I more or less only used FOSS from late nineties until autumn 2021, where I got an iPad. This decision was partially prompted by frustration with Android’s open washing (I was stuck with an un-updatable Android tablet that wasn’t that old. By comparison, this iPad has received updates for way more years already) and partially in a rash angry moment after interacting with a complete jerk online who made me in one instant give up on the entire FOSS community.
There was also the fact that I realized that I had already been leaking away my own FOSS-y values, that there had been one growing, frogboiling exception; video game consoles. Now, for a while when I was at my most freshly converted GNU-wly brainwashed, I didn’t use any. Then I rationalized that it’s not that bad to use a Game Boy or NES. The roms are runnable on widely available emulators (not to discount the incredible feats of engineering creating those emulators entailed) and often decompilable or simple enough to understand in machine code. I found them similar to Z-machine or Scumm VM which I already thought was OK. After all, the requirement was free software, not all free media. I could still watch normal movies, for example.
But that can hardly be said about modern consoles like Switch or Wii or 3DS. They’re like entire operating systems spamming tons of telemetry and junk.
So “I am already using proprietary apps so why not do it more?” was my thinking.
After getting the iPad I immediately regretted that. It was so much worse than I could’ve ever imagined.
And now I’m stuck with it for as long as I have this device. There’s no chance of a FOSS firmware being made anytime soon. That m1, m2 Linux distro that existed briefly until the kernel guys bullied them away, they were prohibited to make it work on tablets, they could only work on computers.
I’m not gonna get the Switch 2 nor a new iPad. I’m going to try to get better at this in the future. It’s not exactly easy because this world has made it way harder to be FOSS only than it was in the nineties. I’m just gonna do my best from now on and not beat myself up.
I want to steer clear of “network effect” apps like Messenger or WhatsApp or X. Those are much much harder to get out of once you start using them. Do not lightly sign up for them. So on the iPad I never ever used iMessage for example.