Are Apple now really just a gang of hypocritical, greedy wankers without a new idea in their bones or is that just malicious hearsay? You decide. Me, I decided long ago – read on

Here’s a notable development – remember ‘Apple, Think Different’? Apple at the forefront of innovation, in the avant garde of a brave new world, Apple [add your own hyperbole]? Well, Apple is failing, slowly but surely.

It is not that since the death of Jobs and the departure of Jonathan Ive Apple have lost something essential that made Apple Apple. It’s also that with the rise to leadership of one Tim Cook - whose Apple background was not in any way technical but always commercial - making money seems to be the raison d’etre of Apple.

Bugger Apple’s previous reputation for making imaginative products with user-friendly software, now it has become recycling old ideas, the challenge always to be how to disguise the fact that recycling is going on.

But let me be fair: I don’t have an Apple computer but apparently its M Series of chips are a winner. That, though, is the sum of the winning. Apple glasses are not being bought simply because they are a gimmick.

The iPhone is simply recycled year in, year out with small cosmetic changes to give the impression of being a ‘new model’. The same is true of its Mac OS and IoS operating systems: changes are minimal and, frankly, pointless.

Two days ago I upgraded from IoS v18.6 to v26 on my iPad. I immediately noticed a difference in that it began to lag. My iPad is only four years old so not ‘old’ or ‘obsolete’, but it is now lagging. This morning I tried to downgrade to the previous IoS, v186, but as it is no longer ‘signed’, that is impossible.

So I am no stuck with an iPad which is no longer as much use to me as it was. Somewhat miffed, I went to the Apple Community forum and - headlinong my contribution clearly as ‘Not a question but a complaint’ asked why we could not longer downgrade and what the reasoning was.

In my post I went on to criticise Apple in similar terms as I have above. Several hours later I was informed my post had been deleted. Apple might argue that its community forum is not the place for such criticism, but I would suggest the opposite is true. I immediately posted again twice in response, but each post was gain deleted, notably within minutes.

Here is the text of my original comment

Here is my second comment, this time being pretty straight about what spineless wankers Apple are, though, er, not expressing myself in such plain English

OK, I’m not kidding myself on that this signifies the slow collapse of the Western World. But anyone here who can still remember the Apple glory days – how using an Apple compared to a Windows machine was straightforward and how the slogan ‘It’s an Apple’ did somehow convey quality and reliability.

Looking back, I don’t at all mind conceding that we were all a little naive and overexcited by the ‘possibilities’ of the – then new – technical age. And that naivety – I bought my second computer in 1999, sadly only an Apple clone because I couldn’t afford the real thing (I had very briefly owned a desktop which was still running DOS but it was stolen within weeks when my house in Groton Road, Earlsfield, was burgled over Christmas.)

This was in the days when the internet masqueraded as ‘the information superhighway’ and that astonishing institution was about to usher in a new age of democracy when totalitarianism had no hiding place.

The giveaway was Apple’s little puppy rushing around wagging its tail and Windows had – wait for it! – a fucking talking paper clip which passed on wise advice and warned you if you were using non-PC language. And Lord weren’t we all charmed and excited!

Me, working in newspaper production as a sub-editor – I had given up on reporting after six years as my heart wasn’t in it but more on that another time if the demand is there – was excited by ‘desktop publishing’ with Quark Xpress.

That software was then the only game in town and took users to the cleaners when I first started using it (in a newspaper office, so I wasn’t paying for it) 35 years ago, those shysters took everyone to the cleaners and charged about £800 for it! By my reckoning that would now, in 2025, be about £1,560. But newspapers – at least those that didn’t operate a mainframe had no choice.

Now, ‘the net’ is useful, certainly – I do all my shopping and banking online – but it has also thrown up any amount of nastiness, not least access to child porn for those who want it.

In brief, we have come a long, long way since Apple and Google – fucking ‘Don’t be evil’ for fuck’s sake! – posed as the future in which we were all going to be better people.

OK, I’ve come off-topic now, but it is sobering to find that Apple is now aping one Donal Taco Trump in denying the reality of anything or everything that puts it in a bad light.

So, all together now