The "Don't Be Evil" corporation that valued open source rather than open-washing, that valued openstandards over "oops, we didn't mean to break that for you!" isn't here anymore.
The company that bends over backwards, much farther than the law requires, to enable the surveillance state.
I despise Apple. Especially on mobile. No SDCards, no headphone jack, walled garden app stores. Ugh ugh ugh.
I have applications that does E2E for contacts and calendars that I'll have to find an iOS solution for.
I loathe the notch.
But my next phone will be an iPhone.
Google collects so much absurd amount of data - that all the Proton-mail, DuckduckGo, Wire/Signal, Firefox (loaded with adblocking and tracking plugins) apps in the world can't keep you totally from it as long as you're on Android. You disable things, you opt out of stuff and it just keeps on collecting anyways.
And i don't believe for a second the data they're allowing you to "autodelete" genuinely gets deleted. It just gets removed from your view.
I fully switched from Android to iOS when iPhone X came out in November 2017.
I realised in the next months that the perceived "freedom to tinker" on Android is something hugely overrated. I could achieve almost everything I wanted on my iPhone -- it just took a bit of time to find the proper apps. Later Apple added the Shortcuts which is a very solid automation app.
Many Android users also lament the lack of a visible filesystem but that's a huge plus in my eyes. What are Android apps doing with that? You guessed it, scan your internal storage and SD card and upload them feck knows where (and this has been proven by many advanced Android users). iOS' sandboxing is not a bug. It's a feature which I appreciate a lot.
I'll not shy away from the fact: there are areas that I miss from Android. For example, I could have inspected WiFi strength signal with an Android phone and I cannot with a non-jailbroken iPhone.
Again though, as a guy who used Android phones for 4.5 years before switching to an iPhone, I found that the uncomfortable feeling of switching to an entirely new (and supposedly more "locked down") ecosystem is mostly an illusion created by our brain's unwillingness to endure big changes. You get over it very quickly. Don't trust your brain on these matters, it floods you with non-truisms to avoid cognitive shock.
P.S. I too loathe the notch. So after 15 months with the iPhone X I switched to iPhone 8 Plus. Easily the best phone on the planet to this day (plus a bigger screen and a slightly bigger battery). Now I dread the day the device will no longer be sold.
I don't know if it falls under "freedom to tinker", but having a microSD slot saved my vacation once (well, the pictures of it anyway). We were out at a children's amusement park in the mountains with poor service, so just moving things to the cloud wasn't an option. Deleting apps from my phone to pick up space is of course an option, but also a silly one. Swapping out the microSD card, however, was simple and I just got back to taking pictures and videos.
I went iPhone -> Android -> Windows -> Android. I'd really like to get back to an iPhone for privacy reasons, but the storage situation really doesn't work for my family. Traditionally, it's been a low capacity entry model and then ~$100 to upgrade to each new tier, paying Apple's wildly inflated markup. The pricing is also way out of line with our budget. I was really hoping for a new SE model for my wife.
I'm fairly happy with my Galaxy S9+ now, but I really miss a lot about Windows 10 Mobile. I'll never forgive Google for doing everything in its power to make sure another mobile platform didn't become viable.
This is why I bought the 256GB versions (although your photo archives might be even bigger).
Not sure what I can recommend but in any case I'd probably get a professional camera with 400GB SD card. :D I mean, if you guys like to make long videos during a time outside, why not?
I agree Apple's proposition has cracks by the way. Not arguing that.
As for W10 Mobile, yep -- I sold my Lumia 1520 the summer of 2017 and my heart is still broken. :( This system had so much potential! And I have never found a phone whose form factor and feel to the touch that I like so much as the Lumia 1520 and the Lumia 950 XL.
I finally gave in and moved back to Android. My wife wanted my Lumia 950 XL and she loves it. She's not going to be pleased when she needs to move to something else. That dedicated camera button is an incredibly nice feature.
As for photos, I wouldn't say I take hundreds of gigabytes. The point is I don't want to have an anxiety attack over running out of space where I have low coverage. I can get a 512 GB microSD card for $100 and smaller capacities for much less. That let's me have my apps, offline music, offline maps, photos, 1080p videos, and so on. But, thanks for the suggestions nonetheless.
Same boat here. I'm not with Android because I think the OS is better or because I hate privacy. It's a matter of cost (I think I paid $650 net for my S9+) and lack of hardware options.
I'm preaching to the choir, but it sucks that the only two viable options these days require such huge trade-offs. And that the premium for privacy is so much greater than what typical Android hardware costs.
I'm glad you've been able to find a trade-off that works for you. I'm hoping something changes in this duopoly system we have.
Cost is rarely a concern unless you are barely making ends meet. iPhone's cost per year is actually lower than most Android flagships, if you factor in how quicker are the Android phones to start breaking down and/or lose their system software update window. So IMO Apple has the upper hand in terms of amortised cost (albeit not by much if you look at the insane prices of the iPhone XS/Max).
I completely agree we shouldn't have to make the big trade-offs between the duopoly. But truth be told, if Microsoft failed to gain ground as a third smartphone vendor, what hope does anybody else have? They were sabotaged by Google at every turn and let's face it, if your mobile OS cannot have YouTube that means at least 80% of the smartphone populace will write you off as useless. If not 95% even.
I also haven't found the perfect setup yet. Pondering investing heavily in a 10Gbps router + 10Gbps switch + NAS with 25TB as a start. I have loads of videos and can't pay iCloud for them. So things are still shaping up.
Overall though, I am really happy with my choice. Serves me well in 98% of the time.
Thank you for the kind words. Right back at you. :)
I'm a former ios user (9 years, from my 3GS in 2009 to my 6S which I used until 2018) that switched to Android last year mostly out of cost. Apple crossed a threshold I'm unwilling to follow.
