Apple is a 'use all of our products, or else we will make life inconvenient for you' company. The fact that this happens to offer some privacy benefits is just a strategy credit[1]
I'm not in any way an Apple fan and only look at their ecosystem via VM, but I curious. What company have more convenient integration of both own proprietary services and 3rd-party one? As I see it with Apple you can be at least fairly sure their products going to have good integration within their closed-garden ecosystem. With anyone else not even this is guaranteed and you'll likely be bombarded by ads.
I'm among the guys who use FOSS everywhere and it's just hard to setup and maintain own infrastructure like Desktop+Laptop+Phone+Cloud+Services integration. So I wonder if you know better options.
> What company have more convenient integration of both own proprietary services and 3rd-party one?
Most others. Google’s services work on Linux, macOS & Windows (and, I assume, the browser-based stuff works on the BSDs, too). Even Microsoft’s stuff works many places.
But Apple just locks one out if one is not using an Apple device. Two of my brothers’ families use iCloud exclusively to share & comment on family pictures; I’m locked out of my family’s life because Apple thinks it’s too difficult to display images and text on a web page (and, of course, because I value my freedom too much to use an Apple device).
And yes, I am bitter about that. The photos-and-comments stuff is bog-standard; there’s absolutely no good reason it should only work on iPhones & macOS computers.
I’m actually hoping someone will take a second to post ‘you dolt! Apple has had a website for the last 3 years to support exactly that!’ That’d be great. But that last time I checked — they didn’t.
Why should they? They want to sell you the Apple experience, where iCloud is fully integrated. Integration into Android will be half backed, which gives a bad impression.
Microsoft failed with their Windows mobile strategy and uses a different playbook, trying to get everything in Azure, no matter the specific client.
Because it makes no financial sense for them. MS’s Office is ubiquitous and has a market beyond the borders of a specific OS. Apple’s solution isn’t nearly as competitive as Google’s or MS’s. It’s a “better than nothing” approach as far as I can tell. Even Google’s solution only competes because of the synergy with the ecosystem (Android), not because of technical superiority.
It’s similar to the reason MS stopped making a mobile OS.
And if you’re wondering, Google’s solution also integrate pretty poorly with the competition’s products, if they can get away with it. But in their case it’s not because it doesn’t make sense, it’s to force people into using G stuff.
Maybe this will change if Apple guarantees some privacy features but without solid technical features to compete, it’s still a tough sell.
unfortunate (but necessary) move, considering part of the reason it failed is because Google yanked support (and later certification of Microsoft's implementations of) Google services like YouTube.
It wasn't only the lack of Google apps mind you, but they do have a certain degree of kingmaking ability with whether they put apps on your platform or not.
Google Drive increases the data you have with Google and encourages you to use other services like Gmail or GSuite. This increases the time you spend with their apps which increases the chances of clicking an in-app advertisement.
Apple doesn't sell ads so there isn't a financial benefit to them releasing iCloud Drive on Android.
Apple sells iCloud subscriptions though. And yet you're not worthy of their privacy if you didn't buy their completely DRM locked devices where they control even the content you're allowed to see.
Sure, but if you’re not using Apple products, why would you want iCloud Drive? I mean if it wasn’t deeply connected with iOS and I could slot in any third party, I’d probably never pay for iCloud Drive either.
If you want third party on Android, Microsoft’s 1TB of OneDrive as part of Office 365 (can buy annual subscriptions at a discount from Amazon as well) seems the better deal.
> but if you’re not using Apple products, why would you want iCloud Drive?
I think that's the point though: some of apple's products are quite appealing, but really only make sense if you buy into their ecosystem entirely. I could use Chrome without using anything else from Google. I can subscribe to a Google Group without having a Gmail account (though they're not making it easy, or good tbh). I can even use Android without Google – although at that point it's not much of a Google product.
iOS is looking like a nice mobile OS but I'm not interested in buying an iPhone. iTunes may be a good service but I won't be able to use it on Linux or my phone.
I run my own infra (caldav,carddav,imap/smtp) and all of it intergrates seamlessly into iOS and macOS. I tried the same on android and it did not work seamlessly with anything except google services.
Sure, their own stuff works better with their own stuff, and yes, the watches can't be configured without a phone, but that's also true of android.
Could you outline what kind of problems you had with android and integration? In my experience android is the superior platform for plugging in your own modules and your own data where you want it.
The way you describe it; I would agree. You can "do anything" on Android, but this leads to poor implementations for common things.
What I'm referencing is that the OS and Apples own applications are built to support what I would be consider very sane defaults (as in, it supports me doing my own thing, without the need for plugins/modules).
My experience is that on Android I had to have many third-party integrators to get things up and working, and they were very poor quality and would run in the background murdering my battery life. (and I had to pay for it: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.bitfire.dav...)
IMAP/SMTP Were less of a problem but it always /felt/ very third party when using tools for that purpose, where google mail was truly first class. On iOS I don't feel this way at all, once I had push notifications set up the experience was identical (if not a little better with my own server due to apples SMTP servers getting overloaded).
