Apple still links services like device bricking to the Find My network. If your iphone is stolen, and you don’t want someone to reset it to use or sell, you HAVE to submit your location data to be a part of the tracker network. Disabling that, Apple sends users a scary nag email that their device is no longer protected.
I love how you took the time to write the years and title of the event… 😁😆😊🤍
Wish there was a website or a wiki that document all this, these companies are basically using philosophical fallacies as a marketing strategy at this point
100%. Most business is just advanced sophistry at this point. Marketing and advertising serves a useful purpose for new products, when the market isn't aware that it exists.
But by quantity and cost, most advertising is just social manipulation and is effectively an extra drain on the economy.
Not exactly true. If you enable “Advanced Data Protection” not even apple can look at your data (with the exception of data which has to be interoperable like calendars and mail)
I’m sure the Google is also encrypting the data with the exception of the interoperable data. So there’s no difference. Why point fingers when Apple do the same?
Apple also know your browsing history. They also know your app usage. They also store your contacts, calendar, photos - just like Google. I don’t see the difference.
Holy shit y’all. Developers need to eat too. It’s totally fine to charge for an app or serve ads. LjDawson is a fantastic developer and really listens to his user base. Yes there are plenty of open source apps to use, but sometimes closed source is way more polished because the developer makes it their job to create the app. Living isn’t free. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
The one time payment for no ads used to support the original app for years and now it’s forced in a subscription model, the definition of greediness. I dont know why you support such behaviour and insult others on top of it, (oh the irony) but you do you.
made a whole meme to defend nitpicking words, 3 replies so far nitpicking my words and ignoring my original argument like a true contrarian, keep going
I tried an analogy since you didnt see the fallacy of your point, that failed too I guess, telling me dont judge the dev unless youve been in their shoes would mean u cant judge politicians either, I can and should have opinion on stuff regardless
Again, point me to where I said don’t judge. I didn’t. Judge away.
If you look at my post again, you’ll find that I tried to suggest that when you make your own app (and you should), you should decide on your cost model which sounds like it’ll be free. I eagerly await your release!
So what is your point exactly? That you shouldn’t charge for software you develop to access a free network? There are plenty of free solutions for you.
Yes not paying for a subscription to remove ads like the original sync app = not getting paid, youre already making up arguments so go ahead and make up my reply too why bother asking me
You are comparing the old simple “Remove Ads” option to Sync Ultra features.
The new “Remove Ads” without additional features costs 14,99 €. Which, yes, is more expensive than before, but that was to be expected. The old price would have been way too cheap for today’s pricing situation, especially since he also lost most of his userbase.
That was in response to your comparison with t-shirts.
And yes, scaling does not work in the same way for app development. A large part of the required work for app development stays the same, regardless of how many actual users there are (excluding server costs (-> Sync Ultra) and probably the amount of support tickets). But since Sync has way less users now, there has to be more income per user for it to be profitable.
I literally just explained why the price per person needs to be higher now. It is not about server costs. It is about the cost of app development and maintenance.
Of course a single user is irrelevant, but in principle and if it would evolve into a larger trend: yes. At least if the dev wants to keep paying his bills. That is how business works. And with lower user counts at some point the required price per user would be too high to be competitive. Then the dev would have to abandon the project, since it would not be profitable anymore. He is a full-time developer after all.
Heyo sync pricing update, now the price is 50% off after dev saw the backlash, so is he going bankrupt or were you talking out of your ass the whole time?
AFAIK he just implemented regional pricing. The price is the same in Euro.
My point was also never that it has to be one specific price, but to raise awareness to the fact that the old prices of Sync for Reddit are not actually sustainable anymore for Lemmy.
their default model isnt based on ads like sync for lemmy
a third party client isnt as much work as the fediverse as u see it took him a month
3)ads used to be a one time payment for his old app, so the money was enough for him back then and now hes even richer so why do you excuse his greediness?
It took him a month because he adapted a code base he had been working on for a decade.
It’s not greediness to want to be able to pay your bills. This is his job. Also a single payment option has already been developed it’s just not made in live yet.
He was already paying his bills with the one time payment and now hes even richer, this is the definition of greediness. Also his future plans are irrelevant here I am judging his current actions and the OP comment defending them.
PS, weird how the no ads feature takes longer to develop than the recurring payment with 10 features, INCLUDING the no ads one!
I said rich-ER buddy, how did you miss the one word? One time payment was enough when he had even less money back when he didnt have the reddit money yet so theres no excuse to hide no ads option behind a subscription model, especially for a foss platform, its not like its a reddit client and pays for api
Who cares if he is rich. He is making a good product and people want that product. He can charge whatever he wants, there is no point taking it personally. If you don’t want to pay, there is no one forcing you - you can even continue to use the app for free if you want.
If getting paid for the work you do that people are willing to pay for is greedy, then yes I suppose he is greedy, and so are everyone else who works for a living and try to up their earnings.
If getting paid for the work you do that people are willing to pay for is greedy
Not charging more than double the price of his product in the span of one month equals to not supporting people get paid, lets end this convo here since u wanna troll ( im nice and dont assume your reading comprehension is that bad instead)
Sure, the issue is when people reply to me with bs like u don’t want to pay devs when u oppose 2.5x price hikes or moving permanent features into subscription models
Charging 2.5x more in the span of one month for the same feature is the essence of software development and people cheer u for it? Sheesh im in the wrong business
Holy shit y’all. Developers need to eat too. It’s totally fine to charge for an app or serve ads.
You might be forgetting that these same developers refused to simply put in a subscription to their reddit apps to continue them, instead closing their apps and telling everyone to move to lemmy because that’s where their app will be…and now adding huge subscription fees and one-off fees on a platform that doesn’t charge them to use their API lol.