Now I have a moto x4 that was just $300 so I'm not terrified to take it running/hiking with me in case I trip or fall or otherwise break/drop/lose the phone. It takes an SD card so I don't have to pay inflated rates for memory during purchase, the one chance you get. And on top of it I'm on a cheaper carrier (not strictly Apple's fault).
I can fully relate to the part of "not being terrified of breaking the phone". That's a peace of mind I didn't have for a long time and I still miss it.
That being said, don't most US households get carrier-financed phones?
I think you overestimate how much free capital the average person has. Even in my case, where I could afford an iPhone with max storage (to assuage my previously stated concerns), I'd have a really hard time justifying it. We budget pretty diligently, so we'd have to justify to ourselves why paying a premium to Apple is a better use of our capital than anything else. I came really close to buying an iPhone 8+ about a year back, but the Samsung Galaxy S9+ beat it out hardware-wise and was considerably cheaper.
I'll grant you that Apple providing better software support for their phones was a huge advantage. And their stance on privacy is leagues apart from Google's. So, I could work out the math on that iPhone 8+ and call it roughly breakeven. I typically keep a phone for 3 years, so the per annum cost was roughly the same. But, for that money I likely wasn't going to be happy and that factors in. I just wasn't going to have what I want out of a phone and I'd have to console myself with having an intangible benefit of better privacy. I care about privacy, but trying to be honest with myself, that likely wasn't going to make me feel better about paying $200 extra because Apple doesn't think I need a microSD slot.
My wife has a completely different hang-up. She gets very nervous about carrying around a fragile $800+ device. And she'd lose her mind if she misplaced such an expensive device. Prior to inheriting my Lumia 950 XL, she had a Lumia 640 she loved and only paid $30 for. So, she was never going to be happy with an iPhone 8 either. If Apple had refreshed the SE device, we may very well have made the switch to iOS. But, they want to sit at the high-end of the market -- as is their right -- and so we decided to self-select out.
All of this is a really long-winded way of saying that affordability isn't the only concern when it comes to making a purchase. For all its other faults, the Android ecosystem provides many options to suit people's budgets and comfort zones. And yet again, I have to lament the demise of Windows 10 Mobile because it really offered the best of both worlds there.
> I think you overestimate how much free capital the average person has.
I most certainly do, but as mentioned in a sibling comment, don't most US households use carrier-financed phones? That's like, $20 - $50 extra a month?
The 3 years usage period is kind of surprising to me because it clashes with my anecdotal evidence somewhat -- I've known 20+ people holding on to iPhones for 5-6 years. But I am pretty sure the median you gave is more accurate so in that case the cost per annum might indeed be equal to Android flagships (or larger).
> paying $200 extra because Apple doesn't think I need a microSD slot.
I now dearly regret not keeping the link but there was a research showing that the SD controller introduces lag in the entire system (in the case of SoCs anyway). However, nowadays that probably can be solved. Likely nobody in Apple tried though. So there's not only Apple not thinking you might need a microSD. There seem to be other factors in the equation. iPhones are known to be fast and Apple doesn't want to risk losing that no matter what -- would be my guess.
> She gets very nervous about carrying around a fragile $800+ device.
As I mentioned in the other sibling comment here, I really miss the days I didn't have to care if I dropped my phone. Sadly I don't think these days are ever coming back. :(
I personally am unwilling to sacrifice privacy and smooth operation (most budget Androids lag like hell) -- because I consume a lot of reading and video and audio material on my phone and replacing light amounts of anxiety (that most of the time I can put under control) with severe annoyances on a daily basis is a bad trade for me.
Of course, we aren't trying to convince each other, I am aware. We're sharing use cases and I am grateful that you oblige.
Carrying a laptop around with me everywhere I go is a wildly impractical solution. The situation I mentioned was at an amusement park, while on vacation.
The problem isn't that I'm using the device wrong. The problem is the device isn't fit for purpose.
I do, but I am not sure what can I do -- Androids are no longer an option for me because Google is way too obvious and they collect everything they can, 24/7. It's too much.
As for privacy, I would disable cloud sync and backups as well. But eventually came to the sad conclusion that I have a lot more going on in my life and I cannot sacrifice even more of my preciously little free time to self-manage all my data -- not to mention this would require a moderate investment in my own NAS / 10Gbps switch / 10Gbps router and end-to-end encrypted backups to 1-2 VPS-es.
I get where you are coming from, I do. But I had to make a choice between an actual life and paranoia. I settled for a "mostly ok" solution and a bit more of a personal life and free time.
If privacy and offline-first own personal data get commoditised, I'll be the first to switch away from cloud (and thus Apple).
I use my DSLR to shoot pictures in RAW and still don't fill ~10GB of space in a full vacation. Granted different people have different needs - but anything over 32GB seems to work fine for me.
I have the OS taking up space, games that now take up 1+ GB, some offline music, and offline maps so I can use the GPS in rural areas. All of that eats up a sizable portion of that 32 GB. Add in photos and 1080p video and it doesn't take long to fill up. If 32 GB works great for you, awesome. But I didn't make my story up :-)
Now my phone has 64 GB based storage and I'm still in the same situation because everything has bloated to fill the available space. microSD is a really cheap and incredibly effective solution to the problem. Certainly much cheaper than buying a new phone so you can get more storage.
Not doubting you at all. Also, I recently bought a 128GB iPad and copy my pictures to it - from phone and camera (using the SDCard adapter for iPad). It works great for me. iPads are cheaper and last quite a bit.
>Many Android users also lament the lack of a visible filesystem but that's a huge plus in my eyes
That's awful in my eyes. What's more is my inability to browse that file system without a third party application when i want to simply move files to my computer.
