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"But let's say Apple does exit the EU.

Good."

Imagine if the US was to regulate so-called "tech" companies and the surveillance "business model"

Would Apple threaten to stop selling computers with their pre-installed, crippled OS

If they did, what would be left

IMHO

FreeBSD (from which Apple took its UNIX userland) would be left

NetBSD would be left

OpenBSD would be left

Linux would be left (maybe)

To name a few

If these so-called "tech" companies like Apple gave up on surveillance because surveillance was regulated, then we would still have open source volunteer-operated OS projects

I suppose some HN commenter might try to argue

that these OS projects would disappear without certain "tech companies" that do surveillance as a "business" and

that contributions from these so-called "tech" companies are keeping these OS projects going

Apple's "threat" is not credible these Silicon Valley companies have lied too many times. No one is going to believe them

These companies are hell bent on using the internet to conduct surveillance, they cannot stop

AFAIK, those open source OS projects do not try to phone home. Even if they did, the public can remove the surveillance code and re-compile

There is no "app store", no corporate restrictions on what software the computer owner can run

IMHO the compiler toolchains are nicer than "Xcode"; and there's no "Apple Tax"



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