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Google photos on ios is literally a hostage situation. Remove key functionalities like copying an image or editing an image unless you give them full unrestricted access to your entire photo library. (The holy grail of surveillance capitalism data). Data extortion masquerading as a service.
Yeah, iOS is nuts.
Transfer files over bluetooth? Best go buy an entire apple product because fuck internationally recognized standards.
Transfer music to the iPhone? Gotta download one of two programs, make an apple account, and sync your entire library. Apple doesn't support common formats such as FLAC? Go fuck yourself and convert your entire library for them.
Backup your phone to the cloud? Apple doesn't let you select how many backups are saved so you run out of storage and get an upgrade to apple storage program for only $5.99 every other month/phone update.
I thought google was bad with their tyranny of default but the iphone 16 pro max is the pinnacle of anti user and pro consumerism. I list that phone as it is the only apple phone I have used.
I don't think this is an iOS problem, unless the Bluesky post predates the feature that showed me this when I tried to insert a picture in OneNote:
Choosing "Limit Access..." lead to this:
The irony of complaining about unreasonable requirements from an Apple user isn't lost on me.
I don't know if the format really applies. Complaining about one corporation stealing your data while using another's product that does the same seems a bit pointless, especially when there are cheaper, better alternatives. The putting a stick through your own bike tire format seems more appropriate.
Written black on white in 1998 so nearly 3 decades ago by Hal Ronald Varian, chief economist at Google, chapter 5 Recognizing Lock-In and chapter 6 Managing Lock-In with my own notes https://fabien.benetou.fr/ReadingNotes/InformationRules
Namely it's a strategy. It does not make it "OK" morally or ethically but at least business wise, we had been warned a long long time ago. If despite this been laid out so plainly and methodically we don't both individually and collectively, keep on using such services then we have to at least understand the consequences.
Edit: want to do something about it? Please do. Use https://takeout.google.com/ to leave then bring your own data in a system you actually manage, e.g. https://immich.app/ or whatever else better fit your need. If you still stay, you are giving Google more power to keep on using your data.
Why even install this crap?!
People don't know. Researching good image backup/sharing options is beyond most normies. Privacy invasion isn't even a known problem for them to care about.
My parents certainly won't be able to comprehend this. My brothers are tech savvy, and it's taken years for them to come onboard with self hosting since I've started advocating it (one still can't because his wife finds it difficult to move away from Google photos).
I dont know that google even is the most convenient product for this anymore. The experience via google, microsoft, and amazon have all gotten so shitty that normal people I know are complaining about it.
Here am I, Gigachad, running LineageOS, PiHole and only using FOSS apps
Yeah, I've set up an Immich server last week using an old spare 250gb HDD and transfered my google photos to it..so far so good. I had been using nextcloud for a year to new pictures but the UI is not that great and I missed my old photos. Immich is great! Oh I'm also using lineage..with microg, a pihole and some obter awesome self hosting programs
>Uses applications from the most privacy-destroying ad agency in the history of the world
>Is surprised that they don't respect privacy.
Similar situation with WhatsApp on Android: you can't share images or videos without giving the app full access to your entire filesystem. You also can't video or voice call without giving the app full phone permissions.
Other apps happily let you do all of those things. You can just Share an image from some other app. But nope, WhatsApp just refuses.
I have WhatsApp on Android and have restricted its access to my photos. Every time I want to share an image I need to first select which new photos I want to give Whatsapp access to, then select the photos again to send them. Next time I tap to share an image I won't see any new photos in the options no matter how many new photos are in my gallery.
I can also share to Whatsapp from my gallery, which will prompt again the permission for this individual photo thing. Same.
Isn’t the point of google photos to back up your entire photo library?
If you use apple images or whatever the fuck it's called then they have the same thing. Unless you do their e2ee thing and hope they don't hold the decryption keys for that.
Stop using Google trash. Google is evil.
Is this real?
I'm so used to computer-things being files I edit sovereignly on my device that I find it hard to understand the serfware.
Maybe don’t use services by the worlds largest ad company?