SoapDogPosted a long rant about #Apple and how they lost me after being a user for 26 years:
jesus... this post ended up on HN and now I need to hear why my personal view on my personal computing future posted on my own personal blog is not valid.
Sean Coates@soapdog Last time I had a popular post on HN, they dug into my past and thought it was highly toxic that I've worked with some of the same people for more than a few years…
Dźwiedziu
Flaki
Artemysia
El conde nadie@soapdog
You will be a little freer... 🫂
allow me to recommend GrapheneOs as an Android system (with a Pixel or when they have a device with their new partner, Motorola)
Age verification is going to reach the Android ecosystem and the difficulties in installing anything outside of the play store, too.
You will be a little freer... 🫂
allow me to recommend GrapheneOs as an Android system (with a Pixel or when they have a device with their new partner, Motorola)
Age verification is going to reach the Android ecosystem and the difficulties in installing anything outside of the play store, too.
John
Panic In The Darkroomstupid American company with American values in which you’re just as human as your credit score
Subtle but important thought. It's not just the🍊 idiot that's making the whole world suffer, it's a lot of people.
Retrofan 64@soapdog As a sidebar, I'd be really interested to hear about your MNT Pocket Reform adventures. I love the form factor.
And, unfortunately, the counterpoint to your post is that Linux is getting bitten by the age verification bug, and Android/Google appears to be closing up for developers as well.
I'm appalled at the idea of my OS requiring age verification, as that is the most user space of user space considerations. 🤷
@retrofan64 be aware that UK law doesn't require device or operating system age verification. Only social networks need to do it. That was a proactive move by apple.
@soapdog Understood. My point was that the scope of the age verification kerfuffle in general has bled over into Linux as well. YMMV.
Thomas Schoffelen@soapdog interesting take. Do you think Android and Linux will have less UI glitches than Apple’s UIs?
@thomas no, Linux and Android will have more glitches or maybe just as much, but in Linux I can fix things.
Kye.br 
@Kyebr that’s fair - I guess I’m the type of user who doesn’t want to spend hours on customising stuff, especially on mobile OSes, so I don’t find much of a difference between iOS and Android, both of which I use quite frequently.
It’s quite nice though that I feel like they’ve grown more similar over the years, with iOS becoming a bit more configurable, and Android now having more beautiful and sane defaults.
@thomas It’s also not about customisation. For example; I maintain a journal in obsidian that is sync to all of my devices through Syncthing. It doesn’t work that way on iOS. As it doesn’t allow background process and Syncthing maintainers don’t want to deal with it. (Understandable)
The only real way to synchronise anything is using iCloud which doesn’t work on Linux (afaik) so you would be shut out of luck. Thankfully, somebody made SyncTrain which gives me 65% there with only drawback that I have to open the app from time to time so it can ask ios for background task.
@Kyebr I have this same problem with the app I use to backup my photos to AWS S3 on my iPhone - it runs every night, but only if I open the app once every couple of weeks.
It’s a difficult one though, as I think I slightly prefer the thought that apps therefore aren’t doing weird stuff in the background without me knowing about it, but it does lead to paper cuts in the experience, for sure.
@Kyebr also to nerd out about it Obsidian (which I do heavily customize) - that’s one of the reasons I eventually switched to their own sync (in addition to supporting the company), as it allows me to build shortcuts that wait for the sync to complete before adding new lines to my notes: https://github.com/Vinzent03/obsidian-advanced-uri/pull/221
feat: new 'await-sync' parameter by tschoffelen · Pull Request #221 · Vinzent03/obsidian-advanced-uri
This implements a new await-sync=true parameter that can be used to wait for Obsidian Sync to complete. Since this relies on internal APIs, I've tried to make it as defensive as possible, so th...
Alternatively, I could cave and buy a Mac just for the iCloud synchronization (and the inevitable subscription fees once I exceed the free tier).
Ps. Sorry for the rant! It’s been a frustrating day. I hope your day is blissfully free of computer trouble.
@Kyebr No need, I enjoy being made aware of the implicit trade-offs I’m making, and learning why others might feel differently! Hope your evening will be less stressful!
‘Tad’ Sander 🍉🌻@soapdog I tried to get off Apple a couple of months ago when I “upgraded” to iOS 26, but I failed at the first hurdle. I’m tetraplegic and I rely heavily on accessibility features, especially on Voice Control. These either do not work good on Android or do not exist on GrapheneOS. I feel like a hostage at this point. It’s been round 20 years with Apple for me and I’m sick of it.
