Why do I have to use a phone in its place? Apple products aren't a basic human necessity. I like to think I can just use a phone for the sake of wanting a phone, not to replace the void that not being an Apple consumer leaves in my soul, or something.
What exactly do you mean by "basic aspects of modern life"?
I have a desktop PC, a laptop, a work laptop, a LineageOS (Android-based) phone, and a VR headset for gaming. Anything I want out of modern tech, I either already have or doesn't exist yet.
I tried to get by with Lineage without gapps for a year and a half (if you don't forego gapps then there's no point from a privacy perspective).
I couldn't get push notifications on Slack because they went through gapps.
I couldn't use several online dating services because they were only on mobile, and their mobile apps broke without gapps.
I couldn't check my bank account from my phone because I couldn't get a hold of its app outside of the Play store, and because its mobile site locked my account for suspicious activity because I roamed between cell towers while using it.
I couldn't find places because there was no reasonable mapping option (OSMAnd, at least at the time, was abysmal to the point of being almost useless).
I once bought a pair of headphones that I couldn't use at all because you had to use Bose's app to set them up, and - you guessed it - the app was broken without gapps.
Even Signal - the OSS encrypted messenger - was partially hampered without gapps.
We can talk all day about how we got to this status quo and what can or can't be done about it, but the reality is that if you want to live a real, modern, urban life in 2020, so many people and organizations just assume you to have a fully-functional smartphone that you will be actively hampered without one.
> We can talk all day about how we got to this status quo and what can or can't be done about it, but the reality is that if you want to live a real, modern, urban life in 2020, so many people and organizations just assume you to have a fully-functional smartphone that you will be actively hampered without one.
And for that, you can also get a stock Android phone like 80% of the world and still not be an Apple consumer. :)
And be saddled with Google's services, which are 10x worse with regards to privacy than even this new revelation about Apple? I don't really understand your reasoning.
1. This isn't news about Apple's encryption, it's just that the status quo is here to stay. Your Apple device is as secure/private as it has been, and will probably not get any better. It's disappointing, but not really much of a revelation to anyone who's been paying attention since 2012 (or earlier).
2. The way the headline is phrased vindicates an orthogonal personal decision I made to not purchase hardware or software from Apple.
Given your most recent comment, at some point, you must have assumed a lot of things that a) aren't true and b) I never stated or implied.