The only reason I'm even contemplating the move to iOS, is b/c I have a android based, digital audio player that has 2 SDcard slots that I keep disconnected from Wifi (and it does n't have a 4G connection at all).
If my music was still on my phone, I simply would not move to iOS over this singular issue. You're talking 250-400GB of files, not including my downloads, my pictures, my Keepass databases, my SSH keys, my certs file for my VPN, and files that I don't want the OS to index and put in some general library.
It stills seem ridiculously daunting to let go of. Because I use it extensively. Daily - even without my music on there.
>ou guessed it, scan your internal storage and SD card and upload them feck knows where (and this has been proven by many advanced Android users)
Except only the apps I trust are allowed storage access.
Android Q is adding scoped storage and it's more or less the end of a visible file system. Even the existing file manager apps will have trouble to show files without special permissions.
Key word is "permissions", right? Meaning apps that don't wish to scare users with permissions will adopt the new API, but existing filesystem access should continue to function. Otherwise this would be crippling to some users and apps and I doubt it would go over well.
That sounds like the right way to do it. I would love a file browser that has no network permissions but special file permissions, and my network capable apps to have no extra file permissions beyond their own needs.
They are crippling it some way I am a heavy user of calibre companion app on Android. A library type app that you use to open books in the readers of your choice. But according to the dev of calibre companion opening the book into a reader of your choice will break
Not judging or criticising but you seem to have arrived at the right time to setup a home VPN with a [ten] gigabit grade router + switch, and put a NAS behind them. (And can then use them anywhere from the outside world as well.)
As mentioned in a sibling comment, Apple's proposition has cracks and that's unequivocally true. Your usage sounds like an outlier case.
In my case, I have tons and TONS of videos (800GB at this point) so I am pondering the home NAS + 10Gbps router + 10Gbps switch setup. And yeah, I can't use Apple's iCloud for my videos.
You can get 10Gbps upstream where you live? And actually afford it? Wow...
That's not the case almost anywhere though. And you won't be able to access your own stuff without internet either.
That's would be very annoying for music, imo.
The far Eastern Europe (Bulgaria where I live, and Romania) has one of the best internet connections in the world. ;)
In my case I am on 1Gbps ingress/egress for ~43 EUR a month and could negotiate a deal for a datacenter level of a link (10Gbps) but I don't want to.
The reason I'll go for 10Gbps router and a 10Gbps switch is because if you put a NAS in your home network then the gigabit speeds will never be achieved again (various reasons, including LAN chatter). And also because I'll buy a 10Gbps-enabled machine and would like to be able to work with the data on my NAS with 1.25GB/s.
To each their own but this is quite a bit overkill. I’m running a gig connection (with only 40mbps ingress) with a 16TB NAS setup and it serves all my needs. People in this thread are complaining about the Apple premium but then you see people talking about buying multiple thousand USD NAS setups to get around having to use cloud storage.
Eh, both things don't contradict each other. Many are willing to spend money to get away from corporate lock-in and I get that motivation. I want to partially do that myself since all my videos would cost quite a lot in cloud hosting costs (not to mention the snail speeds of backup!).
I agree that my planned setup is an overkill but I am setting myself up for such a tech overkill setup in all my work endeavours because I want to have a peace of mind for about 10 years -- if at all possible.
I don't think any of us will soon need more than 1.25GB/s ingress/egress anytime soon (unless of course our games are rendered on the cloud and streamed directly to our PCs). And since I am sick and tired of eternal tinkering, I want to go for an ultimate endgame, or at least one that can last me some years in the future.
I agree, I made the switch a few years ago when I couldn't find a single good Android phone that wasn't huge (and yes, I tried the Sony Z3 Compact, it had way too many issues). The iPhone SE had just come out with flagship specs and one of the best cameras on the market, so I made the jump. It was painful for a while but now I'm sure I'd feel the same pain switching back.
My main complaint about iOS is text entry. Both the keyboard and voice input are incredibly bad compared to Android, even compared to Android of 3 years ago. I still struggle to type accurately or voicetype without having to make a ton of corrections. And there are better 3rd party keyboards (including GBoard) but they tend to be slow and awkward due to iOS limitations, plus then you lose voice typing completely which is not acceptable to me. If I could have an iPhone with the native Android keyboard and voice typing I'd be super happy.
Oh I agree on the text input completely. Google's keyboard on Android is like a mind reader when you do swipe/gesture typing. If there's one thing I miss dearly in Android to this day it's exactly that.
I know and use it. But it's much less precise than its Android counterpart due to Apple not giving it the exact touch sensor readings. As a result, it's not that good. :(
On iOS, 3rd party keyboards block access to the voice typing function which is a dealbreaker for me. At least on my iPhone SE, it takes so long to switch between a 3rd party keyboard and the iOS keyboard to use voice typing that it's too painful to be worth it.
Does it upload everything you type to Google? "For your convenience" and "to improve our services", of course. It'd be ironic to switch to iPhone for privacy but keylog yourself in the process.
No, it doesn't. Third party keyboards have two levels of access and they come pre-installed with the much more limited one (no access to internet whatsoever, no matter if you're on WiFi or 3G/4G).
Doesn't stop Google's keyboard to periodically pester you to give it full access "to get the full experience" (or something along the lines) but if you don't, it will never get or send a single byte to Google's servers.
Trust me, I researched. I too didn't want the huge irony you mentioned to hit me. And it doesn't.
Android just announced a move away from the traditional visible file system as well.
The best part is the equivalent Android APIs have terrible performance and stability.
Android has been steadily moving away from both being open and supporting power users, with stuff like Doze relying on GCM, nerfing WiFi control, disabling getting BT mac addresses (and not even letting apps ask for permission)
It turns out being able to replace a users lock screen with a full page ad is not a good thing.
