A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the wrongheadedness of the Department of Justice’s antitrust witch hunt against Apple. One reason amongst the many deserves its own consideration.

The Department of Justice’s antitrust suit against Apple is one of the worst calamities to hit computer privacy in recent memory. If we want to understand where this could very well take us, we don’t need a hypothetical future horrible privacy mess, we need only look at Zoom video conferencing software.

This weekend is packed with several uncommon and good tech deals, particularly for Apple users. If you’re in the market for a smart speaker or Thunderbolt dock, you will want to check these out.

Viewers paying close attention to Apple’s first prime-time product announcement event on Monday were treated to the most impressive product highlight: one that wasn’t even spoken. The whole event was filmed on iPhone.

With the artificial “holiday” of the “Prime Deal Days” going on right now, there are plenty of mediocre deals, but a few you may want to nab before it ends tonight.

Standardization is a good thing. Forced standarization can appear beneficial, too. But the two are not the equivalent. Consider the increasingly ubiquitous USB Type-C cable.

Last week, I grumbled about Apple’s “vision” which is visionless at worst and horribly dystopian at best. What could have been different? I found myself imagining what WWDC23’s big announcement might have been if Steve Jobs were still living.

I watch Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) keynote every year like people watch the Superbowl — snacks, celebratory anticipation, the works. The greatest ones over the years remain memorable long after, conveying master showmanship and a clarity of vision for technology that makes life better. Ironically, while introducing a device called Vision Pro, this year’s conference felt like an aimless stumble towards dystopia.

My good friend and fellow OFB writer Dennis E. Powell and I met years ago on a group that championed Free/Open Source software, much for the same sorts of reasons he advocates for his new phone configuration over Apple’s offerings. OFB itself was founded, in fact, to promote such open software, especially Linux, so why would I defend locked down systems from Apple? That’s a story that started 19 years ago, before the iPhone even existed.

As a friend battled viruses on his brand-new Windows computer this week, I thought again about just how spoiled Apple users are by better security and better privacy than Android and Windows folks live with. Long adept at bringing such advantages to the masses that will never try (much less secure) Linux, Apple has one vulnerability is tech prowess cannot overcome: China.