Real question. I would like to know what drives you to hate Apple? (In terms of privacy of course because in terms of price it’s another story).
In terms of privacy? What’s the alternative? I’m sure that stock Android phones are way way worse in terms of privacy than any Apple device ever made.
Android is great in theory but the amount of pre-installed garbage, material design and Google / vendor powered spyware is way too much for my liking. I’m not saying that Apple doesn’t track things, because they do, but at least there’s no vendor garbage and you can go through the Settings and disable everything you don’t need, restrict Apps from running in the background etc. If you don’t upload your data into iCloud it will be way more private than the average Android phone.
Another thing I dislike about non-Apple phones is that, besides the Pixel and a few others, their bootloader and storage security is a joke, if someone gets your device you can assume they’ll get to your data.
GrapheneOS is great, it would be the one and only alternative to the mess that Android is however I can’t daily drive that as it lacks features (nice things) I do want to have.
I’m not saying that Apple doesn’t track things, because they do, but at least there’s no vendor garbage and you can go through the Settings and disable everything you don’t need, restrict Apps from running in the background etc.
Did you make a mistake here? You are describing an Android device. You can even remove apps entirely from a device with a tool like Universal Android Debloater, and Android allows alternative app stores so you don’t need to rely on a heavily limited selection of proprietary apps.
That tools doesn’t always work, besides an iPhone comes clean out of the box. No constantly running spyware on the background, no Samsung/Xiaomi apps. Almost everything can be easily turned off under Settings unlike an Android where you’ll be forced into a 3rd party tool or a ROM like GrapheneOS if you want a clean experience.
When you buy an iPhone you’ll also have a guarantee that you won’t be installing malware, even with the new Alt Stores in Europe, all the apps are code-signed and require validation. You also are sure that your apps won’t be able to get system-wide access and run all over your data and battery like we see on Android.
Yes, the iPhone is less open but it provides a level of security, privacy and “cleanliness” out of the box that Android devices can’t just match. If you don’t have much time / interest / tech skills to mess around with a phone then the iPhone is the best phone you can buy.
an iPhone comes clean out of the box
How does it come “clean out of the box” when you literally just said it requires modifications to the settings to improve its privacy?
at least there’s no vendor garbage
Samsung and Xiaomi apps are vendor-specific and can be disabled, even without the use of UAD (which works fine, not sure why you’re lying about that).
unlike an Android where you’ll be forced into a 3rd party tool or a ROM like GrapheneOS if you want a clean experience.
GrapheneOS is available as an option because Android has an open-source basis. Remind me which alternative privacy OS Apple allows third party developers to create for iPhone? Which iPhone did they allow users to install this imaginary privacy OS on?
You also are sure that your apps won’t be able to get system-wide access
Android applications have been sandboxed for several versions now.
How does it come “clean out of the box” when you literally just said it requires modifications to the settings to improve its privacy?
iOS comes with reasonable privacy defaults and blocks things such as apps running in the background for long time. Going into the settings is the extra-mile that still easier than having to install a cleaner ROM or deal with 3rd party tools.
Samsung and Xiaomi apps are vendor-specific and can be disabled, even without the use of UAD (which works fine, not sure why you’re lying about that).
I’m not lying about anything here, you know as well as I do that many vendors don’t allow you to remove all of their Apps and most install permanently running daemons that you can’t remove without UAD or other methods.
Android applications have been sandboxed for several versions now.
Yet the sandboxing isn’t even comparable. One key aspect of the iOS sandbox is that is not only restricts filesystem access but also executes applications with way less privileges than Android does.
To complement the sandbox iOS apps are forced to use Apple’s APIs in order to access user data (eg. Contacts and Photos) which will apply strict restrictions such as allowing you to limit at a system level what photos an application may access. Since all apps are required to be summited to Apple for review (even on Alt Stores) they’ll enforce the usage of their APIs making it way harder to bypass restrictions.
Comparatively, on Android, you can install applications from random sources that typically resort to hacks to get around the sandbox restrictions and access more than they should.
I’m not an Apple apologist, but I feel there are some things Apple does that are privacy focused.
