I just can't justify buying hardware from a company that is so hostile to developers and hackers as nice as it may be.
I don't think it's hostile, I think they're just hands-off; they throw the hardware over the fence and say, "if you wanna make use of it, here's our software; if you don't like our software, sorry no docs but you're free to write your own". Which is exactly what's happening.
I mean it would be nice if Apple had released more documentation, but I totally understand if they don't want the burden of supporting it.
That said, Apple has been very hostile to hackers over the years imo. Hardware being hard to repair, access, upgrade, etc. I think at one point they were making it virtually impossible to replace components because they were serial locked.
As far as I am aware, progress Apple as made has been in response to public image issues or changes in consumer laws within the EU.
Plus Apple software is heavily indebted to Open Source software so they very easily could be releasing drivers for their hardware instead of relying on community to do backwards engineering.
You can only have so many flexibility in design with modern hardware — they are not fitting things into 5 cm “thin” chassics anymore. How exactly are such a thin device be repairable? Similarly to how old car motors could be tweaked with, you need special tools to touch anything in a modern engine. This is not against the customers, these are trade offs.
But even this way, apple devices have by far the longest lifetimes, macs, iphones will have 2-3 owners easily - so is it really fair to call them out, or is it just baseless emotional reaction?
Also, what you heard about locked down components resulted in better security, a much lower risk of theft, and a much more clean second-hand market (where you won’t be sold a phone with a cheap chinese shittier screen for example).