#buy apple iphone case

[rubberduckyrye]

Getting my playlists sorted for the big Move to....... my iphone......

Ick!!!

[malkaviian]

i have a headache but also i dont want to go to sleep just yet dkjnfjds i want me-time

(warning: as i was writing the tags of this post this turned into another kinda-heavy rant about the situation my group of friends and i are. so keep that in mind)

[waycaseuk]

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[i-blason]

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[cannibalistickitty]

MODERN!ELLIE HCS

warnings: none! bit of cursing:)

word count: 0.6k

notes: hai guys:3 here's some ellie hc's! kinda proofread !!

-used an iphone 6 till it completely died and then she couldn't decide what phone to get because she didn't want to get a "fancy" one. you had to drag her to Mediaworld because she was basically refusing even though she hadn't used a phone in almost a week😭 (she'd been having to use your phone)

-has about a thousand hoodies and wears three of them, she buys them everytime she goes to the mall but then she uses the ones she bought when she was a teen. she doesn't even notice if you're wearing one of her hoodies because she didn't even know she had it

-she has a clear phone case and the only thing in it is a polaroid of you guys on your first date:') she hasn't changed it since that day

-still wears the same converse she's had for god knows how long, and when you asked her if she wants a new pair for her birthday she looked at you with the nastiest side eye ever. she couldn't even think about changing the pair

-has a private Instagram where only friends follow because she's scared of other people commenting on her post, like what if they say something mean? or what if they flirt with her? so she keeps it private and post a story maybe once a month

-even through she's not on Instagram that much she is always on tiktok, like you'll wake up at four in the morning for some water, turn over and her phone is inches away from her face the screen lighting up her face.

'ellie go to bed!' you mumbled as you got up and rubbed your eyes

'babe look at this borzoi' she tapped your arm and you rolled your eyes

-expending on her interest with borzois, after they become a meme she's just completely obsessed over them, if you're out with her and you see one you bet she's running up to it and awkwardly asking if she could pet it and then pets and plays with it for 5 straight minutes making you stand by her apologizing to the owner for her taking so long

-popeyes lover !!!! if you don't know what to have for dinner she'll order pop eyes (without) your permission, and suddenly the bell will ring and she's speeding down the stairs and running back up with a huge bag and the cutest smile on her face

-okay so if u have a fyp like mine then you know about mulch, so I think her fyp is full of mulch and lobotomy videos, and sometimes while your having a nice moment she'll say

'ugh I am so full of joy and sandy loam'

you'll look at her with the most judgemental look ever and lightly punch her shoulder

-loves I mean LOVES dried apples, will munch on them for hours !! she sneaks them into movie theaters and basically annoys everyone in the room because she's so fucking loud. also loves dr.pepper ! if you'd give her a bag of dried apples and a can of dr.pepper she'd be the happiest girl on earth

-can't cook for shit, like it's actually scary, somehow she'll burn everything she puts on the stove or in the over, she either puts the heat too high or just forgets she has something cooking at all. but will put the most amount of effort in a date night dinner !

-sometimes if you're lucky she'll get sappy and serious, like you'll lay down on her and fall asleep and she'll whisper something like 'I'm gonna marry you one day' then she realized what she said and cringed at herself

[annievrse]

boyfriend!eren headcanons pt. 3 *･｡ﾟ

—ᡣ𐭩 headcanons a/n: going insane, so i wrote more bf!eren while in a waiting room. because of this, they are a little more......... unhinged part 1 part 2 part 4

bf!eren's post-game meal is 3 big macs and 2 mcchickens AND a kids nugget meal (he wants to give you the toy that comes with it because he’s cute) but don’t forget dessert!! he sips his *diet* coke as a palate cleanser and then inhales an apple pie

bf!eren will help old people cross the road/down stairs. he is just that type of guy

bf!eren gets a job coaching a kids' basketball team, and that is a canon event

bf!eren carries your belongings in his sweatpants pockets when you’re out together (e.g. your keys, lipbalm/lipgloss, water bottle etc etc you name it, it’s probably in his pockets)

bf!eren’s phone is very simple—a black iphone 14 with a plain black case, but despite it not even being visible, he keeps a photo of you in the back of his phone (so you’re always with him even when he can’t see you)

