Mega-kudos to the author for chipping away at the wall around Apple’s garden.
I have had a iPhone for 15 years, and I have only ever been able to back it up with iTunes on windows (as I will never buy a Mac).
Apple’s refusal to provide interoperability borders on criminal. I wish there was a better option.
Have a look at https://github.com/libimobiledevice/libimobiledevice and iOS backup projects that are based on it.
Or idevice [0] (the one I prefer), or go-ios [1], or pymobiledevice3 [2]
[0]: https://github.com/jkcoxson/idevice
[1]: https://github.com/danielpaulus/go-ios
[2]: https://github.com/doronz88/pymobiledevice3
Over the years, I have tried to make that solution work, but it never ever went smoothly.
Maybe it’s time to try it again, but it’s an arms race from what I remember. Apple just keeps changing things; if you’re on the latest iOS version, it was unlikely to work. Has that changed?
Since you are dead-set against getting a Mac, why don't you move to Android? It seems like a better fit as Apple's whole thing is about continuity between their own devices, which obviously will not work for you.
> why don't you move to Android?
Because I trust Google even less than Apple (and a de-Googled phone would not be useful to me).
> their own devices
Sure! Apple can do whatever they want with their devices. But when they sell them to people, it’s no longer theirs.
People are (IMHO rightfully) not happy with a general computing device not being open.
Societies are pushing back against this practice through legal means, which is good!
The best part is if people want to stay inside whatever ecosystem, they can! It can be opt-in to enable developer mode to do what you can already do on any desktop PC.
If you want to lock down gran and gramps iphone (or PC for that matter), you can! Make an admin account and have them use an account with less privileges.
We can have the best of all worlds. An integrated ecosystem. Security. User computing rights.
I'm shouting into the wind here a fair amount, but I just discovered DeltaChat and ArcaneChat. ArcaneChat is available only on Android, but DeltaChat is available on iOS and uses chatmail relays. My family has found it to be super useful and effective. I don't think it's viable to convert everybody in my social circle, but I've been very happy with the apps and attachments, notifications, and general performance.
https://chatmail.at/
I'm considering running my own chatmail relay, although I haven't tried that yet.
DeltaChat was much more useful when it worked with any email server and didn't need its own special kind of server. We have plenty of messengers that use their own servers, like matrix, XMPP, and simplex.
Didn't know they stopped working with regular email servers, that is a huge letdown. I'm guessing this was quite recent?
That was their one big plus and while I avoided it because of PGP, this means that it really has no upside over XMPP for me.
I appreciate the simplicity of hosting ChatMail versus a regular mail server. It's simpler, lighter weight, and better suited for the chat use case. It's basically the ideal messaging platform for my needs.
It defeats the selling point of DeltaChat. You may as well use XMPP or Matrix.
I use DeltaChat just by myself to share things between devices. Not really the intended purpose but it's good enough for me!
Pixel is nice, in my opinion better than iOS, and more open for now
Especially with GrapheneOS
Doesn’t interoperability work two(Windows)-three(Linux) ways?
You could stop using iMessage and iCloud.
Green bubbles, WhatsApp, Signal, etc. are not an option for a lot of people. I don't get it either.
Because techies on average aren't socially popular enough to get anybody to make any effort to msg them on a better platform.
Speak for yourself
Ok! I don't use iMessage because people I want to talk to are happy to install a new app to do so. :)
What is the problem with green bubbles? I don't get it. Doesn't it just mean the other person is not using an Apple device?
If you really want blue bubbles, use Signal, the default color is blue.
Apple's green bubbles are low contrast and hard to read, on purpose.
For years it meant fewer features and frustrating experiences in group chats.
Kids liked renaming group chats and liking/reacting to individual messages, and sending higher-res photos, and one "green bubble" participant nerfed the whole chat for everyone.
In spite of Apple knowing kids got bullied over this, meh, money. Thankfully this has now been just about fixed (depending on which Android version/carrier someone has), so green bubble stigma should be on its way out [eventually].
Firmly believe no one ever actually cared about the color.
How has it been fixed? It's still just Apple parsing the messages that came through like so and so reacted with some emoji to some message, and then attaching it to that message. But then this doesn't work with reacting to attachments like photos as it doesn't know which photo was reacted to.
RCS messages still show as green bubbles. I'm sure kids will still be bullied for it even if group chats didn't degrade.
All of these problems could be avoided if iMessage was cross-platform or if people just used something else. Nobody is being forced to use iMessage
What is there to get? Some people just don’t want to use other services. Period.
Not sure why people having their own subjective views and preferences is such a hard concept to grasp.
That's not what's hard to understand. It's choosing to exclusively use iMessage knowing that not everyone can use it. And then shifting your social circle based on one company's decision to not support it on other platforms.
That’s simply not true.
I know people who have iPhones just for FaceTime because young and old non-techies use those a lot.
I’ve gotten my close friends onto Signal but there are still always 3-4 group chats where that isn’t possible.
> I’ve gotten my close friends onto Signal but there are still always 3-4 group chats where that isn’t possible.
I'm sure it's possible for them to use Signal but some people are unreasonably stubborn.
Or leave the walled garden entirely. GrapheneOS has all the same stuff.
GrapheneOS hardware options are substantially behind iOS hardware options. Also Graphene is somewhat annoying to use; I missed shots bc the camera app didn’t open fast enough.
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Because they provide a platform. Platforms are not normal products. Once a product becomes a platform, the rules should change to force interoperability. This should be true no matter the product or technology.
Nobody's asking Apple to provide anything. We just want them to stop sending cease and desists to developers who do provide said thing.
They don't have to add support. All they need is APIs and documentation.
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No it's not.
Do you think it costs nothing to provide stable APIs and write documentation?
No. Why would I think that?
You mean the same Apple, who supports RCS, and historically supported open protocols?
As to iMessage, think carefully about the architecture, and maybe you can imagine why it is Apple only.
As a fanboy I can admit rcs came with them kicking and screaming against it.
didn't it take legal threats from the EU to ultimately make it happen?
Yeah, and I’ve yet to make any use of this feature. Nice to have, but let’s not pretend RCS is that big of a deal in any way.