95
What phone brand do you like the best?
(midwest.social)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
95 points (93.6% liked)
Privacy
31987 readers
520 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
iMessage and FaceTime are really not that relevant outside the US and, as you said, can be relatively easily replaced by Signal. As another commenter pointed out, it’s more about little things like Airdrop or iCloud’s all around seamlessness that cannot be matched by anything else I’ve tried. Family sharing alone would be a major loss if I were to switch. What Google or Microsoft have to offer in that regard is laughable in comparison (not that they’re any more “private”), and AFAIK, there is no FOSS alternative all of the iCloud family sharing functionality.
Makes sense, thanks for elaborating.
I'll have to look into the FOSS tools to see what could be a reasonable set of alternatives. Some initial thoughts:
But each of these are a bit inconvenient compared to what Apple offers. I'll think about it some more, and maybe I'll try building something. My kids will be getting old enough to have phones in a couple years, and I'd really rather avoid Apple's ecosystem, but their friends will likely all have iPhones so I'll want a reason for them to prefer something else.
I already use KDE Connect to exchange files with my Linux laptop and it’s not the best, but it’s good enough for the occasional thing.
Steam is not a solution IMO because it locks you in just as much as Apple while being clunky and giving you the illusion of choice. And it’s only for games. Family sharing on Apple products is more than games. If you’ve bought apps or subscriptions, you can share them with family members at no additional cost (if the app opts into that which is disclosed to you very clearly in the App Store). Screen Time is great to block apps above a certain age rating and to restrict or outright block purchases for children. Another thing is location sharing in the Find My app. I know there are many solutions for that, but I just like the UX in the Find My app a lot more.
About the Plex server, I’ve heard they’ve changed their TOS and are now pretty shady or something. Also, if I were to make a server like that, I’d be pirating stuff anyway which I already do through my go-to pseudo-streaming piracy sites.
I could see myself hosting a Synology NAS in the future, but that is still not as convenient or well thought out as the iCloud services tbh.
Yeah, unfortunately that's not possible (legally) without being the digital store owner (like Valve for Steam) or the seller of the app. Fortunately, we don't buy apps, so it's not an issue (everything we want to share is a free download, like Netflix or whatever).
But I think the rest should be possible, there just isn't a nice, FOSS ecosystem for it.
I've never actually used it. I just configured minidlna to stream in my home, so I put my movies and whatnot on my NAS and it's available on my TV. I set up a Samba share for my wife so she can upload/download whatever she wants, and it's working well.