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Tech sucks: You have to vote with your wallet, or nothing will change
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Illustration only Photo by Marc PEZIN on Unsplash
An opinion piece argues that developers who criticize Apple's restrictive ecosystem but continue buying Apple products have no effective leverage, and that only withholding money can force change.
For engineers building mobile apps, this highlights the gap between vocal frustration with platform restrictions and the financial support that sustains those restrictions. The piece contends that complaints without corresponding shifts in purchasing are irrelevant to the platform holder.
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Apple's developer restrictions, including a 30% revenue cut, mandatory Xcode usage, required Mac hardware for builds, and approval to run your own app on your own device, create what the author calls an abusive relationship.
Public criticism of Apple is ineffective as long as developers and users continue purchasing their hardware and paying into the ecosystem, because revenue is the only metric Apple responds to.
Exiting Apple's ecosystem is acknowledged to be painful due to lock-in, but the author argues there is no alternative path to forcing change.
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