Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

I completely agree. In an environment where everyone was just copying the iPhone UI, some of the design ideas that were coming out of Microsoft were really refreshing and exciting. There was really nothing else like it (and nothing like it ever since).

I would love to see how Windows Phone would’ve matured.

Makes me wonder why they only mention iCloud specifically, does that imply our local OS is already pwnd?

This used to work great and is still my preferred method of back up, however for at least the past year it has been extremely unreliable. I have to manually load iTunes on my computer and initiate a back up from there because it never happens automatically anymore. And there’s no way to manually start the Wi-Fi backup from my iPhone anymore (that was removed in iOS 13). Maybe it’s more reliable if you use a Mac instead of a PC, but at this point I get a full backup maybe once a month, and often end up plugging in via USB cable in order to even get that.

(to clarify, my desktop PC is always turned on and connected to the network, so most of the other complaints in this thread about it not working with low battery laptops or whatever don’t apply in my scenario. Even in my ideal-case scenario it still barely works)

I'm so done with Apple, but more generally, with cell-phones. I was very excited to have Signal available back in 2015, but when I learned about cellular baseband processors and DMA attacks, I realized the whole smartphone stack is insecure. We can't audit anything in our phones, down to the cellular chip.

Even if our phones were 100% trustworthy, they are triangulated by cell towers thousands of times per day. Location tracking can only be avoided by:

1: Not owning a phone.

2: Powering off your device and keeping in a Faraday cage while not using.

Tempting to own a cute little purse that blocks phone signals, but do I really need a cell-phone on my body, 24/7?

If I evaluate the overall pros & cons of my cellphone, it has been overwhelmingly negative. I've had a phone since August 2014, when I went to college. Before that, I would text with my parents' phones.

Here are the top negative things that have happened due to using a phone:

1. Miscommunication, isolation, social anxiety due to social media and texting. Talking in person is so much better. And what about the hours and hours of snapchatting, so pointless and sad looking back.

2. False sense of security, thinking you can know what's going on, help people, intervene when necessary (friend sexual assault stuff at parties). What about when their phone dies? It made me wish we had landlines, or that I had been there. If I didn't have a cell phone, I don't think I would've left the party. I would've stayed and kept watch.

3. Poor posture, lack of sleep, constant exposure to blue light (who knows if the light is really bad), etc.

4. Missed connections by having my head in my phone all the time in public.

5. The US government has a total map of my life since August 2014, even though I have sent thousands of encrypted messages and hundreds of encrypted phone calls.

6. Less time available each day. I have spent typically 1-3 hours per day on my phone since I got one, about 1,980 days ago. This amounts to probably 4,000 to 6,000 hours, or about 170 to 250 days. In other words, about 1/8th of my life since 2014 has been dedicated to bullshit technology.

Here are some positives:

1. I have lots of photos that would otherwise have required a camera. But I have dozens of film cameras and a few digital ones, and there's no reason to shoot photos on such a tiny format. Good luck printing cell-photos beyond 5x7 or even 8x10.

2. I occasionally talk to family. This could be accomplished with a landline.

Maybe I've missed some things, and maybe I'm being pessimistic, but the reality is that I've lost lots of sleep and experienced more problems with interpersonal relationships as a result of having a phone. It's likely that not owning a phone would expose me to a new class of problems, but I've decided to get rid of my phone.

I'm in the process of switching accounts and removing 2FA, so I don't need cell service. Once I get there, I'm planning to write a little blog post about it. After having a baby, it's become clear that a phone is sucking my life away, and I need to be present with my family. Hope to have this all dealt with in the next week or two.

Persons [edit: I don’t mean in the legal sense] they are not, but do you think it is reasonable to model companies as non-person _agents_? (In the sense of “thing which has goals/preferences, (and beliefs?) and acts so as to further those goals/preferences”.)

If it is useful to model such organizations as non-person agents, then while they of course would not “care”, in the sense of emotions, about things, it would be coherent to say that such an organization e.g. “has protecting privacy as a goal”.

Err, I guess I’m eliding the distinction between “being useful to model as an agent” and “being an agent”, which may be a mistake. I suppose what I should say is “if it is useful to model as an agent, it is useful to treat as coherent the claim that it has goals of e.g. privacy stuff.” .