bf!eren accompanies you to all your appointments (even if he doesn’t have to) but waits in the waiting room (spoiler: he falls asleep most of the time, kinda embarrassing eren pls wake up)

bf!eren gets you a keychain for your birthday to match his own (i fully 103% believe it would be the lego ones (he would get himself batman, and get you spiderman))

bf!eren leaves his dirty ass bigfoot black vans at your front door (a tripping hazard!!), but it feels so domestic and homey that you can’t bring yourself to scold him for leaving them there

bf!eren watches family guy religiously

when bf!eren gets baby fever, he gets it BAD

but bf!eren cannot be trusted with indoor plants 😐 so (please see part 2 for more evidence (cheez-it incident))

bf!eren buys annie's mac and cheese in bulk (read: he is a manchild who loves cheesy pasta 😋)

bf!eren has an emotional support water bottle (a 1-gallon dark green yeti his mum bought him as a college essential). he does not leave that thing anywhere (carla would castrate him :))

bf!eren owns one (1) pen, so he's constantly stealing yours when he has class and tucks it behind his ear so he doesn't forget to give it back to you (warning he does gnaw on the end like a starved dog)

bf!eren showers twice a day even though i make him sound like he does only once a week :) (and the showers are LONG rip water bill)

bf!eren has a spare charger that is for you only at his apartment <3

bf!eren facetimes you from everywhere (like gross bathroom eren wtf i don't want to hear bathroom sounds, and he just :) but i missed u........)

bf!eren kisses you on the cheeks every chance he gets (big sloppy wet kisses that are so (screaming) so cute and loving and i need him)

bf!eren's hands are rough and warm and dry (not like dry, but like man hand working hands dry you know or am i just talking shit)

bf!eren has his own pillow on your bed that he brought from home

bf!eren has half of his belongings in your room, and yours in his (literally just move in together at this point :/ come on guys)

ok ok bf!eren in those prada sunglasses you know the ones. i know i said in part 2 that he has dad speed sunnies, but those prada ones are so ASDFKJHG

bf!eren makes sure you take your meds (if you have them) every morning/night and calls you if he's not with you to ensure you've taken them (he cares!!!! he's not trying to be overbearing or condescending, i promise)

bf!eren has a nintendo switch so he can play his silly little games when he's waiting for you at your apartment to come home from class (his phone and youtube videos get boring after a while (part 1), and studying is not an option so)

i was in that waiting room for a WHILE ok

[magentas-dystopia]

Something I really lament is the move towards digital media. Slowly we start to never own the things we like. Even if we "buy" a digital game, or movie or show. It's locked behind a certain platform or service. Once it shuts down we lose it forever.

(me when big booby anime girl explosion Is taken off of Netflix)

I also feel like there's a certain charm to owning physical media, like things you can hold and the satisfaction from pressing a clicky button or putting a disc or cassette in and seeing it work.

(oooh so classy so retro so.. expensive in the modern day)

More people should try to make copies of what they own digitally, or try to buy physical media before it's lost from streaming services and digital storefronts forever. Like the case with certain games like Godzilla 2014 and Transformers War for Cybertron. They don't exist digitally anymore. Only hard copies exist outside of emulation and at insane resell prices like... INSANE ones for a mediocre Godzilla game

So yea. Buy some more CDs of those albums you have on replay! Buy a DVD of that niche obscure anime you like! And most importantly PLEASE PLEASE START MAKING HARD BACKUPS OF SHOWS YOU LIKE THAT YOU PIRATE!!! media preservation is important!

(me downloading every episode of Daredevil onto my hard drive to burn to a DVD later so I can give it to all my friends)

This is now going to be a Comprehensive guide on how to rip a CD

POLL TIME!

Burning and Ripping Disc's❤️❤️💕💕🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️

STEP ONE:

BUY A CHEAP BLU-RAY/DVD DRIVE FOR YOUR WINDOWS COMPUTER

here are some I recommend!!!

i personally use this pioneer one :)))

DVD drives in general are relatively cheap from 30-20 smackeroos, but Blu-ray drives are around 80-100 bucks depending on the manufacturer but offer better support for copying HD video such as on a Blu-ray.

