This would be a serious breach of privacy if true. But reading the tweets I'm not sure what the policy really is:
> During a discovery thing 3yr ago, legal forced me to hand-over all my texts. They refused to let me delete anything, even "fully personal," even when I said "by fully personal I mean nudes." They said they're in their "permanent evidence locker
This doesn't sound like company policy, and more like they were subpoenaed or otherwise compelled to hand over communications.
> Another interesting Apple tidbit: the company tells employees to link their personal iCloud accounts if they need to collab with colleagues when they start. When they leave, they're asked to hand over their laptops w/o wiping them and give managers access to work systems.
I'm not sure how to parse this. Do you need to link your personal accounts with family photos and whatnot? Or can you just create a separate iCloud account just for work, to collaborate with coworkers?
I'm a firm believer in separating work and personal accounts. I usually try not to even log into email from my work computer if I don't need to, and I always use a spare phone for work if a company requires admin access or remote management tools of any kind. That said, reading these tweets I'm not really sure if Apple is asking employees to breach this separation. I'd just create a separate Apple ID for work and use that for the "personal" account that I'm supposed to merge. That's a separation I'm still comfortable with.
> Do you need to link your personal accounts with family photos and whatnot?
Nope. You can create a separate iCloud account just for work. I did that during my time there. I always maintained a separate work phone, and used work icloud account for that. The folks complaining are the ones who just didn't do that, and added 'work data' on their personal account, which ofcourse they will have to hand over if subpoenaed.
Okay, that makes a lot more sense. To be frank, this twitter thread seems sensationalist if reality is closer to "I didn't bother to create a separate work account" rather than "Apple asked me to merge my personal account".
Having a separate account for work and private stuff should be common sense. No surprise your employer wants to access it when you used it for work related reasons. This can be as trivial as some business contacts having your mail and trying to contact Apple.
> This doesn't sound like company policy, and more like they were subpoenaed or otherwise compelled to hand over communications.
Yeah it feels like something is definitely missing here. If it's some kind of legal discovery, it's no shocking that the person cannot delete "personal stuff" before they hand it over, that would basically render pointless whatever they are doing with the phone.
The only way there should be a legal hold on a phone like that, is if it is her work phone, which she shouldn't be having nude pics of herself on in the first place.
> ... more like they were subpoenaed or otherwise compelled to hand over communications.
Exactly. OP wrote it was a "discovery thing". Discovery is a legal process for gathering evidence in a lawsuit. All relevant business records are discoverable, even if they're stored on employees' personal devices.
Who is "legal"? Corporate legal? They no right to your personal phone. Even if they were subpoenaed, they could only ask you to hand over data on corporate devices, not your personal one.
The only people who can get your personal device are a search warrant from a court.
Most of these companies offer a BYOD option where you explicitly agree to co-mingle work & personal use of your phone -- upto & including paying your cellular bills. This frequently means signing waivers permitting surveillance, installing corporate applications, surrendering the phone upon termination, and placing everything on the device at risk of subpoena.
When the company is subpoenaed, they aren't going to give you the chance to delete data from "evidence". This is probably what happened here.
Some time ago when I hired on at Apple (I've since moved on to greener pastures) I had a tough time provisioning my corporate MacBook. Every time I tried entering my work email address I got kicked into an unfamiliar auth flow that ended up not working. After I mentioned how much trouble I was having, someone sitting near me in the office told me I needed to use a personal Apple ID to provision the device.
I created a completely new consumer iCloud account and used that. I never did anything remotely "personal" on that machine, and after I left Apple I never used that iCloud account again. In fact I don't even remember my password for it.
I went so far as to carry two iPhones, one personal and the other "corporate," and I only ever used my "corporate" iPhone with Apple employee apps. I never even connected my personal phone to the campus WiFi; I used wireless data for that phone the entire time I was there.
That said, I don't recall ever being asked to merge my personal and work accounts. It's just that if you want to do any personal stuff with corp hardware, it's much more convenient to just use your personal Apple ID when you provision the hardware.