> I realised in the next months that the perceived "freedom to tinker" on Android is something hugely overrated.
I've never really wanted to tinker much with my smartphone. I want it to do a handful of simple tasks (calls, texts, maps, music, light web browsing), and otherwise get out of the way.
Similarly, I switched to Mac OS X awhile back after years on Linux and BSD, because I realized that I would never want to tinker with (the source code of) my web browser or word processor, and there was a whole tinker-friendly Unix system sitting right next door. Pace, Stallman, but I don't need the freedom to tinker everywhere.
While I admire people like Richard Stallman and Sir Tim Berners-Lee, IMO they fail to understand that most people simply don't care -- they have a life, job, family and stuff they like to do in their free time and they want technology to enable them and save them time, not get in the way and take their free time.
I used Debian as a main driver for several years and lost patience around 2010. Using a MacBook Pro with an external monitor and working to get an iMac Pro with maxed out settings (~14_000 EUR) to have as a main driver for the next 9-10 years.
Customisation and freedom to tinker with the details is great but only when you need it. Not all the time.
Also, for those believing in free markets: freedom to tinker for you is also the freedom to ask your friend or pay a local professional to tinker on your behalf. It doesn't mean everyone has to be a tinkerer, only that everyone can be. The opposite of that is requiring to go through the official vendor for every little thing you need to tweak.
I don't believe in free markets. I am too much of a realist for that. :)
I ask you what can we realistically do though?
It's very apparent that budget Androids that lag like hell and break down often aren't to the general populace's taste if they have a choice -- in my "poor" country (Bulgaria) people get loans so they can buy the Galaxy S10 or Huawei P30, en masse. Most people I've known in my life buying budget Androids only did so because of money constraints. I only knew 2 people who bought cheap Androids to tinker -- and it was because they loved tinkering with tech more than having sex with their wives, or spending time with their kids, or go jogging.
I already said I am not OK with Apple lobbying against the right to repair.
But I have no recourse as a customer. My iPhone is legitimately saving me time and frustration for a no small amount of leisure and work activities. If it didn't, I'd be using a budget Xiaomi for life. But here we are.
What would you do? Would you sacrifice your free time so you can punish the big evil corporations? And how?
Given that all Androids offer you the "freedom to tinker", you can always shell out for the Galaxy instead of iPhone if that's what you care about. I understand either choice on individual level. Myself, I'm on Galaxy S7 now, previously on S4. Before that, I bought a cheap Android phone and learned the hard way that what you save in money, you'll repay back with interest in mental health. The "death from a thousand cuts" isn't worth it, and I recommend everyone around me too to save up for a better phone instead of taking the cheapest one.
If the only Android phones where the cheap, shitty ones, I'd probably be on an iPhone now.
I loved Samsung while I was using Androids but they were starting to lag at the 6-9 months mark, without an exception (I owned 5 of their devices over a course of 4 years). Eventually it pissed me off.
Only Android device I legitimately loved was the Xiaomi Mi 6 (the high-end version with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage). Truthfully a masterpiece!
In the end though, my need for full and easy integration between my mobile devices and laptop (soon a desktop as well) prevailed. I arrived at the conclusion that "tinker at all costs" is not for me. There are plenty of people who do only that, I am passing the torch to them.
I had this argument 10-15 years ago, and agree about the potential for lock-in. But even at the time, I realized that I would rather not build Konqueror, Kate, or the Gimp from source, and would never make a significant change. They had become so complex that learning and keeping up with them enough to contribute would be a part-time job.
The current toss-it-over-the-wall-ware model is good enough. Android and Chromium technically "work" without Google, and their code is online. There are multiple Firefox forks. I don't know about OSS programs for Excel spreadsheets and Word docs, but I'm happy to sacrifice some freedom in order to never have to go down that rabbit-hole.
Yep. We all have jobs to do and free time to enjoy. I am frankly burned out on tinkering and I am pursuing getting better at my workplace plus work on a few hobby projects every now and then. Beyond that I throw my hands in the air and give up. I have a life. And I like it.
"What if"-s and theoreticals don't help any discussion. It's very evident by now that people en masse don't push back. And there are no signs that this is changing as well.
Instead of being hung up "but if the people just do this...", how about we formulate a new strategy based on the facts observed so far?
IMHO open source already does that.
Most of the new opensource projects do make ease of use a major point.
You see that in frameworks, nearly every framework has a "Get started in 5 mins" and samples.
But the problem is that the money has to come from somewhere, so either you get sponsored, sell data, raise pricing or die.
Too few people pay for tech stuff, since most of is is free and then we end up in situations like today.
Wish I had your optimism. I used 8 languages in my life actively -- and 3 more as a quick hobby and evaluation of features -- and almost never seen a well-documented AND easy to use library or a framework. Almost every author falls in love with their own idea and convenient abstractions and even if they explain those to somebody else, it still doesn't make sense to a chunk of the programmer users.
Trust me, I'd like some of my ideas to be funded as well. But it doesn't seem to be the world we are living in. :(
Yes same here. I was on ubuntu from 2003-2010 and quit for osx because I didn't have time to tinker and fix basic-level services like audio and display settings. I only recently got ubuntu 16.04 on my desktop (dual boot) and am enjoying it, but I still drive osx on my laptop.
Is it not? Your entire post only argues "It is, but here's why it works for me...". Removing the "freedom to tinker" is taking two steps back from what a computer should be. And smartphones are growing to be the primary computing device for many, so in my mind it's ridiculous to argue them being locked-down a merit. Relying on apps from a walled-garden app store is not a solution even if it works for you or others. Many legitimate apps are banned from the Apple app store entirely, and users cannot install them even if they choose to because iOS prevents installs outside of the app store (unlike Android). I want to run my own code on my own device, freedom to do so is not "hugely overrated".