STEP TWO:

FIND A PIECE OF MEDIA YOU ENJOY.

in this case its gonna be a CD!!

i really enjoy Vespertine by Bjork, but i wanna have it on my computer just in case anything happens to my CD. SO. ill open Windows Media Player

(she hasn't changed since 2011 <3333 be urself girl)

NEXT

ill insert the disc into the player. and it'll start playing!

Pause the disc and go into Rip settings

NEXT!! select the format!

if you want to conserve space and don't mind sacrificing audio quality select MP3! if you want to hear the same level of audio quality as preserved on the CD, select a format labelled LOSSLESS. I recommend .WAV files as they'll work with most devices including an android phone or iTunes on PC (more on that later ;3 )

NEXT!

create a folder on whatever u wanna save ur music to! (u can call it whatever u want the world is your oyster bestie)

THEN!!! FINALLY

go into more options on the Rip Settings menu!

select ur folder and press Rip CD!!!!

the fun thing of this now, is that you can pull these files on your computer and put it onto your Android device so you can listen to your hearts content without lugging around your CD in a player at high quality without any subscription service with free reign of who you can give your download to!

But Magenta! what if i have an iPhone?

ohohoo fear not bestie because iTunes on PC has an even EASIER way to do it

because simply putting in a disc with iTunes downloaded prompts THIS

(oooo so new age)

and if you have apple music on your iPhone this will sync to your phone if you logged into iTunes on PC!!

thank you for coming to my TED talk

[hotvampireadjacent]

Bc my cheap but cute 5$ phone case is it’s on its last leg I went to buy an otter box bc idk where I put my old one. Anyway I had to look up what iPhone model I have bc they all look the fucking same these days. iPhone 13. Just as happy if I had the newest and before that I kept my 7 until it was too old to hold charge.

And if we had. A right to repair I probably could have just had the battery and maybe the port replaced.

My point being is there’s too many fancy new phone with very little difference, and we get screwed with planned obsolescence and Apple refusing to repair or make things easy to repair.

[accio-victuuri]

CPN : Why the Camera 📸 is driving us mad 🫶🏼

sometimes i forget that not everyone will get the reason why a certain number of cpfs are screaming about something. or if they do, is it because of only the present candy or is there a history behind it. this is something i find hard to gauge and i usually just post very quickly in hopes that people get it. most of the time i have a post about that “history” and link it but for this one i did share some bits but not enough to connect the dots.

that’s the purpose of this post, to hopefully connect events and make sense of the story.

Let’s start with the whole “LEICA” story and why we think it’s a gift to match ZZ’s. Back in April, there was a whole CPN about an alleged camera that was good for vlogging given by WYB to ZZ to take to Milan. It’s a Sony camera, but the point is, WYB gave ZZ a camera to take to his trip abroad in Europe. Now it’s ZZ who is allegedly giving him a camera ( Leica ) to take with him to Paris. Both are big events related to Fashion week and while they cannot be together, giving each other a proper camera is a way to to be connected. It’s an incentive for them to take photos and share with each other after. Apparently, taking photos from their iphones or their team’s camera ( take note, WYB was with someone holding a proper camera with a big ass lens too ) is not enough. They should have their own.

The reason why this made us all 👀 was we were already speculating that WYB had a new camera back in Mid Autumn Festival.

This is personally why I was screaming cause the clowning is correct. Even before we saw WYB in the streets of Paris using the actual Leica camera, turtles were already guessing he didn’t take the Moon photo with a camera phone. Based on the quality, dimensions and size of the file. All the more how accurate the kind of camera is.

( excuse the auto translate but you all get the point, it’s leica — a proper camera, not a phone. this was posted 9/29/2023. )

Also Yibo-official added fuel to this because instead of reposting and giving the same greeting like they usually do, they praised Photographer WYB. 📸

This was out of the ordinary, it’s like they know something. Turns out, they do. WYB has a new camera that he is playing with ^^

ZZ has a leica camera. This should not come as a surprise knowing part of his job before is being a photographer.

