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One reason Apple sucks


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2020 Apr 26, 5:23pm   1,120 views  23 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (55)   💰tip   ignore  

You cannot get your own photos off of your own iPhone without using iCloud or iPhoto. iCloud literally gives Apple your photos, and iPhoto is a revokable closed source piece of software which runs nowhere except on a Mac. This means Apple can prevent you from getting at your own photos unless you pay them, and that is their goal.

The polite way would be to let people mount an iPhone as a device with a filesystem you can browse from Linux or any other OS. You can do that with Android, though of course Android is Google spyware which no one should ever use because it betrays all your data to Google/NSA.

When you plug in your iPhone to a Mac and go look in the filesystem, you see /private/var/vm has been mounted, but it contains only an opaque 4G swapfile. Your photos are in there somewhere, but Apple does not want it to be easy for you to get your own data.

Apple wants you to go through a gate which they control and which they can charge you to open, or leave shut if you refuse to submit to their total control over your data.

OK, they do allow you to email out photos from the photo app, one at a time, knowing that this is also an effective wall between you and access to your own data. Are you really going to email yourself your 1,000 photos, one at a time? They are betting you won't. And they're probably right.

Still haven't forgiven Apple for removing the 1/8" headphone jack from iPhones either.

Not quite willing to throw out my iPhone and MacBook yet, but as soon as they die, definitely going to buy one of these phones:

https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

And probably one of their laptops as well.

But only as soon as I'm am certain that they do not restrict access to my own data in any way.

Comments 1 - 23 of 23        Search these comments

1   B.A.C.A.H.   2020 Apr 26, 5:40pm  

I've been emailing photos to myself, then downloading them on my windows PC. Did it yesterday. Videos are a problem, though. Can only transfer those to the Mac.
2   MisdemeanorRebel   2020 Apr 26, 5:49pm  

Pinephone shipping with LinuxOS. Cheaper model if you just want to dick around with it.

https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinephone-community-edition-ubports-limited-edition-linux-smartphone
3   Booger   2020 Apr 26, 6:47pm  

Patrick says
Still haven't forgiven Apple for removing the 1/8" headphone jack from iPhones either.


The only time I use the headphone jack is when I am using the FM radio app.
4   clambo   2020 Apr 26, 6:59pm  

I get the point, but Apple shit tends to work well.
I saw an iPhone fall off a dock in Jupiter Florida, incoming tide so clear water, a guy got a mask and fins and dove 9 or 10 feet down to retrieve it. It was intact and the owner rinsed it off in fresh water.

Re: file stuff, the Apple set up sounds like a big hassle, I use google photos on my Mexican iPhone 5 and my USA Pixel phone.
Maybe google can make some use of my photos but I don’t think I allowed it in preferences.
It might be interesting to have a file and call it “terror plans for 2020 in NYC” and see if I am contacted by some men in black.

I had a craptop I put Linux on and I like it, unfortunately I need to run tax software once per year so I need a Mac or Windows computer around.

Now I’m annoyed by how politically correct Apple is becoming, maybe it’s hopeless.
5   theoakman   2020 Apr 26, 7:01pm  

I remember when I bought the first iphone. I installed itunes. The friggin program started to take over everything. Then the ipod broke in two days and apple wanted me to pay money just to talk to someone. Ever since then, I went back to winamp and I still use the original version of winamp to this day. It takes up resources and does not spy on me. It never tried to see what i was listening to or manage my music. It's perfect.
6   Patrick   2020 Apr 26, 8:40pm  

clambo says
I had a craptop I put Linux on and I like it, unfortunately I need to run tax software once per year so I need a Mac or Windows computer around.


Use VirtualBox or some other VM. Then Windows can simply be a slave of Linux, and disappear when not required by those carefully planned dependencies which force you to use Windows.

Mac used to run in a VM, but doesn't seem possible anymore.
7   ForcedTQ   2020 Apr 26, 9:48pm  

I run windows 10 professional on my pc, have an I phone 8, and regularly connect my phone to my pc with the usb to lightning cable to browse my phones file system to archive anything multimedia that i want that I have on my phone. Using windows file explorer, no special program, just like you would any other flash drive device. Not sure what the problem is here?

Although I do feel it’s been bullshit they won’t supply an micro sd card port for file system size expansion!
8   WookieMan   2020 Apr 26, 10:39pm  

Can't you just download photos from iCloud on a desktop? Then just delete and not pay for storage? I pay for the storage because I'm lazy and it's not all that expensive for 2TB per month. I think $10? Makes life easier and I don't have my phone loaded up with full sized photos. Having kids, we take a lot more photos and it's just a hassle to manage.

I spend another ~$12-18/mo on amazon S3 storage as a secondary backup. I'm paranoid and have all my photos in 3 back ups (3rd is a physical hard drive). We lost our college years photos to a PC crash and I'm not going to risk that with my kids photos. $200-$300/yr doesn't even get noticed in the checking account at this point.
9   rigidmember   2020 Apr 27, 6:32am  

At work I just plug my phone in via usb to my laptop, open windows file explorer, find my phone, open the folders and copy out the photos to my hard drive. I believer we’re all running windows 10 but I do remember not being able to do this on earlier versions of windows though.

