximum that should be done: When accounts get created on an operating system, allow the user to provide a completely unproven age. Then that age should be the only age check.
If the goal really is to just help parents prevent their kids from accessing inappropriate material, that's plenty. Anything else, and you're admitting the real goal is Big Brother style surveillance.
I don't think they meant literally Oauth but instead that you can get a verification request from the party that needs your age verified, get it signed by the government, and then send the assertion back to the relying party. It's not necessary for the government to send the signed verification request directly to Pornhub. It's not even necessary for the government to sign the assertion itself. A trusted device (like most consumer phones) could store the identity locally after government verification and then sign assertions itself after biometric or PIN verification, which is what most proposals look like.
If the US had this, Trump would definitely be using it right now to send ICE to arrest people that said mean things about him on social media, didn't drop out of college, didn't bribe him enough, etc.
Mate. None of the companies is worth such stress. I feel rage in you. It is just a tool. You choose what works best. That's it. No need to overthink it.
A smartphone is a tool that is all but required for modern life, it gets it's hooks into every detail of your life, and you have very little choice in providers, features, and functions. It makes a lot less sense to not care like this.
I bought a cheap, used iPhone SE3 because I needed to Facetime relatives.
I learned quickly that "Find My" was far superior in remote tracking of airtag-equivalents, and switched some of my convertible tags to their network.
I flew out of O'Hare last month, and there were advertisements all over the airport announcing that Illinois id/drivers license import into Apple Wallet, so I did it, and that works.
Supposedly, passports can be imported. I haven't been able to make that work, even after a few hours on the phone with Apple.
I also added a new CTA Ventra card, and I lost my ATM card while out of the country and instantly added a new one to Apple Wallet.
Apple devices allow biometrics to be disabled for unlocking the phone. That is an important requirement for me to use these features.
I would never, ever trust Google with any of these things. Ever.
That being said, if I want to run a torrent client on my phone, I should be able to do so. Apple will never allow that.
If I want a Bourne/POSIX shell, I should be able run one. Apple will never allow that [AFAIK].
There are important reasons that Apple products will never, ever be my primary communication devices.
Currently, one is a surveillance company that is motivated to abuse my privacy in every possible way, in order to target ads (and, conceivably, Gemini). The other, currently, is a hardware company that's dipped it's toes in advertising and is motivated to sell me devices and services.
If, at some point, they converge, I will trust Apple as little as I trust Google, but it's absurd to pretend they're the same thing, today or to "what if" yourself into knots.
Google is absolutely an evil company, head to toe, that is aligned against you. Trusting them with anything is almost as stupid as trusting Meta.
> Credit cards are not documents. Many people don’t have them. Apple don’t provide any other way to verify your age because they are a stupid American company with American values in which you’re just as human as your credit score.
UK passed age verification law and people still find a way to blame the US.
> 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.
While Ofcom hasn't required it yet, they have indicated that they very much plan to[1]. Apple is pretty clearly getting out ahead of this, and simultaneously removing the burden of compliance off all of the relevant app developers (which seems in line with their overall privacy stance - I'm more inclined to trust Apple with my ID than I am some social network)
It's not about some American cultural attachment to credit cards. It's another classic Apple frustration move where they make the experience worse for their users in the hopes they'll blame someone else like the UK govt. They do the same thing with green bubbles.
What are you talking about, have you tried to exist in America without a credit score? It absolutely is an American principle, just because it's not explicitly stated in the constitution doesn't mean it's not true.
I kind of prefer Credit Card over anything else if I have to do it. I give out my CC pretty regularly already so not much new PII to lose there. But it does sound like Apple has bugs to work out.
Yes. The point in the post is that it's very American to assume that every adult has a credit card. I'm in my thirties and I never had nor plan to have a credit card. I always have had only debit cards. In countries I've been raised and lived it's a sign of a poverty and total dependency on the bank with additional tax on your living, not an everyday tool like Americans perceive it.
Debit cards can be given to an underage, so I suppose they don't accept it for this reason.
In the UK, having a credit card is an overwhelmingly good move even if you never use the facility for credit. You can set up a direct debit to pay it off in full every month, making it effectively a debit card, but you get what are known as Section 75 protections on all purchases. So if you’re buying online and the firm goes bust (or you for any other reason don’t receive your goods), the credit card firm has to compensate you in full. For this reason I always make larger online purchases on credit card.
For many, obtaining a credit card just for the purposes of age verification, and not using it for shopping, feels easier than giving away their legal identifying information to a random third party.
In the US you're usually inundated with offers to open a credit card (often pre-approved) right in your mailbox. Even if you're a poor recent immigrant, or something.
Probably, but making a non-used CC just for using your own phone sound a bit weird, don't you think?
And I don't criticize US way of living here, but Apple is an international company and could do better adjusting to local cultural habits. But maybe they just punish people for this stupid law in the first place which is totally understandable.
Banks are subject to much more scrutiny (regulations, audits) than a random company. Or maybe even a highly established company which you'd rather not give your identity to, something like Pornhub.
You must live in an especially civilized place to be able to get by without a credit score. I wish I could close all my cards, but doing so would harm the score since card count and age are part of it.
Credit cards are a sign of poverty? Now that's a hot take.
I feel in Europe having a credit card means the complete opposite, only "rich" people have credit cards.
I have a credit card, I use it, I pay it off every month. Why am I seen as poor just because I have a credit card? It's just a tool.
It spares me from needing to maintain a 10000$ emergency fund in my checking account.
And in post-soviet countries you blink and you owe 15+% interest. I know many people who couldn't meet basic needs and pay a never-ending percentage. Or forgot to close the debt and lost more than ever gained from this tool in one payment. So people who can pay from their pocket just pay from it instead of endlessly tracking the grace period and counting the money.
I don't imply that's the same everywhere. Also probably depends on a local regulation and interest rates.
Also people here don't generally like to owe to somebody, that feels insecure.
At least in the UK it would be entirely legal for companies to use account age as a proxy for verifying you're over the age of 18. If your Apple account is over 18 then you probably are as well.
> First it attempted to check my Apple Wallet, it failed even though I have five cards in it and am able to use the App Store fine.
> Then it moved onto wanting me to manually add a card to verify myself. It failed with all my five cards. Four were debit cards, and one was a credit card from another country, cause you know I am an immigrant who has accounts still in my own original birth place.
None of these corporations are going to have their CEO / CTO / CFO go to Jail, face the huge fines or get kicked out of the UK for you.
4chan, KiwiFarms etc. can stick a middle finger up at the UK because tbh they probably don't have that many UK users and have nothing there for the British Government to go after, the best they can do is probably nab the owner if they ever land on UK soil.
Apple could’ve opted to use the same (open, portable, privacy respecting) mechanism the euID architecture offers for such cases but of course Apple doesn’t do privacy, portable or open.
Right, Apple is a US company, with typical US culture, and they always try to "follow the letter of the law but not the spirit" when it comes to privacy and also when it comes to the age checks. In this particular case, they seem to have implemented the check in the worst possible way too, even the account age is above the age limit, what's hard to figure out here?