( for reference some of XZ’s known camera/s. the ones used in commercials tho, not sure if it’s his. )

ZZ is Leica Q2 ( spotted as early as 2019 ) and WYB is Leica M11. It’s so freakin expensive. WYB is many things but he is not exactly a photographer. Yes, he takes photos for his personal documentation and shares it to friends. Sometimes, he shares to the public, but I don’t think an amateur will buy something like this. He may be rich and the cost of this is virtually nothing to him, but I personally feel like if you’re starting out, you wouldn’t choose this. All the more buy it as “i-need-a-camera-cause-i’m-going-to-paris” purchase.

The CPN is, ZZ, who knows his way with cameras/photography and only wants what’s best for the love of his life —- gives him this, and what better time to play with it than a trip abroad. The Moon photo is him testing it out, and maybe he already has other photos that he just doesn’t share.

This is actually on brand for this couple. Matching Gucci lion head necklace? Check. Matching Shoes? Check. Matching clothes? Check. Matching phone case? Check. Matching Apple watch? Check. So this Couple Camera is part of a pattern and makes sense 🤍

-END.

[thebibliosphere]

Joy I am trying desperately to buy your book afer months and months of seeing posts about it. Amazon won't let me buy the kindle version. I can't buy books on the kindle app (I've never used kindle before lol). I'm in Australia, I've never bought books from Amazon before so I'm unsure if that has an effect? I know you've listed other places before that it can be purchased online but I can't find it :(

If you have any tips, please please let me know. I'm hoping for an ebook because I'm impatient and don't want to wait for a hard copy to ship 😅

I know you said to disregard this in another ask, but I’m replying in case it helps others.

For a while now, it's been impossible to buy Kindle items on an iPhone because they want you to use Apple Book store instead.

Recently, Android made a similar change in an attempt to push the Google Play library store.

You can still buy things for Kindle, you just can’t do it through any Amazon apps. You need to be logged in on a web browser and then the item(s) will be sent to your Kindle app.

It’s an absolute pain in the ass.

Anyway, for future reference, you can find all my buy links in my pinned post. Or by clicking on my blog home page and using the navigation links on the side. I also reblog promo posts every so often that have all the links.

My website www.joydemorra.com also has a list, though it hasn’t been updated in a while. I’m waiting until the new site goes live.

In response to you other ask: glad you got it sorted! Happy reading :)

[lisascorner]

omg omg omg another hc post?!?!?! in 2 days?!?!?! that's crazy

anyways here's the ninja and what tech they have!

nya

okay i think her battlestation would be like. slightly above average, but she most definitely uses linux since she's too annoyed by the mac price point and windows just didn't do it for her. BUT she has an iphone 13 in blue, duh

i don't think she'd have an ipad honestly...i feel like she just draws all her blueprints for the stuff she makes on paper then scans it because she likes the feeling on paper or sumn...

she probably only has wired earphones and trusts only wired earphones.

jay

jay has like three laptops all for different things and an ipad and a samsung tablet. no way he doesn't have allat to play games on their respective platforms frfr... (e.g. pjsk is region-locked and the japan and global versions of the game have some slight differences, so some people have to log out of their apple ids and change it to a jp one so that they can play the jp version. it was tedious, so jay just got 2 ipads.)

his iphone would be like the midnight blue 13 pro max or something. he'd probably have one of those stupid gaming phones too (he bought one off the market, found that it didn't run properly, and just made another one that actually worked himself. LMAO)

specifically has the apple wired earphones and airpods. i don't really think he's a headphone guy.

lloyd

the green ninja unfortunately does not have the option to buy a green macbook, so he settled with a space grey 13 inch air with the M1 chip and bought a green skin for it. 💀 fortunately, he could buy his phone in HIS green with the iphone 13 pro max once again!

he's not an ipad kid. he doesn't have one, and he doesn't need one. he might have a borgwatch though.

lloyd however IS a headphone boy and he wears sony XM4s like the elite he is. augh.

kai

latest iphone, latest mac, latest ipad, that has red options. nothing else needs to be said for this social media DIVA ❤️‍🔥

airpod pros for this boy. he has red headphones from beats by dre but uses it purely for aesthetic.