Maybe I’m just cynical but this really seems like the dollar signs lit up in the reddit app devs eyes the second reddits API changes got announced.
No that’s not correct. sync for Reddit already had the ultra subscription. The problem was he would have had to up the price on the sub substantially to cover the Reddit API fees.
Okay let’s do the math. According to here there is expected to be about 55.79 million folks using reddit daily. Let’s say a good 5 million folks use Sync. Now, reddit said it would charge $0.24 per 1000 API calls. You can find that here. Now 1000 calls isn’t much at all really. Let’s say those 5 million folks just 1000 API calls a day ( they wont’ actually use ONLY 1000 ). So we have 1000 * 5,000,000 * 0.24 = $1,200,000,000. That’s per day. Does that seem sustainable to you? Like if folks were using MUCH MUCH less I could see your point. But the fact is…they weren’t and reddit were being assholes about it. Now compare that to what he’s charging. $17 bucks for a year. Let’s break that down and compare it to what he’d be paying per day. Say all 5 million users were paying for Ultra. That’s 5,000,000 * 17 = $85,000,000. Divide that by 12 to get per month. 85,000,000/12 = $7,083,333 per month. Divide by 30 for average revenue per day. $7,083,333/30 = $236,111. Now tell me that even comes close to $1,200,000,000. Your logic is flawed. This doesn’t even account for fees and possible server costs.
Let’s say those 5 million folks just 1000 API calls a day ( they wont’ actually use ONLY 1000 ).
Correct - 99% of those people will use nowhere near 1000 API calls a day. Each persons subscription only has to cover the costs of their API usage.
A $5/month subscription, at $0.24/1000 api calls, gives each user just under 21,000 API calls per month. Most people aren’t going to be doing anywhere close to that.
This doesn’t even account for fees and possible server costs.
Sync doesn’t need any server costs. It’s not hosting an instance of Lemmy.
Also your maths is off by 1000x lol. The cost would be 1.2mil a day, not 1.2bil a day. You’re multiplying by 1000 for some reason, when the $0.24 already gets you 1000 api calls. So if all 5 million used 1000 calls per day, that’s 5 million x $0.24, which is $1.2mil.
They would actually use much more. See [here] ( reddit.com/…/lets_talk_about_those_api_calls/). Basically almost everything is an API request. Just loading a post and doing very little you have close to 33 requests. Even if my math was wrong it’s still way too much to pay for per day. Especially if folks are using much more that 1000 API calls per day.
Just loading a post and doing very little you have close to 33 requests.
No you don’t. You can open Reddit and open a post with ~3:
1 for getting the posts on your front page
1 for checking your messages.
1 for getting the comments on a post.
Where are you getting “close to 33 requests from”? That post that says they’ve done “very little” and used 33 calls? Ah yes, because everyone “checks who the mods are +1” every time they log in to reddit. Every single user is a mod who checks their modmail (+1).
BTW I know how API’s work, I’m a web developer. Most people will not go anywhere close to using 1000 API calls a day.
Okay so say I believe you. Why do you think a large majority of third party devs shuttered their projects they worked on for so long if it was just as easy as adding a subscription fee? Why didn’t more of them do it? I know of one that actually implemented a subscription. If folks were actually doing much less than 1000 API calls daily then you’d think most devs would have gone that way right?
They want people to move here instead where they can continue having zero costs and making millions of dollars.
It literally is as easy as adding a subscription. They know how many api calls the average person makes. Even if they put the subscription at $10 a month, they should have given people the option. It’s not like the users would run up absurd bills for them - the user would just get cut off in the extremely unlikely event that they use all their api calls. Hell why not make a tiered subscription for ranges from casual users to power users?
It’s hilarious that people jump all over the “the developers deserve to be paid” line, while saying Reddit don’t deserve to be paid for making these developers millionaires for free.
Can I ask why you think it isn’t as easy as adding a subscription fee?
You replied to the very answer to your question. Apps can still be businesses, not everything has to be free. There’s a bunch of free alternatives, this is just one of the paid ones.
They moved to lemmy because the fees on Reddit where exorbitant, and he’d have to raise the prices too much to keep same wage (Haven’t looked at the numbers). Afterall, it’s he’s app, and he’s to decide what wage he wants to keep working on it.
Google took its time stepping up, but it’s better late than never
So Apple completely fails to give any kind of fuck that some people don't use their products but might be affected by them... and Google is the bad guy for not being timely enough to account for Apples douchebaggery? I mean, I'm no google fanboy, but jesus christ that's some shitty logic.
Apple created an app to detect airtags for Android but…
It takes 2 full minutes to do a scan (only manual scans are supported)
For some reason you need to wait a timer of TEN FUCKING MINUTES before make the tracker beep (close the app and you need to wait the ten minutes again)
It’s the most minimum viable product that they could ship, I think the long waits are all artificial because there’s no way that someone actually waits all that time each time that wants to check if he’s stalked by an airtag. It’s clearly designed for compliance “see? We made a detection app for Android users” and not for being actually used
Any form of Android compatibility must be maximally enshittified to encourage switching – see iMessage. Unless of course it generates revenue for Apple – see Apple Music. Not being stalked/murdered using Air Tags does not generate revenue for Apple: next time buy an iPhone.
Including the most basic task of plugging in an Android phone to access files on MacOS. It just works on Linux or Windows, but with MacOS I had to go the extra step of having to download and install Android File Transfer. And then wasn’t even able to preview pics from the phone storage and had to move the files to the PC.
Apple probably wants people to go I should get an iPhone. But, given the experience of how it just works on Windows and Linux my thought was wow Apple is shit at compatability with everything that isn’t Apple.
