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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?

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He is right. US has complete power over people on their soil and basically in Europe and Asia as well. They do a LOT of extraditions of other countries citizens when they go traveling or to business trips from their citizenship countries. China, on the other hand, does not seem to give a single f* about foreigners, only about their own citizens. Most people are not so are not really endangered even if chinese spyers…

You should talk to this Swedish guy. He was captured in Thailand(!) by Chinese agents:

https://www.dw.com/en/china-sentences-swedish-publisher-to-1...

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

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it was well thought-out. Apple betrayed my trust as a consumer and the response in the past week was plain gaslighting. I thought about it for a couple of days and then decided that I don't want to support a company like that anymore. (edit)I was planning to buy a new MBP/iPhone/Watch in Q4, so this made it easier to decide on those purchases earlier.(/edit) It's correct that the CSAM scanning is currently on…

Even if we were to call this a "backdoor", it's a backdoor that creaks quite loudly. I mean, what's the attack vector here? The plan, as far as I'm aware, is to upload a list of hashes to each device that have been vetted by multiple child protection agencies. In order to surveil other things, additional hashes would need to be transferred that wouldn't be vetted by these agencies. That would be noticed, and that's t…

>I mean, what's the attack vector here? The plan, as far as I'm aware, is to upload a list of hashes to each device that have been vetted by multiple child protection agencies.

I hope not.

If hashes are uploaded to devices, they can be extracted and images that clash against it can be created.

I think they're going to be creating hashes of images locally that are being uploaded and send it with the image. Then if the hash is found to match one on their database, that's flagged.

The problem then is, if they're matching on their side, what prevents them from receiving some order that forces them to match for other images?

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

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain this to me -- The whole premise is that Google and Facebook and everyone else are just doing this on the unencrypted photos you upload, in their cloud, with their own (presumably, but correct me if I'm wrong) undocumented algorithms and datasets. Now here comes Apple, documenting almost everything except the dataset itself, and everyone is freaking out because it's happening on your own device . B…

I think part of it is that Apple has always said "what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone". People expect Microsoft to be evil, and (post "don't be evil") Google to be evil. Apple was supposed to be the good guys in this. So it's more surprising and feels more like a betrayal when Apple decides to be evil. Also, it's actually pretty easy to mess with Android and get it un-googled. Google don't make most Andr…

> "what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone"

Well, technically this is still true. Files you are putting to iCloud by yourself voluntarily are not staying in your iPhone in the first hand. Everything which is against this, is only speculation currently.

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

#294
Is it useful to add my vote to the very many "none" posts already in the thread? I have to admit I was annoyed by the implied assumption that's in the wording of the title, which seems (to me) to imply that a sizable portion of HN is in the process of moving off Apple's products because of the CSAM issue.

I tend to hope that everyone else sees every issue the exact same way that I do, and can word leading questions like the OP did here in the hope of somehow pulling everyone along as though (in this case) switching is the only reasonable choice and the question boils down to which platform to choose, rather than whether switching is a rational decision in itself.

Otherwise all the other posters giving good reasons why not to switch have done a much better job than I have in explaining why not.

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

#295
post #29

This seems like an over-reaction. I'm highly opposed to Apple's CSAM move but they are still much better and transparent than Google, Amazon, and most other services. Many of these already do something like this but they just don't actively tell you or document it. Also, and please correct me if I am mistaken, Apple's CSAM is limited to iCloud for Photos. It does not just work against your local photos. CSAM Detectio…

It is limited to photos destined for iCloud. A lot of rage appears to be around 'what if', but what if exists every day right now. I'll re-evaluate when Apple does one of those what ifs. They said they won't, and architected the system in such a way that it's hard do those what ifs, so we'll see. The reality is, people have to trust their OS vendor.

Yes, but I would argue the 'rage' is justified (even if I don't agree with the actions folks are taking). It's opening the door, not matter how noble the effort or intention.

It doesn't compel me to drop Apple. I still think they are the best of the best, but I agree in sentiment to many people here that it was a huge drop in my trust.

The lesson for me is that I cannot trust any company, and that is probably a smart approach. I will depend on myself and right now Apple, amongst all the players, is still the one that manages my privacy better than anywhere else. But I'll be watching.

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

#296
Linux has progressed a lot, but for productivity apps, it doesn’t come close to macOS.