"I went so far as to carry two iPhones, one personal and the other "corporate," and I only ever used my "corporate" iPhone with Apple employee apps. I never even connected my personal phone to the campus WiFi; I used wireless data for that phone the entire time I was there."
This is the way. Carry two devices.
Separate personal/work devices. Never connect personal to corporate network. Never send messages between personal and work. Never give out personal device # to colleagues.
Assume that everything on your work device is logged and monitored. Don't do vacation research, medical research, social media, Spotify, anything personal at all on your work device. Ever.
> It's just that if you want to do any personal stuff with corp hardware, it's much more convenient to just use your personal Apple ID when you provision the hardware.
Yes, but I feel like a major takeaway is that you should never ever do that
Here’s my take as someone who worked there in the last two years.
1. You absolutely have the choice to make a separate iCloud account for work, you just can’t make it with an @apple.com email.
2. It’s true that you should not wipe your device when you quit.
3. We were instructed to avoid using iCloud for anything work related. They recommended turning everything iCloud related off on your work computer except for FindMy.
4. None of the claims in the tweet sound familiar to me, but Apple is a big org.
My impression is that they need you to have an iCloud account for tracking the location of the device with FindMy, but technical/legal limitations prevent that from happening through your work email.
Yeah the Twitter OP is wayyyy off base here. No one compels employees to merge accounts???? What the hell is this story even. This feels like someone with an axe to grind, and external readers are none-the-wiser to reality internally at Apple.
(Obviously thoughts are my own, I do not speak for the company)
Jacob Preston (ex-Apple Firmware Engineer), Ashley Gjøvik (Apple Senior Engineering Program Manager) and Zoë Schiffer (Verge senior reporter) in the linked Twitter thread all seem to be claiming that Apple tells employees to merge their accounts. Encouraging use of a work iPhone as a personal device to "dogfood" is also mentioned.
It's a big company though, so possible that policy varies.
Yeah, it's really weird that the @apple.com email you get when you start isn't usable as an Apple ID. I didn't want to sign into my personal account on my work computer for a BUNCH of reasons (privacy being one, but beta software messing with my data was another) so I created a new free iCloud account. But it struck me as VERY odd that Apple would want their employees minging their work and personal data on their personal accounts.
It was a similar story at Microsoft: for a long time we couldn't reliably use @microsoft.com e-mail addresses as MSAs ("Microsoft Accounts", the then-new name for Windows Live IDs), so we were all told to create a new non-@microsoft.com address for stuff that needed an MSA - I don't remember the guidance for if we could re-use our pre-existing personal addresses or not but I know that some people did, but most people created new @outlook.com addresses.
IIRC, they did iron out the problems eventually, and finally came-up with a semi-decent UX for normal (non-MSFT) people that had an Office 365 ("Organizational account") with the same e-mail address as an MSA - but I think internal MSFT accounts still have issues? My information isn't up-to-date fwiw.
FWIW, I never had access to any "real" internal resources via my new @outlook.com MSA address - the only things it did have access to was things like MSDN Subscriber Downloads[1] and as a backup/recovery e-mail address for my @ms org account.
[1]: Oddly enough, I retained access to the MSDN Subscriber Downloads area, including full ISOs and Product Keys for about 2 years after I left the company, I only lost access because that was when they moved everything over from "MSDN Subscriber Downloads" to "My Visual Studio" which changed everything.
Might be a side effect of how broken their "company" managed Apple ID system. You can create managed Apple IDs at business.apple.com with such access, but the accounts are _extremely_ limited in functionality[0].
It’s far easier to blend. Otherwise you’re carrying multiple devices. To each their own, but you’re going to have a hard time debugging anything or living on your own new features if there’s zero personal real data in use.
The same Apple that can't figure out how to let customers merge two accounts [1]?
[1] Why would a customer need to merge two accounts? Because originally Apple accounts were just for iTunes, associated with your email address.