cole

the bare minimum. HOWEVER, his phone would be a galaxy S23 bc i said so. and he has nothing earbuds! don't be fooled by the non-apple name those are the same price as a base airpod model i think. yeah but cole mainly uses his phone to browse and listen to stuff, so he's alright. 🙏

zane

i don't really think i need to explain this

arin

he probably has one of those limited edition ninja x xiaomi collabs where there's a subtle design of lloyd's gi (like the armoured robes from s11) or something like that. this guy is too big a fanboy to not have purchased every single thing the ninja were remotely associated with.

he wears bose quietcomfort 45 headphones. HE'S JUST LIKE ME FR

sora

also kind of enough said?? iphone 10,000 or something. or at imperium's rate of technology advancement there won't even be phones anymore. but strictly speaking if we were to talk real world terms she'd probably have an oppo or a vivo (trust me some of these brands from china are ridiculously good and RIDICULOUSLY CHEAP so yeah)

wyldfyre

she would much rather lay in the grass and smell the air than look at a screen. but, in case of emergencies, she has a nokia indestructible.

riyu

he's the ipad kid. he's the one with the 2 terrabyte ipad pro 13 inch 2020 that stores all his shows or something.

OKAY THAT WILL BE ALL! thank you for your kind attention and i shall shrink back into my corner of the internet now

[waycaseuk]

Shop now for our latest range in phone cases!! Only at waycase.co.uk

[maryangelex]

The 141 & Their Phones

A/N: I'm pretty sure I saw someone post this or something similar but I have to give my own two cents!

Includes: Ghost, Price, Gaz, Soap.

Warnings: none except not-cannon material.

Ghost:

This guy has a Samsung, there is no way he'd give into buying anything from Apple (he's even got those Reikon earbuds, not Airpods).

His wallpaper would probably be one of the default ones but he'd actually pick one of them, the darkest colored one that's available.

Very few apps too, probably WhatsApp because the lads aren't keen on the green texts from him, and others like a workout tracker and Spotify; all his apps are password-secured too.

Very basic or has little to no social media (maybe he'd have it to keep up with the boys or like his tattoo artist).

He's got a dirt cheap black rubber case or maybe a sleek black one that one of the guys might have gifted him so his phone can have some dignity.

And he's definitely got a privacy screen!! You can't argue with me on this one, he has a privacy screen protector and it's part of his "masked identity" ordeal.

Price:

He's got an iPhone but it'd be an old model like an iPhone 8, maybe even an iPhone 6 (in the bigger sizes so it can fit in his big ol' man hands). He just likes the home button, he understands it better, okay?

He's got an Otter case!! Again, do not fight me on this. He's got one of those trucker dad cases; the bulky Otter ones because he thinks it's optimal protection.

Bonus points if it's those that clip onto his belt, he's an efficient guy!! The most severe dad energy.

He'd actually put a little effort into finding a nice wallpaper, maybe one of his dog or him and the team at a pub. He took it himself and he's very proud because he put a filter on it.

And he asked Gaz to size up his font...

Gaz:

Now this gorgeous boy knows what he's doing when it comes to technology. His iPhone is the newest one and it is absolutely beautiful.

his wallpaper would probably be something scenic, a picture he took himself because he didn't buy the one with the best camera specs for nothing.

He has all of his apps (which there is a lot of but he uses them well and frequently) organized into categories. And he definitely has widgets.

He wouldn't have the customized widgets or a theme or anything, but he has the widgets organized and his phone is just so essential because he's made it super optimal for him.

He'd have workout apps, meal-prepping apps, one to log his runs, a planner, and other organizer apps.

And he'd have a nice case, probably one of those Apple ones, and a screen protector that's unscathed.

Soap:

This is where it gets ugly...The opposite of Gaz. This iPhone is chaos incarnate.

He's got no case, his phone is semi-raw dogging it with just a screen protector (Gaz gets him new ones frequently so that he doesn't walk around with a battered screen)

No widgets because he doesn't understand those. But a ton of apps that are definitely not categorized, they're just all over the homescreen so he has like four pages.

His wallpaper would either be a picture of the Scottish Highlands that he took, or the Neil Ellis selfie. Yes, this man has a selfie as his wallpaper.

And his camera roll is full of memes he screenshot and all sorts of pictures he's taken.

And of course, he uses the most emojis out of the four of them.

[i-blason]

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

The antitrust case against Apple

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT (Mar 22) in TORONTO, then SUNDAY (Mar 24) with LAURA POITRAS in NYC, then Anaheim, and beyond!