What I want to see is a user-friendly productivity app suite as good as macOS for linux:

- Calendar - Mail - Preview

These apps need feature parity with the macOS, need to “just work” with sane defaults and need to be well thought out with an equivalent UX.

Don’t get me wrong, I ran Manjaro and Arch for a long time and I would love to go back to them as my daily workhorse, but the app support isnt nearly as good.

Even apps like Spotify bring my linux T480 thinkpad with 32GB ram to its knees because Spotify doesnt give a shit about Linux. So as a result I have to find shitty second class apps that dont have full features, are buggy or dont work. Then I end up spending more time trying to get my computer to run apps properly than actually use it for its intended purpose.

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

#297

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.

For photos, you could always do Nextcloud and save yourself the work of writing something (unless, of course, you're doing it for fun).

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

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you have iCloud Photos turned on, those images are already being uploaded and then CSAM-scanned on Apple’s servers. The chain is just being configured differently, but this risk is already active.

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.

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

#299

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 interested in privacy. So I worried about defaults. Calyx looks a little more explicitly pro privacy?

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

#300
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of Android flavours that don't have Google apps, like https://lineage.microg.org/ In my limited experience so far, LineageOS works much better than it used to on my HTC Desire. Battery life has been better than any of my iPhones (3G, 4S, 5S, 7 and XS) ever had. That said, if I had to chose between a Google Android phone and an Apple phone, I'd still pick the Apple one. Luckily there are more choices…

android is no where near competitive with apple’s user XP. i was a long term android user until 3ish years ago. i’ll never go back to a fragmented device ecosystem again if i can help it.

To each their own. I switched to an iPhone early this year after always having used Android before, and I won't be buying another one. Apple nails the big picture stuff, but they have really dropped the ball on some of the details in their UX. Just a few arbitrary gripes off the top of my head:

* The Clock app doesn't let you set a snooze length? Seriously?!

* Not having a notification LED or some other indicator really sucks. I might set my phone on the counter while I'm doing other things, and with Android, it was nice to be able to look up and see if I've gotten something without walking up to the phone and checking. (I know Apple will likely never implement this because it's a great pitch for their watch.)

* Face ID is slow and inconsistent compared to a fingerprint reader (especially during COVID), and I'm bummed that Apple ditched the latter. It works well about 80% of the time, and the other 20% I'm that crazy-looking person that's making faces at his phone trying to get it to unlock.

* If you had any sort of media app open previously and then connect some Bluetooth headphones, the media controls for that app open up and take up most of the lock screen, and there is no way to swipe them away; you have to kill the app to get them to disappear.

* I miss the inline notification controls. On Android, apps can give their notifications extra buttons, so you can do things like delete an email right from the notifications bar without having to open the app.

* My friend and I regularly send each other voice memos. First of all, the built-in voice memo feature in iMessage is atrocious (no seek and you have to restart from the beginning if you leave the screen), so we use the Voice Memos app to send each other audio files. Except, when you play an audio file inline through either iMessage or Mail, the screen will still turn off and lock, which pauses the file. You have to save it to Files, then open it via the Files app to ensure that it continues playing in the background. How are you supposed to know this?!

* If your iCloud storage is close to full, Apple will continually notify you every few days via your phone and email, and there is no way to disable these notifications.

* Needing a special charger sucks. Everything else I own is either USB-C or microUSB at this point, but my iPhone needs its own charging cable that nothing else uses.

* All of the special treatment that only Apple's apps get is frustrating. For instance, why does only Apple's Clock app get a special timer UX on the lock screen, and everyone else's has to use a notification? Why does only Safari support ad blockers? And why is the camera button on the lock screen limited to the built-in Camera app? They really push their own apps with these artificial benefits, which detracts from the plethora of apps in the App Store.

* Syncing files (in both directions) without iCloud is a pain, and I'm not going to pay for an iCloud subscription. There are lots of different ways to achieve this, but none of them are as easy as simply using SyncThing on Android.

Even though Android is lacking in certain areas, I find the UX to be a lot more consistent than that of iOS, and I would take the consistency and flexibility of Android over all of Apple's corner cases and attempts to predict how I will use my device. But again, that's my personal preference, and to each their own.

(Sorry, this turned out to be much longer than I expected. I guess I'm more frustrated by iOS than I realized!)

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