EDIT: Getting a ton of great responses thanks everyone <3 Once this is up for 24 hours or so I’ll make another edit summarizing everyone’s recs for future reference. Keep ‘em coming!
TL;DR Have any recs for non-Apple phones/laptops that have lifespans of at least 5+ years?
Wanted to get everyone’s opinion on want brands/products have worked for them. I’m lightly techy and not afraid to put some effort in, but also don’t want to build everything from scratch. I think Apple’s products are often anti-consumer, anti-privacy, anti-yadda yadda yadda.
At the same time, with both phones and laptops, I’ve found my Apple products to have double or even triple the lifespan of any other brand. I did my research and bought a $1000+ HP laptop with Ryzen7 a little over two years ago, and due to a flaw in the hinge which is now subject to a class action lawsuit, the screen has cracked and it’s mostly unusable. Other purchase haven’t failed quite that dramatically but don’t tend to last as long. On the other hand, my or my partner’s old Macbooks and iPhones are easily seeing 5+ years of use in addition to software updates.
So let me know what’s worked for you!
Is it far fetched to say that they fight against Meta and Google because they want to be the only ones who have your data?
It’s not far fetched to say so. Apple doesn’t fight for ‘privacy’ for ethical reasons - they do it because it helps their stock price. Similar to how a company being woke will gain them profits
They also only fight for privacy as a marketing differentiator from Google in the US. Their privacy stance varies from country to country.
If Apple had the same capability to harvest and mine user data as Google, there’s no doubt in my mind they would already be doing so. Their inability to produce a viable cloud service and major security and update issues with iCloud imply it’s a lack of ability and not any pro-user/privacy-oriented sentiment in the company.
What about saying that their entire business model is exploiting stockholm syndrome?
A bit. You can download your data from them, it’s not much.
Apple’s business plan isn’t to sell your data to advertisers but rather to sell you (presumably) high quality items that people are willing to pay a premium for.
To Apple, having your data is a liability rather than an asset and thus they’d like to have as little of it as possible yet still being able to offer you the Apple experience.
Even if they didn’t sell any data, that doesn’t mean they don’t collect a bunch.
You can tell me all you want, but personal data being so incredibly valuable paired with the fact that Apple was the first trillion dollar company…
Their overpriced hardware doesn’t play the only role here.