The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

The anger reading the comments here from the folks who don't like DF/Apple is practically palpable, and that's obviously the reason the articles get flagged.

I'm not sure where all that anger comes from (e.g., there isn't any company I've ever been as angry about as some of the commenters on this thread are). I suspect the response I'd get if I asked would be Apple did this or that, but personally, if I didn't like this or that I'd just buy a product from a different company and go about my day. I don't get hanging on to all that anger.

(And frankly, I'd love if someone did what DF does for other platforms, I like hearing from fans of products and platforms what they see in them.)

I suspect it's driven by the Olde School Linux / Free Software contingent of HN commenters / voters. Here is an example[1]:

"The #1 story on Hacker News at 2023:08:21T15:41Z is a 2021 discussion of Linux desktop packaging tools. Hypothesis: HN story up-voters are heavily drawn from Free / Open Source Software folks interested in issues that were broadly discussed in "tech" two decades ago (Linux for the desktop!) and are much less broadly discussed today."

That anodyne observation garnered 5 downvotes. I mean, of course it was silly to treat Linux desktop packaging tools as the most important story in tech in 2023! Overall the dynamic feels like Wikipedia: people who participate are atypical, and nothing annoys them more than one's pointing out that they are atypical.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37211129

I agree, and expressed something similar in another command on this thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43493805 that HN is trending more and more from a general site for software/hardware makers, and more towards a Linux/OSS specific site.

That's a notable trend overall, but not really a problem on its own. Every community is inevitably going to lean a certain way.

But it doesn't really explain the anger. To be blunt, most of the comments criticizing DF/Apple in this thread sound unhinged to me, e.g., like Apple goes around living in these folks head rent free. I have difficulty understanding that mindset with something you can so easily avoid just by buying a product from another company? E.g., there are countless companies whose values don't align with my own, so I don't use their products, and that's the end of it. Why are these folks spending so much of their energy on hating this company that they can so easily avoid? And why is it just Apple that garner's this hatred, e.g., why not Nintendo for example, a company with a similar approach overall (closed, emphasis on product experience over specs) for example.

> like Apple goes around living in these folks head rent free

Not rent-free. 30% in the App Store. And 100% in the PWA they don't let me ask users to install.

Are you saying these things make you angry at Apple? I.e., I'm still having trouble understanding, e.g., why not just make software for the many other platforms that are more aligned with your values? E.g., if I made games, I'd probably ship on Steam and not even try to ship on Nintendo, but I wouldn't hate Nintendo for that, I'd just target platforms that I'm more aligned with. I'm just having a hard time picturing hating another platform for having values different than mine when there are so many options available, why not just focus on the other options?