Is it surprising that people blame the company and the culture that fostered it, instead of the country that is trying to "protect itself", regardless of how misdirected that "protect itself" is?
> even the account age is above the age limit, what's hard to figure out here?
I have a gmail thats old enough to drink anywhere in the world, and never used it for youtube, accidentally opened youtube, they asked me for my age. At some point, I think its okay to just use account age instead of even asking.
Credit card usage is a small fraction of debit card usage. This is very different to the USA where there are more credit card transactions than debit card ones.
You can have a debit card in your own name when you're under 18, but not a credit card, meaning credit is a proxy for age but debit isn't. It's the same in the UK and the US.
I didn't know what a MNT Pocket Reform and wow! Rockchip, 20 cm wide keyboard, ix ethernet connector, 4 hour advertised runtime, 2 inches thick and costs more than a macbook. You really have to suffer to stick it to the man!
I wish they'd just show some backbone and refuse to implement age verification.
If this means they would need to geofence + start disabling devices to the extent required by law, good. The laws will immediately be repealed.
The whole platform is a smoldering fire at this point, so nothing in the article is particularly surprising. I've hit 10x as many bugs as the user mentioned. Liquid glass (as bad as it is!) barely makes the top 10 daily issues I have with iOS 26. In any other release, it'd be #1.
Maybe "Flood the zone" should be the word of the year for 2026?
This is honestly why I've been getting deeper into Linux and self-hosting since early COVID. As much as I've loved my M1 Pro MBP, Apple's OS decisions - and my career expectation to always be on the latest version of OSes/software to help vet organizational migrations - have basically killed my enthusiasm for their kit. The hardware is phenomenal; the software does not spark joy.
And if I'm being frank, my time with Linux (Debian 13 on an N100 NUC w/ Docker) has really opened my eyes to just how excessive modern compute is, specifically to power increasingly bogged-down operating systems and woefully inefficient software. The N100 sips energy while happily transcoding 4K video streams on Jellyfin, running my IRC server for friends to hop off Discord, reverse proxying my entire home network, letting me stream game nights via Owncast, host some image board shitposts for various friend groups, host my RSS Aggregator, and still yawns with 75% excess capacity left over.
I'll still have a Mac because that's what my family uses (if they want free tech support from me, that is), and I'll still have my Windows gaming PC, but I'm already drafting up cyberdeck plans for my first primary Linux box, with just a CLI to get me by. Realizing I don't actually need ten cores and 32GB of RAM and a hefty GPU to do daily work is pretty damn revelatory - and shows how grotesque mass-market software and OSes have become in the name of marketing cycles and advertising dollars.
> Even though my software is packaged and notarised as per their requirements, they still show my users a dialog box confirming they want to run my app, something they do not for apps installed through their walled garden. This is just friction to punish developers outside their store. I am very tired of it.
Indeed. I'm honestly impressed that he lasted this long. My first "I'm very displeased moment" was when Java became a second-class citizen on macos. I was a Java dev at that time and had written some non-trivial apps. They weren't native perfect, but they were close enough that my highly-Apple-fan relatives didn't realize they weren't "native" until I told them. The write-once-run-anywhere dream of desktop UI software (without getting into Qt) was there in a very real way for me. I ran it on my windows machine at work, and my mac laptop and linux desktop at home. The hoops at that point were nothing compared to what they are now, and it began souring me. For me the final straw was when I got the latest macbook pro with the latest mac monitor (all from Apple mind you) and yet there was a horrific bug that aboutg half the time when you plugged in to the monitor, the laptop screen shut off and would never come back on until you did a hard reboot (holding the power button). That was never supposed to be possible since it was Apple hardware/software controlled top to bottom, the original promise of the vertical integration and one of the reasons we accepted the heavy lack of cross-platform compatiblity. A little before that I used to put my macbook on the nightstand and listen to podcasts at night to fall asleep. I would dim the screen to off and have the volume at low levels. Apple rolled out a software update that suddenly caused the screen to kick on at FULL BRIGHTNESS after about 5 to 10 minutes (when the screensaver would have normally kicked in). That bug was there for years, and myabe still is (I replaced it with a Linux laptop). My user experience on macs was never close to bug-free, and was frankly worse than almost everything else out there. It took me a while to figure that out though.
Article says his account is 25 years old, but I guess the laws don't care about such metadata.
But OT: it makes me realize my Yahoo Mail account is turning 30 this year, because in 1997 Yahoo wanted to compete with Hotmail and I thought "Having a @yahoo.com email, that's a very good nerd badge!". Nowadays the ridicule is deserved, and they've silently lost all my mail from 1990s...
I have FP6 with eOS, it's fine and works well. One thing that I can't do is use my phone to pay, e.g. Apple Pay.
You can't install Google Wallet - it does not work, but also defeats degoogle mindset. There were curve company that people seem to have used in the past, but seems like the company was sold to someone and now it's dead. So I have to use physical card like a boomer.
---
My story is similar, somehow my air managed to update to 26' (maybe I just clicked that stupid notification window button to make it go away). I will keep my opinions on glass to myself.
Facts are: docker broke again, app launcher is whatever the hell it is, firewall with started messing up with my dns blacklists. I know you can somewhat fix it, but nixos/asahi on m2 with hyprland gives me a workflow that is superior. I just won't go back. AeroSpace just can't match.
Then the credit cards... I have my original store country elsewhere. I've then moved a few times and changed banks. Now, apple does not like my card. It won't accept it. That's it. Nothing you can do about that. And I couldn't really change the country because I have had some subscriptions and I had to wait until they expire. Meanwhile, apple killed my apple subscription I lost Music, I lost cloud storage, I lost some backups.
The thing that incredibly pissed me off is that as soon as my apple subscription got cancelled I could not even see my music library in the app. It would just prompt me with "gotta subscribe buddy" screen, which I can't.
And yes, the hardware is very good. I love my m2. But the whole software part is becoming messier and messier and I don't want to deal with it anymore.
30 days later they canceled the ABM company account and deleted all the associated users along with the Apple ID which I used to log into a testing device, which now became a fairly expensive paperweight: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47516266
Just to add a little bit of context, when I hit the same problem today the flow offered me the option to scan my driving license or 'national id card' (whatever that is - we don't have those in the UK)
So despite the claims in the article, it's not credit card centric.
However, they did not accept my passport as a scannable ID, and so luckily I had a credit card somewhere that I have used recently for a single large purchase otherwise I'd be stuffed, as I don't drive
When you move to Android, I'd definitely recommend getting a Pixel for GrapheneOS. It's really highly polished and most things should just work once you press the button to enable sandboxed Google Play.
Also curious what Linux distro and desktop you're going to. Flatpak makes it matter a lot less these days, so long as the base stays pretty current.
I been considering Fairphone cause I want to support smaller vendors and also because it is repairable.
As for Linux distros. The MNT Pocket Reform comes with Debian and I plan to leave it at that even though Debian is not my favourite. I will use Niri and Noctalia with it. I plan to make use of whatever Debian package but if it is too old for my taste, I'll look for AppImages and Flatpaks as needed. I got a Surface Go 1 running exactly that setup but with Fedora and works really well for me.
