I don’t want Apple to do client side scanning. But if they do it, I wouldn’t be getting off their ecosystem. At this point, its a total fiction of choice as a consumer...all my devices are Apple devices. I have a equitable choice for cellphone network providers. I don’t really for device ecosystems. It sucks but I also think that leaving Apple has a very high cost as a consumer; that the right solution may be through regulations.
I know this sounds crazy, but even 10 years ago humans happily existed in a world where we didn’t have ubiquitous cloud providers that ruled our lives.
Why does it matter? I took plenty of pictures. I still have all of them. In fact there are some physical logistics, but they will probably still be around in 30-40 years. Who knows about my Dropbox account. Every so often I do ship an encrypted hard drive down to my parents house. It is a backup of everything.
What is it about modern phones we actually can’t live without? Or modern cloud? The answer is not much. They are recent inventions. Not required for a convenient or fulfilled life. I do use an Apple phone, I’m typing this on one. But I’m ready for when or whenever I feel like ditching them. I recommend everyone with the means be likewise prepared.
Also backblaze is a nice place to warehouse data for now. They will get bought. Another independent broker will come along. Anyhow. Don’t be a slave.
I wish I could agree with you. But so many things are apps now, only available from official app stores. This goes far beyond convenience, at least in my country.
You can't park a car in many places in my city without paying via an app.
Nobody uses cash here anymore, everyone uses cards, and for private transactions there's an app (yes, just one, owned by one of the banks). So if you want to buy stuff from someone who isn't a shop, say at a flea market, or split the bill for dinner when you're out with some friends, you need that app to participate. The app is tied to a bank account (in any bank), but this is not a problem since everyone has bank accounts (government mandate).
Most of the big supermarket chains have their own apps now that can be used for payments. Of course, you can still by card or cash. Accepting cash is a legal requirement, but that is likely to be phased out over the next few years, and who knows what framework will replace it. If it becomes legally possible, I wouldn't rule out some places being inaccessible to the non-smartphoned here in time, since penetration is so high.
We have government mandated single sign-on service that is a requirement for communicating with any public institution, as well as banks and many other places. It doesn't strictly require an app in its current form (you can get a printed one-time pad), but there's a new version just being introduced that seems to be even more tied to the app, and the alternative seems to be exclusively meant for senior citizens.
Sorry, but these seem like weak excuses for complying with what sounds like a brutal corporate takeover of your country.
I don't have a cell carrier or any Apple/Google controlled devices. I run a b2b tech company and it isn't a problem.
When I really need to send an email or chat message I find WiFi to connect my small CalyxOS device to. The rest of the time I am living in the moment without notifications and this has done wonders for my mental health and social relationships as I plan things ahead and act with more intention.
When parking spots require Apps I find there is normally a webapp or a parking attendant that accepts cash. When there isn't I park further away and get some extra exercise.
When I split a bill with friends I use cash or crypto-assets.
When a restaurant demands I use my phone to view the menu I ask for a paper one.
When all hospitals in my area required I use their proprietary app, I accepted the appointment in the webapp, cited that the app didn't work on my device, and was able to get the doctor to call me on my VoIP line.
I am finding out recently I can use cash or prepaid Visa cards almost anywhere if I ask.
I am not aware of a single democratic country with any laws that can mandate all citizens accept the terms of service of Apple or Google.
Any private entity that demands you accept them must be avoided. If all private entities do this and you literally can't use essential services like grocery stores, then you must bring it to the attention of your local legislators as a serious discrimination issue. You could be the squeaky wheel that sparks change in your area.
We have a right to live fulfilling lives in the modern world without accepting Google or Apple ToS.
> We have a right to live fulfilling lives in the modern world without accepting Google or Apple ToS.
Oh, I agree, and I don't actually have a phone with an app store. So I'm seeing that it's becoming increasingly difficult. The payments thing is becoming really bad, in particular. As I said, businesses are legally required to take cash, but most people don't want it anymore.
It's an interesting argument, because you're saying it's fine that we're forced to have one of these devices, and that we're expected to carry it everywhere, or face being excluded from many aspects of society. For some things I can accept it (parking is a grey area to me personally since I don't actually know how to drive), but for e.g. person-to-person payments, I find the current situation untenable.
I heartily agree. I hate that Apple is effectively negating their promise of E2EE with client-side scanning, which may be the most invasive of all options. But if you aren't a slave to Apple's cloud, then no worries. Maybe I'd feel differently if I used their mobile devices - as it is, I'm Android+MacOS. Any old remote volume is fine for backups - even S3 - if your backups are encrypted client-side and your keys are somewhere physically safe. There was some real screaming when people realized Apple was doing an end-run around firewalls like Little Snitch. I don't expect that to happen again. I block every single Apple app that attempts to call home, and hosts-file-out every one of their domains I come across, and my Mac runs great.
