Comment by KennyBlanken | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KennyBlanken | Hacker News Reader

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Okay, I guess I should qualify that and say that there's no iOS client that is actually practical to use.

NextCloud integrates into iOS's Files app pretty tightly as a 'storage provider' or whatever Apple calls it. End result is that my password database is magically up-to-date whenever I go to use it in my password manager, probably because Files sees an app trying to access the file, pings NextCloud to say "yo, is this shit up to date?", and then my password manager opens the file. I don't have to worry myself about background sync and such.

I didn't have to do jack shit to open the database the first time; the built-in iOS file-picker that came up let me select nextcloud as a source, and then my password database. Done. It is two taps to get that database open now - one to hit "passwords" in the keyboard area, and the second is me TouchID'ing to unlock the database.

Looking over the Mobius faq, it appears to be vastly inferior, with no guarantee your files are synced at any point in time, and you have to manually push files from Mobius to Files, and then access them in apps from there:

> iOS apps cannot access each others’ files. This means you will need to copy files in and out of Syncthing using the Apple Files app.

I wouldn't do that even if the software was free. And they want me to pay for that? No?

I sometimes have the same problem with Android apps that store their files into their private folders, protected by the OS. I can't use Syncthing to backup those files to my computer. Either the app lets me configure the storage location to something that the other apps can access or I uninstall it and use a different app that lets me do that. If the OS gets into the way of what I want to do, oh well, that's one of the reasons why I'm using Android and not iOS. Android gets in the way but not at much as iOS seems to do.

A better way should be creating a whitelist of apps that can access the storage of other apps. Gpx tracker app? Add Syncthing to its whitelist, and the file manager I use instead of the system one.

It's Apple. You are of course welcome to pay their exorbitant development fees yourself, go through the insane review process and publish your own competing app!

You can't publish your own competing app. The desired behaviour requires running a background service (not allowed) that watches arbitrary folders (not allowed).

Third party iOS apps do in fact have access to background tasks. There’s even a variant dedicated to longer-running tasks, like lengthy file syncs.

The difference is that instead of having an ever-running daemon, the developer schedules tasks with the system, and system decides when to run them based on network availability, battery charge, etc as well as the app’s behavior (badly written/inefficient background tasks and frequent high intensity task requests are penalized).

I think you lost the plot - you can publish a competing app that uses the Files app for sync, just like NextCloud does.

That is a somewhat combative thing to say.

We see a NextCloud dev explaining that background uploads don't work herehttps://github.com/nextcloud/ios/issues/215

And we can see syncthing devs lamenting the many issues with an iOS client here https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/102

It may be the case that file eventing now works, but a quick check with an iOS dev friend suggests that the filesystem sandboxing is too restrictive to be meaningful anyway.

Further on this issue, consider that a functioning syncthing client is a node in a p2p network, so must be able to advertise and listen to requests in the background as well as the background jobs that NextCloud requires (as NextCloud is centralised it doesn't need node level co-ordination) - so a partially working NextCloud client is good enough, but a partially working Syncthing client is woefully broken.

I guess I'll just have to pay $49.99 a year for iCloud!

Why isn't this a lawsuit yet?

Lawsuit for what? Not providing an API for a feature you want?

It's not like Apple specifically advertised background services, then lied about it.

The device is specifically built like that, and you can buy a different phone if it's that big of an issue.

It feels like complaining your toaster doesn't have a dark enough toast setting that you want. Is there a lawsuit in that?

> you can buy a different phone if it's that big of an issue.

- I can't change my car's satnav. You can buy another car if it's that big a deal.

I think we can agree, the above statement reads silly.

Sometimes, no matter the deal size - buying a new thing isn't always a reasonable option.

Full agreement the above sounds silly. So really it comes down to line between the responsibility of the consumer, and the duty of the product creator to say what the product can or can not do.

If you really care about replacing parts in your car like the satnav, should you need to do research before buying instead of assuming it works that way?

Or should we have rules that all sat navs need to be replaceable so consumers don't need to do that?

I honestly can't draw the line myself, I just try my best to identify what I want in a product before purchasing. Especially huge purchases like a car.

There are cars where you can change the built-in sat nav?

Nearly all of them. Changing the media center is a well sypported third party customisation for most vehicles.

Yup, almost every single car has this ability, sat nav or not.

For engaging in anti-competitive behavior. Forcing a single App Store on an os is much less draconian than offering a broken interface to basic OS functionality in order to prop your own product above others. Imagine if Windows downclocked whenever you wanted to use an office alternative. This is not much different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_neutrality

Because you can buy an android device?

Be the change you want to see in the world.

$99/year is hardly exorbitant.

Plus ~30% of your revenue.

correction: 30% of your revenue for certain business models. Still too much, but let's at least be somewhat accurate. Plenty of apps make tons of money on the App Store without every paying a dime to Apple beyond the $99.

Perhaps you missed the ~

Files sees an app trying to access the file, pings NextCloud to say "yo, is this sh* up to date?"

What does it do if you're not connected? Don't mind it checking whether the local copy is up to date, but I'd be concerned if the sync trigger is you opening the app.

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