- The ability to E2EE encrypt iCloud is a very simple privacy feature that is accessible to the technical and non-technical alike.
- Private relay provides a double VPN architecture that doesn’t cause constant captcha hell and again just works for non-technical people.
- Hide my email, while not being perfect, is a pretty straightforward method to make throwaway email addresses.
The things I hate about Apple are generally not privacy related.
- They are a mega-corporation that stifles innovation
- They don’t allow other browsers
- They are puritanical about what is allowed in the App store
Overpriced, locked down hardware, walled garden software, and a snobbish userbase. I simplify it all down to "I’m not paying 500 more dollars for a logo."
Can’t say anything about privacy because I haven’t used their stuff enough, however I have an iPad from 2013 in perfect state that it useless because I can’t install anything on it.
Seeing as no-one’s answering the question in terms of privacy (although I agree with their sentiment)
Trust. You have to trust that they will respect your privacy. They actually talk a good game, are probably superior in privacy to the average android (but not GrapheneOS or Linux) in so much as they fend off other entities trying to hoover your data, mostly so they have exclusive access (at least to metadata, actual data may currently even be secure but that can change and possession is nine tenths and all that). At the end of the day, they’re a greedy mega-corporation and cannot be trusted if they need to keep that line going up this quarter.
I like their hardware, excellent build quality (shame about long term support and e-waste though). Will probably pick up a cheap M1 Air once Asahi linux stabilises.
Yes, thank you for answering the privacy issue. To be honest, I use Apple products but not so much iCloud. I’m in the Proton ecosystem and I’m waiting for Firefox to become less terrible than it currently is, otherwise in the meantime I’m using Safari with AdGuard…
- price
- closed ecosystem that funnels you into buying more overpriced hardware
- general feeling of superiority apple customers often seem to aquire
(e.g. my former project lead refused to touch other peoples devices because controlling them “doesn’t feel like apple”)
All that.
BTW, of all the drivers on the road, I always hated Volvo drivers who sport an Apple sticker the most. They’re pure entitled no-good scum. Except BMW drivers, they should be euthanised.
What kind of image do Volvo drivers have where you live? Here Volvos are just seen as reliable but boring.
Here in Slovenia they have this sort of hipster/yuppie clientele, basically the same demographic as the smug Apple users, that’s why you see so many with Apple stickers. Usually they drive the estate version like XC70. The new SUVs are more for the executive smug base, though, but obviously they’re still scumbags. :)
Ah, here it is BMW drivers, most have Apple stickers on their cars, and they are all douchebags.
I still have to encounter a BMW driver who isn’t a piece of trash. Note that I actually raced with BMWs, but still wouldn’t buy one as a daily driver. 🤷🏼
Overpriced hardware comes with a boon: It lasts longer. I am by no means an apple fanboy, but when I discovered the 12 year old Mac of my dad still performed like mid-range PCs with Windows, I was quite surprised.
Still not buying their hardware though…
Check out Louis Rossman on youtube. Especially his apple hardware design analysis.
Rossman has a vendetta against Apple ever since he got caught importing counterfeit batteries (You can’t slap the Apple logo on batteries that Apple did not make, even if you call them “refurbished”)
Except a 12 year old Mac isn’t supported by Apple anymore and will likely be riddled with vulnerabilities. You could just load Linux on it since it’s probably an Intel based chipset.
As long as the OS was supported, updates were available.
But yes, I loaded a nice Fedora on it… 😉
It depends on the chipset. The big changes in chipset have been the big barriers for Mac upgradability. My father ran a 10 year old MacBook that was still running the latest MacOS until he found that his 4GB of RAM wasn’t going to be enough and bought a new one (without talking to me first). I had a PPC MacBook that ran on the latest MacOS for about 6 years after Apple switched to Intel.
Also the hardware support is not great, for example the webcam. I installed Linux on my old MBP but it was a hassle to get the webcam working involving some dubious command line entries with
sudo
No unlocked bootloader
On mobile, forcing browsers to only be designed as re-skins of Safari. I would like an actual Firefox mobile browser that you can use uBO with. Right now Orion can do that somewhat, but it’s not polished.