And as for privacy: what is privacy if its decided for the user and not the other way round? You cannot have true privacy without freedom, you only have Apple's definition of it. Tell Chinese Apple users about privacy, why Apple stores data in China.
And freedom extends to hardware, too. You purchase an iPhone and Apple tells you it's too dangerous for users to fix it themselves, and lobbies against right-to-repair [1]. Do you also consider freedom to repair your own devices overrated?
You hijack my rather focused and narrow comment and try and broaden it to a much wider set of problems. Not a respectful discussion technique, partner.
Of course we should have the right to repair. And of course many Apple users aren't okay with everything Apple does -- or you thought we were all mindless worshipping drones? No. We buy Apple because it makes the most sense for our needs. That's all there is to it.
But tell me, what choice is there out there if we want alternatives? No, really. Don't give me theoreticals and "if we could only do X...". We have Android and iOS. Nothing else. Sailfish OS is very niche and not everybody likes Sony's 2-3 devices that the OS supports. W10 Mobile is dead. Google and all Android OEMS actively sabotaged any and all open-source efforts -- mostly the ROM community -- mainly by voiding warranties if you touch a single byte in the bootloader. Even the rootless unlocking techniques are attacked on a regular basis. It's a furious battle and the OEMs won.
So don't tell me Android is much better than iOS because it's very obviously not. Historical factual records show that Google is very keen on the walled garden idea as well -- and I hope you are aware of the Google Play Services situation and that "the vanilla Android" (AOSP) gets less and less useful with each release and that more and more functionality is sucked into the proprietary, closed-source, binary blob that's Google Play Services.
---
Again, what other choice of mobile ecosystems do we have?
Android's supposed increased freedom is periodically strangled away (normal file system is soon going to be a thing of the past, for example). Looks like a pretty classical bait and switch, don't you think?
Oh, and the ability to side-load apps is only useful for the 0.2% of the populace that are tech-savvy users. For everybody else it's a huge security risk.
I understand you're not OK with what Apple does -- trust me, I hate their guts for some of their policies as well. We really don't have a choice nowadays though. Apple just seems like the lesser evil compared to Google.
I didn't hijack anything, I bring up RtR and privacy in response to the comment chain here saying "choose iOS, choose Apple, choose privacy". I directly address your post.
Now if you aimed your comment to be narrow then why broadly disregard the fact of Apple's ecosystem and related concerns as simply "supposedly" and freedom as "overrated"? There is nothing "supposed" about iOS being locked down, and "just find it on the App store" isn't viable alternative to the freedom Android offers. Neither is the contrast in the two platforms an "illusion" to merely adapt to.
> what choice is there out there if we want alternatives?
What Google does with Android remains a worry for the future, but the current-day choice simply from a matter of freedom and privacy is a LineageOS-supported device, preferably one requiring the least amount of blobs, alongside F-Droid. No Playstore and related frameworks installed. No accounts, no perpetual sign in and tracking, unlike Apple requiring you to be signed in with Apple ID even if you don't use their cloud services or just to install an app. If you must use apps that depend on Play Services, install MicroG and use Yalp. You have near full control of your device, which extends privacy since you can root, install low-level firewalls, and edit system-level files like hosts. Notice that this ecosystem is more Unix-like as opposed to just one big Apple ecosystem. You can decide yourself instead of Apple making choices for you.
With Apple, you only have one vendor, but with Android you have many choices you can make. Headphone jack? Too bad. Since iOS comes with Apple hardware, you have to discuss the two alongside each other. And for me, even ignoring the lock-down of iOS, I refuse to support Apple and vendor lock-in.
> For everybody else it's a huge security risk
Think-of-the-children fallacy. This always ignores the fact you can have the best of both - those none-the-wiser can continue using official means of installation. It also ignores the other side of the coin, developers wishing to offer programs but not interested in dealing with the Apple ecosystem - both them and users are out of luck in that case, and this can happen even if you're already on the app store if Apple decides to take down your app or developer account for whatever reason.
> I realised in the next months that the perceived "freedom to tinker" on Android is something hugely overrated. I could achieve almost everything I wanted on my iPhone
There is a counter argument which says that the only reason you can do those things is because the existence of open source Android forced Apple to do it or be uncompetitive with Android's features.
My primary objection to Apple is one of principle: giving up your right to code software that is hostile to the interests of a platform owner is massive loss of freedom. As Stallman put it, "Apple made it cool to go to jail".
> And i don't believe for a second the data they're allowing you to "autodelete" genuinely gets deleted. It just gets removed from your view.
While "deleted" might take a while (eventual consistency FTW), any company with a presence in the EU has a lot to lose if such a scheme (beyond what they declare, eg. "31 days to recover your account") ever sees the light of day.
Even then I would still fear that data having already been transformed into something else and using word play to disassociate with the original set of data.
edit: I've been subjected to Google's dark patterns for so many years that I doubt I will ever trust this company to be honest with me.
Legal action requires you to be able to prove they still hold the data.
If they only use it for something where other factors affect the outcome (ad targeting, etc) they can still keep your data forever while hiding behind plausible deniability the other factors provide them (from outside, there’s no way to prove that a particular ad was served to you because of your data instead of another factor they use as input for the algorithm).
That's different. People can easily be unethical at scale when incentives align. What they almost never can be is coordinated at scale against the individual incentives - whether for good or bad.
Also maintaining that deleted data is an issue, can't just magically move it to your datacenter in the mountains. someone will notice the movement of data even if it's automated. i suspect google just extracts as much data as possible from the photo, maybe trains an algo or two with the metadata and then deletes
> from outside, there’s no way to prove that a particular ad was served to you because of your data instead of another factor they use as input for the algorithm
Create an account, use it to excessively look for tea pots until you predominantly get ads for tea pots. Store the cookie[0] that encodes your user id. Delete the account.