I wish you all the best of luck!
I wish you all the best of luck!
∴ esoterik ∴
kit@soapdog
Last straw for me was email. There's something simple about the ecosystem when you use theirs, but when it insisted on putting APnews email about Gaza in junk until I turned off filtering, I decided to switch away.
As a datapoint I'm running e/os on the Fairphone 6, and the banking apps are fine so far (Sweden), though android auto has just stopped working again. I don't have any googevil accounts.
@hypostase oh thanks for letting me know. I use Thunderbird, so my mail filtering is all over the place anyway as I train it.
I checked some of the banking apps against a list they have on the /e/OS website and one of my banks doesn't seem to be working. I'm also afraid some of the governemnt apps I need might not work. Maybe I need to be gradual with my migration and start with Android and maybe later get a second device to try /e/OS and see how well it works.
@soapdog I kept my iPhone on a backup number as, well, backup, but I've moved everything off it.
I am back using Thunderbird, but I'd stopped a long time ago due to memory isses, but that seems OK now. I still need to shove filtering back onto the server, where it belongs.
That said I'm looking for mail, banking & government ID apps, navigation. I'm still working on calendaring that I don't hate.
But the killer is looking to be AndroidAuto, and I fear somewhat what else will be locked down. Unfotunrately I've had a hard time finding good docs, and I'm not really up to reading the source.
@hypostase have you seen that Thunderbird posted public roadmaps this month? They're focusing on the calendar UI/UX.
roman
Dino@soapdog I am in the midst of trying out both GrapheneOS and LineageOS on older Android phones with the purpose of using one of them full-time. It's going well. Had to give up less than I feared, but tap-to-pay is likely one thing that will never work without Goog's official shitware.
Tobias
[384992] Ellie Winters 
@soapdog have you considered a pixel with GrapheneOS? you can still use google services on that, sandboxed too, or use them on a different user profile and not have google services on your main user profile. also they took a firm stance against this age verification bs too which i quite like
@ElliesSurviving I am considering it but waiting for the Motorola phone to see it, I might still go with Fairphone cause it is repairable and done by a smaller company.
AlexanderMars@soapdog exclusive Apple user since 1985, ditched to Linux and Android.
If I may suggest, first get a Pixel so that you can try several Android ROMs, particularly GrapheneOS which others have recommended. It was the only one my banking app worked with(YMMV) and they've committed to never doing age verification.
If you have lots of friends and family with Apple Stockholm Syndrome(edit: ASS, how did I not see it?), then also check out openbubbles.
@AlexanderMars oh thanks for letting me know about OpenBubbles. That seems really cool. Not sure if I will need it as I plan to migrate to Linux before migrating the phone.
@soapdog open bubbles is great because you don't need to keep a mac around after that initial set up. There's no "server" the phone pretends to be your Mac when communicating with Apple. As long as you have one laptop that can dual boot into macos, you can nuke that partition later if you needed it. You can do it on a phone, but the devs don't recommend it.
Flore@soapdog
I have bought my first Apple computer in 2005 and an iPhone 4. After the firefoxOS adventure, I switched to an android phone (Z3C with various ROM, then pixel). At the same time, I was fed up with the high prices of apple computers and in 2017, I built a hackintosh. It worked quite nicely at the beginning, but then it was more and more difficult. At some point, I realized that Linux was really improving and I installed fedora on my computer. Never regretted it
I have bought my first Apple computer in 2005 and an iPhone 4. After the firefoxOS adventure, I switched to an android phone (Z3C with various ROM, then pixel). At the same time, I was fed up with the high prices of apple computers and in 2017, I built a hackintosh. It worked quite nicely at the beginning, but then it was more and more difficult. At some point, I realized that Linux was really improving and I installed fedora on my computer. Never regretted it
@flore that is it right, sometimes we stay with macOS out of fear or just by wanting to be in this discomfort zone that is at least known. I am running Fedora on my Surface and it has been sooooo good.
廃墟猫 🐈🌈🐈⬛🐈🐈⬛🐈⬛@soapdog for Android, you can use Graphene, I use it and my banking apps work fine. You'll need a Pixel, but you can get one 2nd hand if you morally object to giving Goooogle money.
std::polar@soapdog first time I heard about HN in at least five years. Unpleasantly surprised that it still exists
Guillotine Jones, Flâneur@soapdog
Apple lost me after being a user for zero years, soapdog.
Apple lost me after being a user for zero years, soapdog.