Want to use KDE Connect to link whatever Android I get with the laptop.
> It will take me a while before I can fully migrate away... I’m gonna throw all of them away... I purchased a MNT Pocket Reform. It will take them a while to assemble and send it to me... I am considering getting a Fairphone Gen 6...
Honestly it sounds like Apple is far from lost here, but I'm excited to see updates on how the transition is, if it ever does happen.
I find it so odd to have such an extreme response to Apple all-of-the-sudden. Like they've been so great all of these years and only just now you're deciding to make such an extreme switch that you're going to choose the worst possible hardware imaginable because you can't even stomach buying a decent GNU/Linux laptop from Dell or Lenovo or Framework or System76? Jeeze. That little puny 8GB ARM laptop you're choosing instead is going to be painfully slow compared to whatever Mac you're coming from. At least check out the System76 laptops - some I do believe come fully open-source with Coreboot if that's all-of-the-sudden so important to you.
> Even though my software is packaged and notarised as per their requirements, they still show my users a dialog box confirming they want to run my app, something they do not for apps installed through their walled garden. This is just friction to punish developers outside their store. I am very tired of it.
Does them quitting Apple mean they're going to stop supporting MacOS users?
I am all for voting with your dollar - but it sounds like maybe this user doesn't realize how bad it is out there right now for the grievances he listed.
Great timing too to ditch MacOS. Just instilled Fedora Asahi Remix 43 on may MacBook Pro M2, and both KDE and Gnome work great. So happy to be liberated form the increasingly sloppy Apple OS.
nitpick: just changed my monitor to a UWQHD one. The text on this blog occupies 1/6 of the screen, 5/6 of white. If i only use half the screen for the broswer, it would be 1/3 and 2/2. Still too much white space for me.
Anyway: Not sure why fairphone. While i like the concept it's still an android phone, eos is not much better than lineage.
If i had to change today i would go again for a Pixel 8A (or a series 10) and graphene. But if the OP can wait and see, next year we should get replaceable batteries everywhere because EU, and maybe wait and see whatever motorola is cooking for graphene.
Or check out the pinephone and go full linux.. i guess, when i'll have some spare cash to throw away..
The forced age verification shocks me. It shouldn't, given how much it's been in the news, but my poor naive Millennial sensibilities still feel it's part of some dystopian nightmare that I saw in some Michael Bay sci-fi once, not my present reality.
Your phone, which you own, updated during the night, and now demands you tell it who you are through a credit card, which you may not have, or you're locked out of features. On your phone. This is outrageous.
We can jump ship -- for now -- but it's only a matter of time before these laws cover every kind of Internet access, if they remain unchecked.
Wow, that age verification is wild. We need to fight this here in the U.S. If my cell phone starts requiring gov't id and credit/debit cards for verification... god help me...
If he's pissed at this, imagine how pissed he'll become when he enters the ridiculous Android ecosystem.
Anyway, he's free to choose whatever, but I have to nitpick here:
1. macOS 26 - a fiasco? Come on. A lot of like the liquid glass. On macOS I hardly notice it, but on iOS is actually beautiful to me. Also a long time macOS user, since 2003 btw. You can always dampen it using accessibility settings.
2. Age verification ? First time I've heard of it. Also on latest iOS. But then I'm also not in the UK.
3. "Interfaces built with AppKit or SwiftUI that rendered perfect, are now overlapping controls and clipping stuff. They have no consistency at all in terms of icons, placement, corners…". I'm all for constructive criticism. But where are you seeing this? I've got 8-9 apps open and none are inconsistent in my view. I'm picky about these things too. Genuinely I'd like to know.
Agree the icons are unnecessary and silly. Apple should know better.
The corners haven't bothered me much, I like seeing a bit of a gap down there, and I haven't had issues dragging it but that could be because I'm using a regular USB mouse and not a trackpad.
I've been a macOS user (or OS X rather back then) since 2003. It was truly a blessing to finally get a proper UNIX™ on the desktop. I was on Linux in the 7-8 year period before that.
We just got fucked by this today. My 22 year old daughter doesn't have a driving license or a credit card but does have a passport and it didn't work. She's now got a kids phone. I haven't tried the 20 year old yet who is in the same situation...
They have 5 days to unfuck this or I'm literally rolling out Pixels + Graphene to the family.
Phones can read biometric information from passports and identity cards just fine. Why didn't you think of a personal ID document as the first step to prove ID?
the law in the UK doesn't require any of that. It didn't even required Apple to do it. Ofcom is praising Apple for doing it even though it was not required. Social Networks need to do it.
This UK law does not apply to OSes. It applies to online platforms. The author ran into this problem because using the iPhone required an Apple account.
That depends on if you live in a jurisdiction that lives or dies by free speech, and if it considers code speech[0]. Forcing you to implement age verification is effectively forcing you to speak things you don't want to say, which isn't free speech.
Apple has gone from a company with a long term vision of the future and their part in it to a quarterly financial report gradient climber. This is what happens to every company when it loses it's founder(s). They have enough money and market influence to be a problem for all of us for the next 30 years or so.
Gatekeeping is trivially turned off by those who won't footgun themselves by dragging literal garbage from the Internet into their system. It is a good feature for most macOS users. They only care about your verification woes a tiniest bit, if at all. They need a walled garden, Apple gives one to them, it's a product-market fit, while power users are given a reasonable off-ramp.
The other issues are more serious, especially macOS 25, but again, how much of that deeply affects the vast majority of actual paying customers who buy Macbooks? As long as Apple learned their lesson and will do another one of those bugfix OS releases they've done before, no long lasting harm done.
Using credit cards for age verification is certainly dumb, but age verification is coming and most people see the need for it. You can disagree that there is a need for it (entirely different discussion), but you must acknowledge the broad support for it at least.
I don't hate iOS 26 as much as I thought I would but macOS 26 has been a disaster. I'm staying with Sequoia for as long as I can. Hopefully Apple will fix this mess in macOS 27 or 28.
Apple bothers me less than Microsoft. At least Apple has been consistent. "Our hardware, our software"... while Microsoft plays all these games. At the end of the day, there's never been a solution for people who care about this stuff other than Linux.
I see the arguments are mostly attempts to needle the individual points. But it's clear the writer has reached a personal tipping point; the last straw as it were. Some of us gave up Apple over lesser offenses years ago.
You’ll be back. Have you tried Windows 11 lately? Want an exercise in self-restraint not plowing yours fist through your monitor? Use Windows. Microsoft as Steve Jobs said has no taste. They hire the cheapest international engineers who take zero accountability and perfection in their work. Everything is just, that will do. Good enough.
>Credit cards are not documents. Many people don’t have them. Apple don’t provide any other way to verify your age because they are a stupid American company with American values in which you’re just as human as your credit score.
This is the way ID verification is going in the USA and the reasons for it seem clear. A human person is only useful to a corporation if they have money to give the corporation. If you don't have provable money, either through a third party corporate payment service willing to pay for you sometime later (a credit card) or by giving a corporation your login details to your bank account (ie, Plaid), then you're not a human.