Ultimately I think Apple's trying its best to be in compliance without screwing their users. Fair warning, there is no platform you don't build yourself that you can trust. People who don't protect their own privacy may arguably deserve their privacy being violated. People in the free world need to learn this lesson the hard way, apparently, before they stop voting for clowns who want to gut encryption.
I absolutely 100% agree with this, I can also more and more see the value in the web. At one stage I was like, screw the web experience, I enjoyed using an App, but this is what happens. We're locked into the Apple cco-system because we're hooked on apps.
This is such a disaster on so many levels. The USA is looking more like China to me now, the Government now wants to monitor your phone intimately. Fuck off.
I need a new phone, I've decided that I'm going to break my dependency on Apple because of this. I'll buy a second hand iPad to call my family on Facetime, and that's it. I will likely go for a Purism.
>I don’t want Apple to do client side scanning. But if they do it, I wouldn’t be getting off their ecosystem. ... It sucks but I also think that leaving Apple has a very high cost as a consumer;
Isn't it a big mistake that many people unfortunately make when they are trying to evaluate personal freedoms rights and values in terms of consumer costs?
"I wouldn’t be getting off their ecosystem." One thing to consider is that if you would not you'll pay much more later even though at the moment it decisively appears relatively safe. Nevertheless by staying with them in such case you'll give them a clear sign that they can abuse you much more and they will. Why not?
>that the right solution may be through regulations.
The full control of devices you own is absolutely essential. It requires a complete transparency of basic components like cpu micro-code, firmware and hardware otherwise it can and will be abused.
Client side scanning is clearly the search without warrant. Hard to see it any other way.
>Client side scanning is clearly the search without warrant. Hard to see it any other way.
Depends on the country/laws. In the US, I'd say, as soon as judges got to decide for the people what "privacy" means, with BS "expectation of privacy" interpretations, anything goes...
There's nothing to sue for, the fourth amendment / warrantless search is about government action and does not prohibit Apple to do that with hardware/software they make, it is not legal grounds to force them to abandon this practice.
I don't understand this argument, in fact I'd argue the opposite. Non-Apple devices are way cheaper, both for the device itself and considering the fact that one isn't paying a premium for each peripheral (headphones, freakin charger etc). And if you're referring to the interconnectedness of devices this is attainable with alternatives (even FOSS like KDE connect) albeit with some setup time.
The only Apple device I use is my mac, but I probably wouldn't switch off it unless there was a more compelling option. There are other viable options, but viable only matters if there's some pressure. I certainly wouldn't sell my car if I had one because another car is equally good or marginally better, it would have to be way better and at least as nice to use in some way. In the future, a new mac is still the most compelling option, for my purposes.
The phone is basically a commodity though. I like Android enough, but I get the best value thing I can for under $500.
The cost I mention is the time/labor cost of switching over to a new ecosystem and making it work in the way I expect it to. I’m just not technically capable (or have the inclination) to spend an insignificant amount of time in getting this custom thing set up. When I buy a TV I don’t really want to care about how the internals work, It’s a black box that I expect to work as designed.
I will leave. I'm already all linux on PCs I gave my two macbooks to relatives. If they push the full project on iphone they will completely lose me as a customer. I'll move my data and forget about them as an option. If you want to give up that's fine I guess.
What is it about Apple that makes them hard to leave?
There are some switching costs to be sure. I wrote a custom MP3 tag identifier at one point when switching off an Ipod. But do they just make exports cumbersome, expensive, or what?
> What is it about Apple that makes them hard to leave?
It's a weird phenomenon.
I don't use Apple devices, but my wife does. When she got into photography, I asked several tech forums as well as photography forums if there was an equivalent of Rapid Photo Downloader[1] for Macs. It's a nice Linux program that lets you conveniently rename images you're transferring from your camera, and put them in a folder that follows some rule you define. Nothing complex.
The responses I got just drove me nuts. Universally I was told I was doing it all wrong. I should use the standard Mac way of doing things. I forget the details, but it was basically "Let the standard Mac app import it into its library."
Well, where in the HD are the files, so we can do backups?
"You don't need to know that. Just let iCloud handle it."
What if I don't want to use iCloud?
No good responses to that other than "Why wouldn't you use iCloud?"
My wife wanted to use Darktable which wasn't inherently aware of the Mac way of doing things and insisted on simple folders and files. The responses I got were:
"You can export from the Mac app to a folder, and then point Darktable to it. Then when Darktable exports to JPEG, make sure you import the output files back into the Mac app."
