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Comment by teekert | Hacker News Reader

I'm thinking of going from android to iPhone for privacy reasons. But, whenever I hold an iPhone that list of notification puts me off, in android they are grouped, meaning 3 new exchange mails is 1 notification, I can pull on the notification to expand the 3 and then even more for every email. Short replies can be done inline in the notification even. I use that constantly. You can also swipe away a notification group. In iOS apparently everything is one notification, that really increases the amount of work handling them significantly.

I did try google-less Lineage [0], but it's pain. Installing and keeping apps up to date is more work and some apps don't have notifications.

So for now I'm on lineage with the nano Gapps package.

I am curious though, with android I can easily ssh into my server, and make tunnels (use it as proxy), use vnc etc. Can you also do that with iOS?

[0] https://lineage.microg.org/

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I don't see how Apple is better with privacy. I get it's a big part of their marketing, but it's.... marketing. Phone still comes with siri, with apps you can't remove, with location tracking. Apple cloud is, as all clouds, you giving away your data to Apple, so you end up having to trust them blindly.

I know it's not part of their business model so far, but they still collect and own a lot of your data.

As long as a phone comes with apps you can't remove (either if it is from google, apple or whatever manufacturer), I don't see how it can be trusted.

Apple is "better with privacy" because Apple's model is to have you pay for things with your money instead of with your personal data.

If you really have a difficult time distinguishing any difference between Apple's and Google's business models, I don't know how to even begin explaining to you.

I'm not speaking about business model but about privacy. That's two totally different subjects. I agree on the business model part, but it doesn't make apple better than google on privacy. Apple still own a lot of your data gathered through the app installed.

So don't use anything, ever, then.

If you want to use a smartphone, you basically get to decide who you trust more with the device that holds a lot of your digital life: Apple or Google. I know how Apple makes its money, and I know how Google makes its money. This makes the decision very, very easy.

Your argument basically is "yeah, I know one of these companies is already actively exploiting my data for profit and the other isn't, but hypothetically they might some day in the future so that means they're indistinguishable from each other today". Which makes it close to impossible to treat you as arguing honestly and in good faith.

I use neither of those and host my own services, but I know I'm a control freak on that.

My point is that an object that you don't control can't be trusted for privacy, that's all. Both iphones and stock android phone fits in this category, you don't control any of those.

Edit : If Apple change it's business model and decide to use the data gathered, what do you do? It's exactly the problem of privacy, having control of the data you consider private. Controlling data over time is a really important part.

Apple probably made like $500 selling me an iPhone X. If they sell my data, I won't buy another one. I guess I'm stuck trusting capitalism in that I think Apple would rather keep making $500 every couple years than $50 once.

They sold your data to Google.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/google-paying-apple-3-billio...

BTW you undercut your own point because neither Apples not Google's phones are free. And Apple's services - Siri, iCloud, Mail, etc are free.

What? You can completely disable siri, remove almost all apps (excluding phone, clock and stuff like that) and completely disable location tracking. Also, you can use it without logging into icloud, or disable sync.

You can do exactly the same on an android phone packed with google apps (I'm not sure if you can pass the login process without a google account though), but by default it's not like this. In both situation, the apps aren't really removed if I'm not mistaken.

If I'm also not mistaken, you have the obligation to use the apple store to install app, so the app you are using are tracked. Even installing an app can give some very personal information (depending on the app of course).

I use an app called Blink (http://www.blink.sh/) on iOS to manage servers on the move, has mosh support as well for areas with spotty cell service.

I have yet to try Blink. I find it somewhat expensive. Panic makes a cheaper (SSH only) app : https://panic.com/prompt/

Termius is free and has mosh support: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/termius/id549039908?mt=8

It offers in-app purchases for some subscription feature (https://www.termius.com/pricing ) but I've never needed or wanted them.

You can compile Blink yourself and sideload it in Xcode.

https://github.com/blinksh/blink

I've been a Panic Prompt user for as long as it's been out, but it's always left me missing something. I wasn't aware of Blink, but plan on checking it out now.

iOS lets you reply inline on messages.

Grouping notifications is something that iOS can do, but it's up to the app to do it and most don't.

I don't see why you couldn't SSH into your server with the right iOS app. Not sure how easy it will be to use it as a proxy, but there are VPN apps on iOS so I imagine it's possible.

> I don't see why you couldn't SSH into your server with the right iOS app. Not sure how easy it will be to use it as a proxy, but there are VPN apps on iOS so I imagine it's possible.

Prompt by Panic is the best one I've tried; I run most of my sessions inside tmux, so they persist on disconnect.

iOS won't let an app keep a socket open very long once it's out of the foreground. (In generally backgrounding on iOS is unreliable. It's a double-edged sword: it keeps rogue or badly written apps from burning down your battery.) People who do a lot of SSHing generally use something like screen on a remote host.

(Actually, using something like Blink and mosh seems like a better idea. See some of the comments below.)

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