Weird how things that the manufacturer would consider insecurities, eg unlocked bootloader, allow end users the kind of control that can increase security and privacy (admittedly, maybe conflating privacy and security). Highlighting the disconnect between industry security and user interest (even though users, by and large, aren't interested in their own interests).
I realize there's a theoretical risk the OS could be compromised or malware could have superuser permissions, but my previous attempts to find any significant data breaches or user harm caused that way have come up empty. If anybody knows of one, I'd be interested to read about it.
What are you attempting to protect me from then SafetyNet? Oooh, I get it, you're trying to protect apps created by companies that collect and store sensitive data to minimise the chances of said companies being sued for, and having to publicise, a data breach. Ok, why didn't you just say that? Yeah, you're right, it doesn't play anywhere near as well to the great unwashed.
SafetyNet sounds like shit to me:
> requires Google Play Services to be enabled on the device for the API to function smoothly.
> SafetyNet works in combination with the snet service on Android devices which collects data about the integrity of the device and constantly ping Google about the safety status of the device.
> Google offers many other options like application sandboxing, encryption, app-based permissions and so on to secularize apps but none of them are considered as an all-inclusive solution.
(GPS permissions required for wifi scanning? Fix your basic shit first!)
> By identifying devices which are currently in the non-tampered state the API provides an assurance that the device on which the app is running is neither rooted nor using a custom ROM.
(cough Magisk cough)
Above excerpted from an article admittedly with rose-coloured glasses view of the subject: https://www.hexnode.com/blogs/safetynet-android-security/
I don't use my phone for banking, but I do have a crypto wallet that refuses to run on a rooted device, but Magisk solved that for me.
For the cookie thing you can just install “I don’t care about cookies”
Tapping adds apparently lead to installing these things called "Launcher" which are essentially complete phone UI and those launchers have ads that lead to even more hideous apps. They also lie about the thing you are installing, she was trying to get some emojis and I checked back then, the launcher in question was disguised as emoji thingy. You need to carefully read the text to understand that you get the emojis together with complete phone UI replacement.
I can't stand the Android way of doing things. How it is possible to replace the main user interface of the device? I understand the desire to completely control your device and I do support it in principle but this sort of modifications should be possible only by going through scary screens that let only people know what they do achieve that sort of device modifications.
It's a general-purpose computer like a PC, not an appliance like a game console. That's not for everyone, I guess.
But she always had problems with her private laptop, and no assistant or IT department to fix it. We thought she needed a windows one because that is what she knew, but the switch to a macbook air took maybe a week or so to adjust to.
It was a bit of a gamble, since I don't own a mac so supporting one via phone would be very tricky. But she has had the macbook now for years and I've had to do absolutely zero tech support on it. For emails, Word documents and some web browsing it really just works.
I think he gives Apple credit for how fast his internet is, when really it’s due to Brave. But the rest of the experience— no crap ware, no spyware, no ads in the system— that’s on Apple.
Edit: forgot the main point, which is that he needed no handholding. Given how often he had to replace his crapware-ridden netbooks in the past decade due to performance degradation or something physically breaking, I showed him the trivial math that made the MacBook look like an economic decision as much as a QoL decision.
My dad’s life is made easier with a MacBook Air + iPhone combo because all his 2FA SMS codes get auto inputted into the 2FA field so he does not have to type out the number.
It greatly irritates me that Apple is sharing profile information with Netflix. I have never used Netflix on my iPhone and don't even have the app installed. Worse, no matter how many times I respond to the notification, my account keeps getting suspended. I never had a Netflix problem before the iPhone.
So, giving up and buying an expensive Apple device does not protect you from life.
P.S. Please don't try to educate me on HN to recognize the difference between a system notification and a scam text message.
> It greatly irritates me that Apple is sharing profile information with Netflix
That’s not a thing.
Advocating that buying expensive Apple products saves you from vampires is also a scam.
You're slaying a strawman here; no one claimed iPhones stop phishing, or meteors, or any number of other things.
The (correct) claim was that people on Android sometimes get their devices compromised in ways that aren't possible on an iPhone.
I personally believe that some sites are designed to shift just a bit to cause this. Like they've used analytics to know how quickly people push the link and now they've designed a slow loading image to shift the page at that point.
I have yet to see one
Complete and utter failure on Google's part.
Whenever I use a new platform with a new UI paradigm, I’m a little like that too.
Even first time on fresh iOS I installed a “lite” app with ads that was definitely not what I thought it was.
It's one reason why Apple phones still do really well on the secondhand market.
My parents both had Android tablets (Samsung iirc), but they didn't use them for very long, switched to iPads, and used them at the dinner table for years afterwards - just checking news, playing games, that kind of thing.
My dad bought a laptop the other day to play games and watch F1 with - at least the pre-installed shit wasn't too bad. Still had to talk him out of getting both AVG and some other virus scanner though, that would've bogged his system down and make him lose trust, because virus scanners these days are scareware - that is, if they don't pop up every once in a while pretending to be useful, people will get rid of them.