It clear what a bot is now: anything that doesn't have provable money.
I think it's also related to the fact that the US and the UK don't have ID documents the way that a lot of EU countries have and many people don't have passports, so the only other way left that has an API and is checking periodically that you are who you claim is your bank before giving you a fresh credit card
I think it’s a lot simpler than that. Verifying a credit card is probably the easiest and cheapest reliable method to verify identity.
If you look at it this way: they’re trying to identify somebody, and they don’t want to do a massive amount of work in house. Do you go to a company that verifies identity? Or… you can use credit cards as a proxy for identity. Most of your users already have them.
Credit cards require no additional infrastructure, no additional corporate approval, no additional expenses, and no additional auditing. It’s good enough for the company and who cares if it’s good enough for the users.
Corporate greed is a massive problem, but you’re giving people too much credit to assume they have some kind of grand conspiracy for every decision. That requires far too much intelligence.
Corporate laziness is a far better explanation for this one.
And even better for companies: banks and credit card companies are completely unaccountable entities who've established they're willing to put up with 10000 false positives to block one false negative. They don't even have to get it right. And getting it wrong won't result in bad press or anything actionable for anyone. We're just ending up in a system where a good fraction of people are declared not people forever.
> A human person is only useful to a corporation if they have money to give the corporation.
This is spot on.
This is the same tactic used by the affiliate marketers back in the day to qualify leads - Free book, just pay for shipping! Or, get this e-book for just $1 (so we can upsell you a $97 product later)
The laptops seem... crazy enough. And what you get for your buck is even less than with normal PC manufacturers, let alone Apple. You get CPU that is slow for a phone. For 1300 USD.
On the other hand I have a weird urge to buy one and use as a daily.
author here. Yeah, they make their laptops by hand in their lil shop in Berlin, low volumes makes things more expensive. I get it you can get a lot more performance per buck elsewhere, but I want to support a company that creates open hardware and open source software. Also it is the most repairable and upgraded laptop in the world atm.
The gatekeeping, the age identification issues are both "real problems", that compound, from the same root.
Anonymity allows one to behave in ways they would not "in public", with your neighbors, or co workers (for the most part). Be that building malware, or kids doing things they should not, and the people and business that take advantage of that.
I don't think the UK law is a good one, but when major companies continuously fail at their social responsibility I understand why people want the government to step in. I don't think the friction apple creates is a great user experience but it is better than the old approach that ended up with systems riddled with malware and spyware because normal users don't think like the folks who built technology.
Could the law have been written better: sure. "More control" over their Childs devices would have been the way. Is there a solution to the friction with apple... maybe but I'm not sure it would be that much of an improvement (its purpose IS to slow you down).
I'm in the same boat, but only because of the age verification thing.
I was never an Apple maximalist to begin with, I just have an iPhone and use a Mac at work because I have to (and will continue to), but I just turned off auto-updates on my iPhone and will never buy a new Apple device.
I think it’s fine. It definitely needs some polish and there are other, unrelated changes like the big round corners that I dislike, but Liquid Glass itself is just… different. And appearance aside, I genuinely like some of the updated UI patterns, such as making buttons look like things you can interact with instead of undifferentiated text.
It’s OK to dislike glass, of course. I’m not saying doubters are wrong. A lot of it, though, feels like piling on to sound like one of the cool kid skeptics.
At this point I am pretty sure it's the loud vocal minority that hates it. Vast majority is either indifferent or actually likes it (but liking something doesn't sell).
I've seen far more non-design-obsessed people (normals) complaining about it, but in the end i think the better question is why? What possible purpose does this serve other than key-jangling? It is a distraction for most people and a waste of screen space and probably gpu cycles, why are we shading and filtering on every frame on every window and modal? Just render the pane and put the fries in the bag.
The waste of screen space is the big one for me. It feels like every company is racing to dumb down their products and fill their UI with whitespace instead of using that space for controls or content. My bank just redesigned their website and now even checking the balance of a few accounts + credit cards requires scrolling on a 1080p display. Ridiculous.
I think the vast majority's friction points with liquid glass come from the other changes, like the redesign of Messages and the calling functionality.
its not super bad, but it needs a lot of refinement (especially on iPad and mac), and also its a performance hog (or at least iOS26 is a performance hog) so they have a lot of work to do imo
I loved Liquid Glass too. It gave a refreshing look from the UI that I was seeing for quite some years. It drew the line that separated itself from rest of the competitors UI wise. It felt good, I don't much remember the older UI of iOS now, every now and then when checking for compatibility with older versions, I test through older UI and it feels very awkward.
Another nail in the coffin, but the author fails to realize that the only viable answer here is to move towards relying on your smartphone as little as possible. You can get a fairphone, or whatever, but will anything in the real world (outside of old fashioned websites) actually talk to the thing?
I agree with this as well. The only things I really need on my "smartphone" are a browser, mail client (offline that does IMAP), organic maps, whatsapp and obviously a phone. I can do everything else some other way without too much inconvenience.
Edit: wow are people really that tied to their technology? You're fucked if anything worse happens geopolitically than is happening today.
Can we all just agree that cyber criminals suck? Especially if you are a legit developer who wants to offer useful apps to the world?
Don't get me wrong, I can't stand surveillance, and I think age verification is virtue signaling and will have very little affect on actual cyber crime. We need a better way to stop online abuse.
But certificates, GateKeeper, app certification, app stores etc. are all supposed to mitigate serious harm from bad actors.
We need to get much better at security in general if we want to have nice things.
The worst cybercriminals are allowed on the app store. Facebook and Google are two obvious examples.
Even if avoid installing their apps, take a look at all the third-party data harvesting malware that iOS apps bundle. You'll find you have plenty of stuff installed from them, and even worse actors.
Linux doesn't have any of this developer certification bullshit, and it has (almost) none of these issues.
These "breaking up with Apple" stories pop up from time to time here. Cracks me up because they all follow the same pattern:
"I'm done with Apple. I've been a Mac user since since $EARLY_YEAR. I loved using $OLD_APPLE_HARDWARE to work on $VARIOUS_INTERESTING_PROJECTS. I fondly recall $FORMATIVE_APPLE_MEMORY.
But they've gone too far. $NEW_APPLE_ENSHITTIFICATION is the last straw, I can't do this any more. This will be hard because $REASONS. But I'm going to adopt $PLATFORM because it's the right thing to do."
Most of them mention Steve Jobs but this one didn't actually.
"X decides to not use products from Y after longstanding loyalty, because Z"
This is a so generic template that you cannot criticize a post for matching it. It'd be like criticize a story for matching "X happens to Y, leading to Y doing Z which leads to a (happy|unhappy) ending"
What is it that bothers you about this type of discussion? For myself I just switched back to Android after a decade of iOS so I'm always interested in what it was that was the last straw for others.
(for me it was interop issues around wearables and trackers; I want to use chipolo and a pebble watch and not feel punished every day for going out of the ecosystem)
It doesn't bother me at all -- in my post, I said it cracks me up. They all have their reasons for breaking up with Apple. FYI I'm not an Apple guy myself.
