It is a full blown Linux OS. You can switch out of the gaming specific mode/UI to a Linux desktop environment using KDE. There you can install your own software and use it like a normal computer.

The only limiting factor is that the root file system is read only by default (can be disabled). If you want to install system level packages, you can work around this by using something like distrobox.

I think most proprietary apps these days have frequent updates because they don’t actual have in house testing and use frequent updates to constantly roll out changes. They are also constantly changing the app with feature switches/AB testing to increase important business metrics.

This same strategy can be seen in the gaming industry with games being in an alpha/beta state for years, at least they are upfront here of the unfinished quality of the software.

None of this would be possible if software was still shipped on physical media. Companies would actually have to test and think through product functionality before releasing it.

One counter point is young people drive the technology trends. Look at how social media and the Internet in general took off in the early 2000-2010s, it was driven by younger generations using these technologies. Now everyone is on social media after the younger generations at the time pioneered it.

If younger generations do rejected apps, smart phones, and surveillance capitalism, maybe there could be change in the direction.

It is relatively easy to find an English speaking tech job in Germany. If you have a university degree, then you can get the EU Blue Card.

Another big problem not mentioned in the article is companies refusing to hire QA engineers to do actual testing before releasing.

The last two American companies I worked for had fired all the QA engineers or refused to hire any. Engineers were supposed to “own” their features and test them themselves before release. It’s obvious that this can’t provide the same level of testing and the software gets released full of bugs and only the happy path works.

What if there were only two car companies?

I think Apple is responsible by releasing new APIs that are only available on the specific iOS version. Rarely have they back ported functionality to older iOS versions. Apple draggles shinny new APIs in front of developers causing them to update the minimum version.

Yeah Apple rapidly dropping support with Intel Macs is really terrible. I have a 2018 Mac mini that is already obsolete, what a joke. That was the last Mac I buy.

The security updates for old iOS versions are a sleight of hand. Most companies only support the three latest versions of iOS, so soon that will be iOS 17 as the minimum. I had a device stuck on iOS 15, which was released in 2016, and banks and other major apps dropped support. So while the phone did get security updates, it can’t run the apps I needed.

You also need every company to develop for a third mobile platform, where two different ones are already a big ask.

Easy solution would be to run existing apps on Linux, probably would be Android.

Another solution would we move to PWAs to have apps in the browser.

Both these things already happened on desktop Linux with Windows games using Proton and most proprietary desktop apps switching to Electron.

Even the non glass icons look terrible, they include some automatic blur being applied.

Yeah, but the issue is they didn’t buy a legal copy of the book. Once you own the book, you can read it as many times as you want. They didn’t legally own the books.

There‘s also the FSEvents database on the root of every disk which is a database of all the file events/operations that happened on that disk.

Supposedly you can disable it, but I haven’t got it to work. For example if you download a sensitive file, do something with it, and delete it. You can see this in the FSEvents database.

This is already a recall type feature at the file system level.

Using AI to produce software faster only helps capitalists companies extract more value out of their workers in a shorter time. This actually reduces worker worth, as their salary isn’t increased to match their increased output, the company takes more from them.

Outside of a work context there is zero incentive to use AI, as you can take all the time to learn and craft quality code.

It’s stuck on iOS 16. Once iOS 26 releases, companies will quickly pivot to iOS 17 as the minimum supported version and slowly you will find important apps no longer work on the phone.

Yes you are correct in that real socialism was never implemented.

Socialism is when workers control the means of production and the surplus generated from their work.

When the government controls these things, like with communism, it’s state capitalism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism

If an app that is being used to coordinate a rebellion takes off the US government can order Apple to disable its use. I hope the degoogling Android trend takes off further.

Apple already did this in Hong Kong to appease China. They took down apps that were used by protesters to coordinate, they even modified AirDrop so it couldn’t be easily used for ad hoc communication.

https://9to5mac.com/2025/03/17/apple-globally-censoring-this-iphone-communication-feature-deserves-renewed-scrutiny/

Don’t worry, Recall will record everything done on the Windows machine.

Sounds like a fucking nightmare, but a wet dream to Big Tech.

CEO will come out and say employees are more productive when forced to work 5 days a week. When asked to see the data, they will say trust me, I’ve seen the internal studies from a Big Tech company. Same exact playbook as work from home.

Most interesting would be a forced sell of Android. Would all of the Google spyware be stripped out of Google’s Android distribution? Would we see more official distributions of Android without any Google software?