I'm one of the most technically-inclined people I know in my personal social circle (not true in my professional circle.) I'd even probably go so far as to label myself a "hacker". But I do care about UX (which Apple nails). I do care about convenience (which Apple nails.) And I do care about privacy (which, and I know I'll get flak for this, Apple _also nails_ when compared to any other device on the market that isn't explicitly marketed to developers.)
However, despite being an actual software engineer, I'm no security researcher. I don't understand kernels or privilege elevation or anything deeper than the UNIX shell I work in. So it's nice to have a system that's 99% safe by default, but still allows me to run crons, or programmatically open/modify things, and generally script my machine to look and behave the way I want.
Apple is the perfect middle-ground for people like me. Just because you can't fiddle with a kernel hardly makes this a "hood-welded-shut" machine. There are processes on my Windows machine that I'm not allowed to kill even as an administrator. I can `kill -9` whatever the hell I want on my Mac.
There's a very large group of people who operate like me, and are even less technical than I am, but love things like Keyboard Maestro or Apple scripts which allow them to tweak little things. Windows has no comparison and as far as I've witnessed it's one of the most frustrating operating systems in existence. Most people do not have the time or desire to run Linux. So, you are left with Apple which nails several of selling points that no other ecosystem nails.
That's why people, including "hackers", are enthusiastic about this "hood-welded-shut" system.
> I can `kill -9` whatever the hell I want on my Mac.
Note that the Mac is way more open than the iPhone (or iPad, which is funny considering how some chips are shared between Mac & iPad), specifically to preserve (some) of the kind of control people expect from their Mac.
That's why you can run Asahi Linux on Macs, but not iPads.
So you & GP may be talking past each other, them grousing over the locked-down nature of the iPhone, while you celebrate the control of your Mac.
You can permanently uninstall Microsoft Edge, it just takes some tinkering.
Last time I was playing with a Mac, even the root account was a problem to try and access. Apple are just way too nannying with their devices, but people like that.
I'm not talking about sudo su, but actually accessing the root account directly. I remember back in the day I put a file on someones desktop to prove a point, and they couldn't delete it because logging on as root was harder than it should be and they didn't know how.
However, despite being an actual software engineer, I'm no security researcher. I don't understand kernels or privilege elevation or anything deeper than the UNIX shell I work in. So it's nice to have a system that's 99% safe by default, but still allows me to run crons, or programmatically open/modify things, and generally script my machine to look and behave the way I want.
Apple is the perfect middle-ground for people like me. Just because you can't fiddle with a kernel hardly makes this a "hood-welded-shut" machine. There are processes on my Windows machine that I'm not allowed to kill even as an administrator. I can `kill -9` whatever the hell I want on my Mac.
There's a very large group of people who operate like me, and are even less technical than I am, but love things like Keyboard Maestro or Apple scripts which allow them to tweak little things. Windows has no comparison and as far as I've witnessed it's one of the most frustrating operating systems in existence. Most people do not have the time or desire to run Linux. So, you are left with Apple which nails several of selling points that no other ecosystem nails.
That's why people, including "hackers", are enthusiastic about this "hood-welded-shut" system.