Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu on macOS Big Sur

Citation needed. If you look at app store pricing models the opposite seems true. If I were going to take a random guess I would say that tech savvy users use open source software to avoid anti-consumer bullshit more than anything else.

My point is that the vast majority of people don't say that, only a very tiny minority. The vast majority of people want convenience, not control. They want their stuff to "just work" because even if they do have the technical knowledge they don't have the time to screw around with fixing their computer. Apple is giving the market what they want as evidenced by actual buying behavior, not posts on HN.

My other point is that while there probably are enough tech-savvy people who care about freedom to support a viable alternative platform, the majority of these users are not willing to pay for anything so there is not in fact a market for it.

Basically what it boils down to is that people don't actually care. Even the vocal people who say they care don't care because they won't open their wallets or change their buying habits. If you won't actually do anything about something, you don't care. Whining on the Internet is not doing something.

And that's why I picked up an MBP this year; it's caused me way less grief than my various Linux boxen have.

People aren't buying features off a list. In a situation like this a missing feature has to be so important that it completely disqualifies the product, which is a very different thing from a willingness to open the wallet.

It's similar to how you can get a kindle with or without lock screen ads. If the only option was with ads, you'd see more people buying that version because it becomes artificially hard for them to say "I don't want ads". Even though they're willing to pay for the feature.

And for convenience vs. control, well, this firewall bypass doesn't help convenience.

“The market will price this out” doesn’t actually work because it assumes that 1. Apple’s product strategy is done to match market desires perfectly and 2. The decision to buy is solely predicated on this particular thing. The first is false because nobody can do that and the second is because people buy Apple products for other reasons than just that. I personally know many people (although this sample is of course unbiased) that buy Apple devices for a number of reasons (they work well, they look nice, they have good support) but hate that they can’t do thing on them. But their purchase decision doesn’t reflect their opinions on this particular issue.