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Comment by bayindirh | Hacker News Reader

> Why is here consistently in any Apple discussion exactly this reaction?

Because the only mobile OS provider which allows blinding tracking frameworks with a single click is Apple currently, and every software vendor will want its telemetry and ads for their "monies".

The application model evolved from "pay this to get that" to "train this AI implicitly which we gonna use against you, and ah, we also sell your every aspect of you" to see cute cat GIFs.

Some of us are seriously against this and Android doesn't provide that. Maybe it's because Google is an advertisement company which provides nice looking (free-ish) utilities which also acts as nice data funnels (incl. Android).

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If you mean browsing web, the freedom I talk about allows you on Android to install Firefox and ublock origin (and other plugins), which is more privacy friendly solution in-the-box than Apple will ever allow to be installed on any Apple device. If you mean apps installed its your choice what you put on your device.

Lets not forget the stuff you (and most of us) so loathe is direction Apple is actively heading for few years via their own ad-space. Truly surreal discussion.

You can install Firefox on an iPhone

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios

Firefox on iOS is just browser chrome on top of Safari's browser engine because Apple bans all other browser and JavaScript engines on iOS.

True, but Google's own implementation of Android in the Pixel does allow you to re sign the bootloader so you can install your own OS and securely boot to it. And "Android" isn't all the same. It's a broad and shared ecosystem.

However, doing this and using a custom ROM will flat out disable SIM services menu and related functionality, which I need for my embedded e-Signature in my SIM card.

Also, we have a gatekeeper called Google Play Services. In other words, even if you have a custom ROM, you need that all-encompassing framework to have nice things.

Clients may differ, but the cloud platform and the connector which enables all these "Android" things is closed source, and controlled by Google.

Or you could have the open source microG and miss out only on Google Pay (and some bank apps that wanna validate SafetyNet for some reason). If you disable FCM / push notification support, your phone won't even need to interact with Google servers at all.

How do I install that microG thing in a Huawei Mate 50? Oh wait, I can't.

Tough luck! That said, Huawei phones don't siphon your information to Google (of course they leak it to Huawei instead :-)

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If you want to install microG super easy and are still choosing your next phone, get one supported by LineageOS: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/

Then instead of the official LineageOS build, get one from here with microG preinstalled: https://download.lineage.microg.org/

For low budget folks, a lot of Xiaomi phones are supported. You'll have to sign up for their account and wait for a few days, but otherwise the process is pretty straightforward. E. g. this is for my current phone: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ginkgo/install

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