After the advertised account retention period, try the cookie again in an otherwise squeaky clean session that gives random ads without the cookie:
Tea pots? Something survived.
No tea pots? No targetting.
(and yes, the onus to demonstrate your accusation well enough to convince a DPA is on you, IMHO as it should be)
[0] or whatever bits of data are necessary: try to recreate the tea-pot session after a logout without logging in officially to determine what's necessary.
I don't believe for a second they keep the data at a company of Google's size. But they don't need to anymore if they just feed your data through some neural network training that outputs a black box filled with weights. They can legally show your data is gone but now their model knows that people with similar browsing history, location, etc have a weak signal for tea cups. You'll get the occasional ad for them if their other networks don't filter out all the history for appearing suspicious. Google can bring in a bunch of experts saying how much data they've processed and no one really knows how the ML algorithm learns, etc.
They've improved their model none the less even if you delete your data after the fact.
And that is fine by me. Using my behavioral data to train an underfitting model is very different from actually storing my behavioral data. Sure, the word 'underfitting' does the heavy lifting in my previous sentence. But I don't think that overfitting is even feasible at this scale. Google does not train models that just memorize the habits of 3 billion people. Such a model would be useless.
If you're coming from the same device or IP address/range, that's enough of a link.
An anecdote: I stayed with relatives for a few days one time, and my two-year-old niece really liked one particular music video on YouTube, so it got played on their TV box 3-4 times during my visit. Not on my laptop, but I used said laptop on their wifi (not logged into Google products, as I never am). When I got home, YouTube highly recommended that video to me after I watched an unrelated video, when there was no other reason to recommend it (I didn't know the artist, almost never watch music videos, and it wasn't anything all that popular).
I notice a similar behaviour. I don’t have a Google account and don’t keep cookies, so the only way for them to track me is my IP.
My IP seems to be permanently associated with my YouTube habits. They’re even being sneaky about it, as in they’ll give you a default homepage and generic recommendations first, but watching any video similar to the previous viewing habits will bring back not just videos related to that one, but the entire history they’ve collected over the years (some of the topics I watch are completely separate and would never intersect normally, so the only way for them to both come up in suggestions is from previous viewing history).
I didn’t create an account, didn’t agree to any privacy policies, and am blocking any and all cookies just like they advise in their own privacy policy and yet I am still being tracked.
I wonder how they define 'your data'? If I train a neural net to recognize you and predict your behaviors and preferences, are the weights of the network yours, or can I keep them? What if the network covers you and your family? Do I have to retrain my network?
Yes, if the neural net can identify a person, it's covered by the GDPR:
"Personal data which have undergone pseudonymisation, which could be attributed to a natural person by the use of additional information should be considered to be information on an identifiable natural person" (Recital 26).
In which case you need a lawful basis for doing such processing (of which consent is just one possibility). Furthermore, that's considered "profiling" and is subject to extra rules if it can have strong impact on the person's life.
On the other hand, if the data is well mixed with other people's, preventing that recognition, then it has been anonymized, and therefore it's not longer subject to the GDPR (Recital 26). But note that you're still subject to it when you're capturing and using personal data to train that model, even if the model itself is anonymized.
Not changing policy means escalating fines (those 4% of global revenue maximum are nothing to sneeze at, and so far compliance was the cheaper route) but also, at some point, the inability to operate in the EU.
Even if a company only does the bare minimum required under GDPR, total deletion of data on request is part of that.
But these more severe measures are either 5-10 years away, or never going to happen at all (the latter part is my assumption, not claiming it as a fact).
IMO the corporate board of directors will coast on the situation for as long as possible and only then will we see some changes, don't you agree?
> IMO the corporate board of directors will coast on the situation for as long as possible and only then will we see some changes, don't you agree?
There are a few cases already with fines around 2.8% of revenue, and those fines don't mean the DPA will go away. The expectation is that these fines are paid _and_ the reason for the fine is resolved.
Turnover in the 2.8% case (Taxa 4x35 in Denmark) was from Fall 2018 (start of investigation) to March 2019 (when the DPA reported the incident to the police and "recommended" that fine). Sadly the only follow-ups on the case that I could find are behind paywalls (so I can't read them), but apparently the DPA isn't done with them yet.
It's all a matter of exercising pressure, and it seems that the authorities are willing to do that.
As someone impacted by the GDPR (AAA Game Studio, and all player stats / multiplayer matches getting impacted), backups are exempted:
"The GDPR is open to interpretation, so we asked an EU Member State supervisory authority (CNIL in France) for clarification. CNIL confirmed that you’ll have one month to answer to a removal request, and that you don’t need to delete a backup set in order to remove an individual from it. Organizations will have to clearly explain to the data subject (using clear and plain language) that his or her personal data has been removed from production systems, but a backup copy may remain, but will expire after a certain amount of time (indicate the retention time in your communication with the data subject). Backups should only be used for restoring a technical environment, and data subject personal data should not be processed again after restore (and deleted again). While this adds some complexity, it allows organizations to have some time to re-engineer their data protection processes."
https://blog.quantum.com/backup-administrators-the-1-advice-...
You are absolutely correct that following the intent of the GDPR (we don't have access to the user data once they file the request) is of utmost importance. But the prior poster is correct that the data still exists.
Edit: All opinions my own and not that of my employer, etc. etc.
True, but I doubt EU courts could take up a case involving non-EU consumers. So, even though Google compiles in Europe, they don't have to afford the same protection to non-EU users.
GDPR covers any interaction of people or organizations in the EU.