CarPlay being actively dangerous if you use it for GPS navigation and someone dares to call you, so the call prompt blocks the entire screen until you either accept or reject the call, was my last straw.
Sure, shit UX and UI is a hassle, but at least it was somewhat consistent. But that the UX department have completely left the building so they're enabling UX that puts people in real life danger? That's the stop I get off at.
The problem is that when they start using $PLATFORM, they realize that it can't do many of the things that they've taken for granted since $EARLY_YEAR.
Apple has to do age verification because of dumb laws, but they decided to do age verification in a dumb way.
The author tried to go along with the age verification system with five different cards and failed five times. For an account that's older than the legal age that would need to be verified in the first place, mind you.
There are many ways to do age verification, most of them bad, but that's why most companies complying with these laws use multiple methods.
nevermind the apologist. his paycheck is paid by people that have capitulated to the same bullshit. and you know what they say about people learning lessons whom have a financial incentive not to.
Indeed. There has been zero political opposition to these laws. Apple isn’t going to pay the fines on our behalf, so we need to get organizing if we don’t like this.
ah, yeah; I guess organization looks like complete capitulation and then commenting on the effect elsewhere with a sturdy shrug "whatcha gonna do? we're all just so powerless". fighting the good fight.
ah, cool! great to have such a loyal ally that snark and cynicism wilts their enthusiasm to such an extent. how would we ever get rid of age verification laws without your "dropped at the first sign of someone not being nice to me" supportive commentary and shrugs?
1. Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user.
2. mac OS26. I totally agree that this is a total fiasco from a design perspective, and liquid glass is unqualified shit. Still, I see Apple at least somewhat moving in the right direction by getting rid of Alan Dye.
3. Apple had a bug in their age verification protocol. Again, valid point, but Apple needs to follow UK law. I've seen a lot more missives arguing against requiring things like driver's licenses and other government ID, and so it seems like Apple is at least trying to go the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification.
To emphasize, I'm not apologizing for Apple here. In particular, much has been written about how Apple has lost their way regarding the "it just works" philosophy. But it seems like the author's main beef is against Apple's level of control, and this is just a fundamental difference in Apple's stance that has existed for about 2 decades.
> 1.Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user.
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.
> 3. (...) the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification.
But not everyone has a credit card. Those are not something you're born with or required to have or even required to have them issued from the same country you're living in. That is not the least restrictive, that is a very large assumption. What I would have liked to have seen is them providing you with options: "do you want to use credit card verification? National ID? Passport? Credit check? Etc" and then it is up to each user to decide on their risk profile and what they are okay with.
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.
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.
Author started at System 8. 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…
No simple drag and drop onto a mounted USB drive like all other mp3 players back in the day. Maybe more of a lock-in attempt instead of lock down, but related imo.
> To summarise for yous there are three main issues for me and the last one happened today and is what pushed me through the threshold.
The compounding led to this, not that individual issues existed (and have been a problem) for a while.
All the reporting I’ve seen indicates that he left of his own accord and that Apple was blindsided, indicating that they didn’t even consider getting rid of him.
Are you sure you're not apologising for Apple?
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.
The point is this person has been dealing with Gatekeeper for a long time but all of sudden it’s a deal breaker?
The boiling frog thing is a myth - most frogs realize the water's too hot at some point, and jump out.
Full disclosure: I've been in the Apple ecosystem since System 6, worked as an engineer there for 25 years. But I am as frustrated by many of the decisions Apple has made as many people I see posting.
Liquid glass? This too shall pass.
Locked down ecosystem? I imagine the blowback if they unlocked it and people's devices were suddenly being compromised by malware.
I guess I prefer the frying pan to the fire that I feel awaits me if I jump. As I mentioned though, seeing blog posts after the jump will be interesting.
They had a guy who had no UI/UX experience leading the UI/UX team. He left for Meta thank goodness [1].
[1]: “Alan Dye Leaves Apple for Meta, Replaced by Longtime Designer Stephen Lemay” — https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/03/alan-dye-leaves...
And I’m still able to install any app I want with minimal fuss.
Alan Dye left of his own volition to Meta. I 100% believe he would still be there if he had not left.
That's why I like Apple so much.
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.
I find it infuriating I have to verify that I am older than 18 when my gmail account is 20+ years old.
Him moving to Android will do them no good as Google will be implementing similar controls in it. I suggest they get a Pixel Phone and install Graphene OS.
And the UK law doesn't ask for device-level age verification.
> 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...
No they don't. They need to grow balls. They pay hefty tax rates in UK. If they would announce they are leaving UK market in 90 days, I bet you would find enough politicians to change the course of this terrible law.
Also there would be many lawsuits arising from this.
Are you sure?
I suspect the UK wouldn't love losing that 304m, but Apple would also probably not enjoy losing the 1200m of profits either.
It's almost like international companies having to deal with legislation in every country they operate in is a more complicated topic than could ever be hashed out in the comment sections of a tech news site...
https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2025/07/apples-uk-tax-b...
The only other complaint seems to be liquid glass? It really feels strange because Apple feels on the upswing with their new office and their cheap, repairable mac.
Edge cases like immigrants in a different land are typically unmet for these things. I remember once trying to re-activate my Google Fi SIM from my home in the UK before I returned to the US and getting a strange error message that didn't allude to the region. I got the rep on the line and they said "You're in the US, right?" and I had to bullshit something about "oh I had my VPN on" and then turned it on so I would like I was in the US and it worked then.
Anyway, there's clearly one cause and the rest is just kitchen sink argumentation.
It’s a brutal faux pas from Apple to consider immigrants an “edge case”. We are a significant group in many countries. (That said - I don’t have any banking products from my country of origin anymore)
I mean, I'd consider it important for it to work, but when it doesn't I wouldn't consider it a brutal faux pas so much as a moment of frustration at the kind of engineer who only happy-path builds.
It would appear the UK doesn't:
> 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...
Weird take to shift the blame to Apple for that.
That covers the good and the bad. The ugly is the increasing presence of ads in Apple software - Maps being the latest example. Something that's going to push me out of the ecosystem eventually. I'm probably ditching Apple Maps for Google Maps this summer, because if I'm going to use an ad-infested product I at least want to get reliable directions out of it.
The fact that you think American corporation punishing foreign users for their laws is acceptible is sick upon itself.
Not really. I was hoping more large US corps would just not comply and force a big kerfuffle and force the UK government to rethink the OSA and other ridiculous legislation.
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati...
[2] https://www.money.co.uk/credit-cards/credit-card-statistics
Once the dust settles, this will be a case study for decades to come. Apple threw their hard-won reputational gains off a cliff for _nothing_.
And besides a few odd posts on x, I haven’t heard anyone techy speak positively about it.
Maybe I’m the one in a bubble, but I’m seriously considering switching from Apple as a lifelong Apple user, largely because of the UI changes (Liquid Glass et al), so I don’t think the complaints about it are overblown.
We also have data to show people dislike this. Google Trends shows the largest spikes ever for "how to switch to android", "iphone revert update", "iphone fix battery", and "iphone slow", all only after the release of Liquid Glass (and particularly the increased tactics to get people to update starting in September).
