So long, Apple, welcome Linux

With the release of OSX Ventura I decided to abandon the use of Apple products and to use Linux exclusively. For this choice, the Cupertino company will certainly not lose turnover – nor its managers, sleep – but so be it.

The minimum requirements of the new operating system are the straw that broke the camel’s back. For some time, a couple of iPads that were certainly not cheap (at the time) have been reduced to the role of wall clock – not even precise, by the way. Super-vitaminized MacPro and iMac (at the time) are essentially retired. Now, OS X Ventura sentences a 2013 MacBook Pro and mine to quiescence – but can I count it as such? – “Trashcan”, the very expensive “barrel” Macpro, whose specifications still make it a medium-high range machine, but not “worthy” to host the illustrious new “spirit”. I will be able to “enjoy” the “news” on the latest hardware that has not yet been artificially made incompatible, but that’s not the point.

There are no technical reasons for choosing Apple since with a somewhat laborious process it is possible to overcome the block and use the operating system normally even on older models, even dating back to 2012. In other words: the “putting out service “of a computer cost as expensive as fire and still perfectly capable of withstanding the demands of the digital ecosystem is established in the name of pure commercial needs.

Of course, you might find that the computer with the old operating system continues to work the same and that after nearly ten years the support cannot be expected to continue to be provided. Why not? My Nikon F3 (not to mention an old Voigtländer Bessa R with M mount) with its lenses still work great after well over ten years and even my 1987 Gibson Les Paul sounds even better than when I bought it. Furthermore, I was, am and will remain the owner of these tools until I decide to discard them. This is the concrete meaning of the property right enshrined in the Civil Code, which applies to every asset, except, and let’s get to the point, that for digital devices. For some time, in fact, software has been the Trojan horse that moves the hardware market – at the time there was openly talk of the WinTel monopoly – and even Microsoft, Adobe and many others have a policy similar to that of Apple. Since, with the need to “fight piracy”, the activation system was introduced, the old licenses of Windows and Office (perfectly capable of running on virtualized machines) are no longer usable even if regularly and handsomely paid. With the transition to the subscription-based business model, Adobe, among the first, has solved the problem: no Euro, no Software. The same goes for the “cloud software” made available by the various suppliers. If the financialization of hardware also took hold for consumers, the expropriation process to the detriment of citizens would be completed. In fact, one would pass from a condition for which, by paying, one becomes the owner of something that should retain a value in use over time to a condition for which, upon payment, one only receives a service that requires to be paid systematically. , continuously and only available as long as you can afford it.

The issue of technological rationalization, then, does not only concern the public administration and the state apparatus but also citizens. Not only that, in fact, there is the right to demand that public institutions function well by managing infrastructural costs in a rational way (and therefore avoiding useless and expensive technological changes mistaken for “innovation”); there is also the right, as the law says, to “enjoy fully and exclusively” what you buy, including software and computers. And if this enjoyment cannot be enjoyed because software is not a product to be sold but a creative work (like the Divine Comedy?) That can only be licensed, then now is the time to change the law, to even more so, if software becomes the way to make the hardware components that make it work unusable.

The EU is thinking about the Cyber ​​Resilience Act which could bring some news on the subject, even if the premises do not seem among the best and the piece, as in the case of the “shippers directive”, could be worse than the hole. These are not the times in which to support industrial models based on the purchase of expensive toys to do the same things over and over again. And perhaps it would be time for the Antitrust to question the possibility of considering these strategies as “unfair business practices” and forcing software manufacturers to manage development policies more transparently, stating what is really needed to improve functionality. and what is “only” cosmetic.

Never, as today, have the words of Richard Stallman proved prophetic, Linus Torvalds’ farsighted intuition and the contribution of the FLOSS communities have been fundamental. Never before is it important to support similar initiatives for Open Hardware, such as Arduino (in which, among other things, there is a lot of Italy). Never before is it urgent for institutions to free us from electronic slavery.