I am actually very confident that Apple is selling what is almost certainly an enormous amount of my PHI to minimal buyers, if any. That’s not where they make their money, and they have no interest in it, and one of their main selling points is that they don’t do it.

Now, over the years, Apple has enshittified to an increasingly maddening degree, however—having worked at the Apple Store for five years some time ago—I can say that I think at the core of the company, it’s just not quite as evil in these terms as, say, Meta and Google. I think it’s a pretty informed, educated opinion to have. I know that many people disagree, especially in this community. And that’s fair.

I would actually be all about setting up my own ecosystem for smart home and sync and media library with Linux if it weren’t so frigging much work and so difficult that, honestly, it would take me forever and I probably would not achieve success. So, as objectively bad as the Apple ecosystem has become, it is sadly the best alternative out there, in my humble opinion.