I am watching an interesting scenario play out among users of Apple Computer products. As you might have noticed, users of Macs and iDevices tend to be fiercely loyal and love their machines. And, I think, with good reason. I remember the first time I used a Macintosh in 1984. It felt as though the designers had thought through the user experience in a way nobody had since the early days of Digital Equipment Corporation. For example, when you clicked on a button, the button would highlight but nothing else would happen until you released the mouse, then the action would occur. If you had second thoughts, you could slide off the button, the highlighting would go away, and releasing the mouse would do nothing. A small thing, but it showed extra attention to detail that were echoed in myriad other interface elements. Most notably, there was a consistency between applications and environments that just wasn’t matched in the Windows universe.
Apple has made missteps in the years since. Many missteps. But the majority of their users felt supported and seen. Sure, every innovation (removing floppy drives?) was met with some frustration and anger, but people got over it. And the genuine missteps were often overlooked because of the user-loyalty capital Apple had built up.
It appears, from my distant perspective, that Apple may have pushed things too far of late, forgotten the care that helped build up that user adoration. The Liquid Glass interface in their latest OS versions has upset a lot of folks, and it comes in the wake of Apple’s bribes donations to the current administration’s inaugural ceremonies and the granting of a golden meaningless trophy to Trump by Tim Cook. Users are also alienated by Apple’s insistence on making iOS products increasingly tightly protected outside the user/owners’ control. I have seen a lot of Apple backlash over the years, but never to the level I see today.
The usual response is to shrug and say “what am I going to do, switch to Windows?” Even with the steady improvements in Windows security model and interface design, it’s still too limited for many macOS or iOS users. But I am seeing a lot more folks switching to free and open-source (FOSS) alternatives like Linux distros using the KDE Plasma desktop environment.
Here’s the thing, though. I use Plasma as my desktop environment with Fedora, and I love it. It’s my daily driver, and it’s been many months since I’ve even been tempted to boot up my MacBook Pro. But when I’m being really honest, I have to admit that Plasma and the suite of FOSS applications usually used with it are… quirky. Why do I put up with it? Because I believe in FOSS. I like having control over my own devices and not having to constantly cede control and money to a monopoly corporation that exploits intellectual property law to limit what I can do with products that I own.
Just as Apple is learning that it’s possible to fritter away goodwill and loyalty by being arrogant and user-hostile, FOSS projects need to understand where their users’ goodwill is coming from and not let their own agenda alienate their base.
Here’s looking at you, Mozilla.
—2p