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chasiltoday at 2:59 PM5 repliesview on HN

I bought a cheap, used iPhone SE3 because I needed to Facetime relatives.

I learned quickly that "Find My" was far superior in remote tracking of airtag-equivalents, and switched some of my convertible tags to their network.

I flew out of O'Hare last month, and there were advertisements all over the airport announcing that Illinois id/drivers license import into Apple Wallet, so I did it, and that works.

Supposedly, passports can be imported. I haven't been able to make that work, even after a few hours on the phone with Apple.

I also added a new CTA Ventra card, and I lost my ATM card while out of the country and instantly added a new one to Apple Wallet.

Apple devices allow biometrics to be disabled for unlocking the phone. That is an important requirement for me to use these features.

I would never, ever trust Google with any of these things. Ever.

That being said, if I want to run a torrent client on my phone, I should be able to do so. Apple will never allow that.

If I want a Bourne/POSIX shell, I should be able run one. Apple will never allow that [AFAIK].

There are important reasons that Apple products will never, ever be my primary communication devices.


Replies

The_Presidenttoday at 6:48 PM

To add on... No ability to firewall their iOS devices leaves use of the network vulnerable. Siri and other unkillable daemons always running. My favorite is when the cpu fan "stopped working" on an old A1278 after an update. Turns out that was just a change in the fan profile so the machine would cook first before the fan would wheeze out a puff of effort.

Rohansitoday at 3:22 PM

> I would never, ever trust Google with any of these things. Ever.

Why do you trust Apple with them? What guarantees Apple will not do evil?

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genthreetoday at 3:12 PM

> That being said, if I want to run a torrent client on my phone, I should be able to do so. Apple will never allow that.

> If I want a Bourne/POSIX shell, I should be able run one. Apple will never allow that [AFAIK].

I believe you can accomplish the latter (via an emulator) with “ish”, and then use that to accomplish the former (with e.g. rtorrent)

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NegativeLatencytoday at 3:13 PM

Depending on your definition of shell there are some: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/a-shell/id1473805438

JollySharp0today at 3:44 PM

You traded convenience for control. That is how all these big companies lock you in.