Now, if I was developing software for MacOS and it broke all my UIs, I would be at least as irritated as the author.
I have much more of a problem with the terrible window management on the mac and ipad OSs. Not being able to snap and resize windows to the edges of the screen, like every other standard window manager that exists, is insane (I know they added some version of this recently, but unsurprisingly it sucks). And the entire mac OS is starting to feel slow, bloated, and janky. They completely ruined the cmd-space search in their most recent major release. They need to get their house in order.
It appears you do indeed understand the fuss around Liquid Glass :)
The way I see it, "Liquid Glass" is used as a catch-all term to refer to all the UI changes across Apple's 2026 slate of user interfaces.
For one example, the annoying Apple Watch fitness app changes are "Liquid Glass" in my book because it exists only to show off the new wobbling refracting buttons,. The loss of performance and battery life is reasonably assumed to be tied to new Liquid Glass shaders Apple aspires to run 120 times a second on the phone.
The griping I read about Liquid Glass is from the unhip nerds on HN (like me). I don’t actually know what the industrial designers and graphic artists in their Soho lofts think. I asked an exec designer that I know IRL and got a shrug.
Other than that, I stand by my statement exactly. This is very bad.
Those other things add up and are definitely noticed by non-tech users that don't care that things like the alarm UI are massively regressed.
The reality is that Windows 11 continues to get worse. I was an embedded Linux dev for 15 years, and even I don't really want Linux on my desktop. Apple has better build quality, long support periods, simplified updates, and for the most part just works. My personal computer is just an appliance and a means to an ends, Apple still is the best of many bad choices.
I don't have a Mac but my tablet and phone are both running liquid glass and it's... fine. I lost my favorite Sudoku app (Enjoy Sudoku) when my they updated and for me that's the worst thing about it.
I think on forums like this that tend to have a lot of Apple fans and haters, the impact of UI changes is overblown. Normies mostly don't care. They notice the change when it happens and then two days later they have already forgotten what the UI used to be.
Apple fans bemoaned the Settings menu changing from a grid to a list, or the battery getting a skeumorphic icon, but that doesn't really matter.
The Liquid Glass stuff was forced on users in ways their other OS updates weren't, and it has caused serious performance, stability, and usability problems throughout the entire OS.
Seems underlying features such as kerberos, NFS, auto mount and others are just bit rotting by now and its a matter of time before MacOS becomes Windows 8.
I imagine some executive’s ego was spared by not telling them their idea was bad. Priceless.
I'm told ThinkPads are getting to parity and have primo Linux support, but barring accident, my M3 MBP will probably last me a decade. Another reason I prefer Apple hardware.
1. Battery is better than any other laptop out there
2. Touchpad is better than any other laptop out there. I don't even use a mouse anymore
3. Sound is better than any other laptop out there.
There is no other laptop that comes even close to this hardware.
still too many missing bits for me.
The UK, and Brazil who passed a similar law, 'cheated' by just forcing private companies to figure it out.
Honestly I'd rather have private companies figure it out. Then at least you'll get multiple options, including from privacy-first companies. But that still sucks, and my preference strongly goes towards OS-level Age Indication. Just as effective in practice, 100% private and offline.
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-age-ver...
I really don't like this perfect law enforcement future, but this EU initiative is about the best design one can have.
There are no plans to allow separate, standard AOSP attestation methods for Android. Google's crooked* Play Integrity will be the only one.
*crooked because it confirms Android 8 are safe and with full integrity, even when they're rooted, full of malware and present spoofed certificate.
At least on the Brazilian case, it's outright illegal for a private company to implement the thing you are describing. So, if the government doesn't provide the service, there isn't much for them to figure out.
If the goal really is to just help parents prevent their kids from accessing inappropriate material, that's plenty. Anything else, and you're admitting the real goal is Big Brother style surveillance.
It will be fun when (not if) the database is leaked.
However my Apple ID verified me based on my account age, I didn't need to provide anything.
The UK government proposed that and was met by the usual resistance to it.
I learned quickly that "Find My" was far superior in remote tracking of airtag-equivalents, and switched some of my convertible tags to their network.
I flew out of O'Hare last month, and there were advertisements all over the airport announcing that Illinois id/drivers license import into Apple Wallet, so I did it, and that works.
Supposedly, passports can be imported. I haven't been able to make that work, even after a few hours on the phone with Apple.
I also added a new CTA Ventra card, and I lost my ATM card while out of the country and instantly added a new one to Apple Wallet.
Apple devices allow biometrics to be disabled for unlocking the phone. That is an important requirement for me to use these features.
I would never, ever trust Google with any of these things. Ever.
That being said, if I want to run a torrent client on my phone, I should be able to do so. Apple will never allow that.
If I want a Bourne/POSIX shell, I should be able run one. Apple will never allow that [AFAIK].
There are important reasons that Apple products will never, ever be my primary communication devices.
Why do you trust Apple with them? What guarantees Apple will not do evil?
If, at some point, they converge, I will trust Apple as little as I trust Google, but it's absurd to pretend they're the same thing, today or to "what if" yourself into knots.
Google is absolutely an evil company, head to toe, that is aligned against you. Trusting them with anything is almost as stupid as trusting Meta.
> If I want a Bourne/POSIX shell, I should be able run one. Apple will never allow that [AFAIK].
I believe you can accomplish the latter (via an emulator) with “ish”, and then use that to accomplish the former (with e.g. rtorrent)
UK passed age verification law and people still find a way to blame the US.
https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-introduces-age-verif...
[1]: https://www.rpclegal.com/snapshots/consumer/winter-2025/ofco...
There isn't some American principle that human = credit score. Americans just don't want their government ID required to do basic things.
See discord age verification controversy.
"Age" verification was a wonderful trojan horse that has fooled a lot of people.
Debit cards can be given to an underage, so I suppose they don't accept it for this reason.
In the US you're usually inundated with offers to open a credit card (often pre-approved) right in your mailbox. Even if you're a poor recent immigrant, or something.
And I don't criticize US way of living here, but Apple is an international company and could do better adjusting to local cultural habits. But maybe they just punish people for this stupid law in the first place which is totally understandable.
I feel in Europe having a credit card means the complete opposite, only "rich" people have credit cards.
I have a credit card, I use it, I pay it off every month. Why am I seen as poor just because I have a credit card? It's just a tool. It spares me from needing to maintain a 10000$ emergency fund in my checking account.
I don't imply that's the same everywhere. Also probably depends on a local regulation and interest rates.
Also people here don't generally like to owe to somebody, that feels insecure.
* Passport
* Identity Card
* Driver's License
It rejected my Driver's License and I gave up after that.
> First it attempted to check my Apple Wallet, it failed even though I have five cards in it and am able to use the App Store fine.
> Then it moved onto wanting me to manually add a card to verify myself. It failed with all my five cards. Four were debit cards, and one was a credit card from another country, cause you know I am an immigrant who has accounts still in my own original birth place.