Most people aren’t plugging their phones into their computers. I’m an IT guy and I’ve never plugged my iPhones into my pc, nor the last 5+ android phones.
Okay? I wasn’t asking about other people, but expressing something I expected to be a basic function. And it was an Android phone I was talking about not an iPhone.
The comment chain talking was discussing how Apple will make things slightly less functional for products that aren’t Apple. Not an inquiry about how others use Apple products.
Google do it to some as well so they’re just playing the same game.
See Picture in Picture - it’s an OS level greater yet google went out of their way to disable it for YouTube so they could sell it to you via YouTube premium.
Google took its time stepping up, but it’s better late than never
And Google is postponing the launch of their trackers compatible with Google Find My network (Chipolo Point, PebbleBee) because Apple didn’t get around with adding stalking detection for these in time.
In this case if someone needs to step up and get their shit together, it’s Apple.
For as long as I can remember Reddit and Sync have been one and the same. I never used Reddit website or app, only ever used Sync to browse Reddit hosted content. I used it a lot. I’ve missed it a lot.
Between the Lemmy platform and Sync client, to all intents and purposes what Reddit was has been fully restored/migrated.
I know it’s early days, but I did not expect to see anything like this so soon and it gives me hope that Lemmy can grow and thrive into the network of people that always made Reddit what it was. Everything that’s needed is there - early, a little rough around the edges, but there. And being improved constantly.
Definitely agree. This has pretty much completely restored the reddit experience for me after I chose to delete my reddit account in the wake of reddit’s third-party app debacle. The Sync developer deserves major props. This app will surely make lemmy so much more attractive and accessible to a host of new users in the coming weeks and months.
It’s the same experience for me, but I still do a lot of Google searches based on Reddit content since there is a lot of information posted there over the years.
Some modern phones still have removable batteries, like my Motorola e5 play, its quite useful if the phone locks up bad, I can pop the battery out to restart it.
Just kidding, I use Samsung myself. It’s crazy how easy it is to brainwash Americans into worshiping their corporate gods. Couple of good ads and they will die for their brand or choice.
People get so hostile over such things. I have an iPhone for business. I have a Pixel for my personal use. They’re alright. It depends on what you need. Still a smartphone enthusiast.
Ugh, sounds like some of my coworkers and MacBooks. Then you discover that MacBooks are seriously crippled compared to the Linux machine you were using and you get told one of:
“What do you mean by $feature? I’ve never heard of that.”
"Why would you want to do that?"
Run a badly performing Linux VM in a janky hypervisor to do that
Pay $10 for this little 3rd party app to fix the problem
Throw in some serious RSI pain from that tire fire of a keyboard and yeah, I have no idea why I switched.
Edit: Work machine. No way I’d pay for Apple with my own money.
I’m stuck working on a MacBook too and it’s horrendous. I plug it into a monitor and use a good keyboard, but it’ll never be useful as a portable computer with that garbage keyboard
Using more than one monitor was the first “Why would you want to do that?” moment. Window management on Macs is awful but adding screens makes it way worse. Coming from i3 and sway, with rich hotkeys and fast, straightforward window manipulation, it felt like someone forgot to finish writing the OS. It seems most people use only the laptop screen or have a single external monitor as an auxiliary? They just genuinely didn’t know why or how you use multiple monitors.
Tiling in macOS can be polyfilled with apps but there are tons of edge cases where it fails and the app’s hotkeys don’t flow well from the a handful of native keys, so it feels disjoint and bodged together. Also, if you “bump” a window, it’ll stay dislodged because it’s a poor mimicry of the real thing.
What are these edge cases you are talking about? I been using Rectangle for many years and have no issues with multi-monitor setup. My company with over 2000+ devs use this app without any issues.
Amethyst. Focusing on empty workspaces makes everything stop working. Certain window types (dialog popups, arguably that app shouldn’t be using popups) are “invisible” to it. System preferences is untouchable (fair) and shows up under all other active windows.
It’s rough in the US. Most iPhone users will insist that iMessage is better and refuse to use anything else, and then whine when an android user is in a group chat and none of the features work.
I have several group chats with both android & iPhone users. No one complains. The only place I hear about people complaining is the Internet, never anyone in the wild.
The statement about a massive majority of iPhones in the Nordics is factually incorrect.
iPhone has a slight lead at one of the biggest vendors Komplett, but that is without counting the remaining 10 % which is almost exclusively Android units.
For clarity: Komplett operates in all the Nordic countries, but I would assume these numbers are for Norway, the richest of the bunch.
It’s the same story at work where I am the responsible party for company phones: Pretty evenly distributed where some of the iPhones are chosen due to MLM solutions for those wishing certain solutions.
I can only speak for my own age group in my personal life, but I would say Android has a quite big lead with young adults.
Kids/teens might be a completely different story though.
In 2017 I lost my £70,000/yr dream job as the company I worked at decided they couldn’t keep their EMEA campus in a country that hasn’t decided how, when or even if they were going to allow foreigners in.
I had to move to a shithole town in Nottinghamshire to live by myself in a cramped one-bedroom flat to do a job I hated for £22,000/yr.
That company went under because we couldn’t import the network equipment into the UK because of Brexit. Most vendors weren’t bothering since there were shortages anyway, so why not just send all their stock to Germany where there’s no nasty surprises and plenty of buyers waiting.
Ended up doing minimum-wage shift work at an Amazon warehouse and Deliveroo deliveries to survive.
Got another, similar job on £20,000/yr.
Not had a holiday in six years. I used to have at least two a year.
Can’t get a CPAP machine for my apnoea because of difficulty importing them (ended up getting a friend in France to buy one for me).
Local supermarkets still can’t get a lot of fresh fruit that they used to stock. Empty shelves common.
My savings went from £50,000 to zero.
