Finally a good, nuanced article on this topic, thanks for sharing. Only drawback is that the author doesn’t seem to be aware that degoogling your phone is a viable alternative, especially with manufactures like Fairphone offering this out of the box.

Lots of people (including myself, previously) fall for the narrative that Apple can financially justify not spying on their users because their hardware is expensive. Versus Google, who have always been about ads and data mining.

This logic unfortunately fails to consider that a publicly trading company will always use all methods at their disposal to keep up profit so shareholders are happy. Expensive hardware was probably enough a decade ago, but the golden rule is: as long as a company can fuck you over in a way that increases profits, they absolutely will, given enough time.

We need federal privacy law in the U.S. and we need it fast.

I use Gramophone from F-Droid for playing MP3 files which are in folders. One of the tabs in Gramophone allows you to navigate your main music folder and it’ll treat your folders as playlists!

Best comment I’ve read for a long time

Yeah wouldn’t suggest using your real phone number

This is the correct answer. If you don’t need notifications:

Make sure you enable the auto frost service in Shelter’s settings, enable auto frost for WhatsApp in Shelter and replace the icon on your home screen with a Shelter shortcut.

You can also use a trustworthy VPN to route traffic from the entire work profile or only from WhatsApp.

Damn, Astrill is expensive though. Friend in China is currently happy with Mullvad + Shadowsocks. A few hiccups here and there, but it works pretty well and is fast enough for streaming, too.

They also have guides to a few more involved methods in case Shadowsocks is blocked.

Yeah that’s true

Alternatives include PhoneTrack for Nextcloud (setup complicated but pretty much set it and forget it) or TICE (very easy setup, but only meant for temporary sharing).

Yeah I tried swipe typing on FUTO keyboard too and was very disappointed, went back to the absolutely stellar Heliboard. It’s definitely as good as Apple’s swipe typing, especially after a few weeks of use.

To be fair the FUTO keyboard is still in Alpha and they plan to improve this specifically. I’ll keep an eye on it as it matures.

You have just convinced me to put “visit a 7-11” on my Japan bucket list*. I need to know what it feels like to print sheet music there.

*I may not ever get to go to Japan, but we can all dream

I used to hold the same opinion you do, but after reading this article, reality caught up with me:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html

If you want a shorter version of this that puts the consequences into perspective, I recommend one of Cory Doctorow’s blog posts: https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/18/unhealthy-balance-sheet/#think-manorialism

Taking the above behavior into account, Apple’s value proposition for anyone that cares about digital sovereignty is extremely brittle. I’ve decided not to invest any further into their tech. Is it the worst evil that roams earth? No. But does it logically follow that you should defend all their practices? Also no.

After reading the above, it shouldn’t surprise your that Apple spies on their users too, if only a bit less than, say, Facebook/Meta: https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Hope you can approach this with an open mind. I know it’s hard, I certainly didn’t want to start doubting what I thought was a valiant defender of consumer privacy. Cases like the San Bernardino shooter were testaments for Apple’s commitment to me. It turns out that’s only half the story though.