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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?

#221

Post by corndoge »

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.

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

#222

Post by fartcannon »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #176
fartcannon wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lineage and Linux exist and they're incredible. You've simply give up.

Lineage requires the Play Store to have paid apps or things I now pretty-much need for everyday life, at which point you've lost and it doesn't really matter whether it's Lineage or stock Android. Linux is incredible... and still unusable for many everyday apps and workflows, and simply not an option for many people including myself. I've tried Linux distributions since 2011, they aren't there yet.

None of those things matter as much as a future where corporations don't have carte blanche over your information.

Support the continued freedom you enjoyed in your youth for future generations.

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

#223

Post by dpratt »

imwillofficial wrote: post #184
system16 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's less about privacy and more about what the invading actor will/can actually do. People are less concerned about the Chinese government's reach vs. the NSA or other three letter agencies in the US. I suppose if you are important enough to the Chinese government whatever they have on you could be used as blackmail, but most 'regular' people don't fall into that category.

> People are less concerned about the Chinese government's reach vs. the NSA Wait what? You’re 180 degrees wrong.

I think the point is that the average person who resides in the US is more concerned with Orwellian overreach from the NSA than the CCP surveillance apparatus.

The Chinese secret police don’t present a threat to me, whereas the NSA has the means, motive (at the leadership level) and opportunity to violate my natural rights.

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

#224

Post by RealStickman_ »

ByteWelder wrote: post #3
28194608 wrote: post #2

Main reason I'm using apple devices is for their quick security updates. I don't trust Samsung phone because they even run ads on $1500 phone. I am thinking to go with Pixel phone.

I'm an Android developer myself, and Samsung is universally hated among devs due to the bloatware/adware. Manjaro Linux has rolling releases, so you get updates more swiftly than with other Linux flavours. LineageOS (regular or microG variant) get weekly updates if I recall correctly. Pixel is a solid hardware choice in my book.

Afaik Lineage for microG is twice monthly, but still much better than many OEMs.

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

#225

Post by Popegaf »

Linux laptop or desktop: https://linuxpreloaded.com/ or customize a desktop yourself

You can checkout compatibility of hardware components @ https://linux-hardware.org/

It's of course possible to keep your Macbook, do the environment some good (less waste) and run linux on your mac: https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux

Phone: a phone that supports LineageOS ( https://download.lineageos.org/ ) or GrapheneOS ( https://grapheneos.org/faq#device-support ). Neither are perfect:

- LineageOS still has some google config but at least it doesn't have Google Services (use microG for that https://lineage.microg.org/ )

- GrapheneOS only runs on Google Pixel devices so you will be putting money into Google's hands

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

#226

Post by Spivak »

jrockway wrote: post #130
scoopertrooper wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, I think people are just getting a little too worked up over this whole thing. Apple computes a hash of each image you upload to iCloud then check it against a list of CP hashes. Of all the things in the world to get worked up over, this is ridiculous. I get it, the mechanism they're using has apparent flaws, and maybe some whacko could somehow get access to your phone and start uploading things that trick th…

Apple's using my electricity and my silicon to call the cops on me. We have no idea what hashes they're checking images against; we can't see the raw data, and we can't see the hashes, and we can't see what they're sending to their servers. There is no technical reason why this needs to exist. If they want to scan iCloud photos for something, they can do that on their servers. iCloud is not end-to-end encrypted. Law…

Your line is the maybe pennies of electricity over the lifetime of the phone? Weird. I can totally understand your line being the CSAM scanning itself but you seem to be fine with the exact same scanning being done with even more opaqueness and less transparency because it's done server side.

I also get the slippery slope thing since you don't really have any control over what your device does but that's been true since forever. Running some scan() method and posting matches to a URL is something that literally could have been done in the last 10 years. It's not like this tech is magically enabling something that wasn't possible before.

And I do get the using your resources argument but iPhones have had integrated DRM since forever.

The thing I don't get is why now? Surely you should have left ages ago?

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

#227

Post by fbnlsr »

I've been using Pop!_OS on a Lenovo Thinkpad T480 for a year now, coming from a Macbook Air, and I couldn't be happier.

The thinkpad cost me less than half the price of a Macbook, and I was able to change its keyboard (for a QWERTY one) and add 8 GB of RAM in less than an hour (and for less than $100).

Pop!_OS is amazing. It feels close enough to MacOS that the adaptation period was almost non existent, and it's been running flawlessly for more than a year now.

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

#228

Post by hkt »

IncRnd wrote: post #200
zepto wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> iCloud is not end-to-end encrypted Yet. Have you considered that this might be a necessary precursor to making iCloud e2e?

Scanning people's on-phone photos clearly has nothing to do with being a precursor to e2e encryption. The photos get transferred either way, so one has nothing to do with the other.

Except for giving the authorities a way in to replace the one they're losing.

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

#230

Post by pshirshov »

scoopertrooper wrote: post #71
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…

Exactly, I think people are just getting a little too worked up over this whole thing. Apple computes a hash of each image you upload to iCloud then check it against a list of CP hashes. Of all the things in the world to get worked up over, this is ridiculous. I get it, the mechanism they're using has apparent flaws, and maybe some whacko could somehow get access to your phone and start uploading things that trick th…

> if someone has that level of access to your phone, they could upload real CP and maybe even upload it to your Facebook for good measure.

Many messengers, including Whatsapp, save all the incoming pics into camera roll by default.

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