Government is pissing money away on detention centres and hotels for immigrants because they refuse to cooperate with the EU.
Government is also planning on ripping up our Human Rights (ostensibly to deal with the immigrants) and has even indicated they would like to abolish GDPR, bringing it full circle to OP’s comment.
So, yeah. Not everyone has had as bad a time as me, but everyone I know has encountered some negative fallout. I’ve yet to encounter anyone who has actually benefitted, even indirectly.
So err, do you think the country has any chance of fixing stuff up, considering Poland is on track to overtake the UK at this rate, within a decade? And have perhaps some of your political ideas/values or strongly held beliefs changed at all?
On a related note, I believe Indians are emigrating to other EU countries too - it wouldn’t surprise me if India’s rise was a consideration for brexit. Naturally Indians (as with most people who wish to immigrate tbh) want to come to an English speaking country.
My political ideology has definately changed: I now think of myself as European, rather than British. The point of the EU project is that it doesn’t fucking matter what flag you live under, or what language you talk, or which imaginary friend you worship; for all our differences were 99% the same, and want to live in safe places, eat good food, travel freely, speak out minds, work rewarding jobs, love who we want, work together to make the world better and delight in seeing others getting do the same. As a sometimes-vegeratian, coffee-loving IT worker from Manchester I have more in common with sometimes-vegetarian, coffee-loving IT workers from Mannheim, Maribor or Madrid than I do with some fat-necked millionaire power-lusting would-be dictator with whom my only common ground is a flag.
The purpose of the EU and it’s predecessors is to make war in Europe impossible. It’s that simple. Who are these people that would see that undone? Whoever they are, they call themselves British.
Lol, some would call you over remain-minded. I appreciate that you miss what you lost clearly (beyond even the wages).
As an EU citizen in blighty, I care even less about the EU than before seeing that even the wealthiest countries within the EU have regressed socially and politically.
Obviously your own issue doesn’t have much to do with EU countries’ domestic policies, you relied on UK membership of the EU for trade.
Germany is what I’m planning on but you need to have 11,208 euros (if I remember the number correctly) to prove you can support yourself for a visa to study there
Ireland is probably is a nice country to live in, but it’s pretty ironic recommending it to someone wanting to come to the EU because of its regulations on big companies.
@Hikiru@Squizzy I live in Spain and I'm planning to move to Denmark or Norway in a few years. Heat is impossible to manage here, and the political system is almost beyond salvation.
Your visas are hard to get without a job, and the only jobs hiring foreigners are… big tech companies. I tried Ireland for years before giving up and going elsewhere.
The person who decided a headphone jack is superfluous should be found, tarred, feathered, and left naked and alone deep in the alaskan wilderness covered in pigs blood for the wildlife to enjoy.
I believe Steve Jobs is already dead. And those who inherited his billions probably don’t mind all those extra AirPod sales, especially if people keep losing them.
I honestly don’t think it made a noticeable difference in terms of selling AirPods, it simply reduced cost.
I only buy phones with 3.5mm jacks on principle, and yet I stilled jumped at the chance to get Pixel Buds cheaper when I got my 5a because of how convenient they are. The decision between wired and wireless is now nearly exclusively because you prefer either fidelity or convenience over the other. Not whether or not your phone supports them. Besides, if you’re picking fidelity you probably scrutinize much more on a phone than headphone jack or not.
I’m pretty sure the rise of BT headphones is solely due to Apple removing the headphone jack.
Yes, I know BT headphones have existed before, I was an audio/technology editor, so yes I know. Which is why I also know how tough it was to get some half-decent BT audio adapter or earphones 10 years ago, even tho BT 2.0 was in every phone for close to a decade already. Then within few weeks to months after the jack removal and introduction of AP, the market got flooded with them. Don’t tell me it’s a coincidence.
It may sound like a good thing to have so many choices, except you’re losing the original choice of whether you want it in the first place. Combined with another lovely trend Apple has kickstarted - non-removable batteries - it just means yet more ewaste.
And I’m sorry, but the whole idea of “true wireless” is fucking terrible. I use sporty BT earphones I can hang around my neck or just put in a pocket when I’m not using them. Fiddling with 3 separate small things every time I want to take earphones in and out is madness. Of course you’ll loss something eventually.
Then within few weeks to months after the jack removal and introduction of AP, the market got flooded with them. Don’t tell me it’s a coincidence.
You can crawl the way back machine though and find that this just isn’t really true in an appreciable way. Yes, after 2016 we start to see more and more wireless headphones but is that because of the iPhone or because Moore’s Law means standards increase, production gets cheaper and form factors get smaller?
It may sound like a good thing to have so many choices, except you’re losing the original choice of whether you want it in the first place.
I don’t disagree with you at all which is why I still make it a point to only buy phones exclusively with 3.5mm jacks still included.
And I’m sorry, but the whole idea of “true wireless” is fucking terrible.
That’s just, like, your opinion, man. That’s totally subjective and your taste. The ability for me to put earbuds in under earpro is masterful. That I can do work and keep my phone somewhere off to the side and out of harms way is beneficial to me. That I don’t have to worry about routing a cable through my clothes to prevent it getting grabbed by moving machinery and parts is a definite benefit.
And I’m sure absolutely none of that applies to you and that’s okay! It’s why I still advocate for 3.5mm jacks because my use, and your use, is totally different and deserve different accomodations.
standards increase, production gets cheaper and form factors get smaller?
Here we can be pretty sure, because Bluetooth 2.0 A2DP, allowing stereo sound, has been widely available since mid-00’s (I got my first phone with it in 2005), BT chips cost pennies even then and mono earphones of that size were old news too, so none of that was anything special. And it’s not like Apple were the ones to make it affordable anyway.