Then they started cloud services like file storage, email, calendars, etc, and those accounts were tied to your Apple provided email address.
Eventually they made it so that iTunes and cloud used the same accounts, but those of us who had both iTunes and cloud before that ended up with two accounts. And since your devices can only be signed into one at a time, if we were not extremely careful we ended up with some of our app and music purchases on one account, and some on the other.
This is an ongoing pain in the ass. It would be much much nicer if Apple provided a way to delete one of the accounts and move all the purchases to the other, but they have not done so despite receiving numerous requests to do so.
Sometimes you get lucky. It turned out that all I had on the Apple addressed account was a couple of "purchases" of free apps plus some paid for storage. It was easy just to repurchase those free apps on my original iTunes account, purchase cloud storage for that and delete the other account from my password manager so I can't ever accidentally log in to it. But many people have a lot of non-free app and music and video purchases on both, and so are stuck keeping them both active.
Edit: I don't understand her endgame. She's not going back to work at Apple after the negative publicity she's been generating. She probably doesn't care because she's in law school and will be graduating soon. Is her goal to negotiate a generous settlement? The negative publicity reduces the value of her settlement. (Companies will pay for an NDA as part of a settlement, but only if the damaging info isn't already public.) Is she pursuing some naive, idealistic notion of justice? Or is it all to establish "cred" for her future legal career?
Do people just assume she's telling a truthful story?
I wonder that because I worked there for years and anything remotely like what she claims was implausible when I was there, and would have been immediately corrected with impunity had such occurred.
I mean there's security all over and they're not in a managerial chain, so something seems very difficult about her claims to me.
In saying that, maybe she did have some entirely crazy people around her. Evidence would be stronger than conjecture, and I hope she has some if such happened.
> Do people just assume she's telling a truthful story?
I have no reason to doubt that she's telling the trust from her perspective, but that being said, there are always two sides to a story.
> In saying that, maybe she did have some entirely crazy people around her
To be honest, reading her published tweets/documents, she mostly appears to be someone who complains to HR about everything. Judging by the way her managers "dismiss" her complaints with (attempted) humor (refill whiskey bottles with fruit color and water, suggest which NERF gun she should buy, etc), i'm guessing she's been at it for a while. The sign that her managers purposely leave her out of important meetings could also be a signal that "she's more trouble than beneficial".
Not saying she was wrong (or correct) when she complained, but it would certainly explain some of the hostility being shown by her team members. Reading the parts she complains about it actually sounds like a really nice and accepting/inclusive workplace, and a place i would love to work. Planning a NERF war, and your managers only concern is if you're too loud to disturb other teams :)
In any case, she has published multiple (redacted) confidential documents, so i wouldn't get my hope up for a big settlement.
Fyi, she’s the same woman whose apartment complex was apparently built on toxic waste that made her sick (only her), yet noone could measure any harmful substance in her apartment, the authorities couldn’t help and tried to cover it up. [1]
It seems strange that she happens to be also the victim of organized workplace harrasment at Apple. And again, the authorities (internal Employee Relations) refused to help, and tried to cover it up…?
Either she’s the most unlucky person… or maybe it’s all in her head? Take a look at her website documenting her “ordeals” at Apple [2] To me, it looks like the scrapbook of a paranoid schizophrenic who meticulously collects “evidence” on their “gangstalking”… Just look at this tweet [3] where she talks about fighting Apple, Northrop Grumman (!) and the Irvine Company, and tell me with a straight face that she’s not a wacko.
Even a light scan through the Apple stuff will find you things that obviously aren't just "in her head", like the "Make Ashley's Life a Living Hell" bug ticket entry that other people have mentioned still exists in Apple's system if someone with access looks it up by ID number.
I’m slowly getting the impression that either there’s been a policy change at Apple in terms of customer privacy, or some other government pressure that’s causing all of these seemingly anti-privacy decisions to be made. I’m considering moving away from the Apple eco-system, any recommendations? I’m equally distrustful of Android (specifically Google). I feel like my only option is to compile and deploy my own version of Android (or some other OS) to a non-privacy invading phone.
