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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?

#131
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has been scanning photos for CSAM for... what, almost a decade now? Also, as an iPhone user, contrary to the recent Hacker News fight, I actually view this CSAM scanning with a sign of hope, because this hints that we could get end-to-end encryption on iCloud Storage. The CSAM scanning is rumored to be just a prerequisite to get the government to shut up with their biggest critique of E2E, so that Apple can th…

Oh yes, I'm sure the FBI will be satisfied with using the backdoor to only find CSAM, they definitely will not use the access for 'anti-terrorism' and drug enforcement. That sounds just like the FBI. What good is E2E encryption when they can scan your client with a backdoor? All Apple is doing with this hashing is giving themselves plausible deniability when this access gets abused down the road. "Oh we didn't know t…

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

#132
GrapheneOS. Been using it since half a year and it exceeded my expectations by far. Maybe I was too pessimistic using an Android phone without Google play services but thanks to fdroid there are plenty of open alternatives for pretty much every app needed ... (At least in my case)

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

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reasonably confident that Google listens to every conversation I have within earshot of my phone. It isn't uncommon to find things in my news feed that are related to things I have no interest in but a friend or coworker had just mentioned to me in passing.

I doubt they are listening - What is more likely is Google can use your lat/lng and knows that you and your co-worker work near each other, etc and is making recommendations based of proximity.

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

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason why that's 98%+ of the market. There is a dichotomy between the two camps in the smartphone market, everyone else is fringe. On the fringe, good luck using banking apps, transit apps, vehicle rental apps, or other apps increasingly necessary and useful. I don't think you know what you are talking about when you mentioned Xiaomi as an option. That would be among the dumbest options you could possibly…

> On the fringe, good luck using banking apps Tried that yesterday on CalyxOs with anonymous MicroG account and my banking app works fine. No problem with contactless nfc payments.

Aren't anonymous microG accounts illegal though? (Or at least a violation of the TOS.)

Also you can't use any paid apps with this method.

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

#135

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…

I find it funny how many people pick a random Chinese phone in their bid for privacy (???)

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

#136
Pinebook and pinephone, I hope. Debian and whatever pinephone is using. It's only the photos which are a bit annoying. But with a bit of js and my own server I'm fairly sure I can transition over to something fairly easily. I'll keep my icloud email address I think.

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

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reasonably confident that Google listens to every conversation I have within earshot of my phone. It isn't uncommon to find things in my news feed that are related to things I have no interest in but a friend or coworker had just mentioned to me in passing.

At work you have the same IP. Your coworker may have googled what he was taking about. This is a much easier explaination than a constant mic monitoring for arbitrary phrases

There are a lot of people at this company, and my news feed doesn't diverge enough to account for all of their varied google searches.

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

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reasonably confident that Google listens to every conversation I have within earshot of my phone. It isn't uncommon to find things in my news feed that are related to things I have no interest in but a friend or coworker had just mentioned to me in passing.

I doubt they are listening - What is more likely is Google can use your lat/lng and knows that you and your co-worker work near each other, etc and is making recommendations based of proximity.

It's plausible, but I still don't buy it because I don't see divergent things when I, say, sit next to a complete stranger in the break room cafeteria.

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

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing. You might hate Apple for what they did. But I'm looking at the competition (Google, Amazon, Microsoft) and they're still worse for privacy in well-documented ways. It's an evil but it's still the least among evils.

> It's an evil but it's still the least among evils. Nope, you can use a degoogled android. There's still a matter of hardware that's not open but there's not much we can do that without sacrificing a lot of usability.

Then you can't use the Play Store (legally at least) and can't use paid apps. You're still taking a massive usability hit.
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