Maybe check out PinePhone if you're interested in hacking something together!
Understandable, if Apple's claim on Privacy is to be trusted, then it does seem to be a better alternative to android when it comes to privacy; But for a power user android ecosystem offers more without rooting, is not dependent upon 'trust on a company alone' and there's no separate power-user level ecosystem for iOS without jailbreaking.
e.g.
• AOSP, so there's LineageOS as aftermarket alternative, /e/ with e foundation phone or Fairphone, dozens of other alternatives.
• Firewall VPN for android are more refined e.g. Netguard (open-source) even allows selective blocking of connections per address/ per app; this is the closest thing to Little Snitch on macOS.
• Tasker allows automation to such an extent that, several things which required writing apps can now be performed by creating tasks. Tasker is Siri shortcuts on steroids without Siri.
But can’t those basically be considered part of the operating system at this point? I can’t disable Apple frameworks on my iPhone either. Mind, iOS of course does less user tracking.
That's exactly why I switched because the idea that I can't disable Play Services is bonkers. It does look like MicroG (open-source replacement) is maturing a lot recently though!
> I can’t disable Apple frameworks on my iPhone either. Mind, iOS of course does less user tracking.
Apple makes their money up front by me purchasing the device. That's why they're expensive. They are a hardware company.
Whenever you use an iOS feature for the first time, you are prompted with a privacy policy statement that is presented in both a summary and a long form to be read before you click agree. And they have an icon that they show you whenever data will leave your device.
With them being the forward about it, I trust it way more.
If you don't believe me, go and read this[0] privacy policy on (arguably) the creepiest feature that Apple provides you (Siri).
Some quotes from it:
> Siri Data is associated with a random, device generated identifier. This random identifier is not linked to your Apple ID, email address, or other data Apple may have from your use of other Apple services.
> Siri Data and your requests are not used to build a marketing profile, and are never sold to anyone.
That immediately hits me differently from Google's policy (I read it a long while ago now), and it makes me view Apple with enough of a positive light to make the ecosystem jump.
Apple also charges 30% of much of your software and content purchases, and the hardest isn't particularly expensive relative to similar competitor hardware.
Ah, yeah. That's a good point!
> the hardest(hardware) isn't particularly expensive relative to similar competitor hardware.
Their margins are higher though because they are more vertically integrated. Especially on the higher end phones, they make serious $
so what /e/ is doing is essentially an audit of android, and an attempt to remove everything that is of concern.
it's a major project, and it's not complete. work in progress.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
So if you use their cloud services, both Apple and Google have access to your photos, but Apple has access to all of your whatsapp and signal conversations, while Google does not (if you decide to password protect your backups).
And you have to use iCloud if you want to keep your 3rd party chat history safe, unless you jailbreak to extract it from the file system.
iMessage is of course purposefully flawed to allow for MITM.
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...
I would love to know how many subscribers of Google Music have they lost during this transition to YouTube music. Not that I think Google actually cares, and seeing how big companies BS themselves from inside, they probably sooth themselves with "it is temporary", "we will catch up on features", "they will come back".
With Apple One now being announced, I am investigating if I can move everything there, but keep my Android phone for now.
I have a Pinephone and hope that sooner then later that I can use it full time.
The YouTube Music app is not that bad, but definitely missing a feature or three that I used a lot on Play. It also seems to need to be manually started every time my phone connects to Bluetooth whereas Play would start automatically if it was the last thing that was playing on that BT connection.
I switched to Spotify and I'm glad I did.
The problem is barely Google. The problem are the Apps you download and giving full permissions.