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Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

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Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#371

Post by mapgrep »

pshirshov wrote: post #339
mapgrep wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What initially drove you to Calyx vs Lineage? I'm new to the Android fork landscape. I gravitate to /e/os because I like that it's prepackaged, but have no qualms about rooting a phone myself if the OS is good. My main concern is privacy and with Lineage I didn't trust myself to set it up properly - it seems as much oriented toward people wanting to just upgrade their Android phones or add features as people interest…

> What initially drove you to Calyx vs Lineage? The promise of locked bootloader. Later I learned that Lineage does the same job, they sign their builds for AVB. Though their documentation sucks and forums full of idiots screaming "NEVER LOCK YOUR BOOTLOADER". Regarding "privacy" - I'm not really sure how much work is done in Calyx. Well, you may choose cloudflare dns out of the box and you have a "firewall" (just a…

Thanks and be sure to post the distribution here on HN if it ever happens, call recording sounds great (I achieve this only with a tangle of wires, adapters, and a physically separate audio recorder)

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#372

Post by skinkestek »

AbjectFailure wrote: post #353
anonuser123456 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I can't accept this. It's a step too far. So turn off iCloud photos?

Why should Apple let pedophiles store CSAM on iPhones just because they’re not uploading it to iCloud Photo Library? It’s morally reprehensible to not disable that flag when it’s such a simple thing they can do to catch so many more criminals!

This is obviously sarcasm but I'd preface it with an explanation since HN is multicultural and not not everyone here is brought up to catch it effortlessly.

Edit: The point here is that even if Apple tries very hard to make this be only about photos about to be uploaded to the cloud, if the percentage of phones that turns off iCloud storage increases as a response to this new "snitch-on-me" feature that will be a very good argument for law enforcement to ask for a list of IMEIs that are not using iCloud, and it will also tempt them to demand that Apple start scanning all files.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#373

Post by geophile »

I switched from my 2015 MBP to a System76 Darter Pro, and I've been very happy with it. (The MBP was dying, and the new MBPs had the execrable touchbar, and the broken keyboard.)

There are no good iPhone alternatives. I now don't trust either Google or Apple on privacy, for different reasons. As a practical matter, Apple is probably better for me, as I find it very unlikely that governments forcing Apple to do their bidding are going to be interested in me, personally.

I am relying on the Apple cloud, and I hate it. I have mp3 files for all my music, and I will soon stop relying on Apple for music completely. I take photos on my phone, and they go to the cloud. I think I'm stuck there, but again, I do have my own copies (via download to my wife's Mac). Ideally, I could get photos from my phone to my Linux laptop directly, but I don't know of a good way to do that.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#374

Post by BlueParanoia »

corndoge wrote: post #221
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #26

To be honest... None. It's a choice. You might wholly disagree, but recent events aren't enough to get me to switch yet, because I think the competition has too many tradeoffs. I can get my photos scanned against a CSAM database... or I can have Google tracking my location constantly regardless of what they say (as they've been proven to be misleading in the past)... or I can use a Linux phone and say goodbye to batt…

> It's just not there yet Respectfully, it is there. You are not. Which is fine - I prefer a Mac for general purpose computer use, word processing, web browsing, that sort of thing. But Linux can do these things just as well, it just requires you to configure them, which is strictly a "you" constraint and not a failure of the system.

This is a pretty bad argument. You can apply that "you're the constraint" logic to tons of bad designs and products and claim they're not actually bad.

Linux is not necessary a bad system, but usability (degree of effort, burden of knowledge, misuse risk) are absolutely a core determination on where or not a piece of technology is "there yet"

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#375

Post by neverminder »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #359
neverminder wrote: post #201

Desktop - Ubuntu 20.04. Everything works and my requirements are quite advanced - bunch of games on Steam, pro level audio production studio just to mention a few things. Laptop - Dell Precision 7750, Xeon CPU, 64 GB RAM, bought with Ubuntu pre-installed. Beast of a laptop, superior thermals, wipes the floor with a mac. Phone - Google Pixel. I consider that a lesser evil choice to Apple's walled garden. It's rooted,…

Are you able to run Protools and the Adobe Suite your Linux desktop is that no yet possible? And how long do you plan to keep the Precision before upgrading?

