What if Apple, et. al. decided to require an unaffordable subscription to use those assistive features you have become dependent on, or they stop supporting or even outright remove those features? Your devices become useless, and the ability to run free software becomes the only way to salvage them.
And sure, you could go looking elsewhere in the market, but the same thing could happen with any vendor, and there's no guarantee that the specific set of features you desire is going to be available at a price point that makes sense (especially if your income changes due to further disability).
What if the current US federal administration continues its fascist descent and decides that supporting disabled people is "woke DEI shit" and puts incredible pressure on companies to discontinue features for, or even surveil and report, its disabled users? Eugenics is part and parcel of their ideology after all. Or more likely, the US govt requires a ChatControl-like feature in all commercial software.
Free software is a matter of personal self-reliance -- not just some hobby.
Eh, not really interested in entertaining some hypotheticals that has negligible probability relative to a black swan event occurring. Needless to say there is very little evidence of what you describe with Apple; if anything over the 23 is h years of having used Apple products, the access to the latest accessibility and assistive tech has gone from paid upgrades to free.
Your devices become useless, and the ability to run free software becomes the only way to salvage them.
Free software is a matter of personal self-reliance -- not just some hobby.
Free software provides me negligible utility, I can't rely on it for anything, since it has virtually unusable accessibility and assisitve tech. The chances free software can come to the table with something usable is a lot less likely than the scenarios you have dreamt up, so we'll be fine in the long run.
Like if the Stallman life works for you, go for it; but I would've been left stranded in many areas of my life having stunted growth (not physically) if had not found another way to use tech/computers, which would probably involve spending stupid amounts of money on (again) proprietary niche accessibility tech. Stallman and his FOSS sycophants only care about their ideals, not actually empowering people.
And sure, you could go looking elsewhere in the market, but the same thing could happen with any vendor, and there's no guarantee that the specific set of features you desire is going to be available at a price point that makes sense (especially if your income changes due to further disability).
What if the current US federal administration continues its fascist descent and decides that supporting disabled people is "woke DEI shit" and puts incredible pressure on companies to discontinue features for, or even surveil and report, its disabled users? Eugenics is part and parcel of their ideology after all. Or more likely, the US govt requires a ChatControl-like feature in all commercial software.
Free software is a matter of personal self-reliance -- not just some hobby.