Author here. Thanks for engaging is such gentle way, this is rare these days. Let me address some of your comments and maybe you'll understand my position a bit better even if you don't agree.

> 1.Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user.

Apple been tightening that control over time. For a long time on MacOS X you could simply run apps. Then came notarisation, but you could still disable it. Now, even with a certificate, it still shows a dialog. I wish that apps that went through notarisation would simply run like the ones from the app store without a dialog showing.

> 3. (...) the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification.

But not everyone has a credit card. Those are not something you're born with or required to have or even required to have them issued from the same country you're living in. That is not the least restrictive, that is a very large assumption. What I would have liked to have seen is them providing you with options: "do you want to use credit card verification? National ID? Passport? Credit check? Etc" and then it is up to each user to decide on their risk profile and what they are okay with.

As of now, my only way to verify it is by literally ordering a credit card from my UK bank when I'm pretty happy with my debit cards already.

> but Apple needs to follow UK law

The Online Safety Act does not require device manufacturers to enforce age "verification" at the OS level. If Apple had not implemented this, it would still be in compliance with UK law. Apple is displaying anticipatory obedience here, which is the opposite of good citizenship.

Two things stand out from this fiasco:

1. Apple, and those who praise them for what they just did, don't appear to have learnt from history. Anticipatory obedience used to be known as "vorauseilender Gehorsam" during a particularly dark period in the history of a country a few hundred miles southeast of the UK. It was one of the factors enabling the darkness.

2. The UK is a small enough market for Apple to treat it as a test bed. Which it probably is in this case, and which means that removal of anonymity aka "OS-level age verification" is coming to a lot more devices in a lot more countries soon. See also the uncanny coincidence of lots of OECD countries pushing for online age verification at the same time.

> If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you

Author started at System 8. They didn't start locking things down until the iPhone.

What's odd and strange about this? Author clearly specifies this at the start:

> To summarise for yous there are three main issues for me and the last one happened today and is what pushed me through the threshold.

The compounding led to this, not that individual issues existed (and have been a problem) for a while.

When I got the prompt it just said "your account age is old enough to prove your age" and didn't ask for any further info.

> Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now

Are you sure you're not apologising for Apple?

I don't think it's just those three issues. Those are just the three final drops in the bucket.

Maybe the author was aware of all this, but with "Apple Just Lost Me" they wanted to say that this is the straw that broke the camel's back.

I struggle to believe that Liquid Glass was one person's fault.

I hope the author reports back in a year. Getting off the Apple train appeals to me, the reality of doing so looks bleak.

Full disclosure: I've been in the Apple ecosystem since System 6, worked as an engineer there for 25 years. But I am as frustrated by many of the decisions Apple has made as many people I see posting.

Liquid glass? This too shall pass.

Locked down ecosystem? I imagine the blowback if they unlocked it and people's devices were suddenly being compromised by malware.

I guess I prefer the frying pan to the fire that I feel awaits me if I jump. As I mentioned though, seeing blog posts after the jump will be interesting.

I had the UK Age verification popup today. It verified immediately based on the age of my Apple account, I didn't have to take any further action. I am much younger than the OP, and probably than their Apple account. I am surprised that this didn't happen for them.

Criticize gatekeeping all you want, but I feel it’s safer to recommend a Mac or iPhone to an older, non-technical person than the equivalent Windows / Android machine.

And I’m still able to install any app I want with minimal fuss.

Someone changed their mind about something they've been putting up with, it's as simple as that.

The boiling frog thing is a myth - most frogs realize the water's too hot at some point, and jump out.

Yeah, agreed. Gatekeeper is nearly 15 years old now, and has progressively gotten more aggressive, but AFAIK there isn't much new in the past year or two. macOS 26 is bad, but so is Windows 11...so unless you are willing to jump into Linux for desktop, there aren't many other options. And age verification is likely going to be an issue with any platform he chooses - are other companies not using credit card?

> getting rid of Alan Dye.

All the reporting I’ve seen indicates that he left of his own accord and that Apple was blindsided, indicating that they didn’t even consider getting rid of him.

> at least somewhat moving in the right direction by getting rid of Alan Dye.

Alan Dye left of his own volition to Meta. I 100% believe he would still be there if he had not left.

There's a bizarre trend, especially on HN, of unjustified criticism against Apple. There are so many YC companies committing outright fraud, Palantir is building a surveillance state, a bunch of well known founders and VCs openly promote white supremacist ideology, but you'll never see more vitriol on this forum than someone complaining about the liquid glass UI or app store take rate.

The author is complaining about the fact that there are a myriad of issues with Apple's ecosystem that have built up a level of frustration with their ecosystem where they can no longer tolerate it.

I find it infuriating I have to verify that I am older than 18 when my gmail account is 20+ years old.

Him moving to Android will do them no good as Google will be implementing similar controls in it. I suggest they get a Pixel Phone and install Graphene OS.

> but Apple needs to follow UK law

And the UK law doesn't ask for device-level age verification.

I guess it's written for people who never had to Apple, cause it just repeated reasons I'd never touch those products.

Why are you so deeply invested into defending the honor of a massive corporation that's callous to its users? Especially corporation that's supposedly proud of their UX?

> 3. Apple had a bug in their age verification protocol. Again, valid point, but Apple needs to follow UK law.

No they don't. They need to grow balls. They pay hefty tax rates in UK. If they would announce they are leaving UK market in 90 days, I bet you would find enough politicians to change the course of this terrible law.