It’s a downgrade, but the freedom of running linux on a phone is nice. I have a pinephone running sxmo, probably the nerdiest and least friendly ux possible.
I’ve been using it sparingly, but intend to make a full time switch pretty soon. Having a phone with less capability and a focus on privacy will I think help make my phone less of a mental zapping appendage and more like the useful tool I remember these things being way back when.
I guess I’m arguing why even bother with a full replacement? I know everyone else seems to be all in on mobile/leaving a modern app ecosystem feels like getting left behind, but maybe everyone else is wrong. Maybe it’s better to just step away from all the ultra modern attention grabbing bricks of pure unadulterated dopamine and switch to a hacky little portable computer when you need to look something up, or text someone, or call someone, or work on some text document you have or whatever.
If you have a phone with even a crappy browser you have access to a ton of modern functionality anyway if you want it, minus all of the notification hell.
I'm a huge believer in disabling any form of push notification. Nobody's software is entitled to my attention, I'll use it when I feel like it, not when it nags me for attention like a petulant toddler. I don't know how people tolerate their phones pinging, flashing, and buzzing all day like a pinball machine that's been very personally crafted to extract as much attention from your day as possible.
A little off topic, but since social media seems to be the main driver of this "phones as a personally crafted distraction" I'd love to see what a social network that's not actually deeply antisocial would look like. No push notifications, no filter bubbles, no politics, no "nudge" messaging from governments and other organisations aiming to subtly change people's behaviour, no creepy advertising pushed to a perverse degree. Just give me a place with a good chat client, a way of asynchronously keeping in touch with people in my life in that long range between "good friend" and "stranger" (seriously even the Facebook walls of 2008ish would do), and just enough non-obnoxious adverts to cover costs and make a reasonable profit. Oh yeah, and you should always be able to pay a small monthly fee to be rid of ads if you want to.
I'm using a PinePhone right now and I hope I won't need to switch back to Android. I grew used to this freedom.
However, I would recommend it only to the most determined people because many things don't work well.
Forget GPS navigation. GPS does not get the correct location most of the time, AGPS only works through a hacky bash / python script. There is no good gps app anyway.
The sms app on phosh is crashy and does not yet support MMS for which you have to use another hacky script (but I'm working on an alternative app).
The phone often needs to be rebooted due to the modem sometimes not waking up. Calls are not high quality. No built in way to have a reliable alarm if the phone is not plugged. Photos are bad. The phone is generally slow for many modern web apps targeting more powerful hardware.
The phone takes time to wake up for a call.
I would not want to experience an emergency requiring to call someone.
The phone is not waterproof so it will likely break if it takes a good rain.
The on-screen time is not great though you can buy spare batteries which can largely change the game. Remember to set the sleep timer to 30s, which you need to do using the command line if you use Phosh, it helps a lot.
A smoother transition could be to use a degoogled android phone, maybe with MicroG for cell/wifi based location and only using free software (from F-Droid). But you'll still rely on proprietary blob.
I only ever used open source apps on Android and always refused to use apps like WhatsApp & its friends, which helped the transition to the PinePhone.
On the flip side, the PinePhone is getting better every day and the ability to just buy a spare battery and a battery charger and swap them as needed without any tool is really nice.
I typed this message on the PinePhone by the way. It's far from horrible despite my comment.
edit: what I want to say is, wanting to migrate to free and privacy-friendly software is probably a good thing, but increase the chance it will work by not making it too hard. On the desktop, Linux distributions are delightful to use, free software phones are still pretty much work-in-progress unfortunately. The gap between a degoogled Android phone and a PinePhone is huge, probably way bigger than between an iPhone and a degoogled Android phone.
I’m the same way. For times I absolutely need an app (like banking or healthcare), I’ll boot up an old iPhone I keep around for that exact purpose. Otherwise, I keep no apps other than browsers on my current phone.
