Dear hackers and Emacs users who consume Apple products,

Let me try to say that again a bit more eloquently…

You are supposed to be hackers. You are using Emacs, fer chrissakes. You are supposed to want development tools, to want them to be infinitely customisable, and to want to do those customisations yourself, because you’re supposed to be discerning, sophisticated, unsatisfied, skilled, playful, rebellious, individualistic, disobedient. You should be rocking out in Zion, celebrating your freedom and independence from the machines.

To use a trite and corny literary reference, this is your personal legend.

And yet, you bought Apple.

Apple is a control freak. It’s Emperor Palpatine with a graphic design makeover.

It tells you what to buy, how to buy it, how to use it, and what to call it. It tells you to glorify clang over gcc due to technical measures and because a non-copyleft license is great for business (because their business requires being able to put shackles on you once in a while). It tells you it’s really the Unix that pleases your hacker insides, while at the same time doing things no other Unix does, locking you down with blithe disregard for your Unix rights. Apple throws around nice marketable names like POSIX and big cat names and iMonosyllable, and you love it. It tells you to think different, to be a Mac, not a PC, to use the world’s most advanced OS, to make it your iLife. And you’re cool with all of this.

Apple killed your inner hacker, and you’re happy with it, because keeping you deemed that keeping your inner hacker alive was too inconvenient. You satisfy yourself with a pale shadow of the hacker you once were.

I don’t get it. I’m frustrated, sad, angry that you have let this happen. You’re supposed to be the lifeblood of free software, and instead you’re using and defending McIntosh computers and devices.

I wish you could come back to being the playful rebel you once were. You’ve turned into the suits you’ve mocked in the past, and you’re happy about it.

Quite frankly, it’s starting to get lonely in Zion.

– Jordi G. H.