I’ll credit Apple for putting it together in a meaningful way, but of course they had to do it the asshole Apple way. Honestly, Apple designers should be charged with crimes against humanity for their popularisation of built-in batteries and other disposability features, and all the idiot designers who followed that example, with them. If not on principle, then for all the ewaste.
That’s just, like, your opinion, man.
Of course it is. But to be clear, I’m not against all wireless. So I’m not comparing ‘true wireless’ with classic cabled earphones, but with wireless earphones that have a cable connecting them and controls/battery somewhere between them. I wish designers would concentrate on improving this style rather than producing millions of buds people keep losing or discarding and then re-buying.
(Ed: I mean even TW can exist if people want, but the Apple effect makes everyone think that’s the only way to make earphones.)
I don’t disagree with you at all which is why I still make it a point to only buy phones exclusively with 3.5mm jacks still included.
Jobs died before the headphone jack was removed (iphone 7 in 2016, while Jobs died in 2011).
The villain we’re looking for is Jony Ive, Apple’s product designer until 2019. All other companies just copied Apple’s lead so if there is a responsible party, it’s him.
Yea fuck him too, bit ol’ Steve was quite a fan of the whole “remove every slightly extra option and then sell it back to the user” way of doing business.
It wasn’t Steve Jobs who took it away. Steve Jobs probably would have taken it away, but he also probably would have insisted on developing a technically superior but proprietary wireless technology.
I hate how we’re stuck in a limbo between headphones jacks and usb-c. Like the change was bad to begin with, but if you’re going to switch to usb-c, then do it fully.
USB-C for everything honestly would have been good if they had. But we’re stuck in a limbo
Apple is 100% correct. It’s the entire reason Android exists.
Then again, Apple also does a fair bit of data collection. I hate that Apple has been able to market themselves as some kind of bastion of privacy. They aren’t.
Apple is 100% correct. It’s the entire reason Android exists.
Then again, Apple also does a fair bit of data collection. I hate that Apple has been able to market themselves as some kind of bastion of privacy. They aren’t.
So Apple is not 100% correct. They are 50% correct because the second half of their claim is that Apple is somehow different and not tracking its users…
I believe the reason Google acquired Android was to make sure that Apple didn’t dominate the mobile device landscape, which would be a threat to their ad business. The data collection was just a nice side-effect, from their perspective.
I think you underestimate how early Google acquired Android. In 2005, Apple wasn’t even in the mobile device market. Nokia were the dominant handset in those days.
All cell phones are tracking devices. Unless you faraday cage them. But yes, both apple and Android phones give out way more information than just that. And I definitely would not say that I would trust Apple more with data that I would Google.
Genuine question: in what ways do Apple track iOS users (that cannot be turned off)?
I’m of the viewpoint that most tracking can be rather easily be turned off, and that android plays in a totally other ballpark here. But I might very well be wrong.
They both track you fairly closely. There are no winners if you are primarily concerned about privacy. Google is simply more open about it, and provides more access to that data to you (like timeline and takeout).
Actually, the reason Android exists isn’t so one-dimensional.
The company Android was initially concerned more with Microsoft dominating phones like they did computers at the time, before being bought by Google
They created two prototype chains initially, one touch, one that was more akin to BlackBerry
iPhone came out, they ditched the BlackBerry-esque one and focused on what became now Android
Google was mostly just doing what all tech companies were doing at the time, trying to compete in a mobile arms race for dominance. The data tracking was just a bonus. Appeasing shareholders is paramount. Look at how Apple created an Alexa speaker just because they had to as another example of this type of behavior.
Also, Apple actually has a long history of tracking user behavior that predates both Android and the iPhone.
Apple apps since some time shortly after the inception of OS X would (and likely still do) phone home to configuration.apple.com to send apple metrics on usage. Earlier variations of LittleSnitch could actually block this collection behavior.
Apple has since reconfigured the network stack to guarantee that direct encrypted connections to Apple are always possible above any VPN, or other type of network filter connection. So there’s no way to prevent communication with Apple on an Apple product at all now short of keeping it off the Internet or blocking DNS to 17.* IP addresses, which would only work on a network one has control over.
<span style="color:#323232;">Personal Data: Trackers; unique device identifiers for advertising (Google Advertiser ID or IDFA, for example); Usage Data
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Amazon Mobile Ads
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Personal Data: Trackers; Usage Data
</span>
Can someone please explain a bit what is included as part of a “unique identifier”… does it mean the app sends Google what communities you’re visiting or content you’re consuming, so they can advertise to you personally?
Unique device identifier would be some information unique to your device that can identify it. A common example of such a unique Id would be your IMEI although that isn’t necessarily what they are using. Minecraft as an example creates a unique user ID based on your account that system administrators can use to keep your player records even after you change your Microsoft account name or gamer tag.
It doesn’t have to be specific data related to your activities in the app per se, but it could potentially be used in that manner depending on the app.
This is present in all apps in the playstore for serving ads. If you are running away from it you have to run from the entire internet. You want to live a life like the people in privacy sub reddit with that tin foil hat. For the developer to serve ads this is necessary.
Exactly people really dont care about privacy nowadays , even calling us thin foil thats. Just look at the republican states asking Facebook to share messages about abortion with a mom and her daughter.
I think there’s some nuance there too. I’m not keen on the idea of my facebook messages, or google chats, or private emails, things like that going into other peoples hands (regardless of how much I can do to stop it), but purely ad-based stuff doesn’t bother me. I’m gonna be seeing ads for something, and whether or not they’re things google or amazon think I might want doesn’t really change the equation for me.
However, I do hold it to be true people should be in control of that if they want to. I feel like the choice is important.
