Unfortunately, you will find iOS bad in different ways.

For example: you cannot install NoScript, or anything like it, on an iOS browser. You must choose between "all JS on" or "all JS off", and third-party browsers like Firefox are crippled because Apple forces all iOS browsers to use their WebKit engine under the hood.

The myriad of Safari "content blocker" apps are also pretty dismal, and often expensive. So ad-blocking is difficult as well.

They're better about app tracking, but you might want to keep an Android phone handy if you enjoy browsing the web.

This is what is keeping me from switching. Apple, if anyone is listening: allow a full Firefox browser on the iphone and I will switch in a heart beat

Yup, Youtube Vanced (which not only blocks ads but sponsor segments too, while iOS can barely even block the ads in a browser) and proper Firefox are the main reasons I can't consider iOS.

Yo may want to look into Newpipe

very different thing from vanced

> The myriad of Safari "content blocker" apps are also pretty dismal, and often expensive. So ad-blocking is difficult as well.

Not really. Firefox Focus is free and does a great job. Nomorobo is a call filtering service and it's $20/year, and it also does a great job of blocking ads & other objects.

ka-block does a good job and it's free.

Fun fact, Firefox Focus’ ad blocking works for all browsers. I have it installed just to block ads in Safari!

> or anything like it

You can turn JS off, which is quite similar to allowing no scripts, but more pragmatically, 1Blocker is remarkable, give it a look as one part of a phone-wide strategy. [Note: from sibling comments, you hate 1Blocker. Even so.]

Consider the iOS management profile from NextDNS along with a good set of their filter options (minimally NextDNS + AdGuard), enabling 1Blocker and learning how to tailor it, and turning on Apple’s native anti-tracking — then with all three in place enjoy browsing the web with relatively less footprint.

Firefox "Focus" browser does the trick for ad-blocking and erasing history on iOS. No tab support though.

If you install Firefox Focus, you can use its as blocking in all browsers. I use it in regular Safari. I can’t remember if this happens by default after installing Focus, but if you go to Settings - Safari - Content Blockers, you can enable/disable the Firefox Focus blocker for regular Safari.

Ad blocking works perfectly fine, wdym?

I mean that 1Blocker is terrible compared to uBlock+NoScript, and that's the best content blocker I could find after spending days researching them. Plus, it costs $3/mo or $40 for something that barely functions.

Web browsing in iOS is incredibly frustrating and privacy-unfriendly compared to Android. I recently bought an iPhone for the app tracking protection, but the difference between Safari and Firefox is like night and day.

Have you had a look at AdGuard Pro? I use it on iOS and I don’t notice any ads on the web, and it’s not really different from using UBlock Origin on Firefox in my experience.

Not sure how it compares to others, but a free option is to install Firefox Focus and enable its content blocking in regular Safari. I’m assuming since all browsers are using the same engine underneath that Firefox just installs a standard iOS content blocker and enables it for itself, but works for all browsers on iOS.

Got any recommendations for blocking youtube ads in safari?

YouTube premium subscription. Seriously - don't want ads on your services ? Pay for it.

You can use an Android phone without Google services. You don't even need root or a custom ROM for that — there's a "disable" button on the app details page of every Google app, including GSF. You can complete the initial setup fully offline, too. In case you do need Google services, but want to have a say about which and how, there's MicroG, an open-source implementation of some of the most used ones like GCM (push messaging).

You can't use an iPhone without Apple services, period. An Apple ID is a hard requirement to activate an iOS device, it literally won't let you past that screen without one. Even after you're done with that, you can only install apps from the app store, subject to that unfair, opaque approval process.

microG (a replacement for Google Play Services) includes a free and open source network location provider called UnifiedNlp:

https://github.com/microg/UnifiedNlp

UnifiedNlp allows you to choose the backends your Android device uses to determine the location, without providing any data to Google. Options include:

- Mozilla Location Services: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.microg.nlp.backend.ichna...

- Apple Location Services: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.microg.nlp.backend.apple...

- OpenCellID (offline): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.gfd.gsmlocation/

- Radiocells.org (optionally offline): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.openbmap.unifiedNlp/

- Déjà Vu (offline cache using Wi-Fi and cellular data): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fitchfamily.android.deja...

The easiest way to use microG is to switch to an Android distribution that has it preinstalled:

- CalyxOS (supports Google Pixel 2 and later): https://calyxos.org

- LineageOS for microG (supports all devices supported by LineageOS): https://lineage.microg.org

- /e/ (some overlap with LineageOS, but also supports different devices): https://e.foundation

I went through this and then realized that apple hardware is not meant for people who like to actually do things with their computers

Examples? I get plenty of work done on apple hardware and refuse any other devices for mission critical applications (daily driver devices are all Apple, because I know they’ll work, without me spending a whole day configuring it).

> do things with their computers

Do we mean "do thing to their computers"?

You can do anything you want to you computers, Apple won't send men in black after you if you open up your device(although they will make the parts impossibly hard to get ahold of). The issue is that apple won't let me execute any code I want on the phone/computer that I own, which is preventing me from doing something with my computer that I want to.

So, all the things I'm actually doing on Apple hardware I'm not really doing? Hmm...good to know. Thx.

I'm not sure what my computer has to do with my phone, from a user's perspective. I find Macs increasingly irritating and frustrating to use, but I am extremely happy with my iPhone.

Apple may protect you from Google and Facebook but it won't protect you from itself. iOS is completely closed and you can't verify if it respects your privacy. Don't trust Apple. Open source software is a fundamental requirement for privacy. GrapheneOS is one of the best alternatives.

Which phone do you recommend going with it?

