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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?

#331

Post by harlanji »

Phone: Mobile router with rj11 jack, hotspot, and SMS web interface.

Computer: RasPi 4 8GB + 7” screen with Ubuntu Mate in a SmartiPi case.

Car: put the computer onto the visor and flip the display, hook up accessories.

I’m still with iPhone but pretty close to that setup. Mainly I am thinking about emergencies where I want my SIM in my phone when I leave my car. A second SIM that supports WiFi calling is likely the final step, giving the new # to the iPhone and using WiFi only when possible, at home or in car.

Sounds complicated, no doubt. Tethering CarPuter to iPhone is a much easier approach. I’m a VanLifer.

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

#332

Post by IncRnd »

scoopertrooper wrote: post #251
IncRnd wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You simply repeated back to me what I wrote without addressing any of it.

Okay, well they're likely doing it to save money. I work in data engineering and I can tell you calculating the hash of every iCloud upload wouldn't come cheap. Mystery solved?

You are completely missing the point. The answer to a privacy and security question shouldn't be, "it is easy for us to do things this way." You are inadvertently making the point that you are arguing against.

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

#333

Post by [deleted] »

mullingitover wrote: post #265
istingray wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't refer to it as CSAM. I say I'm switching because of Apple's surveillance of my files so they can find stuff to report to the police. People get it.

This thing is pretty well publicized, people do get it but not in the way you're implying. If you have children and you explain to the other parents that you're just really passionate about privacy and are dumping all your iDevices for... reasons ...your kids are probably not going to have friends come over to visit much after that.

[deleted]

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

#334

Post by swiley »

The last thing from Apple I had was a phone, I've switched to a Pinephone entirely.

That was a lot of work, I had to write my own power management service so I could get notifications during sleep without draining the battery excessively and there are still tons of bugs and little hacks I've written. If that scares you please just switch to a trackphone because smartphone software authors will continue taking advantage of you after you switch to something else.

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

#335

Post by tw600040 »

Hard truth is Apple has really built its ecosystem brick by brick and is constantly getting stronger. And other companies don't even seem like they have their eyes on the game wrt ecosystem. They do some parts better than Apple but no one seems to be focussing on the big picture. Once someone is fully in the ecosystem (phone, iPad, Mac, watch, Apple TV and some iCloud services) it's really hard to find another ecosystem that works as well.. and that's not a good thing for the industry in general

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

#336

Post by pshirshov »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #298
pshirshov wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual problem is not CSAM scanning. The actual problem is that they've created a great surveillance tool which will inevitably get broader capabilities and they are normalising client-side data scanning (we need to eradicate terrorism, now we need to eradicate human trafficking, and now we need to eradicate tax evasion, oh, we forgot about gay russians, hmm, what about Winnie memes?).

But this was already true. There is no reason the governments couldn't have required this tool to be built at anytime all along. Remember EARN IT where Senators said figure something out (like this CSAM tool) or they'll do it for Apple? The EU is similar, with upcoming draft legislation saying they have to do it if they don't figure something (like this) out.

You still may donate to liberty and FOSS NGOs, switch to ungoogled Android and drop macOS in favour of Linux. Also you have your rights and opportunities for activism and peaceful protest. This is not illegal yet (effectively illegal in Russia/China though).

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

#337

Post by jasonlotito »

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…

> This is the first step towards that reality.

You know, I could respect your opinion that this is where you draw the line, but you ignore all of Apple's history if you think this is the first step. This isn't the first step, this isn't the first chapter, this is at best the middle of the book where the plot twist happens.

No, this is clearly no the first step. This is the first step you chose to see the reality of the situation. You'll look back and you'll see how everything was paved with good intentions and how people sounding the alarm were ignored.

This isn't the first step.

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

#338

Post by sigmar »

twobitshifter wrote: post #304
sigmar wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Doesn’t Apple have a front door to change your phone at the FBI behest? Weren’t they already able to upload data (telemetry etc)? It doesn’t make sense to pretend that there was an existing state where Apple couldn’t get data off your phone if the FBI ordered surveillance.

There was a huge court case about Apple refusing to update the OS of a particular phone that was in fbi possession in order for the fbi to see its encrypted contents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...

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

#339

Post by pshirshov »

mapgrep wrote: post #299
pshirshov wrote: post #187

Phone: Google Pixel 5 plus CalyxOS at the moment. Probably will switch to pure LineageOS due to call recording support. The bootloader is locked so the phone is secure and does not call home. Highly recommend. Some apps and in-app purchases doesn't work well on microG, also there are some issues with paid apps. And Android UX sucks but it's a reasonable price to pay for privacy. In fact I've been suprised - with this…

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 better fronted to android permissions API). Though you can perfectly get that on Lineage. Lineage has its telemetry but you can switch it off.

Actually I'm thinking about building my own lineage-based distro (with proper call recorder built in), that's not that hard. Though for now I don't want to invest too much time into that.

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

#340

Post by IncRnd »

hkt wrote: post #228
IncRnd wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not what was being argued, but you made an excellent point.
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