So non-EU consumers are covered once they're visiting the EU (citizen of a member state or not), and potentially (untested, not spelled out explicitly) when they use a VPN with an endpoint in the EU (because they're then likely talking to data centers under the control of the European subsidiary).
> they don't have to afford the same protection to non-EU users
Given that "EU user" is murky like that, I'm not sure if any company goes through the trouble of differentiating which action happened from inside or outside the EU beyond raw GDPR blocking that refuse service entirely for accesses from within the EU.
And i don't believe for a second the data they're allowing you to "autodelete" genuinely gets deleted. It just gets removed from your view.
This came many times before and it is incorrect. If you delete your data from google, it is deleted permanently. Deletion of multiple backups takes longer, but eventually it is gone, forever.
It's one thing to compare iOS and Android, but if we're gonna talk about actually buying phones, it's worth looking at some other aspects here. Such as being able to unlock the bootloader on some android phones and potentially run an alternate OS on them. Whether it's just LineageOS, which is essentially a better-tasting Android, or something even more different like Sailfish or postmarketOS. I don't believe there is a similar option or community effort around Apple devices.
I ordered a new old-stock Nexus 5X to run KDE Plasma on. Fuck both Google and Apple. I hope the Purism and Pinephone actually get released as well so we have more real Linux options.
I hate we live in a world with totally non-standard mobile hardware. Back in the day you could wipe Windows and run Linux on nearly anything. Maybe you would only get VESA graphics or text, but it would at least boot.
PostmarketOS is trying to make a dent in it, but we still have huge gaps in hardware support.
I don't understand why no one mentions SailfishOS. It's an alternative that is available right now.
Sure, it's not up to the level of Android and iOS in most respects, but it takes effort to get something like this going. Also from the users. Like Linux 20 years ago.
Developing for it is not a nightmare either.
And it's running Linux so there's advantages as well.
I used it as my daily driver years ago and I've been using it as my daily driver again since six months or so.
I've looked into Sailfish before. Isn't it closed though? (It might have a Linux kernel, but that doesn't mean the rest is open) and as far as I can tell, it's not (easily) available in US markets.
It's not as open as the Librem phone, I think. What do you mean with "open"?
What I meant to indicate is that it is a viable alternative to iOS and Android, available right now. (Except it's hard to get outside Europe, China, Russia and India apparently. I missed that.)
As a lifelong Android user, I'm pretty close to switching to Apple/iOS because of Google's gross surveillance behavior. I used to have the same qualms about the lack of features or components, but I recently began to see those complaints as pedantic.
I'm seriously considering my next phone to be one I build.
The hardware is available - cheap 4G LTE modules that plug right into a Raspberry Pi Zero exist; that and a cheap touchscreen will get you around 90% of the functionality most of us need, hardware-wise. You won't have a camera, or motion sensors. You will have GPS, voice, data, a screen, storage...
Basically everything you need for most purposes. And adding a camera and an IMU isn't that difficult, either.
The difficult part is - as always - the software. But people out there are building those pieces. Quite a bit can be done using plain-old Raspbian and Python on top, because the cellular module is essentially a virtual serial port device, and everything else has simple drivers or is otherwise easy to interface to.
Where I'll probably start, though, is with the idea of a custom "cyberdeck"; I already have most if not all of the parts, I just need to find the time to do it. It's form factor will be close to what the TRS-80 Model 100 was, though the screen will be...well, different. I'm considering a few options; probably a standard 800x600 HDMI screen along with a secondary 128x64 monochrome serial GLCD.
The ultimate thing about the whole project is independence (well, as independent as I can get - still have to pay some piper - aka T-Mobile - but maybe voip over wifi could be done in the future?) - and customization.
I may not have everything I want in the beginning, but what I want may only be a bit of extra coding, a tad bit of soldering, or likely a bit (or a bunch!) of both. I'm honestly tired of the games Google and pals are playing; kicking them to the curb may be the best thing to do.
It's made by people who care about software freedom. It doesn't use the common ARM-based SoCs which require proprietary drivers and will be unusable with modern software in a few years. Everything except the cell modem (on a replaceable M.2 card connected over USB) runs 100% free software. The device as a whole runs Linux with Gnome, and Plasma Mobile + others also developing for it. The company contributes back to the OSS software they use/improve.
It doesn't have the form factor of the TRS-80 Model 100, but basically the deal you get with it is that you pay the price of a decently high end smartphone in exchange for a midrange smartphone which is completely controllable by you, as much as a normal Linux desktop, but still offers a 'pretty good' UI out of the box for normal phone usage.
> It's made by people who care about software freedom.
How do I know that?
The first I saw about Librem was their original laptop that made clearly overstated claims about its openness. (e.g. claiming a device that used intel CPUs would have completely open firmware). After that I paid no further attention to them.
> Google collects so much absurd amount of data - that all the Proton-mail, DuckduckGo, Wire/Signal, Firefox (loaded with adblocking and tracking plugins) apps in the world can't keep you totally from it as long as you're on Android. You disable things, you opt out of stuff and it just keeps on collecting anyways.
There must be some kind of way outta here.
How about carving out a Google-free chunk of the web, and then only visiting sites for which you're somehow certain there's zero Google in them (no Google Analytics, no DoubleClick, no fonts, none of the other junk they use to track you). Otherwise you'd be slapped in the face by a dire warning akin to those for the expired SSL certificates.
Not crazy, but you would be excluding 85% of the top 100k sites, including stuff like Github. I'd rather just try to block the Google domains themselves.
Well, that's a good start. It even already includes cool stuff like Hacker News and Wikipedia. From there on, site owners need incentives to enter and remain in the "cool" zone. No idea ATM how/if that can be realized but there seem to be enough bright folks out there wanting it to happen.
