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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?

#451

Post by andrei_says_ »

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…

Maybe consider that CP is just the excuse for the backdoor.

So apart from every Apple user being treated like a proven-until-innocent owner of CP, at all times, this will (yes, a matter of time) be used for political purposes, to find and silence activists, journalists, to discredit opposition leaders, to prosecute Uyugur/Muslims/women/palestinians etc.

Do we really believe that CP owners store their collections in iCloud / google cloud / Dropbox and view them on their phones? And that this is an issue on a massive scale?

Please.

These are the most expensive phones on the market, with an incredible profit margin for Apple. The part of these devices that we actually own is a shrinking territory.

Why not have the mics on all the time in case “someone says something related to a CP ring?”

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

#452

Post by marcus_holmes »

nicce wrote: post #396
marcus_holmes wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that this is all about analysing files that are not on iCloud, but on the device. So what is on your phone is now being reported to people who might decide to trash your life. Hardly "staying on your iPhone".

That is not true if you read the technical details. Scan applies for files (and only for those) which are prepared to be uploaded into the cloud. If you don't trust that, that is another story. System is full black box.

Yes, but it happens on your iPhone. So what happens on your iPhone isn't staying on your iPhone like they said it would.

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

#453

Post by nottorp »

theshrike79 wrote: post #443
nottorp wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Apple hashes all of your photos offline [...] > No, only the ones designated for upload to iCloud. How do you verify that?

If you turn off iCloud, the hash list will never get downloaded on your phone. No scanning will take place in that case.

How do you verify that? :) You're just quoting what apple says. Which may be all they're allowed to say due to the national security letter thing.

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

#454

Post by fsflover »

gorgonzolachz wrote: post #410
josteink wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Phone: Pinephone Talking as a Pinephone (and iPhone 12) owner, I think the software is starting to show promise, but the SoC is nowhere beefy enough. If I’ll go this route fully and make a Linux-phone my daily driver, I’d seriously consider the Purism Librem 5 instead.

I'm on the other side of this; I don't use my phone for anything more than messaging, light browsing/videos, and social feeds, so what I really want is more battery life. Last I checked, both purism and pine64 are struggling with this.

The Pinephone keyboard mod adds a 6000 mAh battery, which should be enough I guess.

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

#455

Post by therealmarv »

Retric wrote: post #404
therealmarv wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you've written... why there has to change something when it works already for law enforcement.

I think Apple was actually designing this system internally as an improvement in terms of privacy. Doing Perceptual hashing on the phones is more open and thus auditable than doing the same thing on their servers. They set things up to require multiple different images to match etc. However, the perception was very different.

This kind of technology should not be on phone. Industry standard is doing it on the cloud. It requires only little code changes (let's say in the time frame of 5 years) that law enforcement or whoever says: Please extend that to offline photos and then it's only a few code changes to make that happen. I don't want a ticking time bomb and Apple pinky finger promises that this will not be abused in future.

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

#456

Post by arael »

I used MacOS exclusively for 8 months before making my mind up. The initial plan was to use it for at least one year but after 8 months I was really fed up and went back to GNU/Linux. I expected it to be better but in the end I found it was not, at least not for me. Although Apple invests a lot of money and effort in the MacOS user interface development I found it way too restrictive compared to any DE or window manager I used in past on GNU/Linux. I am not Gnome nor KDE user but would pick any of these two over MacOS interface without second thoughts. Homebrew is useful and commendable but far worse than any of the major package managers on GNU/Linux. Macvim was fine, but it did not have features I relied on in Gvim. I never used Safari because compared to Firefox the interface was clunky. I do not know about current Safari status but back then it didn't have extensions. I wanted to switch many times over the 8 months and was relieved when I did. To me, personally, Apple products are overrated. MacOS? No. But thanks.

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

#457

Post by commoner »

ostenning wrote: post #305
karlzt wrote: post #50

Desktop: Arch Linux Phone: Pinephone At the end of this article: https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7e77y/the-dollar149-smartph... "But even without those changes, this device could be enough to kickstart a Linux-driven mobile revolution."

Linux needs a decent productivity suite of apps (preview, mail, calendar etc) the current offering is terrible

Replacements, all decent or better:

- Preview: GNOME Document Viewer (now supports PDF form filling), Master PDF Editor (paid and proprietary), built-in PDF editor in Firefox/Chromium, Okular; GNOME Image Viewer, Gwenview, Pantheon Photos (part of elementary OS)

- Mail: Thunderbird, Evolution, Kontact (KMail component), Geary, Pantheon Mail, Claws Mail, Mailspring

- Calendar: Thunderbird (built-in calendar), GNOME Calendar, Evolution, Kontact (KOrganizer component), Pantheon Calendar

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

#458

Post by theshrike79 »

nottorp wrote: post #453
theshrike79 wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you turn off iCloud, the hash list will never get downloaded on your phone. No scanning will take place in that case.

How do you verify that? :) You're just quoting what apple says. Which may be all they're allowed to say due to the national security letter thing.

I'm trusting in the hacker community with this.

If Apple really is trying to sneak in a CSAM database on your phone with iCloud disabled, someone WILL catch it and raise so much hell we'll all hear it.

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

#459

Post by wayoutthere »

mohanmcgeek wrote: post #389
wayoutthere wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, this has always been the case in the US. Newspapers were owned by wealthy businesses with a message to spread, as were the radio stations, then it was the big 3 TV networks for a long time, now it’s the 5 big tech companies. The gatekeeping is a feature, not a bug. If you look to other societies, this happens there too. There is a symbiotic relationship between mass media and government at a fundamental level.…

Except in these cases, it's not the government asking these companies to take down the "misinformation" videos. In fact, some of these companies try to add "misleading" label to actual, official government announcements.. Trying to run a parallel, unelected government.

Which, again, has always been the case. It’s a very new phenomenon where an individual can deliver speech directly to thousands of people. The media were the gatekeepers of information and influencers of mass opinion, and they would frequently run stories with counterfactual information that suited their purposes.

Companies have always tried to run parallel, unelected governments. Whether it’s “company towns,” banana republics, or social media restrictions doesn’t matter.

No, I think the root of the problem is that the ability to disseminate information widely across a population is not a good thing. I do think there should be real regulation on mass speech that is proportional to the audience size. If you have 100k followers on Instagram, that should come with some responsibilities.

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

#460

Post by nottorp »

theshrike79 wrote: post #458
nottorp wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you verify that? :) You're just quoting what apple says. Which may be all they're allowed to say due to the national security letter thing.

I'm trusting in the hacker community with this. If Apple really is trying to sneak in a CSAM database on your phone with iCloud disabled, someone WILL catch it and raise so much hell we'll all hear it.

iOS is open source now?
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