I’m currently in the process of trying to move away from using Apple products. I should have done it ages ago, but the truth is that I really like the quality of their hardware, and always found a way to justify using their products. Now, with Tim Cook shamelessly bribing the President with golden trinkets and operating as an extension of the U.S. Attorney General’s office, it’s even more egregious than ever. Continuing to give money to Apple only emboldens them to fight against public good initiatives like the E.U. Digital Markets act, and helps maintain the border around their walled garden. Every dollar I send them is a dollar spent on parts pairing, blocking Right to Repair legislation, and fighting against users’ rights to install the software of their choosing on their own devices. Those reasons alone are enough to abandon ship, but the capitulation to fascism takes the cake.

Some replacements are going to be easy; others, much harder.

This is an inventory of my current slate of Apple hardware, and how I plan to replace them:

  • AirPods: Already replaced with WH1000-XM4 headphones; see this blog post.
  • Magic Mouse: Already replaced with a Logitech Lift mouse.
  • Magic Trackpad: This is going to be one of the harder items to replace. I’m a huge, huge fan of the Magic Trackpad, and have used every model since the first generation was released back in 2010. In the short-term I will use the trackpad built into my framework, in combination with the Lift mouse I mentioned above. My long-term strategy is to try and convince Framework to produce a similar product by leveraging their already existing (and modular!) trackpads.
  • Apple Watch: I will continue to use my Apple Watch until the new slate of Pebble watches are available, at which point I’ll sell my Apple Switch and switch to that.
  • Apple Card: This is one of the easier ones to replace. I can just get a different credit card, transition the existing card out, and then ask them to close my account.
  • iCloud: I already don’t use it. Easy!
  • iPhone: This is the most difficult one, and to be honest, I’m not yet convinced that I’m going to replace it. I don’t much like my iPhone. I even kind of hate it. But then again, I hate essentially all mobile phones running iOS and Android, and I’m not convinced there is a better or more ethical alternative available at the moment. Google has pulled many of the same sickening moves that Apple has, plus they make their money from privacy violations and are going down the same road of preventing users from installing their own preferred software. The iPhone is arguably the lesser of two evils. Long-term, I’m hopeful that a version of Linux will become available for mobile in a way that is compatible with my day-to-day needs (navigation, tap-to-pay, mobile banking, etc.). Or, if that’s not feasible in the short-to-medium term, I’m at least hopeful that one of the alternative Android-based OSes become a more realistic choice.

From an environmental standpoint, doing away with perfectly good devices isn’t especially ethical, either. That’s why I plan to move along this process slowly and thoughtfully, making sure to pick up used items where it makes sense, and to always find a new home for functional devices so that they continue to stay out of the landfill and, ideally, take the place of a new device that someone would have purchased anyway.

Apple has changed, but then again, I have too. It’s not my place to say, but I hope that I have changed for the better; in Apple’s case, it’s pretty clear the changes have been for the worse.