I agree with the point of your comment but this particular post is regarding employees and seems like this has been in place for 3 years at least (tweet mentions it).
I started moving away from Apple a few months ago, much before this Apple CSAM debacle. This is a pretty big move for me because I am a developer who makes apps for both iOS and MacOS, so I pretty much need Apple software for work.
No longer buying iPhones or Macs. I was planning on upgrading to the Mac Mini with M1 chip later this fall but now I plan on building a hackintosh instead. I also no longer recommend Apple devices to friends/family.
I got myself a cheap android phone which I have de-googled myself. I got this Android phone ($190 USD for a very good phone - 8GB ram, 12gb space):
No longer buying iPhones or Macs. I was planning on upgrading to the Mac Mini with M1 chip later this fall but now I plan on building a hackintosh instead.
If you don't trust Apple, why build a Hackintosh and run Apple software?
I work for Apple. It’s not just marketing. It’s in every discussion in every feature. Even the current CSAM implementation is actually all about privacy if you read the details on how it’s implemented.
The real question and concern is what happens once laws start getting passed that run counter to this. And that then won’t be just Apple’s problem at that point.
At this point you might as well buy a Pinephone. It's about as close as you can get to privacy-respecting. Just don't ask too much of it and try not to mind the price.
Well, it's only $149 (or $199 for the higher-spec model with a dock), so it's affordably priced for a phone. One way to keep expectations in check is to treat the PinePhone as an upgrade to a feature phone, until the software options are more fleshed out.
Sailfish is pretty great. Devices get industry leading software update support (the only device they ever dropped got 7 years of updates). Great UI. It even supports a fairly good Android emulation mode if you want to run some Android apps. You can shut down the Android emulator when not in use for power usage and peace of mind.
EDIT: The devices are cheap too, but aren't slow. Typical cost is less than $250 including both the device and software license. The software is mostly open source, but there are a few licensed components. It is possible to use Sailfish without the proprietary bits for free.
The internal policy is invariably related to their views on ultra secrecy. Because they are 'Apple' and people want the jobs, there's acquiescence. When people leave it's probably a different story.
Readit News
> During a discovery thing 3yr ago, legal forced me to hand-over all my texts. They refused to let me delete anything, even "fully personal," even when I said "by fully personal I mean nudes." They said they're in their "permanent evidence locker
This doesn't sound like company policy, and more like they were subpoenaed or otherwise compelled to hand over communications.
> Another interesting Apple tidbit: the company tells employees to link their personal iCloud accounts if they need to collab with colleagues when they start. When they leave, they're asked to hand over their laptops w/o wiping them and give managers access to work systems.
I'm not sure how to parse this. Do you need to link your personal accounts with family photos and whatnot? Or can you just create a separate iCloud account just for work, to collaborate with coworkers?
I'm a firm believer in separating work and personal accounts. I usually try not to even log into email from my work computer if I don't need to, and I always use a spare phone for work if a company requires admin access or remote management tools of any kind. That said, reading these tweets I'm not really sure if Apple is asking employees to breach this separation. I'd just create a separate Apple ID for work and use that for the "personal" account that I'm supposed to merge. That's a separation I'm still comfortable with.
Nope. You can create a separate iCloud account just for work. I did that during my time there. I always maintained a separate work phone, and used work icloud account for that. The folks complaining are the ones who just didn't do that, and added 'work data' on their personal account, which ofcourse they will have to hand over if subpoenaed.
Apple doesn’t expect you to use a personal iCloud account, and is very clear about warning you about sharing /storing personal data on work systems.
I have very little sympathy for someone that used a personal account containing nudes on a work device.
That was a work-inappropriate choice with entirely predictable results.
Yeah it feels like something is definitely missing here. If it's some kind of legal discovery, it's no shocking that the person cannot delete "personal stuff" before they hand it over, that would basically render pointless whatever they are doing with the phone.