But wouldn't that consume double the space?
"Yes."
When I explained that wasn't a viable option, I got a lot of hate.
And everyone told me setting up a folder/file structure for photos was Wrong and I didn't get the Mac way of doing things.
Now I'm sure there are simple ways of doing what I wanted on Macs. What surprised me was how much push back I was getting, and how even otherwise tech savvy folks (e.g. who know Linux quite well) couldn't answer my basic questions.
Reminded me of an Oakland cult[2] where the cult had set up their own parallel institutions that handled everything for its members (banks, paying bills, groceries, etc). They lived right in the city - not in a remote land they purchased, but the cult members had no idea how to function with the rest of society. People who decided to leave the cult had no idea how to pay electric bills or do banking.
I'm not suggesting that the information that you provided is in anyway wrong or fraudulent, but I do have some observations.
Firstly, and most importantly, what you have described is categorically not the "Apple" way of doing things. I'd also add expecting things to work identically between Linux/Windows/Mac is is a fools errand. Different design decisions are made for each environment.
To the flow - Darktable, whilst a fine DAW, clearly lacks in certain features. It should be able to handle importing and renaming files to a standard file structure, including sane default folder names, etc. without the need for scripting. This is a flaw that I suggest you raise with the maintainers.
I've never heard of the software that you/your wife is using to capture the images from the device, but a cursory Google search bought up some interesting results... DigiCam seems to be what you are looking for! It free (libre and beer), scriptable, and acts as a DAW should you need. Will it work like Rapid Photo Downloader? Probably not, but the maintainer of that software doesn't seem interested in supporting macOS, and that's fine. From the FAQ: Does it work on Windows or Mac?
No. Theoretically it could be ported to both Mac and Windows with minimal effort. The one gotcha is getting gphoto2 to work effectively on Windows.
Finally, a bit about the "Cult". The Mac 'cult' is no different to the FOSS 'cult'. Both sides are enthusiastic about their environments to the point of the being, frankly, assholes. Too much "your doing it wrong" and not enough "what are you trying to do".
> Firstly, and most importantly, what you have described is categorically not the "Apple" way of doing things.
It's not clear from your comment if my insisting on using files/directories is not the Apple way of doing things, or what the people on Mac forums told me is not the Apple way of doing things.
If the former, your whole comment merely adds to what I and my parent were trying to say - that even though MacOS has totally fine support for files/folders, Mac users appear to have a hard time switching away from Apple.
As for the rest of your comment, I don't understand the relevance or why it is being directed to me. I'm not complaining that there doesn't seem to be an equivalent of Rapid Photo Downloader. I'm complaining that even highly technical MacOS users insist that resorting to basic things like storing photos in directories and dealing with their file names is simply wrong - and that their solution entails a lot more disk space and had no clear backup solution.
> It should be able to handle importing and renaming files to a standard file structure, including sane default folder names, etc. without the need for scripting. This is a flaw that I suggest you raise with the maintainers.
They are aware of it, and designed it intentionally this way for a good reason. They have certain goals, and this is explicitly not one of them. I can't fault them for not doing what they make clear they have no intention of doing.
> Finally, a bit about the "Cult". The Mac 'cult' is no different to the FOSS 'cult'.
Again, not sure why this is directed to me. I'm no fan of the FOSS/GNU/GPL cult either. The point I will make is that most Linux users are not members of those cults either, and it is not a barrier for them using Linux. The same goes for Windows. When I've wanted to do nonstandard things in Windows, I don't get Windows users telling me I'm doing it wrong.
> It's not clear from your comment if my insisting on using files/directories is not the Apple way of doing things, or what the people on Mac forums told me is not the Apple way of doing things.
The latter. You assumed that I meant the former, then I can only assume that you didn’t look for a solution particularly hard.
As to the rest of my comment, it shows that my assumption was correct. The “highly technical MacOS users” are nothing of the sort. It took me all of 5 minutes to Google what was required. You being lazy is not representative of a platform or it’s users.
“Their” solution, by the way, does provide a backup solution, two built-in in fact - iCloud, which is unacceptable to you (which is absolutely fine), and Time Machine.
> They are aware of it, and designed it intentionally this way for a good reason. They have certain goals, and this is explicitly not one of them.
Funny, I thought their goal was to be a DAM. Importing images is part and parcel of being a DAM. The pro-level DAMs certainly do this. Even as an amateur, using separate software to manage importing and organising files seem like a a pain.
