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iQuit: My Hellish Attempt to Leave Apple’s Walled Garden

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Re: iQuit: My Hellish Attempt to Leave Apple’s Walled Garden

#3
strange to me that people spend $1000+ on a phone when you can get another one that does 95% the same for $200-300.

is that 5% really worth an extra $800+...

the only big difference is if you care about resale value. trying to sell a used android/windows vs a used apple product is definitely an eye-opening experience.

Re: iQuit: My Hellish Attempt to Leave Apple’s Walled Garden

#4

strange to me that people spend $1000+ on a phone when you can get another one that does 95% the same for $200-300. is that 5% really worth an extra $800+... the only big difference is if you care about resale value. trying to sell a used android/windows vs a used apple product is definitely an eye-opening experience.

I value a high end camera to take photos and videos of my kids growing up. I will not get that in a 200-300$ phone.

I have for work a mid range android (Samsung a53). The camera is significantly worse than my iphone 12 pro max. So i have to get high end phones and then the extra money for a iphone is not much.

Re: iQuit: My Hellish Attempt to Leave Apple’s Walled Garden

#5
As someone who has moved between macOS+iOS and Windows/Linux+Android several times, this is doable. For technical people, it's just annoying. For non-technical people, this probably needs written into a more formal set of steps. If you have the need, one can setup your world to work on both systems transparently, but that takes more work.

Caveats: iOS messages can be kept, but they'll be in files, not your new message app. Photo edits will be lost unless you take extra steps.

Messages: if you are comfortable with it, use imessage-exporter (https://github.com/ReagentX/imessage-exporter) on your Mac to export your messages to disk. Copy to new machine. Validate you got what you wanted! Can also be used to decrease iCloud usage by backing up messages and deleting the originals from Apple Messages.

Photos: three ways. 1) open up the macOS photos app, select all photos, and export them. This will make any JPEG photos much larger than they originally were due to ridiculous default quality settings. 2) If you have access to a Windows machine, install iCloud for Windows, let the photos sync, and copy them to a new directory. 3) Use iCloud's web UI to download all the photos on the new machine.

Mail: pick a new provider. Several ways. 1) Add the new provider account to macOS mail. Copy and paste your emails/folders between accounts. 2) Create an app-specific password for iCloud, use the provider's migration facility (most major players support this and it will move your contacts and calendars).

Calendars: if you are sharing calendars with iOS users or will keep some Apple devices, keep iCloud as your primary calendar system. Use DavX5 (https://www.davx5.com/) on Android to setup a two-way mirror between your Android calendar app. Your email provider may provide calendar mirroring (Fastmail does, for one). If you aren't sharing / using your mail provider, export your calendars to ICS files from Apple Calendar and import into your new calendar app.

Contacts: if you will continue using Apple products, keep iCloud as your primary contacts system and use DavX5. Otherwise, open macOS Contacts, select all, and export to a VCF file. Import this into your new Contacts app.

Documents: copy to a backup drive from the machine, download them from iCloud on the web, use iCloud for Windows for the initial sync. Whatever suits you. If you are using Apple's office apps, be sure to load and save as a more universal format.

Re: iQuit: My Hellish Attempt to Leave Apple’s Walled Garden

#6

strange to me that people spend $1000+ on a phone when you can get another one that does 95% the same for $200-300. is that 5% really worth an extra $800+... the only big difference is if you care about resale value. trying to sell a used android/windows vs a used apple product is definitely an eye-opening experience.

[dead]

Re: iQuit: My Hellish Attempt to Leave Apple’s Walled Garden

#7

strange to me that people spend $1000+ on a phone when you can get another one that does 95% the same for $200-300. is that 5% really worth an extra $800+... the only big difference is if you care about resale value. trying to sell a used android/windows vs a used apple product is definitely an eye-opening experience.

I buy second hand apple phones, so I spend £500 on last years model and still get the good resale value 3 years later.

For me the long term updates and lack of maintenance are key factors - it’s been 15 years since I’ve had time to faff around with phones, I just need something that works and can easily transfer on to the next one.

Re: iQuit: My Hellish Attempt to Leave Apple’s Walled Garden

#8

strange to me that people spend $1000+ on a phone when you can get another one that does 95% the same for $200-300. is that 5% really worth an extra $800+... the only big difference is if you care about resale value. trying to sell a used android/windows vs a used apple product is definitely an eye-opening experience.

Looked into this when my Huawei P20 died last year. In urban areas, used iPhones are a solid option since folks tend to upgrade annually or biennially. You can get a 1-2yo device in mint condition with software support for a few more years. I was prepared to drop another 80€ on a battery replacement which i thought would give me at least a few years worth of use out of that phone but so far it hasn't even been necessary yet (i'm using an iPhone 11 and don't feel like i'm missing out on much compared to newer models, even the camera is excellent)

Re: iQuit: My Hellish Attempt to Leave Apple’s Walled Garden

#9

strange to me that people spend $1000+ on a phone when you can get another one that does 95% the same for $200-300. is that 5% really worth an extra $800+... the only big difference is if you care about resale value. trying to sell a used android/windows vs a used apple product is definitely an eye-opening experience.

IMO even a modest improvement in a device that I use for several hours per day, every single day, is worth quite a lot of money.

Re: iQuit: My Hellish Attempt to Leave Apple’s Walled Garden

#10

strange to me that people spend $1000+ on a phone when you can get another one that does 95% the same for $200-300. is that 5% really worth an extra $800+... the only big difference is if you care about resale value. trying to sell a used android/windows vs a used apple product is definitely an eye-opening experience.

I think your framing is wrong here. It’s not so much about what it can and cannot do, of which there are plenty (continuity camera is the best example for me, and that works right out of the box).

It’s more about how well the two phones do similar things. Yes a 200$ phone takes photos and videos, but the image quality is worse and the files ironically tend to be bigger.

Yes it will run all my apps, but they’ll be sluggish cause of bloat in the software stack.

Same idea, but repeat it for everything else.

Now, this may simply not matter to someone, and that’s great they get to save 800$. But to many others, myself included, it does matter.

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