Then sell all your shit and live without any device connected to the internet. If you believe a trillion dollar company can’t track what you like then I’ve got bad news for you.
Oh wait, even if you sell your shit, they just need to know who your friends are and they can create a profile of you… Woops! 🤷
What’s funny is that you’re trusting a bunch of random Lemmy hosts right now, but not companies that can be identified and that you can tell which laws apply to them.
I just think the privacy crowd is mostly wackos that believe in the privacy fairy, that’s all 🤷 Taking tons of measures to not have their data seen by others but still participating in public forums… If your privacy is so important then stay offline.
You mistake (best case scenario) a desire for privacy with perfect anonymity. It is perfectly sane to wish to engage in public discourse without being milked by ad companies. The fact that most platforms make this stupidly difficult is no reason to dismiss everything we say as nonsense. Do get a grip, please.
Wtf are you talking about? No one its exempt from authorities search , if a government wants you they will find you. We are against companies!! Not governments. You just want to be against open source free software if you want to pay for an app go ahead but stop minimizing people that wants privacy.
Anti capitalism? I dont want companies tracking me. I dont care about capitalism or not. I hate when companies track me , and when they go against innovation , freedom for the consumer to choose, and create monopolies. Monopolies are not part of capitalism , that kills competition and the free market.
I am self hosting my instance , how ignorant you can be. And even if I have my account on a server do you think a regular person would care or have the capacity to create a profile on me. I do believe a trillion company can track me and its not 100% but the less they have the better. Also why does it matter to you? Fuck off. Laws? No law can apply to this coporporations.
I dont install aps from the play store , and what’s wrong with wanting to not see ads or my data with Google? The less data they can have from me , the less the ads are relevant, the less likely to work in me.
The person you replied to is being downvoted, and yes, expecting support from Google is a meme, and Google deserves 100% of the negativity they’re receiving in this regard.
But, in their defense, they have always kept their word on keeping Pixels updated, and in some cases, have added on an additional year of support when not originally planned, including an extra full Android update for older devices.
So while they eventually kill every new software product they make, they’ve always kept their word on Pixel updates. I think the Pixel team has a lot more resources than the rest of Google, so I’m inclined to believe them for now, but I’ll be one of the first people grabbing a pitchfork if they don’t keep their word.
Not to mention a lot of their killed apps/services are old versions. Like angularJS was upgraded to Angular V2.
That’s like saying Mozilla is killing Firefox because they released version 120!
Also a lot of the services were “killed” to combine them into one service. The thing people have been begging Google to do for years, to merge apps and focus on one instead of 10 separate ones.
Or the fact there’s hardware on there, like Google “killing” Google Home Max. You mean releasing Google Next Max? The next version?
That website is garbage, and anyone that links it is just being dishonest.
I have always hated it for this, but hating on Google is so popular that you can use what’s basically a website full of lies (of omission?) and get upvotes
They even include rebrands as killed, like what even… and I’m not talking about Google Play music, that was actually killed. One example is tez, the Indian version of Google pay that got rebranded to (you can guess it easily) Google pay.
I’m guessing here, but are any of those products on that website both purchasable AND given a guaranteed product support time? Or to make it more specific, has Google ever killed off a phone (Nexus and Pixel years, so 15 years total) prior to its end of support date?
I don’t believe they have. Stadia, a non-phone product, is the closest thing. Of course it’s not a phone and Google also didn’t give a eol date before its release. When it was killed they refunded any purchased games. So I guess the better question is would you be fine with getting a refund in the amount of your purchase of a Pixel 8/Pro if they didn’t hold up their end of the bargain?
I know some of the comments in the community are tongue-in-cheek, but if Google were to keep the prior support date or do what they did today by increasing them, folks still wouldn’t be happy.
To me they even refunded the months I paid for Ubisoft Subscription services I got on Stadia. Which doesn’t make sense as I did enjoy them and it’s a subscription… probably a mistake but I am not gonna complain.
Every Pixel so far has been supported for as long or longer than it’s official support window. This isn’t a free chat app. It costs a lot and it comes with warranties and expectations for true spec sheets.
There isn’t one. Maybe Fairphone 5 but even with custom ROMs, running Play Services as a sandboxed user app isn’t possible. And even vanilla iPhones can’t be as privacy oriented as GrapheneOS is.
Also consider that the cost to do the maintenance updates has decreased due to extensive code refactoring and projects like Treble, Mainline, and the Generic Kernel Image. Major work in the platform has been focused on cutting these costs.
Jesus, the absolute entitlement in this thread. Can everyone just chill until the app is out of the beta version? Some of us are fine with seeing ads until the lifetime fee is available, and some of us are fine paying a subscription until the lifetime fee is available. If you’d rather not use the app until then don’t, but trashing the dev for getting paid while he works endlessly to create the sync experience for us is so ignorant and childish.
Sync is by far the best user experience app for lemmy that’s available for Android, just as it was for reddit, and it’s worth the wait and the price until the pro version is available.
I hope the dev ignores the whiners and focuses on those of us that get it. How demotivating to see people run their mouths when they dint know what they’re talking about.
Yeah man. I was a sync for reddit user for like a decade. I don’t actually know, but my reddit account was more than a decade old, and I really only was a user on sync for as long as I can remember. Sync was reddit for me.
I happily paid for the app forever ago, and I reckon I’ll use lemmy much the way I did reddit. And I tried a bunch of the different FOSS clients and none of them are as clean and polished as Sync was or is now. Maybe that’s because I just got so used to sync? I don’t know. But I do know that at this point in time, paying 20 bucks a year to support a developer whose work I’ve enjoyed for a significant portion of my life is 100% worth it. And I can afford it.
I used to have to use open source software all the time. I used gimp for so long, I’m just glad I have a job now that I have free access to photoshop. Why? Because it’s fuckingbetter! Because paying for a well refined product makes it easier to use.