The foundational tenet of "the Cult of Mac" is that buying products from a $3t company makes you a member of an oppressed ethnic minority and therefore every criticism of that corporation is an ethnic slur:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Call it "Apple exceptionalism" – the idea that Apple, alone among the Big Tech firms, is virtuous, and therefore its conduct should be interpreted through that lens of virtue. The wellspring of this virtue is conveniently nebulous, which allows for endless goal-post shifting by members of the Cult of Mac when Apple's sins are made manifest.

Take the claim that Apple is "privacy respecting," which is attributed to Apple's business model of financing its services though cash transactions, rather than by selling it customers to advertisers. This is the (widely misunderstood) crux of the "surveillance capitalism" hypothesis: that capitalism is just fine, but once surveillance is in the mix, capitalism fails.

Apple, then, is said to be a virtuous company because its behavior is disciplined by market forces, unlike its spying rivals, whose ability to "hack our dopamine loops" immobilizes the market's invisible hand with "behavior-shaping" shackles:

http://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

Apple makes a big deal out of its privacy-respecting ethos, and not without some justification. After all, Apple went to the mattresses to fight the FBI when they tried to force Apple to introduced defects into its encryption systems:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/fbi-could-have-gotten-san-bernardino-shooters-iphone-leadership-didnt-say

And Apple gave Ios users the power to opt out of Facebook spying with a single click; 96% of its customers took them up on this offer, costing Facebook $10b (one fifth of the pricetag of the metaverse boondoggle!) in a single year (you love to see it):

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/facebook-makes-the-case-for-activity-tracking-to-ios-14-users-in-new-pop-ups/

Bruce Schneier has a name for this practice: "feudal security." That's when you cede control over your device to a Big Tech warlord whose "walled garden" becomes a fortress that defends you against external threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/08/leona-helmsley-was-a-pioneer/#manorialism

The keyword here is external threats. When Apple itself threatens your privacy, the fortress becomes a prison. The fact that you can't install unapproved apps on your Ios device means that when Apple decides to harm you, you have nowhere to turn. The first Apple customers to discover this were in China. When the Chinese government ordered Apple to remove all working privacy tools from its App Store, the company obliged, rather than risk losing access to its ultra-cheap manufacturing base (Tim Cook's signal accomplishment, the one that vaulted him into the CEO's seat, was figuring out how to offshore Apple manufacturing to China) and hundreds of millions of middle-class consumers:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-vpn/apple-says-it-is-removing-vpn-services-from-china-app-store-idUSKBN1AE0BQ

Killing VPNs and other privacy tools was just for openers. After Apple caved to Beijing, the demands kept coming. Next, Apple willingly backdoored all its Chinese cloud services, so that the Chinese state could plunder its customers' data at will:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html

This was the completely foreseeable consequence of Apple's "curated computing" model: once the company arrogated to itself the power to decide which software you could run on your own computer, it was inevitable that powerful actors – like the Chinese Communist Party – would lean on Apple to exercise that power in service to its goals.

Unsurprisingly, the Chinese state's appetite for deputizing Apple to help with its spying and oppression was not sated by backdooring iCloud and kicking VPNs out of the App Store. As recently as 2022, Apple continued to neuter its tools at the behest of the Chinese state, breaking Airdrop to make it useless for organizing protests in China:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/11/foreseeable-consequences/#airdropped

But the threat of Apple turning on its customers isn't limited to China. While the company has been unwilling to spy on its users on behalf of the US government, it's proven more than willing to compromise its worldwide users' privacy to pad its own profits. Remember when Apple let its users opt out of Facebook surveillance with one click? At the very same time, Apple was spinning up its own commercial surveillance program, spying on Ios customers, gathering the very same data as Facebook, and for the very same purpose: to target ads. When it came to its own surveillance, Apple completely ignored its customers' explicit refusal to consent to spying, spied on them anyway, and lied about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Here's the thing: even if you believe that Apple has a "corporate personality" that makes it want to do the right thing, that desire to be virtuous is dependent on the constraints Apple faces. The fact that Apple has complete legal and technical control over the hardware it sells – the power to decide who can make software that runs on that hardware, the power to decide who can fix that hardware, the power to decide who can sell parts for that hardware – represents an irresistible temptation to enshittify Apple products.