I don't use ProTools, I use Bitwig Studio which is a full blown DAW with native linux support. There's also Ardour and Reaper, so linux has plenty of DAWs to choose from. Also as I have mentioned in another comment - all VSTs that I need work just fine with wine/yabridge.

I don't use Adobe's stuff either, but I know other people run Photoshop on wine, I just don't know what issues they're facing.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#376

Post by fsflover »

jcun4128 wrote: post #247
gruez wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "random Chinese phone", are we talking about PINE, or the various OEMs that make android phones?

The Pinephone seems good as far as being mostly open, cheap, physical switches but... I guess the modem is not open. Anyway have I personally tested that the switches actually work/no soft switch somewhere no... I'm mostly after the potential emerging market (apps) over privacy. I have a KDE edition Pinephone that I intend to use more overtime but primarily an Android user. Also I get super annoyed when Android bundl…

> I guess the modem is not open

The Pinephone modem is partially open already:

https://linuxsmartphones.com/hackers-develop-open-source-fir...

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#377

Post by jcun4128 »

fsflover wrote: post #376
jcun4128 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pinephone seems good as far as being mostly open, cheap, physical switches but... I guess the modem is not open. Anyway have I personally tested that the switches actually work/no soft switch somewhere no... I'm mostly after the potential emerging market (apps) over privacy. I have a KDE edition Pinephone that I intend to use more overtime but primarily an Android user. Also I get super annoyed when Android bundl…

> I guess the modem is not open The Pinephone modem is partially open already: https://linuxsmartphones.com/hackers-develop-open-source-fir...

Ahh that's nice yeah I think the keywords were "proprietary blobs" or something like that, anyway that's cool

Edit: another thing to my parent comment, ads in your voicemail... the visual voicemail app in Android. Omg that annoys me so much, thankfully I have not been getting many voicemails anymore.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#378

Post by Syonyk »

isoskeles wrote: post #316
Syonyk wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be... literally all phones available today, wouldn't it? With the possible exception of the $2000 Librem 5 USA. However, as one who's moved from an iPhone to a Nokia 8110 with KaiOS, which I in no way argue is as secure as iOS: It has less on it. It has far less on it. It has my phone calls, a handful of text messages, and while it has email access right now, I'm experimenting with if I actually need that,…

I might make this change. Are you using any kind of app for 2FA like Google Authenticator?

I still have a few things like Authenticator rooted on my iPhone. I mostly use hardware tokens, so Authenticator is nice to have, but not critical for daily use. Signal is another one, I'm currently using the linked devices, but I don't have a "new root" yet.

I believe there are some Google Authenticator apps for KaiOS, just not in the main app store, and I've not gone through the process of working out sideloading yet.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#379

Post by fsflover »

BlueParanoia wrote: post #374
corndoge wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just not there yet Respectfully, it is there. You are not. Which is fine - I prefer a Mac for general purpose computer use, word processing, web browsing, that sort of thing. But Linux can do these things just as well, it just requires you to configure them, which is strictly a "you" constraint and not a failure of the system.

This is a pretty bad argument. You can apply that "you're the constraint" logic to tons of bad designs and products and claim they're not actually bad. Linux is not necessary a bad system, but usability (degree of effort, burden of knowledge, misuse risk) are absolutely a core determination on where or not a piece of technology is "there yet"

> degree of effort, burden of knowledge, misuse risk

I don't understand what you mean. My non-technical relatives use Linux just fine. There is no "burden of knowledge".

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#380

Post by fsflover »

KaiserPro wrote: post #269
dont__panic wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you did all of the analysis on device, even quite cheaply, you could just transcribe key words and phrases into a text file and upload that. That would only be a few kilobytes of data tops per day of unique words and phrases, I should think. And if you've ever tried to monitor data usage on an Android phone, you'll know that the monolith of Google Play Services phones home all the time with all kinds of pings and…

and you'd have no battery inside an hour. watch words are simple to listen for, generalised transcription is far harder.

Doesn't your phone stay on charge sometimes?
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