The Cage Is Pretty, Too

Some technologies we abandon because they stop working. Others, strangely enough, because they work almost too well — provided we agree to live exactly as their maker intended. My problem with Apple was never that its devices could not get things done. It was how many decisions I had to surrender to the company to make everything seem so effortless.

I stopped using Apple products in 2015. There was no dramatic incident, no disastrous device, no revelation after a software update. It was a clash of temperaments. I liked computers as places to explore, take apart, understand, and occasionally make do something nobody had planned for. Apple seemed to be moving in the opposite direction: building an environment so tightly knit that leaving it would become an inconvenience.

And that impression was not something I had imagined. In 2014, when Apple introduced OS X Yosemite, it put Mac–iPhone integration at the center of the show: Handoff, phone calls on the computer, messages, Instant Hotspot, and iCloud. One of its executives argued that only Apple could deliver such an experience because it engineered the platforms, services, and devices together.[1] For plenty of people, that was the future. To me, it was the first warning sign on the cage door.

When convenience starts making your choices

I understand the appeal perfectly well. Your headphones talk to your phone; your phone talks to your laptop; photos show up where you expect them; something you start on one device can be finished on another. It saves time. I am not going to pretend those things are useless just to prove a point.

The problem is what comes with them. The more your daily routine relies on little conveniences available only inside one ecosystem, the harder it becomes to replace a single part of it. You are not just buying a device. You are buying habits, workflows, services, and gradually an impressive collection of reasons not to try anything else.

That is the part of the word “convenience” that bothers me. Often it does not mean the user has been given more possibilities. It means somebody else has decided which possibilities matter and tucked the rest away behind a pleasant interface. That is not necessarily a bad experience. It simply is not the experience I want.

Then there is taste, and no amount of data can settle that argument. I have never been taken with Apple’s visual language: the polished surfaces, the meticulously choreographed animations, the fixation on looking intuitive, the feeling that every edge has been rounded off so nobody might be intimidated. Rather than sophisticated, it often strikes me as silly, sometimes even childish. I recognize the craft. I just do not mistake polish for personality, or visual simplicity for freedom.

I like systems that show signs of having been used. I want to change something simply because I can, replace a component, use an odd little utility, write a script, open a terminal, and find out why a service failed. I do not want to be endlessly escorted through a flawlessly rehearsed experience.

The cage is not completely locked. That is what makes it interesting.

It would be lazy to call everything Apple makes “closed” without making distinctions. macOS lets you install applications outside the Mac App Store; it has a terminal, Unix tools, and a great deal of third-party software. Apple itself maintains important open-source projects, including Swift and WebKit.[2] And although Gatekeeper checks signatures and notarization by default, users can override some of its restrictions in specific circumstances.[3] A Mac is not an iPhone with a keyboard.

But it would be just as naive to ignore where the final authority sits. Who defines the platform’s essential rules? Who sets the terms for distributing software? Who decides which integrations receive special treatment? For years, that control was especially strong on the iPhone. There is a reason competition authorities have challenged Apple’s approach to app distribution and payments. In Brazil, the competition regulator CADE approved an agreement with Apple in December 2025; in June 2026, the company announced changes allowing alternative app marketplaces and new payment options on Brazilian iPhones.[4][5] So the walls have shifted — but not because Apple spontaneously embraced the kind of technological freedom I value.

There is a difference between security and being treated like a child. I want protection against malware, fraud, and mistakes. I also want the right to take an informed risk with equipment I have paid for. Not every restriction is abusive, and not every safeguard is an excuse. The useful question is who gets the final say when a user understands the consequences and wants to take a different route.

The same philosophy can be found in the hardware. For years, independent teardowns and analyses have documented repair difficulties, calibration barriers, and obstacles to replacing components in certain Macs. iFixit’s 2024 teardown of the M4 Pro MacBook Pro offers a concrete example.[6] It would also be unfair to ignore recent progress: in 2026, iFixit praised the MacBook Neo’s repairability and improvements in calibrating genuine parts.[7] Good. That only reinforces the point: repairability is not a cosmetic detail. It is a design decision, and it can improve when somebody decides it matters.

