Op-ed: Criticizing Apple While Buying Apple Changes Nothing
Get the Tech newsletter
Daily tech — startups, AI labs, chips, the launches that shape the next decade. Free.
- Theo posted an hour-long video titled "Apple Changed..." ranting about Apple's developer experience, including its 30% cut of all App Store and in-app purchases and its requirement that developers get Apple's approval to run their own apps on their own devices.
- The video also documents that Apple forces developers to use a separate MacBook to build apps for the iPad, since the company won't allow building apps directly on the target device, alongside complaints about Xcode as a development environment.
- The author flags the contradiction at the heart of Theo's rant: despite his hour of complaints, Theo was sitting in front of a brand new MacBook, iPhone, and iPad — having given Apple thousands of dollars that funds exactly the behavior he denounces.
- The author argues Apple, under Tim Cook, only cares about "number on spreadsheet go up" and has no incentive to change anything as long as angry customers keep purchasing the next iPhone or MacBook on release day.
- The piece frames being an Apple customer as an "abusive relationship" where the "everything just works" ecosystem lock-in functions as a trap, making exit painful enough that most customers never actually leave.
- The argument leans on Dave Rupert's post "Double your business with companies you like," which contends that consumer spending patterns — not complaints or videos — determine which companies thrive and which decline.
- The author recasts Apple as an "evil megacorporation" long past its "think different" underdog identity and urges readers to redirect their spending toward smaller alternatives rather than continuing to subsidize Apple's behavior.
- The August 09, 2026 piece treats one developer's viral video as a case study in the futility of vocal criticism without corresponding purchasing decisions.
Why it matters: Apple's developer base keeps complaining about the 30% App Store cut, Xcode limitations, and app approval requirements — but the author argues that as long as those same critics continue purchasing MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads, Apple has zero incentive to change. The prescription most coverage of Apple criticism skips: the lock-in ecosystem is itself the trap, and only actually leaving forces reform. Without consumer spending shifts, even a widely-shared hour-long developer rant is, in the author's framing, free entertainment for Apple rather than pressure.
Ask SkimNews
