this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Gen Z here. Even if I could (somehow) afford an iPhone, I can't imagine buying them because they're just so locked-down... How can you use a phone you can't even access file system on? Hell, even load apps the manufacturer doesn't like? AND sell a kidney for this? Around me, iPhones are a minority but still prevalent, but I am living in a major, pretty wealthy city.
Stock android doesn’t want you to access the file system either. And the stock file manager on iOS/iPadOS is more than enough to do any kind of reasonable file management. And their are legitimate security and data privacy/protection reasons to want to use an abstracted file manager and give apps limited access to the underlying file system.
As far as sideloading, you can do it with a developer account or you can use web apps to fill in the gaps for a big chunk of those use cases. But if you need better performance from sideloaded emulators or virtualization host or programs of those sorts which apple doesn’t allow on the App Store, you will have better luck on android.
iPhone makes a design choice to be more restrictive by default than android but it’s for good reason. If full control of your privacy is something you value then you should definitely consider running an open source ROM on an android phone but you should also consider why you are doing something and consider if it is something that is secure and if there isn’t a better workflow to accomplish the same task.
For instance, on device ad blocking. Do you really trust that ad block developer with permission to inspect network traffic on your device and potentially modify ui elements to block ads (but maybe more). Or is that something that is better left on the edge of your network on a device running pihole.
Sorry to get so wordy on you, but I always getting slightly amused when someone criticizes an iPhone for being locked down and then runs stock pixel ROM with like a couple pirated apps and a shady web blocker on it
My mom was given an iPhone as a gift years ago, so I remember my reaction to this. When you connect it to a computer, you can only see the photos folder. So you can't even drag-and-drop music there. How is this "more than enough"? Maybe something has changed, I don't know.
You just spoke in favor of not being so strict, lol. But also there are far more common cases where this can impact regular people, such as bank apps being deleted due to sanctions. I personally don't use mobile banking, but that's pretty important for a lot of people, isn't it?
If its code is open to be inspected by anyone - why not?
That's not the only alternative. I personally don't yet use a smartphone properly so haven't tried, but there are options for custom, more private OSs. Also pixels are pretty expensive so not the best comparison for "common" user.
I don’t remember when it changed, but it was quite a few ears ago. The solution is iCloud. Your phone has iCloud files enabled, and seems to prefer it (at least for me), and your Windows laptop can be configured with iCloud, similar to how you might use OneDrive or Google Drive. Once you have it setup, you don’t have to think about it. It just works.
That's not access to the file system lol. That's just apple's cloud storage/transfer solution that requires an account and Internet. I mean you can do the exact same thing on Android with Google drive or whatever storage/sync cloud service you prefer.
I really can't agree when you say Pixel phones are expensive. Just look at the value proposition for the 7a. It is currently $444 on the Google store with all the features of the 7 except for a slightly smaller screen and just slightly worse water resistant (we're talking literally one step down). The closest competition would probably be the Zenfone 10 in terms of value,
$444 is pretty expensive for me. More than half a price of my LAPTOP. Most people I know cannot really dish out this much cash for a phone. Maybe it's different in the West.
It seems like one of the differences is, is your phone a tool to run your life or is it your playground? Those are very different requirements that ought to be separate
My phone is a tool to run my life, so it is important to just work. Similarly, my laptop is pretty vanilla because I want it to just work, my router is out of the box because it’s critical for my network to just work, and my home automation is a default install on a physical box because it is a tool I need to just work. For playtime I have a lab network, an AWS account, servers, a rPi cluster and VMs, and a bunch of old equipment I could resurrect to varying degrees. I can play all I want, without destabilizing my tools