I mean, this is basically malicious compliance. They did everything in their power to follow the letter but eschew the spirit of the law. Let’s hope the EU has teeth and keeps applying pressure.

I mean, I’ll take a stab at speaking for Apple fans, and in fact developers. (I’m an ex-employee.)

There are a lot of things we like about the user experience on their platforms, and we appreciate their general interest in privacy while not engaging in the dirty data mining / advertising business of Google and Microsoft. There is a polish on their platforms that is best in class.

But I don’t believe any of us actually support the App Store lockdown situation. It’s probably the biggest black mark on their record. I think they got it right on macOS, requiring the binaries to be notarised (signed digitally) in such a way that malware can be blacklisted. This is a useful security feature. But developers are free to distribute however they want and third party stores like SetApp and Steam coexist happily with the App Store.

100% of their arguments about keeping the App Store as the sole distribution chain are bullshit because macOS is the proof. It’s pure rent-seeking behaviour.

No different than the situation with iPhones and Android phones, really. Apple has made their money once you buy the device, and views your personal data as a liability. Google is an ad company that happens to make hardware, and views your data as necessary monetisation potential.

I really enjoy https://mailbox.org, their custom software can be… esoteric at times, but the company and privacy commitments are top notch, and it has PGP built throughout natively, including an option to automatically PGP encrypt all plaintext emails you receive. I joined it originally as a cheaper alternative to Protonmail but these days I really prefer it.