So all these sync haters, keep hating. But now, I can highlight the haters so the next time I come across them I already know what they are about and how they are just haters.
Hey buddy, we are having a discussion about ads and tracking not the developer. I am really thankful for this guy to make a great app so everyone who used to like the app for Reddit can have a great experience here in Lemmy. If I like the app , I will pay for it for sure , but I dont like ads and I have the right to say no I dont want ads , and I want an open source app.
Bought the one month sub to tide me over, but bought the Ad free as soon as it released. Honestly, cost me less than half of a decent steak dinner so I ain’t mad. A man’s gotta eat and there is no guarantee that Lemmy is ever gonna pull Reddit numbers. Dude basically spent a month blasting out what I consider the best experience for Reddit, now for Lemmy, he deserves a pay day.
I don’t understand why the article writes that iMessage is the only way for encrypted messaging between Android and iOS. I can thing of several off the top of my head:
Apple's biggest crimes here are creating a proprietary platform with an exclusive protocol and making it the default messaging protocol on their devices. None of this is really new, though. All that shit is common. We need Signal or Matrix to improve in user-friendliness and even do some marketing to the point where they become viable solutions.
Android has an easy remote backup system built in. You can save a file to any location, including cloud locations, as long as the cloud service provider plugs into the API. Signal actively disables this feature because they would rather spite users than risk even the shadow of a chance that a user upload an encrytped backup to an internet service that could theoretically then be hacked and hypothetically maybe one day decrypted.
Matrix doesn't have this issue, it just stores encrypted messages on servers.
I’m not sure about Signal being the one, then we just give the power from one company (Apple) to another (Signal). If we want to improve then we should push open protocols where people can host their own infrastructure.
Ideally, I agree. In practice, until federation / decentralization is completely transparent to the end user (unless they choose otherwise), it’ll never be adopted at a large scale. IMO that’s one of the main obstacles of Lemmy, Mastodon, and others.
Signal is only relatively popular among the privacy-respecting options because setting it up is as easy as setting up WhatsApp. Just by adding a “choose your instance” step, you can cut your user base by an order of magnitude. And that’s not mentioning the quality of service, which is much more achievable on a centralized platform, whether that’s in terms of feature parity, uptime, bug fixes, or cross-platform support.
I can send pictures and video over SMS that are viewable anywhere. An iMessage user can only send a patch of 64 color changing macro blocks with some audio. While it’s technically true it’s the default. it’s purposefully degraded to the point of unusability.
Really? That seems odd. I’ve never had a problem sending reasonable quality photos to Android users and I can’t see a business reason why Apple would degrade image sending purposefully- it would drive its own users to get third party apps.
The photos are less the issue than videos. But they definitely reduce the size of them far more than other clients do. At least for non iPhone/ iMessage users. It gets so bad that family doesn’t share videos with many of us anymore because of how difficult it is to use something other than iMessage. Or Facebook. But that’s a whole other problem.
I can’t see a business reason why Apple would degrade image sending purposefully- it would drive its own users to get third party apps.
Depends on what the majority of people are using.
In markets where iPhone users are not in the majority, that’s exactly what’s happening: iPhone users are switching to third party apps.
If iPhones users are in the majority, though, then people will just default to iMessage, and non-Apple phones get associated with poor messaging quality. Which creates social pressure for non-iPhone users to buy an iPhone.
So it makes perfect business sense for Apple to degrade the messaging quality when a non-Apple phone joins the conversation.
I am not an Apple fanboy at all, I have used iPhones for work previously.
RCS debuted three years before iMessage, Apple developed iMessage because no one could get RCS standards together. We still don’t have this, Google has theirs, Samsung has another. Not all manufacturers support it and neither do all carriers. In my country it does not exist.
I use SimpleX, but when I used a company iPhone, iMessage worked very well, and it worked everywhere regardless of carrier. RCS does not 15 years after its introduction.
None of this is to say there should not be interoperability, clearly there should be. Historically at least, the blame lies with Google and mobile carriers.
I’m not letting Google off the hook, but Apple could also open the standard for iMessage and bypassed the whole problem. But they’d rather lock in customers than allow everyone to communicate securely and effectively.
Message works, it’s seamless and does a good job. Sure I’ll change to something else if I need to send images or group chat with Android uses, but in the UK that generally means WhatsApp, which I am definitely not keen on.
telegram is not encrypted by default, and does its best to make you forget to enable it for each individual contact. if you want to do a group chat, you’re out of luck.
Telegram is only (partially) secure for pedantic power users, which most people aren’t.
so, relative to pretty much all other messaging services, it might as well not be.
You’re saying “by default not everyone can read your messages, only you, the recipient, telegram themselves and anyone who they might decide to share them with, with neither your consent, nor knowledge”
When compared to “nobody except you and the recipient” that becomes effectively equivalent to “nothing”.
also, not end-to-end ever when it comes to group chats
Almost all services in that list are closed source, so even if they use end-to-end encryption nothing stops the client from sending all your messages to anyone they like after decrypting (in fact some of them already have it as a built-in feature in the form of backups).
that would be very quickly caught by a network sniffer, because it would have to be sent from your own device. Otherwise they’d just be sharing the undecryptable ciphertext you sent to their servers
Just encrypt it before sending it to their servers. How would you tell that apart from any other traffic it sends? (E.g. to check for new messages, to update who of your contacts is online, etc)
what does that have to do with anything? if you have to encrypt your messages manually yourself, that kind of proves the point that the service itself is not secure. And it’ll still show up on a network sniffer that they’re sending it to two places
Ok, let me break it down because clearly I didn’t explain it well.