I really enjoy Apple products, but this is my biggest peeve. It’s not like I cannot manage without a different browser—certainly about half of americans primarily use Safari—but the flexibility and customization of Firefox or chromium would be very welcome.
Yehhh it’s interesting reading this thread but I’m on my still-super-fast five or six year old iPhone and my biggest complaint is I would LOVE to have an actual version of my beloved Firefox with plugins and whatnot. Firefox Focus works fine but it’s still WebKit. Safari works great with Wipr, vinegar, and baking soda but it’s no Firefox with ublock.
I use Adguard, vinegar and baking soda, but wasn’t aware of Wipr. I might give it a try as a replacement for Adguard. Glad you mentioned it.
It’s not perfect, but I do appreciate it when I’m away from my PiHole! It’s also hella cheap, which I appreciate. I should check out AdGuard too!
One of the biggest walled gardens around. Also, they treat users like they’re stupid. No, you can’t do anything with your hardware or software that we don’t want you to. No, you can’t fix it, either. Windows/Linux you’re free to break shit, change whatever you want (not always for windows), repair a system you build yourself, etc. And I despise apple’s perceived “status” and premium pricing. We joke about #pcmasterrace, but there’s some weird social cache around messaging and even dating where you have to have an iPhone to participate. Tf is wrong with people.
- Overpriced
- Tim Cook
- Closed ecosystem
- People using Apple devices are usually people that don’t know a thing about tech, yet boast about how good Apple is while criticizing other brands, blindly believing the marketing Apple does
- Shitty decisions
- Devices are designed to be as hard as possible to self-repair
- Overpriced
What’s wrong with Tim Cook?
I’m not a masochist.
I think for most privacy nuts it comes down to “I don’t trust them and it’s closed source. They could be hiding anything in that code.”
And then there’s the people who can’t afford or won’t spend the money it takes to have an enjoyable Apple experience. It genuinely costs multiple thousands of dollars to get into the Apple ecosystem and then it’s massively painful to get out. It’s basically just “corporation bad” because corporations are bad. The only way to be truly private is to not carry a phone at all and use only FOSS solutions.
I keep hearing how painful it is to get out. Can someone please elaborate on this?
I am not super tech savvy and was DEEP in the ecosystem but didn’t think it was hard by any stretch.
I migrated my data, purged my files, canceled my subscriptions in a few taps/clicks, sold our imacs, MacBook pros, homepods and iPhones and moved on with my life and haven’t looked back since. Took maybe an afternoon for the data piece and a few other after-the-fact logins to cancel things I forgot about. This is legit the 4th time in two days I’ve read this comment so I am just genuinely curious!
If you have terabytes of data in iCloud, use their mail, contacts, photos, everything? Plus decades of purchased content, expensive devices losing functionality by dropping the iPhone… you have to basically replace everything with something else and it’s tedious especially for a less techy person. This is the reason walled gardens are anti consumer.
For me the biggest thing would be apps. No way I’d want to re-buy all my apps on the play store.
The problem with iOS is the lack of freedom and control you have as a user. Yes, Apple may be “better than Google” when it comes to some aspects of default privacy on their devices (being better than the worst is hardly something to brag about), but as a user the level of privacy you can achieve on your iPhone is always limited by the design of the operating system, where you are just a user with no permissions and no ability to modify or even replace the operating system entirely. You are locked into a proprietary ecosystem that you cannot get out of.
Because I want to repair and fix my things without needing special software or proprietary tools. Along with a userbase of American teens who will treat you like shit just based on the phone you have.
I’m so glad I switched away.
Wife spilled some beer in the keyboard. Screen doesn’t turn on, it doesn’t hold a charge, keyboard doesn’t work. But we need sensitive data off the drive.
Take it to their “genius” bar where we are told there is nothing that can be done for the old data and we should just buy a new one.
I take it home, Google a bit and try target disk mode. Et Voila I’m in and can get that data from the hard drive as though it was an external HDD.
Why the Apple “genius” didn’t share this option with me? They don’t actually care about helping.
And that’s the rub with Apple. They don’t give a fuck about their users or developers. Just want to herd them around to make more money off their overpriced garbage.