Exactly. OP wrote it was a "discovery thing". Discovery is a legal process for gathering evidence in a lawsuit. All relevant business records are discoverable, even if they're stored on employees' personal devices.
Deleted Comment
Who is "legal"? Corporate legal? They no right to your personal phone. Even if they were subpoenaed, they could only ask you to hand over data on corporate devices, not your personal one.
The only people who can get your personal device are a search warrant from a court.
When the company is subpoenaed, they aren't going to give you the chance to delete data from "evidence". This is probably what happened here.
I created a completely new consumer iCloud account and used that. I never did anything remotely "personal" on that machine, and after I left Apple I never used that iCloud account again. In fact I don't even remember my password for it.
I went so far as to carry two iPhones, one personal and the other "corporate," and I only ever used my "corporate" iPhone with Apple employee apps. I never even connected my personal phone to the campus WiFi; I used wireless data for that phone the entire time I was there.
That said, I don't recall ever being asked to merge my personal and work accounts. It's just that if you want to do any personal stuff with corp hardware, it's much more convenient to just use your personal Apple ID when you provision the hardware.
This is the way. Carry two devices.
Separate personal/work devices. Never connect personal to corporate network. Never send messages between personal and work. Never give out personal device # to colleagues.
Assume that everything on your work device is logged and monitored. Don't do vacation research, medical research, social media, Spotify, anything personal at all on your work device. Ever.
That's quite extreme. What is your threat model?
Yes, but I feel like a major takeaway is that you should never ever do that
Deleted Comment
1. You absolutely have the choice to make a separate iCloud account for work, you just can’t make it with an @apple.com email. 2. It’s true that you should not wipe your device when you quit. 3. We were instructed to avoid using iCloud for anything work related. They recommended turning everything iCloud related off on your work computer except for FindMy. 4. None of the claims in the tweet sound familiar to me, but Apple is a big org.
My impression is that they need you to have an iCloud account for tracking the location of the device with FindMy, but technical/legal limitations prevent that from happening through your work email.
(Obviously thoughts are my own, I do not speak for the company)
It's a big company though, so possible that policy varies.
IIRC, they did iron out the problems eventually, and finally came-up with a semi-decent UX for normal (non-MSFT) people that had an Office 365 ("Organizational account") with the same e-mail address as an MSA - but I think internal MSFT accounts still have issues? My information isn't up-to-date fwiw.
FWIW, I never had access to any "real" internal resources via my new @outlook.com MSA address - the only things it did have access to was things like MSDN Subscriber Downloads[1] and as a backup/recovery e-mail address for my @ms org account.
[1]: Oddly enough, I retained access to the MSDN Subscriber Downloads area, including full ISOs and Product Keys for about 2 years after I left the company, I only lost access because that was when they moved everything over from "MSDN Subscriber Downloads" to "My Visual Studio" which changed everything.
0: https://support.apple.com/guide/apple-business-manager/what-...
Deleted Comment
[1] Why would a customer need to merge two accounts? Because originally Apple accounts were just for iTunes, associated with your email address.
Then they started cloud services like file storage, email, calendars, etc, and those accounts were tied to your Apple provided email address.
Eventually they made it so that iTunes and cloud used the same accounts, but those of us who had both iTunes and cloud before that ended up with two accounts. And since your devices can only be signed into one at a time, if we were not extremely careful we ended up with some of our app and music purchases on one account, and some on the other.
This is an ongoing pain in the ass. It would be much much nicer if Apple provided a way to delete one of the accounts and move all the purchases to the other, but they have not done so despite receiving numerous requests to do so.
Sometimes you get lucky. It turned out that all I had on the Apple addressed account was a couple of "purchases" of free apps plus some paid for storage. It was easy just to repurchase those free apps on my original iTunes account, purchase cloud storage for that and delete the other account from my password manager so I can't ever accidentally log in to it. But many people have a lot of non-free app and music and video purchases on both, and so are stuck keeping them both active.
