Exactly, which is why if this gets any traction I believe it'll be removed. Apple does not allow you to consume your own content on their platforms without a tax or at least a little roughing up.
VLC’s doing fine. It’s how our kids watch movies on road trips (download to iPad from Jellyfin’s web interface, play in VLC).
Almost every book I’ve read in Books is from libgen. Download, open-in, and it’s on all my devices. Reading progress syncs and everything.
The best electronic comic book experience I’ve seen is from a free app (optional one-off IAP that does nothing—I wish it had higher tiers, the author is doing god’s work and I’d have given them $50 or something, no question). I put related cbr and cbz files in a directory in icloud, they show up seconds later in this app, it quickly figures out what they are (no clue how it’s as accurate as it is) and organizes them, and I get to reading two pages at a time in landscape on a 12.9” iPad.
The only Apple content I pay for is Apple Music, because it’s so damn convenient and I listen to way more music when I have it. I used to put my own music files in the exact same app, though, and that worked fine.
> The only Apple content I pay for is Apple Music, because it’s so damn convenient and I listen to way more music when I have it. I used to put my own music files in the exact same app, though, and that worked fine.
You can still do this, but you have to use a Mac or Windows PC to do so. It’ll sync your music up as part of a cloud library that exists alongside Apple’s licensed music. It’s the reason I go for their service vs. Spotify (which will let you sync music locally to their app, but doesn’t have a cloud library).
Does VLC have any extra codec support (read: software decoding) compared to what Apple makes available via APIs? I think the only thing I've noticed is webm files being playable in VLC and not when opening via the `files` app, but the vp9 codec is hardware accelerated and has been available for playback in apps for years (the YouTube app shows it in use a lot).
Can’t speak for VLC because I don’t use it that often, but other apps like Infuse support extra codecs (including vp9) beyond Apple’s offering, so AFAIK there’s no limitation on this from Apple’s side.
Almost every book I’ve read in Books is from libgen. Download, open-in, and it’s on all my devices. Reading progress syncs and everything.
The best electronic comic book experience I’ve seen is from a free app (optional one-off IAP that does nothing—I wish it had higher tiers, the author is doing god’s work and I’d have given them $50 or something, no question). I put related cbr and cbz files in a directory in icloud, they show up seconds later in this app, it quickly figures out what they are (no clue how it’s as accurate as it is) and organizes them, and I get to reading two pages at a time in landscape on a 12.9” iPad.
The only Apple content I pay for is Apple Music, because it’s so damn convenient and I listen to way more music when I have it. I used to put my own music files in the exact same app, though, and that worked fine.