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Growing up in a small town, I always believed Apple to be the pinnacle of tech. If you owned a mac, you were an elite programmer or businessman by default. Of course, this was exactly as per Apple's marketing plan, and this subliminal messaging was hidden in every clean corner and metallic texture. Every design was deliberate in hitting that contemporary collective subconscious realm that yearned for a deluge of the future. A future surely had to be exclusive, accessible and of course, elite.
Now in hindsight, it seems pretty obvious that the quality of your code is exclusive from the brand or version of your laptop. A Thinkpad has churned out more world-changing code than a Macbook Air loaded with Apple Silicon. It appears as if a better, sleeker system actually nullifies the incentive to build stuff. If a system is already perfect, I do not need to get down and dirty with my sleeves rolled.
The apparent elitism in the whole "I use Arch btw" is ironically the response to the "Apple effect", and this was something I realized later in life when I had followed many rabbit holes into Linux-land.
This is an inescapable trap in computing, and it seems to be growing more potent with the proliferation of AI-as-a-service.
The easier a platform gets, the more useful it becomes. The element of engagement is lost, and smoother UX leads to rising disillusionment and hence churn. Amazon's mobile app is staggeringly sluggish and boring for this precise reason.
The goal is to keep users engaged, instead of giving them easier lives.