I don’t know that voting with your wallet works with the richest company in the world, especially when a lot of professionals have to have their devices to do their jobs.
Voting with your wallet is the crudest & most direct form of power that people have. In a way, it surpasses democracy. So yes, if enough people do it, it does make a difference.
The HN crowd in particular has a sizeable influence on other people with regards to technology. Because we are the techies, people ask us what they should use/buy. People observe what knowledgeable people do, and they tend to learn from it. You have more influence than you think. It just takes time to see the changes take effect.
Is there any form of democracy in practice that doesn't involve money?
> The HN crowd in particular has a sizeable influence on other people with regards to technology. Because we are the techies, people ask us what they should use/buy.
See, many of us do recommend people to buy Apple. Because they're still very much the lesser evil among the Microsofts and Googles. If Apple does go bad, it's ridiculously easy to avoid Apple completely: Just don't buy any Apple hardware. Done. Not so easy with MSFT or GOOG, which is what we warn people about.
And that's something the other side on HN can't seem to be able to handle and tries to bury any opposing comments to give the impression of a homogenous echo chamber.
iCloud is still easier to move out of and never see again than say GitHub or YouTube, both of which were not owned by Microsoft or Google before but now here we are.