The contradiction I find less amusing than I should

Perhaps the strangest part is meeting people who speak passionately about open source, decentralization, digital sovereignty, and user control, then treat the Apple ecosystem as the natural, unquestionable destination. I do not mean people who use a Mac for work, battery life, performance, or personal preference. Nobody should have to pass an ideological purity test before buying a laptop. I mean the passionate defense of freedom of choice that somehow stops at the door of a favorite brand.

Free software, as defined by the GNU Project, is not another way of saying “free of charge,” nor is it merely a public repository to admire. It means having the freedom to run, study, modify, and share software.[8] Open source is not a religion, and using proprietary tools does not automatically make someone a hypocrite. But if technological autonomy is central to what you preach, it ought to show up in the decisions you make — or at least in the questions you are willing to ask.

And I include myself in that challenge. I use proprietary tools when they solve a problem; Windows, for example, has limitations that deserve no free pass either. I would rather acknowledge my own compromises than pretend a brand has acquired philosophical virtues because its terminal recognizes familiar commands. What interests me is reducing dependencies whenever I can: portable file formats, services I can host myself, open protocols, and systems that do not turn migration into a small-scale rescue operation.

Conversations in user communities are often more honest than the usual brand wars. Some people describe leaving the iPhone as liberating; others went back because they genuinely missed iMessage, device integration, or a familiar routine.[9] Some Linux developers complain about macOS permissions and the ways it interferes with their work, while others admit that a Mac can be reliable and pleasantly predictable for a job.[10] All of those experiences can be true. What matters is acknowledging the cost of each choice.

There is something genuinely wonderful in this story, too: communities such as Asahi Linux are doing remarkable work bringing Linux to Apple silicon. In September 2026, the project announced initial official support for M3 Macs, while making its remaining limitations clear.[11] I admire that effort to expand what a machine can do far more than the claim that a computer is perfect because its manufacturer has decided which paths are acceptable.

The MacBook Pro I bought for no good reason

It would be convenient to end the story by saying I left Apple in 2015 and never looked back. Unfortunately, the truth is less elegant — and rather funnier.

Last year, in 2025, I bought a MacBook Pro. Not because I had discovered some pressing need for one. Not because my other computers had stopped doing their jobs. I bought it because I had an itch to buy one, plain and simple. Call it gadget lust, restlessness, or a momentary lapse in judgment. That is probably the most technically accurate explanation I can offer. Maybe it was curiosity, maybe nostalgia, or maybe just the old temptation to buy a beautifully built object and imagine that, this time, things would be different.

They were not. It was a good computer. The problem was that I had absolutely no desire to use it. There was always another machine I naturally gravitated toward, another environment in which I felt more at home, another solution that let me tinker without feeling like a guest in somebody else’s house, where the owner decides where everything belongs.

Eventually, I sold the MacBook Pro. No drama, no theatrical regret, and no need to invent faults to justify my decision. I sold it because I was never really going to use it. Sometimes we buy something just to confirm an old suspicion. It took me ten years to run that experiment again.

This is not about hating Apple

If someone does their best work on a Mac, wonderful. If they love the consistent design, battery life, support, and integration, those are legitimate reasons. My criticism does not require everybody to run Linux, learn to compile a kernel, or turn their office into a laboratory.

Nor do I romanticize inconvenience. Technological freedom takes work. Running your own services takes work. Keeping your data portable, making backups, and avoiding easy shortcuts can mean a lot more effort than accepting automatic synchronization and moving on. But I am interested in that work. It is part of the relationship I want with technology: not merely consuming an experience, but understanding it and, when necessary, rebuilding it.

In the end, it comes down to temperament and principle. I would rather use a system that sometimes frustrates me but lets me decide than one that delights me at every turn while quietly deciding for me. Apple can be brilliant at engineering and excellent at making products. That does not mean I have to admire the philosophy behind them.