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Unless Apple backs down on this AND makes a firm commitment to keeping ITS nose out of YOUR device, there’s no way I’ll be recommending everyday folks buy Apple to protect their privacy. Unless they make this commitment, there will no longer be any difference between Apple (1/2)

Aral Balkan

@aral

Aug 11, 2021

& Google. (Apart from the oddly surprising position I might find myself in as I recommend Google Pixel phones running GrapheneOS to some folks.) You’re fucking up, Apple. You’re fucking up big time. ar.al/2021/08/08/app (2/2)

ar.al

Apple is trying to redefine what it means to violate your privacy. We must not let it.

Violation of privacy by proxy is still violation of privacy.

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Oh, interesting GrapheneOS as a fork of AOSP. I wonder if people is willing to go without the Play Services, which is what makes Android Phones useful. A phone without apps is mostly useless and most devs only care about Google Play / App store

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and

There are many high quality apps available without Play services and most of the base OS functionality is all there. Even some of the Google apps like Google Maps work fine without Play services. Organic Maps is quite nice as an open source, offline maps/navigation app though.

5:19 PM · Aug 11, 2021Twitter Web App

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and

Many mainstream apps like WhatsApp work perfectly without Play services. Discord works but doesn't provide push notifications in the background unlike apps like Signal, WhatsApp and FairEmail with their own push implementations. Think you'd be surprised how much works without it.

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and

If you want to use apps like Uber, Tinder, etc. then yes you do need Play services but that's not going to mean you can't use them on GrapheneOS. grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxe gives users option to install Play as sandboxed apps in a profile. Our existing users did fine without this.

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