> I'd rather just try to block the Google domains themselves.
This works to some extent but falls short of really penalizing the site owner for installing the trackers (of course, they probably lose some revenue but that's not enough).
If sites had a rating reflecting how "tracky" they are, then, given a choice, people who care would tend to pick the less tracky one. Benevolent browsers, search engines, and other tools can enable them to make this choice.
> The company that bends over backwards, much farther than the law requires, to enable the surveillance state.
This is the key point. Google came of age during the GWB administration, when the folly of trusting government was more clear than it had been for decades, and under Schmidt's leadership Google became a major defense contractor.
It's impossible to know how much unlawful surveillance has already been done thanks to Google's collaboration/complicity.
How can Google earn back some trust? Implement warrant canaries at the google account level, decline to do business with the Pentagon, and come forward and reveal all of the shady and unethical things the firm has done, and simply ask the public for forgiveness.
A lot of the secure applications I use have a linux app of some sort (DEB, AppImage, Docker) but I fail to see how any of that is going to work on a phone.
I certainly don't see how a docker container would be good for battery life on a phone either
ProtonMail - for example - on Linux, requires a bridge application in order to talk to a IMAP capable email client.
Etesync requires a bridge in the form of a docker image.
Wire has an AppImage that I'm certain won't work well on a mobile screen. Signal has a DEB for Debian based environments and I doubt that'll play nice on mobile too.
The only real way to do a Libre phone is for me to invest entirely in the Libre ecosystem for mail, chat, VPN, everything.
if you've spent time moving your stuff into more secure and diverse sets of applications and services, and what's more - convincing friends and family to communicate with you over those very things, you'll have to migrate once more in order to use this phone.
I would bet money that Firefox doesn't even work on it in a mobile/phone-mode. You'll have to use their stock browser which will probably be based on Epiphany.
FWIW docker apps are just regular processes with some additional data structures on the kernel side. If the process(es) in the container aren't scheduled on a CPU (e.g., blocked or sleeping), the app isn't taking any more resources than any other process(es).
Frankly, a container-based app model sounds kinda nice!
If you care about protecting something, leaving one known-exploited exploitable backdoor open is practically as bad as leaving 100 open. "Closing all known backdoors" is a rational compromise. "Closing more backdoors known others are open" is an irrational feelgood measure.
There are things I would miss on iOS (e.g. widgets, dual sim, sdcard, headphone, more RAM) but for example Backup is is so much better on iOS! I fear that my android breaks at some point and I lose some data because there is no proper way to do full system backup. I have to use as much cloud services as possible and it has always been a big pain for me to upgrade to a newer android device. And I remember how straightforward it was and probably is on iOS.
To be fair, each of these either already is or is becoming the norm on Android phones as well (at least, ones at a similar price point iPhones). Several of the top end phones have notches and no headphone jack, and I haven't had an Android phone with an SD card slot for about five years now.
Every phone I've had, my parents have had and my wife has had (since i support them all) has SDcards. Including phones bought this year. They all have various Samsung models right now.
My DAP has 2 slots. (android based)
And it's a god send when your phone decides to boot loop and you can no longer actually get into your phone.
Oh they say - use their cloud services for the low low price of whatever. F- that.
> Google collects so much absurd amount of data - that all the Proton-mail, DuckduckGo, Wire/Signal, Firefox (loaded with adblocking and tracking plugins) apps in the world can't keep you totally from it as long as you're on Android. You disable things, you opt out of stuff and it just keeps on collecting anyways.
Do you really intend this statement in regards to pure AOSP/LineageOS (ie microg)?
Yes Android will always be a product of a surveillance company, rather than being focused on user-centric security. But I would think that microg should be enough to deprivilege Google's backdoors, and generally avoiding stuff from the Play (Yalp) store should shield you from the bulk of OS-facilitated commercial surveillance. If you have information to the contrary, please share!
Obviously given the choice I'd rather run an OS not designed by a surveillance company, but it's awfully hard to find a pocket-sized computer that can. I look forward to PostmarketOS, but I don't think we're anywhere close there.
For me the worst part is that you don't own the pocket-computers (PC/phones) that you buy.... please let me install an OS that I can trust.
there is https://wiki.galliumos.org/Hardware_Compatibility for ChromeOS devices but on many phones, it is currently not possible to install a 3rd party OS, unless you figure out how to root them yourself... and even then, some of its hardware will probably not be compatible because they don't release drivers
I wish a Librem 4 was available (a lot cheaper then the Librem 5)
Loathe is a strong word. And I loathe everything about Apple and the iPhone.
But I think I'll get an iPhone next. And it's not even because I hate Google or because I don't like Android. I just believe in voting with my dollars. And Apple at least is masquerading as a company that makes a product and wants to sell that. I like the idea of the transaction. I buy my phone and then I own it; I'm done.
With Google, I buy the phone, and the phone owns me.
The "Don't Be Evil" corporation that valued open source rather than open-washing, that valued openstandards over "oops, we didn't mean to break that for you!" isn't here anymore.
The company that bends over backwards, much farther than the law requires, to enable the surveillance state.
I despise Apple. Especially on mobile. No SDCards, no headphone jack, walled garden app stores. Ugh ugh ugh.
I have applications that does E2E for contacts and calendars that I'll have to find an iOS solution for.
I loathe the notch.
But my next phone will be an iPhone.
Google collects so much absurd amount of data - that all the Proton-mail, DuckduckGo, Wire/Signal, Firefox (loaded with adblocking and tracking plugins) apps in the world can't keep you totally from it as long as you're on Android. You disable things, you opt out of stuff and it just keeps on collecting anyways.
And i don't believe for a second the data they're allowing you to "autodelete" genuinely gets deleted. It just gets removed from your view.