What is supposed to happen, scenario 1: the client encrypts your messages with the public key of the recipient, sends it to the servers of WhatsApp (or whatever service) along with some encrypted metadata indicating the recipient, which then forward the message to the recipient.
What could happen, scenario 2: the client does the same, but also encrypts another copy of your message with a public key that belongs to WhatsApp, and send both versions to the WhatsApp servers. They decrypt and keep the second version while forwarding the first one to the recipient.
Or, scenario 3: they just never bother with end-to-end encryption, and always encrypt it with the WhatsApp key, still sending it to their servers which then reencrypt with the recipient’s key before forwarding.
In all cases, messages are sent only to the WhatsApp servers, not two places. The only visible difference is in scenario 2 where the communication is larger. You can’t inspect the metadata of the message with your network sniffer, because it is also encrypted, so there’s no way to rule out scenario 3.
If the protocol is designed to be transparent by not encrypting the entire payload sent to the servers, and you have access to the recipient’s private key (those are big ifs) then you could show that there is indeed an end-to-end encrypted message in there. But this is true for how many of these proprietary services? Maybe for WhatsApp.
Maybe if android 14 was guaranteed to have 70% adoption in one week developers would actually care. There’s no point developing features for 5% of users
Google never should have opened it up for hardware manufacturers. They should have just made the OS and licensed it out like windows. Then hardware manufacturers wouldn’t be able to release crappy forks that never get updated.
They didn’t really have a choice. They were building on open-source software and Linux and Arm are somewhat bad at abstracting the hardware. So this means that the manufacturers must homebrew their own distro for their hardware, instead of just publishing drivers like windows hardware does.
They’ve been working on fixing this, but fundamentally they built their castle on sand. And if they hadn’t, they probably never would’ve gotten anywhere at all and we’d all be on Blackberry or WebOS or WinPhone or whatever.
You guys really just said that Linux and open source licenses are "a castle on sand" and they should "have done it like Windows"?
If you start running before anybody notice you may be able to make it. Go. Just. Go.
But no, seriously, that's why I prefer Android. I have versions of it customized to handheld consoles, single board computers and a bunch of other stuff. I don't want to be out there buying licenses for my platforms from Google.
Samsung is the biggest phone manufacturer in the world, Sony is a massive corporation.
If people want to sell phones the least they can do is have the software staff to back it up by doing maintenance. If I wanted an iPhone I'd buy an iPhone.
Look I love open-source but the whole lack of a separate binary driver layer is dumb and is why Windows can support a machine for over a decade while Android has terrible device-specific support windows and you don’t just get your new OS version from Android Update, you have to get it from your vendor.
Imagine if you owned a Dell and couldn’t run Windows Update, but had to use Dell Update instead?
Also, I'm not an OS engineer, but that wouldn't require a closed source, privately licensed OS, would it? Just to not build it as a Linux offshoot, I suppose.
Windows Phone and webOS were amazing. Not just for their time, but even today. Major advancements in mobile OS’ came from WebOS like multi window task managing and my favorite feature of all came from Windows Phone. The most perfect on screen keyboard man has ever made. Specifically with audio. It had click sounds that were specific to a region of the keyboard and it was a low tone that was audibly pleasing. I wish we still had the same levels of competition that we did back in the day. Link to a video about the pleasing typing sounds on windows phone
Metro UI was and still is a sexy AF interface. The widget tiles had a motion to them that was delicate and beautiful. It was just such a beautiful OS. I’ve kept most of the phones I’ve ever owned because I like them and of the 10 or so I’ve done through over the last 13 years especially my two favorites are my windows phones an HTC 8x and a Nokia Lumia 1020.
Also the tiles were so useful because they didn’t take too much space and gave you necessary information at a glance. Another thing I liked was the app drawer where you just click on some letter and it pulled up a grid of letters (I don’t know what is the term used for this feature, it’s also there in windows pc) and we can just click on the letter of the app we want to access. I found this very convenient because I am very lazy about actually typing the name of the app I want or even scroll down for it. In fact I now use a third party launcher called launcher 10 on my android. It’s very similar to the windows phone launcher. I still have my old windows phone which I had purchased in 2014.
This assumes that Android would have anywhere near the reach it does now because of it’s openness.
Google actually is enabling hardware manufacturers to control the end to end experience by allowing them this level of control over their own ecosystem.
The difference is … they’re not Apple. No Android manufacturer operates at the scale Apple does. Licensed Android won’t change that any more than it will change all of the Windows 7 and 10 licenses that still live on in the real world.
It would also put the onus on Google to produce all the device drivers and compatibility layers needed to support the breadth of hardware currently available. This would slow the entire market down.
Hardware manufacturers on average do a shitty job keeping their fragmented operating systems up to date. My iPhone has gone through many major version updates. If hardware manufacturers don’t want to quickly, or ever, update they should have just shipped their phones with stock Android, and allowed us to update it to whatever is the latest.
Sorry, I thought it would be obvious that hardware drivers would be provided by the hardware manufacturer, and then on a fresh install the OS would just… ya know… get them from the manufacturer. 😉
This is a gross misunderstanding of AOSP and OEM compatibility software and kernel driver integration, that comes from a very naive interpretation of how Android device vendors build AOSP for their hardware.
You should probably learn more about it before embarrassing yourself with this kind of arrogance. I have experience in both but, as it’s not my job to educate you, you’ll have to do so yourself.
I disagree. If google hadn’t opened up, manufacturers wouldn’t have bothered. We also have great UIs like oneui with useful quality of life features not found in stock android. Not to mention a longer update cycle than even Google the developer of android.
That’s kind of a moot point seeing how it will be adopted by 100% of phones at one point (except for phones which are out of support, but those won’t get used at all after a certain point)
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