> The point I will make is that most Linux users are not members of those cults either…
Funny that, I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen a “Linux” user say “just use Libre Office”... You went to, I’m guessing, a Mac based forum with possibly filled with “that type” of user. Again, I have seen, on these very pages’ both Linux, Mac and Windows users espousing the wrongness of someone’s approach. Every last one of them an asshole.
I take umbrage with you because you are lazy. You were lazy when looking for a solution that should take around 5 minutes of Googling and you’re being lazy when generalising about users of a given platform.
> I'm not suggesting that the information that you provided is in anyway wrong or fraudulent,
To
> Lazy, lazy and lazy.
I'm not sure addressing your comment point by point will help, but I do think this thread and your comments make for good examples of common mistakes/fallacies people fall for.
To begin with: The original commenter asked "What is it about Apple that makes them hard to leave?" and that was the context of this thread. Your comments focus on what I said, without providing anything useful to the bigger question. You may want to ponder over what you're trying to achieve here.
Now for some fallacies, whose names I wish I could remember:
The first one: Assuming the other party has the same information that you do. Clearly, you found something quickly with a Google search, and therefore I either did or didn't really look at the Google results. This ignores:
1. Google gives different results to different people.
2. Google gives different results for different queries.
3. Google gives different results over time. You have no idea when I did that Google search.
Fallacy 2: If someone has the same information as you, they should arrive at the same conclusion as you. I think this is self explanatory.
Fallacy 3: If someone has the same information as you, and they didn't arrive at the same conclusion as you, then that is attributed to something negative. Examples are poor reasoning skills, laziness, maliciousness. This should also be self explanatory.
Also, some reading comprehension skills may need to be upleveled:
I never said I'm against iCloud for backups.
And:
> and you’re being lazy when generalising about users of a given platform.
Can you point to the generalization? I reported what happened. How is that a generalization?
> The pro-level DAMs certainly do this. Even as an amateur, using separate software to manage importing and organising files seem like a a pain.
Not sure why we are even discussing this. As I said, everyone knows what you are saying. Darktable made a choice not to do this and they provided their rationale. Their decision has been discussed to death on the Internet. You are welcome to disagree with it, but what does this have to do with the whole thread? A Mac user wants to use Darktable, and is asking reasonable questions.
Still not clear why you bring Linux into this. I'm sure assholes exist amongst them. My experience with Linux forums, though, is that while assholes exist, there are usually others on those forums who will answer the question. Still - even if your experience differs, what is the purpose of pointing out that other cults exist? If a cult is problematic, it is problematic regardless of whether they are unique or not.
That's frankly crazy! Macs copied Unix systems, of which Linux is now the standard bearer. If Mac built their operating system correctly, it would be seamless for a Linux user to hop on modulo keyboard mappings (which, in my limited experience with Mac, hurts the muscle memory profoundly). Per your comment and my limited observations, it is clearly not seamless.
What you described makes a lot of sense though. What you're describing is learned helplessness, which increases switching costs for the low-quintile technically inclined users.
I am 100% with you, but you seem to miss some key points:
1. the vast majority of people do not understand how computers work: I have met many folks in both my personal and work life that do not understand *what a file is*, much less a directory (folder).
2. This whole notion of "where things are stored on the computer" is completely alien to most folks. As a matter of fact, this notion has been shoved down the throat of all Android / iOS user since inception of the ecosystems. I have found myself in a situation where I was unable to retrieve actual data I own stored on my own Android device because I made the mistake of storing it there *before* rooting the damn thing.
3. most people in the above category actively *do not* want to understand how computers work. Hence the "you don't get the mac way of doing things" comment you got. The fact that they completely hand over control over their information to Apple and are thereby imprisoned in the ecosystem and become hostages forever is completely lost on them.
Your comment is valid about the average user. My comment made it quite clear I was not asking that category. These were not people who did not understand what files/folders where. They very clearly did.
Even the least technically competent Windows users I've known understand files and folders.
People who are primarily smartphone users - your statement is quite on point there.
Those people likely barely understood many concepts. I’d never think to seriously go to an Apple centric bigger forums. Unless it’s specifically geeky and into being able to manage things with automation, scripting, CLI, power apps, etc, Apple communities generally give very little and weak info.
Those pseudo power Apple Mac users are not that far from average users.
“.. the right solution may be through regulations.”
I’m unclear, are you saying that regulators should prevent Apple from doing client-side scanning? If so, that’s entirely unrealistic. Government regulators would love to require even more intrusive capabilities.
>But if they do it, I wouldn’t be getting off their ecosystem. At this point, its a total fiction of choice as a consumer...all my devices are Apple devices.
So? You can use any of those with a Linux or Windows box.
