HN Explorer

Ask HN: What are upset iOS users going to do?

22 points by ir77 ↗ HN
lot of upset people commenting here, but materially what are you planning on changing as an iOS user with the upcoming CP scanning implementation in iOS15? some thoughts of mine since i'm still on a contract and owe $ on my phone:

- possibly stay on ver 14 as long as possible

- i've been using iCloud photos to free up space on my phone, downloading all videos to store on an external HD and will delete them & turn off iCloud photo sync

- ultimately bail to some degoogled android option?

let me know what firm steps you've decided to take if you're not happy with the direction apple is going with.

22 comments

[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 60.8 ms ] thread
mattl
If space is an issue, you could use Google Photos instead of iCloud Photos, and your photos will be scanned on Google's servers instead?
ir77
i used google photos and wrote about it on here -- to some extent i'm fine with the scanning but my problem was that extracting the photos out of google was a complete nightmare.

anyone that says "just use google takeout" obviously hasn't gone through the effort. i have about 178GB of data and they were all delivered in 2GB zip file chunks, many of them got corrupted, or never even sent over. i extracted my stuff when you could still tie google photos to google drive and even then each photo/video file ended up having 3 files, something for .json, something with exif tags in it and then the actual picture/video itself, it was an absolute mess.

if i know there's a service that will preserve the file 100% and it's easy downloadable then i would use it, for now, i'm extracting everything through iCloud.com and it seems to work perfect (much better than saving files out of iPhotos on mac directly). after everything is backed up to external HD i'll turn off the syncing on my local phone.

ApolloRising
I think you can grab it from Google Drive possibly via rclone?
mattl
Yeah, I got my music from Google Takeout and it was a nightmare
LazyR0B0T
You could also have taken out as a .tgz file because they contain a lot more of your photos in one shot.
moepstar
That's exactly the question that is in the back of my head the past few days.

Computer / iMac? Uh, well, having used Linux on the desktop (various distros) for years already, this won't be as much of a problem.

Something that gives me pause is how well Mint runs on some brick-ish HP laptop from around 2012, just replaced the HDD with SSD. It just feels way snappier compared to my fully decked out late 2017 iMac 5k with 64GB RAM, 4,2Ghz.

I'll be missing the deep integration between iPhone, Watch - but other than that not much probably.

But the iPhone itself? That is going to be tough.

Been an iPhone user since the 3G, iOS 2.0 (2.01 shortly afterwards) and always liked the devices, the clarity of the OS (though sometimes it fell short regarding having all the bells and whistles, early on i've solved that via Jailbreaking).

So, no - i don't immediately have an answer. Ideally, there would be something akin to the polish of a modern Linux OS on a decently powered phone, in a nice hardware package.

I dread running Android :(

Sevii
I'm just going to get a mini linux box and a PinePhone like device as backups.

We live in a world where due to technology a panopticon is almost inevitable. Using free software is the only real way to take back control.

As this technology expands we might need to move open source work to linux hosts only. We have no idea what will be banned next. I just don't want to end up in a situation where I don't have any hardware/software combination I can trust to serve me and me alone.

kleer001
I'm going to have left the ecosystem 3 years ago and never look back.
rl1987
It seems that this can be mostly side-stepped by not using iCloud for storing the photos and preferably using something self-hosted instead. If you upload all your photos to e.g. Google there's nothing stopping them from scanning them and possibly using it against you as well.
ev1
I was under the understanding that the scanning happens on device no matter if it's uploaded, and that iCloud uploads are already scanned regardless
rl1987
I quickly skimmed [0] and my reading is that scanning is predicated on pictures being uploaded to iCloud. It says things like:

> CSAM Detection enables Apple to accurately identify and report iCloud users who store known Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) in their iCloud Photos accounts.

[0] https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Techni...

runjake
For iOS? Nothing.

Google is or will be as bad/worse, the third party privacy-oriented Android distros are too much hassle, and dumb phones are too insecure/slow/busted.

For macOS (which will also scan your photos for secret indicators), prior to this announcement, I was already in the process of migrating to a Linux desktop.

This is only Apple's first step on its retreat from its user privacy soapbox. I expect it to get worse and so I reserve the right to change my mind about the above options.

ssss11
I’ll switch devices but need to read about pinephone etc. I think the fallout will take a while to play out.

I also plan to get Linux next laptop swap in a couple of years (last 3 were apple)

Google and MS are certainly no better so Linux alternatives seem the only option now

runjake 

    > Google and MS are certainly no better so Linux alternatives seem the only option now
Yes, if privacy is your concern, you're at best delaying the problem by choosing a commercial OS.
midnightGhost
- I’m staying on iOS 14 for as long as I can.

- I disabled iCloud and iCloud photos.

- For now doing encrypted backups to iTunes on my pc.

- I’ve also started using Cryptee and they seem solid. Link below. I’m also curious to see how cryptee develops. https://crypt.ee/

Spooky23
They are going to forget about it and move on.

There’s no viable place to go that isn’t performing the same function.

privacyisntdead
I’m keeping my 12 on iOS 14 for as long as possible. Keeping an eye on this issue and their potential antitrust case.

Voting with my wallet and canceled my 2TB plan. Will not be buying any of their hardware anymore.

rdtwo
I just turned off iCloud. Mine has filled up ages ago anyway and I don’t want anything to do with it