The employees there apparently kept scores (on a white board?) to make her want to quit the job [1]
[1] https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1427351298920239106
No matter who is in the wrong here, this is some A-grade toxic shit. This is unacceptable even for kids let alone adults.
https://www.ashleygjovik.com/ashleys-apple-story.html
Edit: I don't understand her endgame. She's not going back to work at Apple after the negative publicity she's been generating. She probably doesn't care because she's in law school and will be graduating soon. Is her goal to negotiate a generous settlement? The negative publicity reduces the value of her settlement. (Companies will pay for an NDA as part of a settlement, but only if the damaging info isn't already public.) Is she pursuing some naive, idealistic notion of justice? Or is it all to establish "cred" for her future legal career?
I'm sure it's not because of the money, it's purely a political motivation. That's what she wants to do in her life.
I understand it, I also take all the chances I have to bash the government, out of pure hatred.
I wonder that because I worked there for years and anything remotely like what she claims was implausible when I was there, and would have been immediately corrected with impunity had such occurred.
I mean there's security all over and they're not in a managerial chain, so something seems very difficult about her claims to me.
In saying that, maybe she did have some entirely crazy people around her. Evidence would be stronger than conjecture, and I hope she has some if such happened.
I have no reason to doubt that she's telling the trust from her perspective, but that being said, there are always two sides to a story.
> In saying that, maybe she did have some entirely crazy people around her
To be honest, reading her published tweets/documents, she mostly appears to be someone who complains to HR about everything. Judging by the way her managers "dismiss" her complaints with (attempted) humor (refill whiskey bottles with fruit color and water, suggest which NERF gun she should buy, etc), i'm guessing she's been at it for a while. The sign that her managers purposely leave her out of important meetings could also be a signal that "she's more trouble than beneficial".
Not saying she was wrong (or correct) when she complained, but it would certainly explain some of the hostility being shown by her team members. Reading the parts she complains about it actually sounds like a really nice and accepting/inclusive workplace, and a place i would love to work. Planning a NERF war, and your managers only concern is if you're too loud to disturb other teams :)
In any case, she has published multiple (redacted) confidential documents, so i wouldn't get my hope up for a big settlement.
That is why said that no matter who is at fault here, this act of public score keeping is still not ok.
It seems strange that she happens to be also the victim of organized workplace harrasment at Apple. And again, the authorities (internal Employee Relations) refused to help, and tried to cover it up…?
Either she’s the most unlucky person… or maybe it’s all in her head? Take a look at her website documenting her “ordeals” at Apple [2] To me, it looks like the scrapbook of a paranoid schizophrenic who meticulously collects “evidence” on their “gangstalking”… Just look at this tweet [3] where she talks about fighting Apple, Northrop Grumman (!) and the Irvine Company, and tell me with a straight face that she’s not a wacko.
[1] https://sfbayview.com/2021/03/i-thought-i-was-dying-my-apart...
[2] https://www.ashleygjovik.com/ashleys-apple-story.html
[3] https://www.ashleygjovik.com/uploads/1/3/7/0/137008339/publi...
I’ve been using it sparingly, but intend to make a full time switch pretty soon. Having a phone with less capability and a focus on privacy will I think help make my phone less of a mental zapping appendage and more like the useful tool I remember these things being way back when.
I guess I’m arguing why even bother with a full replacement? I know everyone else seems to be all in on mobile/leaving a modern app ecosystem feels like getting left behind, but maybe everyone else is wrong. Maybe it’s better to just step away from all the ultra modern attention grabbing bricks of pure unadulterated dopamine and switch to a hacky little portable computer when you need to look something up, or text someone, or call someone, or work on some text document you have or whatever.
If you have a phone with even a crappy browser you have access to a ton of modern functionality anyway if you want it, minus all of the notification hell.
I'm a huge believer in disabling any form of push notification. Nobody's software is entitled to my attention, I'll use it when I feel like it, not when it nags me for attention like a petulant toddler. I don't know how people tolerate their phones pinging, flashing, and buzzing all day like a pinball machine that's been very personally crafted to extract as much attention from your day as possible.
