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App Store to Be 'Split in Two' Ahead of EU iPhone Sideloading Deadline
(www.macrumors.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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As someone who went from Android to iOS back to Android, I still prefer the Android experience. Things like F Droid, access to the entire file system, custom ROMs (running GrapheneOS currently), browsers actually being themselves and not based on WebKit, not having to use an account (I believe even on stock android you do not need to be signed in to an account to use it whereas Apple you are forced to use an Apple ID), being able to change your default SMS, phone, camera, gallery, launcher, etc etc etc.
There are just so many things that still make Android more open than iOS and feels like you actually own the device and can do whatever the hell you want.
Not entirely true. For most functionality on Android, you also need to be signed in with Google, but you can de-google it. On Apple, it's the same, but you can't de-apple it. You can currently only use the App Store which needs an Apple ID, so you can use without an Apple ID but you lose like 80% of the stuff you could use your phone for.
You kind of are forced to use it app store aside. You can not use iMessage without an apple ID but you could use RCS without a Google account. Another bigger drawback to not using an Apple ID is backing up is going to be an absolute pain. Because you can't access the file system on iOS, for things like photos and contacts or messages, your only options would be iCloud as far as I know (I could be wrong) or I guess if you have a Macbook as well Airdrop?
You can sync photos with tools like Syncthing, but it's not automatic because of how iOS stores photos.
Wait so you don't need an Apple ID for the App Store? Or did I interpret your comment wrong.
you do need an apple id. I was just saying other than the app store, there are still many things that you have more freedom with on android than on iOS
In the EU at least, that restriction will be gone in a couple months.
You can use SMS without an Apple ID, and iMessage falls back gracefully to SMS. Photos will be lower quality and sending messages to international phone numbers will be expensive... but it will work and RCS support is coming to iPhone later this year which should fix both of those.
Not really. You just plug it into a PC with a USB cable, and it automatically does a backup. You could just do that every night to charge your phone.
Yeah you're wrong. The "Files" app on iOS, which is also embedded in various apps as a file open/save/import/export/share/etc option, has a plugin architecture where third party apps can provide all the same file storage as iCloud. You can use Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, Bit Torrent Sync, an Git server, etc, etc by simply installing a third party apps.
In fact, Apple charges monthly fee to use iCloud in the files app (assuming you want to store a reasonable amount of data in the cloud). As far as I know, most iPhone users don't pay and a lot of those people would be using third party file apps.
Access to photos/contacts/calendar/etc is also fully available via an API, though I'd encourage you not to let apps access that data. There's quite a long history of it being used for some really creepy levels of tracking — for example, most photos have metadata including date/time/location and face recognition is trivial these days. You're handing over a detailed location history for both yourself and anyone you've ever photographed by giving access to your data, and third party apps have been caught using this for malicious purposes. Sometimes unwittingly, as part of a third party library. Obviously it depends on the app - if you want Flickr to be your cloud storage/backup for your photo library, that's probably safe (and Flickr does have that feature).
Connecting an iPhone to an Apple ID is entirely optional. The only requirement is a quick check on first run wether or not the device has been reported as stolen. The App Store is the only essential functionality that requires an account with Apple even that is technically optional (you can sideload enterprise/school/work related apps for example as well as if you're a developer you can sideload your own apps, and you can do all of that without an Apple ID on the device (the developer/enterprise/school/etc will need an account).
Photos, contacts, messages etc aren’t exposed to Files. The person you’ve replied to seems to be talking about cloud-syncing them with a third-party service or backing them up in a computer-decryptable way.
But any other personal app will not be downloadable unless you plan to only use 3 that aren’t already installed.
If you are an apple fan, just admit it and move on. It is a well known fact that Android, even after all Google has done, even if you get the Samsung bloated version Android (OneUI) is still a much more open platform than iOS will EVER be, and has always been one of Android's main selling points, because otherwise we all know that Apple hardware is superior. Too bad you only get that superior hardware if you walk in to the walled garden and worship daddy Tim.
Really? Funny, my Lineage devices have zero Google Crap and they work just fine. Phone, email, SMS, messengers (Telegram, XMPP, Wire, SimpleX, Signal), web works fine, I'm able to run my sync tools like Foldersync, Syncthing, Resilio, my calendar works, my shopping list app works and syncs to their servers just fine, I use 4 mapping apps two are offroad/hiking, same ones I used when it had google) my address book works, etc.
I have ~300 apps on my phone.
So what's this "most functionality" thing that I apparently don't know about?
That's de-googling (which I specifically mentioned in my previous comment). I'm talking about the stock experience most people will have on Android. For that, you need a Google account.
An user not familiar with Android will just use the Play Store, and they'll need to log in with Google.
Not really, you can just remove your Google Account after setting it up and things will stay working without issue.
You only really need a Google account to download apps from the Play store. But you can use sideloading and different stores for that.
That's (part of) what I said. You can also remove your Apple ID after you downloaded some apps, but that doesn't change the fact that you need one to do so.
Same here with GrapheneOS. Perfectly functional. They even added Android Auto support recently which I have not tried but will eventually try once I have a car that supports it. I don't have as many apps as you but I do have a good bit and have zero issues.
Good luck even getting close on iOS...