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Comment by smoldesu | Hacker News Reader

> It's disappointing.

What's disappointing is that Apple has zero accountability for any of these services. Nobody would be so critical of iCloud if it wasn't your only sync option on iPhone, but they force everything to go through them. Apple says 'trust us ;)' and gives the user no way to confirm that they're not decrypting your data as soon as it hits their servers.

The argument is the same as it's ever been. Apple took away too much of the user's control; if the iPhone were a more open platform, nobody would be squabbling over our only sync option.

Edit: Background Sync has apparently been available as an API since iOS 13, but that doesn't change Apple's lack of accountability wrt security practices.

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The only sync option? My Pictures go to NextCloud, my contacts and calendar are on NextCloud, and in contrast to Android (I recently switched) I don't even need an app (like davx5, great app though, as said here) to sync them, it all just works from the standard contacts and calendar app. Oh and the mail app doens't push me anywhere, it just works with my local provider via IMAP.

My vpn is a Wireguard server (and some Tailscale, recently tested mullvad, works great as well), my position is updated to my family via Home Assistant, Bitwarden pops up automatically anywhere I need to enter a password. Podverse is great for podcasts.

Sure, it's a walled garden and I have my annoyances but much less so than I was led to believe before I got my first iPhone last year. I find it easy to swap out default components where I don't like them (like iCloud and Apple podcasts) and use them when they are superior (like the calendar and mail app, I was always trying 3rd party apps on Android).

Does your NextCloud sync in the background like iCloud does? I don't believe third-party apps have access to background usage, unless something has changed since I last used iOS.

That was a 5s google search.

You’re welcome.

https://help.nextcloud.com/t/ios-background-sync/145197

Photos are synced in the background via location change events (and thus requiring Location permission). It can be a bit unreliable from time to time, but generally works. Contacts and calendars are synced in the background via iOS' CalDav/CardDav integration.

Nextcloud app also exposed itself as file provider in Files.app, so it's possible to use it in place of iCloud Drive for apps that use the appropriate API. (Unfortunately most apps use CloudKit, which sync over iCloud.)

Ah, I see this now. Me and my boyfriend tried switching to Nextcloud a few years ago, but this wasn't implemented on iOS yet so we had to look elsewhere. Nice to see this opened up, it's about time. Hopefully they'll reverse their sideloading opinions as well.

It really got a lot better over the past years indeed. I do miss support for Heic, recently NC just decided to upload Jpeg instead of Heic, and I have mixed feeling about that (Jpeg just works, the new pictures app is great because of it... But I would prefer to have heic and live images everywhere...).

I’m syncing almost all data via Nextcloud. That includes actual files as well as contacts and calendars. The files are obviously on my iPhone, but not in iCloud. In fact, iOS makes CalDAV and CardDAV as easy as they could be. It’s natively supported, whereas Android requires an extra, paid for app (worth the money though).

Other synchronisation like Joplin and Zotero happens via WebDAV. My iCloud is basically empty yet I have every file I could ever need on both iOS as well as iPadOS. Some apps I don’t care for sync via iCloud, that’s all so far. I’m not bought into the whole ecosystem (i.e. apps) too much though. If all you use are apps that only support iCloud, that’s a problem indeed.

fwiw davx5 is libre licensed and available in fdroid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/at.bitfire.davdroid/

there is also a free fork of davx5 on Play as OpenSync: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.deependhul...

agree that it should be bundled in to the system though....

Apple offers local backups. Every cloud backup depends on "trust us", even if open source, externally audited, etc. They can offer a third party online sync option but that seems like functionality would open up more security holes than it fixes. You would just have bad actors convincing users to sync to their servers.

If you don't trust Apple, you should also not trust other cloud back up services. Just turn off iCloud

FWIW, you can sync files with Nextcloud on IOS and it works fine. Also automatically syncs photos which makes it a viable alternative for cloud storage on iPhone. What it doesn't sync are things like settings, though.

Did your photo's also recently got synced to JPEG (by NC), whereas at first the heic's were uploaded? Heic works poorly in browser on other platform so JPEG is ok, would prefer heic to work everywhere though...

> The argument is the same as it's ever been. Apple took away too much of the user's control; if the iPhone were a more open platform, nobody would be squabbling over our only sync option.

It's just moving the goalposts. If Apple gave you more control then people would demand that the source code for the chips be open source, or that you could stand over the shoulder of the person assembling your iPhone and make sure they don't plug in a USB drive and install some malware. It's a never-ending battle. You're just going to have to start trusting Apple and other companies, or build your own device from raw materials you mine yourself.

This isn’t actually true. Yes they don’t give you personally the ability to conduct assurance on their controls. That couldn’t scale. But they do allow large corporations looking to standardize on apple tech, governments, and other like entities the opportunity to verify the controls, their effectiveness, and continued compliance. Further they generally have to attest to their controls under a variety of regulatory regimes with third party auditors verifying.

Your startup may be able to weaken or circumvent your controls and no one would know. But is not true of apple.

What? I sync to Google for instance and iCloud, and use Azure as well.

How is this the only sync option? My pictures go to iCloud, OneDrive, Google Photos and Amazon’s photo storage.

My Contacts and calendar can sync with any provider that supports whatever porn standards are behind it.

When I save and load files using the iOS file dialog, it shows every storage provider I have installed - Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud Drive and I assume Box if I had it.

I don't use iCloud for anything. Dropbox gets my pictures, Google has my contacts, 1Password handles my passwords, etc.

> Nobody would be so critical of iCloud if it wasn't your only sync option on iPhone

I sync my photos with Google Photos because they are a magnitude faster and more predictable than Apple's own Photos.

My passwords are in 1Password.

Can't really say I sync much else.

iPhone launched with local syncing 3 years before iCloud.

> Apple took away too much of the user's control;

Apple couldn't take away what it never gave in the first place. Anyone using an IOS device should have a basic understanding that Apple highly integrates their devices, OSes and services.

> Apple took away too much of the user's control;

Apple didn't took away anything. It wasn't there in the first place and never promised.

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