At home I own a Mac and hate having to import through iPhoto. Such a pain in the ass having to import to special folders within iPhoto then having to move them to other folders as needed.
10   SunnyvaleCA   2020 Apr 27, 11:53am  

Patrick,
Since you have a MacBook, connect it to the phone via (horrible, proprietary) Lightening™ cable. If iPhoto (oops, now "Photos") runs, quit the app. Then launch Image Capture.app (it's in /Applications or /Applications/Utilities). After you get through the various levels of Apple security on the phone, you should just get a whole list of all the photos and videos that you can then drag-and-drop, export, delete, etc. I just tried it here and that worked; I'm running macOS 10.14 and the latest iOS.

I'm guessing that the phone masquerades as a digital camera if connected to a computer running something other than macOS. That's what it did when I worked on it. :-) However, you'll still probably have to authenticate in some way for security reasons.
12   just_passing_through   2020 May 9, 12:20pm  

https://www.rossmanngroup.com/

Louis Rossmann has some fantastic youtube videos that shred Apple and their BS 'Genius Bars'.

Here is one:

www.youtube.com/embed/AVL65qwBGnw
13   SunnyvaleCA   2020 May 9, 3:34pm  

Apple gives novice users some basic tools, such as Photos.app (previously iPhoto). Plus there are some basic low-level tools that can be put together into more expert workflows. Anyway, for Patric's needs, quit Photos.app and run Image Capture.app . Or, in Windows, I think the phone might mount as a standard "camera" periferal. Hope this helps!

I agree with Jazz above. Yeah, amazing! However, Apple under Tim Cook has 3x the stock price, so I can't complain too much, though. :-). One of the best feature of Steve Jobs is how well he stayed out of politics.
14   SunnyvaleCA   2020 May 9, 7:19pm  

At least macOS ships with python, bash, emacs, gcc, gdb, etc. installed. Hey, I see both yacc and bison! Way better than Windows. Amazing how the tides have turned. Windows is now the proprietary system with non-standard tools.
15   HeadSet   2020 May 10, 6:54am  

At least macOS ships with python, bash, emacs, gcc, gdb, etc.

If you are that much of a power user to these tools, why not use Linux as your OS?
16   SunnyvaleCA   2020 May 10, 1:13pm  

HeadSet says
At least macOS ships with python, bash, emacs, gcc, gdb, etc.

If you are that much of a power user to these tools, why not use Linux as your OS?
If you buy the right motherboard and video card, getting macOS running isn't much harder than getting Linux running. After that, I can't think of much downside of macOS over Linux. What does Linux do that is so much better than macOS other than (potentially) the install experience?
17   Dholliday126   2020 May 10, 2:09pm  

Bailed on apple products two years ago, went samsung/android, have never been happier. Holy shit itunes was fucking horrible.
18   Blue   2020 May 10, 2:12pm  

SunnyvaleCA says
HeadSet says
At least macOS ships with python, bash, emacs, gcc, gdb, etc.

If you are that much of a power user to these tools, why not use Linux as your OS?
If you buy the right motherboard and video card, getting macOS running isn't much harder than getting Linux running. After that, I can't think of much downside of macOS over Linux. What does Linux do that is so much better than macOS other than (potentially) the install experience?

Once I tried to install macos on virtualbox with no success. The host was ubuntu os.
19   HeadSet   2020 May 10, 3:30pm  

If you buy the right motherboard and video card, getting macOS running isn't much harder than getting Linux running.

I thought that macOS was only available with Apple hardware. I was thinking there is no point to pay for that if are running open source software that can run fine on Linux.
20   FuckTheMainstreamMedia   2020 May 10, 3:49pm  

You can email or text several photos at a time as well as video.
21   georgeliberte   2020 May 11, 7:31am  

I refuse to use Itunes Store and back up the Itunes Library on my laptop on my external hard drive; and burn Cd copies of albums I like. A-any-rate, Itunes is user hostile and allows very little user editing of libraries. Lastly I will be damned if I am going to turn over ownership of my music library for free and later pay them to use it each time.
22   Patrick   2020 May 11, 7:59am  

HeadSet says
If you buy the right motherboard and video card, getting macOS running isn't much harder than getting Linux running.

I thought that macOS was only available with Apple hardware. I was thinking there is no point to pay for that if are running open source software that can run fine on Linux.


It used to be possible to run Mac OS in some kind of VM container on Linux, but somehow Apple prevents that now.
23   SunnyvaleCA   2020 May 11, 11:52am  

HeadSet says
I thought that macOS was only available with Apple hardware.

If "available" means "sold as a bundled package of hardware and OS together," then you are correct. I would have thought this group of posters would know all about "Hackintoshing." Oh well. https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/building-a-customac-hackintosh-the-ultimate-buyers-guide/

As for iTunes being a mess, I absolutely agree. I use nice, convenient, DRM-free CDs. My music is 250+ years old; I can wait an additional 5 to 10 days for the CD to arrive (often $5 or less from eBay). I haven't taken a look at Music.app (I think it's called that) that replaces iTunes in macOS 10.15. I think they've redone it and removed all the non-music stuff. I hope they have a way of reverting it all the way back to pre-store days of 2002.

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