Apple's famous walled garden is starting to show cracks

Re:Apple's famous walled garden is starting to show cracks by AnthonyMouse on Monday January 14, 2019 @03:09AM (#18901478)

If you're worried about updates you can get an Android One phone for $199 which is guaranteed to get updates for at least three years.

And a $749 phone is faster than a $199 one, sure, but it also costs $550 more, which is the whole issue. That's real money to most people.

> As a bonus, my phone isn’t running an operating system made by a privacy invading ad company.

This is kind of a silly complaint when it's open source and anyone can modify it however they like. Especially with Apple pushing Apple ID and iCloud as if sending all your data to them is completely different.

If you're legitimately concerned about this then rather than Apple your vendor is Purism.

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Re:Apple's famous walled garden is starting to show cracks by scarface74 on Monday January 14, 2019 @05:51AM (#18902098)

This is kind of a silly complaint when it's open source and anyone can modify it however they like.

Most of what makes Android what it is are the closed sourced Google Play Services and you still require closed source binary drivers.

iCloud is easily disabled. But I was shocked to find out when I looked at my dad’s Google account that Google recorded every time he opened any app on his phone. Apple doesn’t make money from my user data.

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Re:Apple's famous walled garden is starting to show cracks by AnthonyMouse on Monday January 14, 2019 @12:29PM (#18904626)

> Most of what makes Android what it is are the closed sourced Google Play Services and you still require closed source binary drivers.

This trade off is inherent. If you want a map service that lets you bring up a map of your current location without first downloading a map of the entire world, you have to send your location to the place that sends you the relevant portion of the map. But you get to choose -- you can use Google Maps, or you can install one of the OSM apps that actually downloads the whole map and can operate offline. You can install apps from Google Play or you can install them some other way.

You can carve Google out of Android, and then it's worse, in much the same way that iOS is worse without iCloud and the App Store. Except that if you want to use F-Droid or Amazon instead of Google, on Android you can and on iOS you can't.

And closed source drivers are lame, but I don't see Apple providing driver source either, and presumably the drivers are not sending your data to a third party in any case.

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Re:Apple's famous walled garden is starting to show cracks by scarface74 on Monday January 14, 2019 @06:44PM (#18907663)

Without iCloud, you just can’t sync between devices and get untethered backups. But you can still backup your device from your computer.

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Re:Apple's famous walled garden is starting to show cracks by AnthonyMouse on Tuesday January 15, 2019 @02:54AM (#18909463)

And what is the equivalent of F-Droid for iOS? What's the alternative to Apple's App Store?

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Re:Apple's famous walled garden is starting to show cracks by scarface74 on Monday January 14, 2019 @12:09PM (#18904479)

That's a guaranteed two years. Not three.

https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/features/story/google-p...

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Re:Apple's famous walled garden is starting to show cracks by AnthonyMouse on Monday January 14, 2019 @03:16PM (#18906072)

"Monthly security updates to be supported for at least 3 years after initial phone release."

https://www.android.com/one/

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Re:Apple's famous walled garden is starting to show cracks by scarface74 on Monday January 14, 2019 @06:40PM (#18907638)

There is a difference between “OS updates” and “security updates”. You get both with iOS and currently for the 5+ year old iPhone 5s.

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Re:Apple's famous walled garden is starting to show cracks by AnthonyMouse on Tuesday January 15, 2019 @03:46AM (#18909705)

Or you could get lifetime updates with a Librem 5, which could also presumably run the latest Android indefinitely as well.

Hopefully the entire concept of needing OEM or carrier involvement to update your OS will be dead soon.

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Re:Apple's famous walled garden is starting to show cracks by scarface74 on Tuesday January 15, 2019 @05:44AM (#18910203)

And then not get any compatibility with apps that require Google Play Services or get updated to the closed source parts of Android that Google includes....

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Re:Apple's famous walled garden is starting to show cracks by AnthonyMouse on Wednesday January 16, 2019 @11:20AM (#18922121)

Google Play isn't built in to LineageOS or similar, but you can still install it if you actually want it.

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