Apple recently created the new generation of laptops that are, performance-wise, the ideal machine to replace my aging 15\u201d mid-2015 Macbook Pro, in the role of a desktop replacement heavy lifting photo editing machine. They also recently released the Mac Studio desktop which is almost exactly what I would want as a desktop machine. Did I just go out and buy them immediately, the way I did some other things they made before? Heck no. Instead, I started moving away from Apple gradually by buying a Lenovo Legion 5 pro gaming laptop; earlier I already upgraded my desktop machine to Ryzen 5900X, so that beast is very unlikely to need any kind of replacement or an upgrade in the next four years, meaning it\u2019s likely to outlast both myself and human civilization.<\/p>\n
What made me \u201cfall out of love\u201d with Apple is the fact that they are at the bleeding edge of the political censorship movement based in America, and are basically the most likely company to disable your computer by a remote command if you find yourself in a \u201cpolitical dissident\u201d camp; basically, if you\u2019re not a complete sheep toeing the official American main stream media line prescribed by the CIA. Having in mind my political stance, I\u2019m an obvious target, and I don\u2019t really feel like making it easier for the CIA to shut me out; sure, I have lots of Apple gear, and I have \u201ccloud\u201d accounts with other American vendors. However, I have a sufficient number of backups; I can trivially get a Huawei phone which is already de-nazified, and I already have several older SSD drives with Linux pre-installed, so that I wouldn\u2019t have to go online in order to be able to go online; I would just have to plug an USB stick into the machine and boot a live Linux distro, or, if I wanted to get serious, plug the SSD into the machine and have an instantly-working pre-configured OS where I just install the certificates and encryption keys and I\u2019m up and running within five minutes. Let\u2019s say a paranoid old bastard like myself is not the easiest conceivable target. They would have to really try, it\u2019s not like they can lock my Apple account and I\u2019m out. I\u2019m certainly not going out of my way to make things easier for them by having an all-Apple ecosystem. Sure, it\u2019s very convenient in peacetime environment where you agree with everything the CIA wants you to agree with, but let\u2019s put it this way. By having a non-Apple system, I miss out on things like the iMessage or the iCloud integration. Big deal, I have to get the Macbook if I want to write lots of text messages. If I switch to Linux, it\u2019s more of a hassle, because a certain percentage of things won\u2019t work properly, I will have to use a different, somewhat inferior password manager, and I won\u2019t have Lightroom so managing my photo library would become a real pain in the arse. Other than that, everything will work, because the way I have my Windows and Mac system configured is basically to work like Linux with Adobe apps running on it. Whenever it\u2019s possible, I use the most direct possible way of controlling things, such as copying files over the network using ssh instead of the high-level services, so the moment I get the ssh terminal and the web browser running, I have everything I need. Would I run Linux preferentially over Mac OS or Windows during peacetime? Heck no; too many things are wrong with it. Would I run it if the commercial options start waging technological warfare for America? Heck yes. Also, I did it for five years in a row at one point so it\u2019s quite easy for me to find my way around, especially since I have a current Ubuntu distro running in WSL on all my Windows machines, I run Linux on both my servers, on a home staging server, and I use the Mac the way I would use a Linux distro where the window manager isn\u2019t actually crap.<\/p>\n
Besides, I\u2019m quite shocked by the amount of user-unfriendliness of the current Macs, to the point where you can\u2019t even replace the monitor cable on the new Studio display, and you can\u2019t add\/replace SSD drives or add RAM on a Mac Studio which is a machine targeted at professionals. I understand that you can\u2019t do it on a Macbook Air, but on a desktop machine? On a thick Macbook Pro, targeted at professionals? And the entire thing is deliberately designed so that America can pull a plug with a single command and you\u2019re out. Russia recently found out what it\u2019s like to implicitly rely on \u201cinternational\u201d services which are essentially all American-controlled, and you find out that you have tractors and harvesters from John Deere that are designed to be maintained only by the manufacturer, so that when you\u2019re sanctioned by America, your agriculture stops working. Fuck that shit. I want to have a car that doesn\u2019t \u201cphone home\u201d to tell its American masters where I am and what I\u2019m doing so that they can brick it in case they don\u2019t \u201csupport\u201d my way of thinking and want to \u201ccancel\u201d me. I don\u2019t want a phone or a computer that requires someone\u2019s approval in order to keep working. Sure, it\u2019s very difficult to get out once you get comfortable in the American ecosystem, but I\u2019m at least keeping a foot out. That\u2019s why I bought a laptop where I can add or replace drives, add or replace RAM modules, it\u2019s designed so that I can open it and make upgrades, and I can just replace the OS with something that doesn\u2019t require political compliance in order to work.<\/p>\n
Oh BTW, when Americans figure out that half of the world hates them, they think it\u2019s because of their \u201cfreedom\u201d. Well fuck you and fuck your \u201cfreedom\u201d. Everything you make is a slave-control device. That\u2019s not what you do if you\u2019re interested in freedom, that\u2019s what you do if you want to keep everyone else as your slave. Anyone who wants freedom today would need to make a list of everything they own and use that is controlled by America, put it on a heap and burn it.<\/p>\n
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Apple recently created the new generation of laptops that are, performance-wise, the ideal machine to replace my aging 15\u201d mid-2015 Macbook Pro, in the role of a desktop replacement heavy lifting photo editing machine. They also recently released the Mac … Continue reading