4chan, KiwiFarms etc. can stick a middle finger up at the UK because tbh they probably don't have that many UK users and have nothing there for the British Government to go after, the best they can do is probably nab the owner if they ever land on UK soil.
Is it surprising that people blame the company and the culture that fostered it, instead of the country that is trying to "protect itself", regardless of how misdirected that "protect itself" is?
I have a gmail thats old enough to drink anywhere in the world, and never used it for youtube, accidentally opened youtube, they asked me for my age. At some point, I think its okay to just use account age instead of even asking.
Bet you there’s already a thriving grey market for old accounts with organic history.
Someone make it make sense.
In the UK most people use debit cards instead for most things.
https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/data-and-research/data/card-spe...
Credit card usage is a small fraction of debit card usage. This is very different to the USA where there are more credit card transactions than debit card ones.
https://www.merchantsavvy.co.uk/uk-credit-card-statistics/
(They also accept an ID scan.)
If this means they would need to geofence + start disabling devices to the extent required by law, good. The laws will immediately be repealed.
The whole platform is a smoldering fire at this point, so nothing in the article is particularly surprising. I've hit 10x as many bugs as the user mentioned. Liquid glass (as bad as it is!) barely makes the top 10 daily issues I have with iOS 26. In any other release, it'd be #1.
Maybe "Flood the zone" should be the word of the year for 2026?
And if I'm being frank, my time with Linux (Debian 13 on an N100 NUC w/ Docker) has really opened my eyes to just how excessive modern compute is, specifically to power increasingly bogged-down operating systems and woefully inefficient software. The N100 sips energy while happily transcoding 4K video streams on Jellyfin, running my IRC server for friends to hop off Discord, reverse proxying my entire home network, letting me stream game nights via Owncast, host some image board shitposts for various friend groups, host my RSS Aggregator, and still yawns with 75% excess capacity left over.
I'll still have a Mac because that's what my family uses (if they want free tech support from me, that is), and I'll still have my Windows gaming PC, but I'm already drafting up cyberdeck plans for my first primary Linux box, with just a CLI to get me by. Realizing I don't actually need ten cores and 32GB of RAM and a hefty GPU to do daily work is pretty damn revelatory - and shows how grotesque mass-market software and OSes have become in the name of marketing cycles and advertising dollars.
Indeed. I'm honestly impressed that he lasted this long. My first "I'm very displeased moment" was when Java became a second-class citizen on macos. I was a Java dev at that time and had written some non-trivial apps. They weren't native perfect, but they were close enough that my highly-Apple-fan relatives didn't realize they weren't "native" until I told them. The write-once-run-anywhere dream of desktop UI software (without getting into Qt) was there in a very real way for me. I ran it on my windows machine at work, and my mac laptop and linux desktop at home. The hoops at that point were nothing compared to what they are now, and it began souring me. For me the final straw was when I got the latest macbook pro with the latest mac monitor (all from Apple mind you) and yet there was a horrific bug that aboutg half the time when you plugged in to the monitor, the laptop screen shut off and would never come back on until you did a hard reboot (holding the power button). That was never supposed to be possible since it was Apple hardware/software controlled top to bottom, the original promise of the vertical integration and one of the reasons we accepted the heavy lack of cross-platform compatiblity. A little before that I used to put my macbook on the nightstand and listen to podcasts at night to fall asleep. I would dim the screen to off and have the volume at low levels. Apple rolled out a software update that suddenly caused the screen to kick on at FULL BRIGHTNESS after about 5 to 10 minutes (when the screensaver would have normally kicked in). That bug was there for years, and myabe still is (I replaced it with a Linux laptop). My user experience on macs was never close to bug-free, and was frankly worse than almost everything else out there. It took me a while to figure that out though.
But OT: it makes me realize my Yahoo Mail account is turning 30 this year, because in 1997 Yahoo wanted to compete with Hotmail and I thought "Having a @yahoo.com email, that's a very good nerd badge!". Nowadays the ridicule is deserved, and they've silently lost all my mail from 1990s...
You can't install Google Wallet - it does not work, but also defeats degoogle mindset. There were curve company that people seem to have used in the past, but seems like the company was sold to someone and now it's dead. So I have to use physical card like a boomer.
---
My story is similar, somehow my air managed to update to 26' (maybe I just clicked that stupid notification window button to make it go away). I will keep my opinions on glass to myself.
Facts are: docker broke again, app launcher is whatever the hell it is, firewall with started messing up with my dns blacklists. I know you can somewhat fix it, but nixos/asahi on m2 with hyprland gives me a workflow that is superior. I just won't go back. AeroSpace just can't match.
Then the credit cards... I have my original store country elsewhere. I've then moved a few times and changed banks. Now, apple does not like my card. It won't accept it. That's it. Nothing you can do about that. And I couldn't really change the country because I have had some subscriptions and I had to wait until they expire. Meanwhile, apple killed my apple subscription I lost Music, I lost cloud storage, I lost some backups.
The thing that incredibly pissed me off is that as soon as my apple subscription got cancelled I could not even see my music library in the app. It would just prompt me with "gotta subscribe buddy" screen, which I can't.
And yes, the hardware is very good. I love my m2. But the whole software part is becoming messier and messier and I don't want to deal with it anymore.
30 days later they canceled the ABM company account and deleted all the associated users along with the Apple ID which I used to log into a testing device, which now became a fairly expensive paperweight: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47516266
So despite the claims in the article, it's not credit card centric.
However, they did not accept my passport as a scannable ID, and so luckily I had a credit card somewhere that I have used recently for a single large purchase otherwise I'd be stuffed, as I don't drive
Also curious what Linux distro and desktop you're going to. Flatpak makes it matter a lot less these days, so long as the base stays pretty current.
As for Linux distros. The MNT Pocket Reform comes with Debian and I plan to leave it at that even though Debian is not my favourite. I will use Niri and Noctalia with it. I plan to make use of whatever Debian package but if it is too old for my taste, I'll look for AppImages and Flatpaks as needed. I got a Surface Go 1 running exactly that setup but with Fedora and works really well for me.
Want to use KDE Connect to link whatever Android I get with the laptop.
Honestly it sounds like Apple is far from lost here, but I'm excited to see updates on how the transition is, if it ever does happen.
Does them quitting Apple mean they're going to stop supporting MacOS users?
https://asahilinux.org/fedora/
Anyway: Not sure why fairphone. While i like the concept it's still an android phone, eos is not much better than lineage. If i had to change today i would go again for a Pixel 8A (or a series 10) and graphene. But if the OP can wait and see, next year we should get replaceable batteries everywhere because EU, and maybe wait and see whatever motorola is cooking for graphene. Or check out the pinephone and go full linux.. i guess, when i'll have some spare cash to throw away..
"curl -LsSf https://acme.tld/install.sh | sh" and "xattr -c" ?
Far from ideal and safe but it's still a very common pattern.
Your phone, which you own, updated during the night, and now demands you tell it who you are through a credit card, which you may not have, or you're locked out of features. On your phone. This is outrageous.
We can jump ship -- for now -- but it's only a matter of time before these laws cover every kind of Internet access, if they remain unchecked.
