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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2937 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 27, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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This is not a fun post, but I need to rant. Fuck you, Apple, and fuck you, Meta.

My wife decided she needed a bigger iPhone and as usual I was the designated data migrator. Given that Apple doesn't want it ever to be as simple as "copy a bunch of stuff from the first phone to the PC, copy the stuff from the PC to the new iPhone" and iTunes backup doesn't actually back up all the data on the Phone I was happy to learn a few phones ago that you can just switch the new iPhone on and painlessly transfer everything via Bluetooth.

Almost everything.

WhatsApp loves the idea of privacy and that's why (unlike Telegram), it doesn't store any of your chat history on its servers. Apple can't or won't transfer it to the new device and you have to do it yourself. And of course, there's no nice buttons like "back everything up into a zip archive" and "restore my chats from a zip archive".

No, you have to either use iCloud (not an option for us, because you can't pay for iCloud in Russia, and it's currently 900% full) or use WhatsApp's built-in transfer option that is fucking hidden in Settings -> Chats and not in Settings -> Data or something sensible like that.

And god forbid you try to log into the account on the new phone first, because that's not how it works, and you have to log out and log in on the old phone again. You have to start the process there, wait until it asks you to log in on the new phone, then scan the QR code on the new phone with the old phone to theoretically start the transfer progress.

I say theoretically because it didn't work for me. I had VPN on on my router, so WhatsApp would freak out and fight me all the way. Wife has VPN on on her old phone for some reason, so I couldn't understand why switching it off on my router didn't work. And there obviously was only one SIM shared between the two phones, so I could use mobile internet to do this.

At one moment I had a bright idea (when we were logged in into WhatsApp on the new phone and couldn't log back in on the old one) to link the old phone as a secondary device on the account. This worked, and I could log back into the account on the old phone, could see the chat history but couldn't transfer it to the new phone. At this moment, I had already fucked up, but didn't know it yet. Because, as I learned 20 minutes later when I managed to log back in on the old phone the proper way, as soon as you unlink a secondary device, WhatsApp erases all its data on it, even if it was there when you linked it. So, without remorse or regret, it erased all chat history on the old phone.

Finally, as the cherry on top, WhatsApp decided the whole logging in and out in two different countries thing was quite fishy and locked the account for 8 hours. I guess we'll try copying one night worth of chat histories tomorrow.

Fuck you, Apple, fuck you, Meta, and fuck your terrible UX.

because you can't pay for iCloud in Russia

Here's the source of the problem. If you live in an anti-civilization country, don't be surprised some Western civilization things are not working for you. It may be not your personal fault and you may not have another choice, but that's the problem and everything else is downstream from it. Apple and Meta products aren't built to cater for users that live in anti-civilization countries and never will be, and it's not reasonable to expect them to. Your choice is using R-Fon and Vkontakte or suffer what you must.

Here's the source of the problem. If you live in an anti-civilization country, don't be surprised some Western civilization things are not working for you.

I don't think this is true at all. The problem here is that Apple doesn't have a reasonable option to transfer everything to a new device locally.

The last few times I've gotten a new Android phone (Pixel), it's come with a USB-C to USB-C cable (with a C-to-A adapter for chargers) and simple instructions to connect 'em directly, unlock the old one, and agree to transfer everything. Admittedly it missed quite a few apps the first time, but the most recent time things almost entirely Just Worked. I think they may have wireless or cloud options there too, but the cable was simple.

Although the security-minded have complained about some of the changes in, specifically, Google Authenticator over the last few years to support this.

Yep, I've had the same thing. There's no reason Apple can't do this, they just choose not to.

Samsung uses the same method.

And the reason they don't because it's only needed when you can't use iCloud, and you can't use iCloud when your country is debanked for starting a war. I don't know how Apple's internal project management works, but I suspect a task "make data migration work if my country is under sanctions" is not very high on the list.

Yes, single player games requiring online connection is just another part of sanctions against Russia. And by the way, if Apple does not have something, this means no sane person would need it at all.

No, the reason they don't is because Apple is a shitty company who tries to lock you into their walled garden as hard as they can. It is mind-bogglingly stupid to use the Internet to transfer data between two physical devices which you have right in front of you. Any sensible person would default to using local wireless (if you insist on no wires), or just connecting a USB cable. This is 100% Apple's fault for doing data transfer in the stupidest way possible.

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