Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 493 posts

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

#61

Post by gjsman-1000 »

0x0 wrote: post #56
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…

macOS has been announced to scan just like iOS

Incorrect. It will use a generic model to warn children that they could be exposed to nudity, but that runs on-device and sends nothing to Apple. (It's just a generic nudity detection model).

On iOS and iPadOS, they will implement the iCloud Photos CSAM scanning, but Apple left out macOS as having that for now. Rumoredly according to GitHub reverse-engineers of the system, it's due to the mathematical precision of the NeuralHash algorithm being processor-dependent on ARM and not Intel.

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

#62

Post by jivings »

I changed my phone to a Fairphone 3+ running LineageOS. I'm liking it so far. I think it's as ethical & private as I can get while still have a smartphone right now.

I also changed my photos to backup to Nextcloud, which I'm self-hosting.

I wrote about switching from Google Photos to Nextcloud here: https://blog.leavemealone.app/moving-from-google-photos-to-n...

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

#63

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#64

Post by helen___keller »

I've been down this road long before CSAM, the gist is:

Use FOSS when possible, minimize all other internet-connected devices when FOSS is not available.

I actually still plan to continue using iPhone as a necessary evil until PinePhone, Librem, or similar are production ready (as my use cases demand). But I don't trust the device, my world doesn't revolve around the device, and that's kind of the only way to live with having devices running proprietary, untrustworthy code.

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

#65

Post by 0x0 »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #61
0x0 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS has been announced to scan just like iOS

Incorrect. It will use a generic model to warn children that they could be exposed to nudity, but that runs on-device and sends nothing to Apple. (It's just a generic nudity detection model). On iOS and iPadOS, they will implement the iCloud Photos CSAM scanning, but Apple left out macOS as having that for now. Rumoredly according to GitHub reverse-engineers of the system, it's due to the mathematical precision of th…

From https://www.apple.com/child-safety/ :

> These features are coming later this year in updates to iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, and macOS Monterey.

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

#67

Post by gjsman-1000 »

0x0 wrote: post #65
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect. It will use a generic model to warn children that they could be exposed to nudity, but that runs on-device and sends nothing to Apple. (It's just a generic nudity detection model). On iOS and iPadOS, they will implement the iCloud Photos CSAM scanning, but Apple left out macOS as having that for now. Rumoredly according to GitHub reverse-engineers of the system, it's due to the mathematical precision of th…

From https://www.apple.com/child-safety/ : > These features are coming later this year in updates to iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, and macOS Monterey.

In that case, I'm not sure. The people reverse-engineering the algorithm say they aren't quite sure if that's because the system hasn't shown up in MacOS Developer Previews yet (where it has in iOS and iPadOS), or if that's because they are referring to the generic nudity detection instead of the database matching system.

For now, the security experts looking at this say that the nudity detection model is on all platforms, but the database matching in iCloud Photos is only on iOS and iPadOS and it's unclear whether it will come to macOS.

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

#70

Post by 576i »

I always saw Apple stuff as toys, so I own several ipads and boughta Mini 12 iphone because I was impressed with the size. For computing, I use real computers running Windows 10 Pro or Linux (mostly Ubuntu) and I'm ready to leave Windows behind as soon as work no longer requires me to keep it.

Since that CSAM is not coming to Europe any time soon I guess I can ride that out and keep the iphones/ipads and slowly have a look around if there's an acceptable, dual sim phone that compares to the 12 Mini. Maybe my next phone will be a foldable...

Post reply on HN