-Accessibility options
-Display & Text Size
-Turn on “Reduce Transparency”
I forgot glass was even a thing as I immediately turned it on day one.
Change my mmind
Anyway, he's free to choose whatever, but I have to nitpick here:
1. macOS 26 - a fiasco? Come on. A lot of like the liquid glass. On macOS I hardly notice it, but on iOS is actually beautiful to me. Also a long time macOS user, since 2003 btw. You can always dampen it using accessibility settings.
2. Age verification ? First time I've heard of it. Also on latest iOS. But then I'm also not in the UK.
3. "Interfaces built with AppKit or SwiftUI that rendered perfect, are now overlapping controls and clipping stuff. They have no consistency at all in terms of icons, placement, corners…". I'm all for constructive criticism. But where are you seeing this? I've got 8-9 apps open and none are inconsistent in my view. I'm picky about these things too. Genuinely I'd like to know.
https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/
https://noheger.at/blog/2026/01/11/the-struggle-of-resizing-...
there are a lot more, but I don't have the links handy.
The corners haven't bothered me much, I like seeing a bit of a gap down there, and I haven't had issues dragging it but that could be because I'm using a regular USB mouse and not a trackpad.
I've been a macOS user (or OS X rather back then) since 2003. It was truly a blessing to finally get a proper UNIX™ on the desktop. I was on Linux in the 7-8 year period before that.
They have 5 days to unfuck this or I'm literally rolling out Pixels + Graphene to the family.
Exit plan for the Mac is a Linux desktop.
What "unfucking" looks like though? The law is mandated in the UK. What other way of age verification would work better for them?
Unfucking looks like a "look what the UK government policy is causing" PR disaster and a rollback and consultation.
Edit: I suspect this might happen when MPs start getting upgraded...
This situation is being treated like a bad business decision. It’s not. It’s a new set of laws. It’s bigger than just Apple.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junger_v._Daley
Sorry but I don't want there to be an issue full stop.
The other issues are more serious, especially macOS 25, but again, how much of that deeply affects the vast majority of actual paying customers who buy Macbooks? As long as Apple learned their lesson and will do another one of those bugfix OS releases they've done before, no long lasting harm done.
Using credit cards for age verification is certainly dumb, but age verification is coming and most people see the need for it. You can disagree that there is a need for it (entirely different discussion), but you must acknowledge the broad support for it at least.
I know, this exists in some form or another, eg Dell, but meh.
And I know Jony Ive / Altman are working on something but Altman, uhg.
Seems to happen a lot with "ragequitting" posts. I feel like I could write "Microsoft Just Lost Me" and it could get to the top.
This is the way ID verification is going in the USA and the reasons for it seem clear. A human person is only useful to a corporation if they have money to give the corporation. If you don't have provable money, either through a third party corporate payment service willing to pay for you sometime later (a credit card) or by giving a corporation your login details to your bank account (ie, Plaid), then you're not a human.
It clear what a bot is now: anything that doesn't have provable money.
If you look at it this way: they’re trying to identify somebody, and they don’t want to do a massive amount of work in house. Do you go to a company that verifies identity? Or… you can use credit cards as a proxy for identity. Most of your users already have them.
Credit cards require no additional infrastructure, no additional corporate approval, no additional expenses, and no additional auditing. It’s good enough for the company and who cares if it’s good enough for the users.
Corporate greed is a massive problem, but you’re giving people too much credit to assume they have some kind of grand conspiracy for every decision. That requires far too much intelligence.
Corporate laziness is a far better explanation for this one.
This is spot on. This is the same tactic used by the affiliate marketers back in the day to qualify leads - Free book, just pay for shipping! Or, get this e-book for just $1 (so we can upsell you a $97 product later)
https://shop.mntre.com/
The laptops seem... crazy enough. And what you get for your buck is even less than with normal PC manufacturers, let alone Apple. You get CPU that is slow for a phone. For 1300 USD.
On the other hand I have a weird urge to buy one and use as a daily.
Anonymity allows one to behave in ways they would not "in public", with your neighbors, or co workers (for the most part). Be that building malware, or kids doing things they should not, and the people and business that take advantage of that.
I don't think the UK law is a good one, but when major companies continuously fail at their social responsibility I understand why people want the government to step in. I don't think the friction apple creates is a great user experience but it is better than the old approach that ended up with systems riddled with malware and spyware because normal users don't think like the folks who built technology.
Could the law have been written better: sure. "More control" over their Childs devices would have been the way. Is there a solution to the friction with apple... maybe but I'm not sure it would be that much of an improvement (its purpose IS to slow you down).
This problem is everywhere in your products and it’s clear the passion for high quality work is gone from the company.
Apple would survive at luxury prices and Google level service.
I was never an Apple maximalist to begin with, I just have an iPhone and use a Mac at work because I have to (and will continue to), but I just turned off auto-updates on my iPhone and will never buy a new Apple device.
It’s OK to dislike glass, of course. I’m not saying doubters are wrong. A lot of it, though, feels like piling on to sound like one of the cool kid skeptics.
Edit: wow are people really that tied to their technology? You're fucked if anything worse happens geopolitically than is happening today.
Don't get me wrong, I can't stand surveillance, and I think age verification is virtue signaling and will have very little affect on actual cyber crime. We need a better way to stop online abuse.
But certificates, GateKeeper, app certification, app stores etc. are all supposed to mitigate serious harm from bad actors.
We need to get much better at security in general if we want to have nice things.
Even if avoid installing their apps, take a look at all the third-party data harvesting malware that iOS apps bundle. You'll find you have plenty of stuff installed from them, and even worse actors.
Linux doesn't have any of this developer certification bullshit, and it has (almost) none of these issues.
"I'm done with Apple. I've been a Mac user since since $EARLY_YEAR. I loved using $OLD_APPLE_HARDWARE to work on $VARIOUS_INTERESTING_PROJECTS. I fondly recall $FORMATIVE_APPLE_MEMORY.
But they've gone too far. $NEW_APPLE_ENSHITTIFICATION is the last straw, I can't do this any more. This will be hard because $REASONS. But I'm going to adopt $PLATFORM because it's the right thing to do."
Most of them mention Steve Jobs but this one didn't actually.
This is a so generic template that you cannot criticize a post for matching it. It'd be like criticize a story for matching "X happens to Y, leading to Y doing Z which leads to a (happy|unhappy) ending"
(for me it was interop issues around wearables and trackers; I want to use chipolo and a pebble watch and not feel punished every day for going out of the ecosystem)
CarPlay being actively dangerous if you use it for GPS navigation and someone dares to call you, so the call prompt blocks the entire screen until you either accept or reject the call, was my last straw.
Sure, shit UX and UI is a hassle, but at least it was somewhat consistent. But that the UX department have completely left the building so they're enabling UX that puts people in real life danger? That's the stop I get off at.
The author tried to go along with the age verification system with five different cards and failed five times. For an account that's older than the legal age that would need to be verified in the first place, mind you.
There are many ways to do age verification, most of them bad, but that's why most companies complying with these laws use multiple methods.
Absolving Apple of responsibility gives more than they deserve.
Strong take from a random nobody.