I’ve been using a de-Googled Android setup and found myself running into the same issue a lot of people probably do: the privacy-first option is great right up until the everyday stuff stops working properly.
In my case, banking apps and Android Auto were the sticking points. GrapheneOS was excellent in principle, but iodéOS ended up being the more practical fit for my actual use case.
I’d be interested to hear where other people draw that line between privacy, convenience, and reliability.
I’m confused. You write as if privacy and convenience are somehow related. They’re not. They’re completely independent of one another as are rabbits and trains. You’re regurgitating corporate-propaganda: software-companies steal your resources (time, money, electricity, bandwidth, data, etc.) and retort they do so for your convenience when confronted. That’s a lie. It just so happens it’s easier to steal when your software has a monopoly and vendors actively prohibit and deter any alternative software.
You don’t get a choice of what software is on your computer when you buy it from the retailer. The fact is you’ve been conditioned and only know how to use proprietary-software that’s become a standard via lobbying and exclusive contracts between software-vendors and OEMs. That has fuck all to do with convenience.
The fact that Google and Apple have a near duopoly over software distribution on mobile-computers (i.e. I want to use my bank’s app and that’s only distributed via Google’s PlayStore™ or whatever Apple’s thing™ is called) is a national-governance issue not a mater of convenience.
Neither Google nor Apple are doing charitable works here. I’ll brush over the details to paint a picture: any financial transaction that occurs within an ‘app’ distributed by those platforms results in a demand from the distributor for a percentage of that sum. How that general thrust affects banking ‘apps’ I’m not sure and I would hope there’s caveats for essential infrastructure like banking. Probably not; regulation is nonexistent for software-companies.
I don’t bank with banks that limit their clients to an ‘app’ distributed solely by Google or Apple. That behaviour has nothing to do with convenience and everything to do with economics, politics, self-determination and self-respect. I consider it abuse to the user to run non-libre software.
I’m not saying privacy and convenience are the same thing, or that the situation is somehow natural or benign.
I agree that the real issue is power, distribution control, and the way mobile software has been turned into a duopoly.
What I meant was more practical, for ordinary users, the choice often ends up being between an ideal setup and one that still lets them do necessary day-to-day things like banking and navigation.
That doesn’t make the underlying problem any less political, it just means people are forced to make compromises inside a system they didn’t choose.
Never heard of iodéOS. At first glance it looks like they take LineageOS for microG, bloat it with some random apps, and expect us to pay them for adblocking. Am I missing something?
I’m grateful that most of my banking can be done directly through a browser on my phone or on a CPU (I also never used the apps before my switch).
I don’t have a infotainment system in my car, CoMaps and BT audio is all I really need anyway
I found it easier to get AA working on Graphene if you use a wireless adaptor.
why I switched to hnnrjsksjcnfjsOS