"Constraints" are the crux of the enshittification hypothesis. The contagion that spread enshittification to every corner of our technological world isn't a newfound sadism or indifference among tech bosses. Those bosses are the same people they've always been – the difference is that today, they are unconstrained.

Having bought, merged or formed a cartel with all their rivals, they don't fear competition (Apple buys 90+ companies per year, and Google pays it an annual $26.3b bribe for default search on its operating systems and programs).

Having captured their regulators, they don't fear fines or other penalties for cheating their customers, workers or suppliers (Apple led the coalition that defeated dozens of Right to Repair bills, year after year, in the late 2010s).

Having wrapped themselves in IP law, they don't fear rivals who make alternative clients, mods, privacy tools or other "adversarial interoperability" tools that disenshittify their products (Apple uses the DMCA, trademark, and other exotic rules to block third-party software, repair, and clients).

True virtue rests not merely in resisting temptation to be wicked, but in recognizing your own weakness and avoiding temptation. As I wrote when Apple embarked on its "curated computing" path, the company would eventually – inevitably – use its power to veto its customers' choices to harm those customers:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

Which is where we're at today. Apple – uniquely among electronics companies – shreds every device that is traded in by its customers, to block third parties from harvesting working components and using them for independent repair:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

Apple engraves microscopic Apple logos on those parts and uses these as the basis for trademark complaints to US customs, to block the re-importation of parts that escape its shredders:

https://repair.eu/news/apple-uses-trademark-law-to-strengthen-its-monopoly-on-repair/

Apple entered into an illegal price-fixing conspiracy with Amazon to prevent used and refurbished devices from being sold in the "world's biggest marketplace":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/10/you-had-one-job/#thats-just-the-as

Why is Apple so opposed to independent repair? Well, they say it's to keep users safe from unscrupulous or incompetent repair technicians (feudal security). But when Tim Cook speaks to his investors, he tells a different story, warning them that the company's profits are threatened by customers who choose to repair (rather than replace) their slippery, fragile glass $1,000 pocket computers (the fortress becomes a prison):

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/

All this adds up to a growing mountain of immortal e-waste, festooned with miniature Apple logos, that our descendants will be dealing with for the next 1,000 years. In the face of this unspeakable crime, Apple engaged in a string of dishonest maneuvers, claiming that it would support independent repair. In 2022, Apple announced a home repair program that turned out to be a laughably absurd con:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/22/apples-cement-overshoes/

Then in 2023, Apple announced a fresh "pro-repair" initiative that, once again, actually blocked repair:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

Let's pause here a moment and remember that Apple once stood for independent repair, and celebrated the independent repair technicians that kept its customers' beloved Macs running:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/29/norwegian-potato-flour-enchiladas/#r2r

Whatever virtue lurks in Apple's corporate personhood, it is no match for the temptation that comes from running a locked-down platform designed to capture IP rights so that it can prevent normal competitive activities, like fixing phones, processing payments, or offering apps.

When Apple rolled out the App Store, Steve Jobs promised that it would save journalism and other forms of "content creation" by finally giving users a way to pay rightsholders. A decade later, that promise has been shattered by the app tax – a 30% rake on every in-app transaction that can't be avoided because Apple will kick your app out of the App Store if you even mention that your customers can pay you via the web in order to avoid giving a third of their content dollars to a hardware manufacturer that contributed nothing to the production of that material:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

Among the apps that Apple also refuses to allow on Ios is third-party browsers. Every Iphone browser is just a reskinned version of Apple's Safari, running on the same antiquated, insecure Webkit browser engine. The fact that Webkit is incomplete and outdated is a feature, not a bug, because it lets Apple block web apps – apps delivered via browsers, rather than app stores:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

Last month, the EU took aim at Apple's veto over its users' and software vendors' ability to transact with one another. The newly in-effect Digital Markets Act requires Apple to open up both third-party payment processing and third-party app stores. Apple's response to this is the very definition of malicious compliance, a snake's nest of junk-fees, onerous terms of service, and petty punitive measures that all add up to a great, big "Go fuck yourself":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/#dma

