For more than a decade, Mother Jones political writer Kevin Drum was a loyal Apple user. However, over the years he’s found that the company’s control-freak nature has left him feeling more and more annoyed, to the point where he’s now dumped both his iPhone and iPad.
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Drum’s “hate” for Apple was reinforced when he learned about the company’s plans to block ads by default in Safari even though in the past it has stopped users from installing ad blocking technology. What made Drum even more annoyed by this was a recent Wall Street Journal report that Apple will only block ads on Safari and that it won’t allow users to block ads in mobile apps.
“So here’s the lesson: Apple is happy to allow users more control over their devices as long as it also happens to benefit Apple. If it doesn’t, then tough,” he writes. “This is why I generally loathe Apple. Obviously all companies are run in their own self-interest, but Apple carries this to absurd lengths. Say what you will about Microsoft, but they’ve never pulled this kind of crap on their customers. If I buy a Windows machine, I can do pretty much anything I want to it.”
Drum notes that most Apple users don’t really care about things like this and are happy to live inside the company’s walled garden. However, his view does show why there are limits to Apple’s dominance: Some gadget users really like having the options to customize their devices as they see fit and they have no use for Apple’s seemingly patronizing restrictions on what they can do with the devices they’ve bought. Because of this, there will always be plenty of Android fans out there, no matter how frustrating the platform can be sometimes.