Apple products UX is so much better than anything currently available on the market, but its slowly eroding due to lack of Steve Jobs.
He had a huge drive to make perfect UX. Newer designers lack this and you can just feel it from how new versions of iOS look like.
And how new iphones design is just small changes or bigger screen. They no longer have that spark like they used to with Jobs.
RIP Steve, visioners are not looked upon kindly.
And it looks like their laptops actually found the path again.
Sometimes Apple products just have these really nice touches. Other times, it infuriates me where the gaps are. I have two garage doors that I've HomeKit enabled and if I tell Siri "close the garage door" I get asked which one, even if only one is open. Even if I say "close both garage doors" or "close all garage doors" I still get prompted.
The UI of Nova Launcher on my S21 is so much more intuitive than Apple. Apple does everything through swipes. Swipes suck for several reasons, one of them being that I must swipe certain positions at certain speeds to get everything done. I miss buttons. Related: After two weeks of owning an iPhone 14, I was complaining about how I can't move my cursor in the URL field. It just kept highlighting words! My friend told me the super-intuitive iOS experience: hold down Spacebar to move your cursor. I'm glad that was covered in the non-existent tutorial.
Then there are the anxiety inducing badges, the fact that settings is an app instead of a system menu, the fact that control center (or whatever the system drop down is) can't have nearly the function of Android's system drop down, the fact that notification center doesn't feel trustworthy or consistent, the fact that notification center shows me notifications from blacklisted apps even in focus mode...
Android's UI just makes so much more fucking sense. And I hate that I am tempted now to go back to my S21 with inferior camera and DAC/bluetooth stack just to have software that makes sense.
I acknowledge this is a rant and not as well put-together as most of my comments, but effing Hell, iOS is a mixed bag.
Apple products do well on the second-hand market because Apple usually doesn’t cannibalize that market by selling low-end devices. By positioning themselves as a premium brand and ensuring that the low end of the market is not served with new products, they ensure that the low end will be served by the second-hand market. PC/Android can’t do this because they don’t control the hardware and there’s always some brand that will sell new low-end devices which compare favorably to any used device.
In the few cases where Apple has deviated from this strategy of not serving the low end, resale values have suffered. The iPhone 8 and iPhone X were released at basically the same time. But the X currently sells for roughy 25% of its original price whereas the 8 sells for closer to 15%. This is due to the introduction of the SE which is basically just a cheaper and better 8.
An iPhone XS (from 2018) has the single-core performance of the most expensive 1000$+ non-Apple phone you can find.
iPhone 11 (from 2019) is still unbeaten.
iPhone 8 and X will still have a much more powerful CPU than most phone models on sale today.
Thankfully I was able to copy off the pictures, and I bought her a Pixel 4a, installed a tempered glass screen protector and thin/minimal TPU case, went through the settings with her, and even showed her screenshots of more user-friendly third party launchers. She opted to keep the default launcher, and it's been smooth sailing since. (I also installed Firefox and uBlock Origin on it.)
Be careful what you wish for. For many power users, overlays and replacing the default browser are 100% essential. Removing them just for the sake of user safety would be a grave mistake.
Google is already pushing to replace overlays with "bubbles" for example.
Yes.
Firefox for Android has AdBlock plus support now. The browser itself is somewhat slower than chrome on Android but totally worth it for the ad blocker.
For YouTube there is YouTube Premium or NewPipe.
It’s usually not even “expensive” when you consider the frequency with which people replace low-end hardware. All of my Android-using relatives replace their phones and tablets 2-3 times more frequently so they end up paying more for slower hardware and then having to spend time playing tech support instead of using their devices.
To be clear, that’s not Android’s fault in the sense that the market is broken: Apple is fine with you having a 6 year old device because you’re probably using the App Store, iCloud, Apple Music, etc. There’s also some lesson about how consumers want the ability to install things outside of the App Store but statistically a large fraction of us can’t do that safely.
I got all of my older relatives and in-laws to buy one (eventually) and they've been 99% problem free ever since. With Androids it was even worse than trying to get their "got it from the store on sale" Windows-laptops cleaned up.
My mother is on her second iPhone SE, she used the first one until it didn't get software updates (5 years IIRC). If everything goes as usual, she'll be using it until 2025.
How is a $400 device that lasts seven years more expensive than even $200 budget Androids that have to get replaced every two years?
After 2 months (!) she came to me with the phone. Somehow she now had ads on her lockscreen, her default browser was hijacked by some other browser app with ads, and multiple apps had persistent notifications and were running continuously. Among them AVG anti-virus, some cleanup tool...
I have no idea how they got there. Probably because they pop-up in Ads with texts like "YOU NEED TO INSTALL THIS".
My grandma can't differentiate between an Ad like that and a serious System update notification.
It's stuff like this that leads people to just "give up" and buy an expensive Apple device. For all their faults at least they protect you from this kind of nonsense. The Lenovo is just the same, really. A profound disrespect for their own users and the usability of their own product.