So, you're right when you say that Android is more modular and supports stronger composibility of the system. But the experience of actually using it is so incredibly poor that even with Apple doing it's bullshit (no small phones, no headphone jack, protruding camera) I have very little inclination to go back- the "feeling" I get is that it's funnelling me to third parties, whether it be google or samsungs awful "samsung cloud ecosystem"
> My experience is that on Android I had to have many third-party integrators to get things up and working
That you have to buy/install CalDAV AND CardDAV connectors is indeed a weird shortcoming of Android. On the flip-side you had the option to do so.
Also, in the age of everything-SaaS, a one time payment of $10 for basic infrastructure isn’t all that bad.
> IMAP/SMTP Were less of a problem but it always /felt/ very third party when using tools for that purpose, where google mail was truly first class.
What Email app did you use? Gmail (which obviously treats Gmail better) or something else?
> But the experience of actually using it is so incredibly poor
Different strokes to different folks I guess.
I never experienced Android to be that different (or worse) when using my own standards-based providers.
That said iOS feels a lot more coherent if you stick to Apple apps all the way. But not being able to set another default browser or email client is just weird.
> That said iOS feels a lot more coherent if you stick to Apple apps all the way. But not being able to set another default browser or email client is just weird.
in this, we agree.
> What Email app did you use? Gmail (which obviously treats Gmail better) or something else?
Samsung mail, I couldn't find any decent alternatives, maybe this is my shortcoming for not knowing what is available?
>Also, in the age of everything-SaaS, a one time payment of $10 for basic infrastructure isn’t all that bad.
Except I'm paying to use a connector to use /my/ infrastructure. But, I don't mind paying for software, so long as it's good and well integrated. DavDroid was half decent, worth the money if you consider the effort involved, but not "good".
Obviously its not what Google intended, but Android is just better when it comes to support of open source alternatives. Yet obviously as I posted already in this topic it's hard to build convenient infrastructure for yourself in general.
All well and good to say such things, could you point me to a few?
I was using Android as a daily driver for over 6 months and I didn't find anything in the play store that was of sufficient quality. (DAVDroid being the closest to decent, but it ran in the background and didn't do 2-way-sync correctly etc)
FWIW I was using a Samsung Galaxy S8, and that model does not have the ability to be flashed (and I think it doesn't to this day)
I use DAVDroid (now DAVx5) and I have had no issues with it so far, coupled with a NextCloud DAV server. So far it has worked well to sync contact information, calendars and the like (for close to 2 years now)
it would be stupid (and ignorant) of me to claim that it doesn't work for anybody.
I'm glad it works for you, it wasn't a very nice experience for me and it's certainly not comparable to having the OS designed and built for my use-case in mind, but I certainly don't think it's "unworkable" just that Apple provides a superior product in this example.
Apple usually has better integration when they care about something, but in most cases I find their offering lacking or not free enough so Android feels like a better environment at this stage to supplement the functions of the base OS with less restrictions. For example, I really like the fact that I can see the file system on Android, while on iOS it's completely obfuscated from the end user.
I think its still fine, as long as someone can afford it. We can't ask them to be fair its just take it or leave it. These days privacy is a luxury, rather than a fundamental right.
> These days privacy is a luxury, rather than a fundamental right.
The EU things differently. For us privacy is very much a fundamental right, such as right for access to clean water/air, right for free access to information (internet) etc.
Looks good on paper but in reality what's being done about it? Apart from a few token court cases. People are still dumping their data wholesale in to social networks and EU is mostly powerless when faced with these companies (FB, Google).
> right for access to clean water/air
Here in Brussels you can't throw a rock without hitting 10 diesel cars that come with almost every desk job and include free diesel no questions asked. They spend most of their time sitting in some of the worst traffic in Europe.
Air quality is constantly at the worst end of the scale, both indoors and outdoors and takes years off your life. At the same time there's more and more calls for regulation of Lime scooters.
EU cares but mostly just pats itself on the back for churning out reports.
We have laws against murder and yet people commit it all the time. What kind of argument are you trying to make?
Both Google and Facebook have been hit with lawsuits in the EU. The laws are there and companies violating them are being punished. One could argue that the punishment is not large enough, if companies still repeatedly violate the laws. It'll take some time though until we see whether companies change their stance on privacy. One company which doesn't need any 'encouragement' is Apple, that's pretty clear now.
Whether what they are doing is legal or will go unpunished remains to be discovered. In the meanwhile there is a considerable increase in public awareness of (e.g.) how creepy facebook is (I know that the biggest facebook competitor is instagram, but there is a real difference between how people interact with the two platforms and also in expectations on how much public your profile and post are)
> In the meanwhile there is a considerable increase in public awareness of (e.g.) how creepy facebook is
Every non tech person I know has some notion of FB being creepy but not a single one has changed their online behavior in any way. Everyone cares until it's actually time to delete your account.
Anecdotal I know, but I know of several people who now refuse to install the Facebook app on their phones (instead using the website) because they don't want "Facebook listening in on their conversations"
Yes, but they have been already fined in the past and law enforcement is keeping an eye on them. This could be better of course, but keep in mind that the GDPR is still a new thing and enforcing it requires time.
Last time I checked Facebook was still selling our data to Cambridge Analytics and whoever they wanted to and tracking us around the whole internet. So on paper it is, in practice not so much.
I'm among the guys who use FOSS everywhere and it's just hard to setup and maintain own infrastructure like Desktop+Laptop+Phone+Cloud+Services integration. So I wonder if you know better options.