But Apple's bullying, privacy invasion, price-gouging and environmental crimes are global, and the EU isn't the only government seeking to end them. They're in the firing line in Japan:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-down-on-Apple-and-Google-app-store-monopolies

And in the UK:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-wins-appeal-in-apple-case

And now, famously, the US Department of Justice is coming for Apple, with a bold antitrust complaint that strikes at the heart of Apple exceptionalism, the idea that monopoly is safer for users than technological self-determination:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline

There's passages in the complaint that read like I wrote them:

Apple wraps itself in a cloak of privacy, security, and consumer preferences to justify its anticompetitive conduct. Indeed, it spends billions on marketing and branding to promote the self-serving premise that only Apple can safeguard consumers’ privacy and security interests. Apple selectively compromises privacy and security interests when doing so is in Apple’s own financial interest—such as degrading the security of text messages, offering governments and certain companies the chance to access more private and secure versions of app stores, or accepting billions of dollars each year for choosing Google as its default search engine when more private options are available. In the end, Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple’s financial and business interests.

After all, Apple punishes its customers for communicating with Android users by forcing them to do so without any encryption. When Beeper Mini rolled out an Imessage-compatible Android app that fixed this, giving Iphone owners the privacy Apple says they deserve but denies to them, Apple destroyed Beeper Mini:

https://blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-moving-forward

Tim Cook is on record about this: if you want to securely communicate with an Android user, you must "buy them an Iphone":

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/7/23342243/tim-cook-apple-rcs-imessage-android-iphone-compatibility

If your friend, family member or customer declines to change mobile operating systems, Tim Cook insists that you must communicate without any privacy or security.

Even where Apple tries for security, it sometimes fails ("security is a process, not a product" -B. Schneier). To be secure in a benevolent dictatorship, it must also be an infallible dictatorship. Apple's far from infallible: Eight generations of Iphones have unpatchable hardware defects:

https://checkm8.info/

And Apple's latest custom chips have secret-leaking, unpatchable vulnerabilities:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/03/hackers-can-extract-secret-encryption-keys-from-apples-mac-chips/

Apple's far from infallible – but they're also far from benevolent. Despite Apple's claims, its hardware, operating system and apps are riddled with deliberate privacy defects, introduce to protect Apple's shareholders at the expense of its customers:

https://proton.me/blog/iphone-privacy

Now, antitrust suits are notoriously hard to make, especially after 40 years of bad-precedent-setting, monopoly-friendly antitrust malpractice. Much of the time, these suits fail because they can't prove that tech bosses intentionally built their monopolies. However, tech is a written culture, one that leaves abundant, indelible records of corporate deliberations. What's more, tech bosses are notoriously prone to bragging about their nefarious intentions, committing them to writing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Apple is no exception – there's an abundance of written records that establish that Apple deliberately, illegally set out to create and maintain a monopoly:

https://www.wired.com/story/4-internal-apple-emails-helped-doj-build-antitrust-case/

Apple claims that its monopoly is beneficent, used to protect its users, making its products more "elegant" and safe. But when Apple's interests conflict with its customers' safety and privacy – and pocketbooks – Apple always puts itself first, just like every other corporation. In other words: Apple is unexceptional.

The Cult of Mac denies this. They say that no one wants to use a third-party app store, no one wants third-party payments, no one wants third-party repair. This is obviously wrong and trivially disproved: if no Apple customer wanted these things, Apple wouldn't have to go to enormous lengths to prevent them. The only phones that an independent Iphone repair shop fixes are Iphones: which means Iphone owners want independent repair.

The rejoinder from the Cult of Mac is that those Iphone owners shouldn't own Iphones: if they wanted to exercise property rights over their phones, they shouldn't have bought a phone from Apple. This is the "No True Scotsman" fallacy for distraction-rectangles, and moreover, it's impossible to square with Tim Cook's insistence that if you want private communications, you must buy an Iphone.

Apple is unexceptional. It's just another Big Tech monopolist. Rounded corners don't preserve virtue any better than square ones. Any company that is freed from constraints – of competition, regulation and interoperability – will always enshittify. Apple – being unexceptional – is no exception.

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/22/reality-distortion-field/#three-trillion-here-three-trillion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money