Sure, I don’t doubt that cost cutting factors into apple’s decision making, but it really feels like they went out of their way to make the internal file system intentionally awkward. I’m not particularly inclined to just chalk it up to cost cutting when it adds up to quite a pattern of controlling users’ access to their own data, which plays right into their infamously closed ecosystem.

Worth noting however that Apple have already made file transfer from iphones to anything outside their ecosystem a pain:

iphone to external drive on a mac is a nightmare. Can’t use the photos app, so you gotta use image capture which is laggy as hell and you either can “select all” or else you have to scroll through and select manually if you just want to transfer the latest photos.

For iphone to linux, granted, whoever’s using linux will likely be more familiar with the command line, but libimobiledevice and ifuse are anything but intuitive for the non-tech-savvy.

As for windows, Apple still wants you to use the apple-approved way but iirc I have, inconsistently, been able to get into the DCIM folder.

But even then once you do get into DCIM, the internal folder structure is absurd. Albums are just an illusion, all you get is a bunch of “###APPLE” folders containing around 1000 photos each, and to top it off you also gotta deal with the heic format. And if you wanted to access anything that isn’t photos or videos, good luck. On linux I’ve more albums than DCIM have showed up but they mostly just seemed to contain metadata files. I get that the user isn’t “supposed” to deal with this folder, but with the apple ecosystem so closed off and unfriendly to anything not-apple-approved, there isn’t really an alternative.

Slower transfer speeds is just the cherry on top.

Idk if you’d consider it a “hobby” (even though I’d say that has more consumerist connotations), but I’d strongly suggest finding a creative outlet. Personally I believe that there’s no such thing as an “uncreative” person, it’s just that most people never get the opportunity to learn a creatively rewarding skill well (and even when they do, many are left with no time/energy after work). It’s a catch-22. Still, unless you want to keep being a cog in the machine you gotta sacrifice something.

Also, art (in a general sense) is a lot better with human contact, idk what you’re talking about that is “doesn’t work”. You gotta find like-minded people. Sometimes you’re lucky and meet like-minded people by happenstance, sometimes you gotta go out of your way to find them (even if by saying it like that I still feel like I’m underplaying how hard that can be).

A final but perhaps more important suggestion is, learn about something. Instead of binging another tv show every week, mix it up with some educational internet browsing, or books, or perhaps you enjoy videoessays more. Again, an environment where you can meet people is better, but higher education has also turned into a human grinder that spits out ready-made workers for the machine so I can’t sincerely recommend it. But it could still be worth considering (depending on where you are… definitely not worth a 100k debt).

TL:DR find ways of satisfying your inner curiosity and creativity.

Social democracy isn’t really socialist…

Anyways it’s just good to know that FOSS is built upon anarchist principles (of course, this doesn’t mean every FOSS project is anarchist) and is a great example of free association in practice. It helps demystify anarchism and communism.

Also what “delusions” are you talking about? Marxist-leninist ones?

I hope this is a lightbulb moment for you