Apple is treating customers like dependents again

I still get a twinge of wry amusement when, in tech discussions, we refer to ‘users’. I think the only other industry that widely uses that term to refer to customers is the narcotics business! It’s partly historical and partly based on the perennial fact that folks who use tech, even tech you’ve built, aren’t necessarily customers. If you think you’re a Facebook customer, and you don’t work in advertising, you’re fooling yourself!

But in flat-out consumer tech companies, those that produce and sell devices, even if they come with an ecosystem…