GrapheneOS supports Google Pixel 2 and later, but only Google Pixel 3 and later are currently supported by vendor security updates:

https://grapheneos.org/releases

All Google Pixel phones released to date receive vendor security updates for 3 years after the release date: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705

A Pixel 4a ($349 new) would cover you until August 2023, and a Pixel 4a (5G) ($499 new) would cover you until November 2023 with better performance. The Pixel 5 is not a particularly good value for the price. Used Pixel 3, 3a, and 4 devices (along with their XL counterparts) are less expensive options with vendor support timeframes that expire sooner. The Pixel 3 and 4 (non-XL) models have poor battery life, so choose an XL model if you opt for either of those.

Thanks! Unfortunately as you note recentish Pixels are not all that great, at least last time I checked. But perhaps at the next release I might change back (I really want to), if it’s suitable. But it is a real shame that other manufacturers make it very hard to replace the OS. The one other phone family I heard great things about is the One Plus, but they may also contain firmware that gets nulled.

I'd like an iPhone except I can't sideload apps like newpipe. I can't control my phone.

I've had Nexus 4, 5, 6, and Pixel 1, 2, 3, and 4.

FYI you can install GrapheneOS on a Pixel (3rd to 5th gen)

Just looked that up, and the site describes the project as

> GrapheneOS is a privacy and security focused mobile OS with Android app compatibility

What does that mean? Is it a built-from-scratch OS with an Android compatability layer (like Blackberry 10), or is it just an indirect way of saying they’re based on Android (like Cyanognemod/Lineage OS)?

It's based on the latest Android (AOSP) + privacy/security improvements. From a UX point of view it's basically a vanilla Android without any proprietary Google code (which means no Google Play of course but you can install F-Droid). The main developer is a security researcher and many of his improvements have been accepted upstream to AOSP.

Or even more friendly, CalyxOS. Works perfectly, easy to install and very few problems in the 6 months I've been using it

On which reasonably modern/performant phones can one install them? I did bought an iphone as my latest phone, because Google-riddled android is ridiculous (even though I like the ecosystem much better. Iphones can feel like some embedded software that only allows a few possibilities), but mainly because I could not find a phone on which installing some AOSP fork is safe, won’t delete important firmware (I believe quite a few mobiles will delete proprietary camera firmware)

It's mainly on Pixel phones, ironically. Has something to do with the security chip they come with

Apple somehow found taking a privacy stance would be good for their profitability, and I hope that bet pays off. Between that and the M1, it's the first time in my life I've considered their products.

Lots of answers here on how an enthusiast can circumvent these problems on Android. I'm not going to give my mom a pinephone or custom rom, and I'm happy that there's an accessible mainstream option.

get a pinephone if you value freedom and privacy. apple ios is just as bad as android or microsoft windows

> get a pinephone if you value freedom and privacy. apple ios is just as bad as android or microsoft windows

It's not as black and white as that. Other people will have different requirements and make different tradeoffs to you.

The PinePhone is great if you value freedom, privacy, and have the time and inclination to make it work for you. Most don't, and an iOS device is a good compromise if you value privacy over freedom to run your own code. It's not perfect, but it's better than Android.

While some people can manage with a pinephone, it is not “production-ready” at all. I do own one, and I am very very thankful to all the people involved with it, but it is simply not comparable to even a low-end android phone, let alone a high-end one or an iphone.

It’s a hobby project as of yet (as even mentioned on the website). Hopefully once software matures there will come a pinephone 2 that will pack a more modern hardware and have full android app compatibility (there is no way around it, it is needed) that can be actually used as a daily driver.

The pinephone is good for privacy only because it is unpopular. It offers far, far worse security against snooping by third-party apps than iOS does.

This is provably false on every level. Android and iOS deliver plenty of telemetries to Google and Apple. Apps do plenty of surveillance as well.

iOS does very little telemetry.

But it doesn't matter. OS telemetry is the least of your problems. That much bigger threat is that of third-party apps on your phone. And the PinePhone does absolutely nothing whatsoever to deal with that threat, while iOS has a huge amount of security built to prevent this.

> And the PinePhone does absolutely nothing whatsoever to deal with that threat, while iOS has a huge amount of security built to prevent this.

Huh?

Most mobile-optimized distros offer apps through Flatpak, which gives much stronger sandboxing protections than iOS through Bubblewrap. You can block access to the network, Bluetooth, filesystem (outside the app's sandbox), GPU, accelerometer, webcam, etc. Most distros also offer SELinux and AppArmor for protections outside the sandbox. Accessing stuff from outside the sandbox (like files) is done through portals, similar to the iOS "share" dialog or file-choosing modals.

For non-technical users, all of this is enabled by default. Programs like FlatSeal let them toggle permissions on and off. Technical users can override permissions, spoof fake information, and dive into SELinux rules.

With iOS, users can't block network access from specific apps, spoof sensor data, block GPU access, etc. You're only as private as Apple thinks you need to be.

Mobian provides tenths of thousands of packages through the Debian repositories.

The amount of spyware and trackers allowed into Debian in the first place is very close to zero.

Also it provides firejail. There is no need for flatpak.

I agree that sandboxing should be decoupled from the distribution platform. Unfortunately, normal users aren't going to use bubblewrap or firejail directly until better GUI wrappers are made.

I also think that sandboxing is still a worthwhile pursuit for many FLOSS packages, since many programs--from moddable games to web browsers--run untrusted code. It also mitigates damage done by some forms of user and developer error (can't accidentally wipe a homedir if you can't access it).

It's similar to the rationale for not logging in as root unless necessary.

How is the app store on pinephone these days?