A little off topic, but since social media seems to be the main driver of this "phones as a personally crafted distraction" I'd love to see what a social network that's not actually deeply antisocial would look like. No push notifications, no filter bubbles, no politics, no "nudge" messaging from governments and other organisations aiming to subtly change people's behaviour, no creepy advertising pushed to a perverse degree. Just give me a place with a good chat client, a way of asynchronously keeping in touch with people in my life in that long range between "good friend" and "stranger" (seriously even the Facebook walls of 2008ish would do), and just enough non-obnoxious adverts to cover costs and make a reasonable profit. Oh yeah, and you should always be able to pay a small monthly fee to be rid of ads if you want to.
However, I would recommend it only to the most determined people because many things don't work well.
Forget GPS navigation. GPS does not get the correct location most of the time, AGPS only works through a hacky bash / python script. There is no good gps app anyway.
The sms app on phosh is crashy and does not yet support MMS for which you have to use another hacky script (but I'm working on an alternative app).
The phone often needs to be rebooted due to the modem sometimes not waking up. Calls are not high quality. No built in way to have a reliable alarm if the phone is not plugged. Photos are bad. The phone is generally slow for many modern web apps targeting more powerful hardware.
The phone takes time to wake up for a call.
I would not want to experience an emergency requiring to call someone.
The phone is not waterproof so it will likely break if it takes a good rain.
The on-screen time is not great though you can buy spare batteries which can largely change the game. Remember to set the sleep timer to 30s, which you need to do using the command line if you use Phosh, it helps a lot.
A smoother transition could be to use a degoogled android phone, maybe with MicroG for cell/wifi based location and only using free software (from F-Droid). But you'll still rely on proprietary blob.
I only ever used open source apps on Android and always refused to use apps like WhatsApp & its friends, which helped the transition to the PinePhone.
On the flip side, the PinePhone is getting better every day and the ability to just buy a spare battery and a battery charger and swap them as needed without any tool is really nice.
I typed this message on the PinePhone by the way. It's far from horrible despite my comment.
edit: what I want to say is, wanting to migrate to free and privacy-friendly software is probably a good thing, but increase the chance it will work by not making it too hard. On the desktop, Linux distributions are delightful to use, free software phones are still pretty much work-in-progress unfortunately. The gap between a degoogled Android phone and a PinePhone is huge, probably way bigger than between an iPhone and a degoogled Android phone.
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I agree with the point of your comment but this particular post is regarding employees and seems like this has been in place for 3 years at least (tweet mentions it).
I started moving away from Apple a few months ago, much before this Apple CSAM debacle. This is a pretty big move for me because I am a developer who makes apps for both iOS and MacOS, so I pretty much need Apple software for work.
No longer buying iPhones or Macs. I was planning on upgrading to the Mac Mini with M1 chip later this fall but now I plan on building a hackintosh instead. I also no longer recommend Apple devices to friends/family.
I got myself a cheap android phone which I have de-googled myself. I got this Android phone ($190 USD for a very good phone - 8GB ram, 12gb space):
https://www.amazon.com/UMIDIGI-Unlocked-4150mAh-Capacity-Sma...
I use Firefox for YouTube on it with the following add-ons:
1. uBlock Origin
2. Video Background Play Fix add-on
This allows me to use YouTube as a background playback music player. And if needed, I use YouTube-dl to get the audio files and put them on the phone.
You can check out several tutorials to de-google an android phone.
If you don't trust Apple, why build a Hackintosh and run Apple software?
More likely that they never were for privacy and injury used it as a marketing ploy, putting on the mirage of being pro-privacy.
The real question and concern is what happens once laws start getting passed that run counter to this. And that then won’t be just Apple’s problem at that point.
EDIT: The devices are cheap too, but aren't slow. Typical cost is less than $250 including both the device and software license. The software is mostly open source, but there are a few licensed components. It is possible to use Sailfish without the proprietary bits for free.
Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28220968