I love how their blog posts say so much and so little at the same time - almost like they’ve been generated by a an LLM lmfao. I read the blog post and still couldn’t find out on what data their model is trained on.

It’s a joke. Apps have defined permissions already allowed on install and some of them have too many things set to allow like home or host access. Also, changing any permission requires restarting the app. It’s heading in the right direction, but it has a looooong way to go to catch up with macOS, let alone Android and iOS.

macOS has nailed it*, even though it’s still not as good as iOS or Android, but leagues and bounds better than Windows and especially Linux.

ETC: *sandboxing/permission system

You’re welcome!

Ente is great if you need a drop-in Google Photos replacement that is open-source, E2EE, externally audited and private. It’s the perfect solution for families tbh. Switched to it like two weeks ago and it’s been great so far.

Because they’ve been caught killing people in Gaza based on their affiliations to group chats on WhatsApp.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240418-israel-using-metas-whatsapp-to-kill-palestinians-in-gaza-through-ai-system/

https://www.arabnews.com/node/2495816/media

https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/1/131708/Meta-challenged-over-accusations-of-helping-Israel-identify-war-targets

Here!

https://protonvpn.com/blog/apple-ios-vulnerability-disclosure/

https://mullvad.net/en/help/using-mullvad-app-on-ios#vulnerabilities

Those remain unpatched btw and have been around since iOS 14 or so.

Apple Translate is pretty decent if your language(s) of choice is/are supported.

Even in the EU, everything is still WebKit and will remain WebKit for the time being, until Apple changes their policy to make this change worldwide. I doubt any developers would put in the time to maintain two browsers like that.

There is also the possibility that some governments would crack down on encryption much more than they already do if E2EE was on by default.

I don‘t know where you read their call to monitoring chats. They‘re requesting making spamming others harder and requiring more steps.

This doesn’t address the issue I pointed out with recommending people switch away from Firefox.

Have you tried registering an account through the Tor browser? If they banned you on that as well, then that’s either creepy as hell, or something is wrong with your setup.

Anything that says their website is broken because Firefox is automatically discredited in my book, especially when they recommend switching away from it.

In addition to all of the arguments brought up by the other commenters against Brave’s blatant lies in this ad, Firefox is deployed in school/corporate environments where compatibility is critical - especially for a web engine that isn’t popular, so they can’t be going around enabling stuff that would break websites on people’s computers in a critical setting, for example during a lesson at school and in front of students.

Mozilla is flawed, but Brave Software is at best just as bad. At least Mozilla isn’t going around spreading absolute lies about competitors.

I keep reading that Google’s search results are supposedly much better than DDG’s when my experience is the exact opposite. I don’t even live in an English speaking country and the results I get are a vast improvement over Google’s. It has been this way for me since at least last year, but in my experience DDG had caught up to Google in 2022 already. It could also be that Google has just deteriorated a lot in the last two years (which it definitely has, judging by all the bad publicity they’ve been getting for it), so I’d urge you to give DDG/Brave Search/Bing/Kagi/SearxNG another chance.

I’d also recommend setting an alternative of your choice as the default everywhere and to use it exclusively for like a week before making up your mind about that specific product!

I already use KDE Connect to exchange files with my Linux laptop and it’s not the best, but it’s good enough for the occasional thing.

Steam is not a solution IMO because it locks you in just as much as Apple while being clunky and giving you the illusion of choice. And it’s only for games. Family sharing on Apple products is more than games. If you’ve bought apps or subscriptions, you can share them with family members at no additional cost (if the app opts into that which is disclosed to you very clearly in the App Store). Screen Time is great to block apps above a certain age rating and to restrict or outright block purchases for children. Another thing is location sharing in the Find My app. I know there are many solutions for that, but I just like the UX in the Find My app a lot more.

About the Plex server, I’ve heard they’ve changed their TOS and are now pretty shady or something. Also, if I were to make a server like that, I’d be pirating stuff anyway which I already do through my go-to pseudo-streaming piracy sites.

I could see myself hosting a Synology NAS in the future, but that is still not as convenient or well thought out as the iCloud services tbh.

iMessage and FaceTime are really not that relevant outside the US and, as you said, can be relatively easily replaced by Signal. As another commenter pointed out, it’s more about little things like Airdrop or iCloud’s all around seamlessness that cannot be matched by anything else I’ve tried. Family sharing alone would be a major loss if I were to switch. What Google or Microsoft have to offer in that regard is laughable in comparison (not that they’re any more “private”), and AFAIK, there is no FOSS alternative all of the iCloud family sharing functionality.

The thing about the Apple experience is that it doesn’t only integrate well among your own devices, but also others. Being isolated from that can be pretty challenging, especially if you are the only one in the family. Unless you come up with a whole marketing concept to make the change seem attractive to other (not techy) family members, you’d be cycling uphill.