Apple users do have a choice. Apple isn’t the only game in town. If those users disagree with Apple and want Tate shit, they can use a different platform.

Apple hit a sweet spot with this. x86_64 applications run at acceptable speed (making the transition easy for people who buy the hardware) while not being SO good that there’s zero reason for developers to start porting their software.

Centralized communities all turn into what Twitter and Reddit became eventually. They benefits for the owners (money, control) are too great to ignore forever once you’re big enough. Decentralized communities have more resilience, provided no individual server gets too big.

Podcasts seem to have figured out monetizing without centralization.

Yes. Yes it is.

apt dist-upgrade will sometimes resolve this.

Yes, but it’s a bit weird and the interface isn’t designed for it. I keep them separate, but I could see it being useful in a pinch.

If it’s not internet connected it’s not that big of a deal

God forbid you try to look good for your wife 🤷

IINA is like VLC but with a nicer interface.

brew is a CLI package manager.

OpenEmu is a great console emulation platform (like retroarch, but with a way better interface that’s designed for a desktop instead of a TV).

If you’re running Safari, you’re already running their OS. If Apple wants to spy on you, they’ve already got the means to do so, so you’ve already decided to trust them.

Switching to Chrome or Firefox means trusting one more entity in addition to Apple. This expands your possible exposure.

I use Miniflux + Reeder. It’s really nice.