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Comment by throw0101c

5 hours ago

> After first boot, go through a long list of things to deactivate so that one can experience at least some feeling of agency and privacy when using your own hardware.

The difference is that you can actually not set these things up: with Windows you often have to choice. Macs allow you to not have an iCloud account and run just fine without them, whereas to avoid a Microsoft cloud account there are magic CLI incantations that have to be invoked. And once you say "no", Apple generally leaves you alone.

I don't mind a bit of 'upsell' or informing (new) users of available offerings, as long as I get a choice.

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throw0101c

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butlike  4 hours ago

The issue with iCloud is that before you even know it, you're paying $9.99/mo. Since 200gb is quite low, the next tier up is 2tb for $9.99, but then you're essentially locked in. I can't view the iCloud price tiers as anything other than predatory.

  • officeplant  3 hours ago

    But 50GB is $0.99 and I'm only really paying for it since I have a bunch of their private email addresses in use. iPhone backup with just the essentials I trust them with is less than 2GB.

    I don't know how I would even begin to fill the 50GB plan since I don't trust any cloud storage provider with pictures and videos.

  • throwaway27448  4 hours ago

    > The issue with iCloud is that before you even know it, you're paying $9.99/mo.

    Sounds like the issue is you.

    • swiftcoder  4 hours ago

      > Sounds like the issue is you.

      Oh, c'mon. The entire services division exists to sell you things like this. And they are very good at it - 25% of Apple's total revenue

      2 replies →

moose333  5 hours ago

> Macs allow you to not have an iCloud account and run just fine without them

Until you need to install an app through the App store. Even a free app will refuse to install without an iCloud account. Frustrating when you want something with a verified source, for me it was Wireguard, and don't want to build it locally.

  • throwaway27448  4 hours ago

    > Until you need to install an app through the App store.

    Do you have an example of needing to go through the app store? There's apple's apps, I guess.