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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2932 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.

People making closed-source software that requires connecting to their server (rather than yours or one you choose) hate you and hold you in contempt. Minimize your contact with these parasites as much as possible because they will always eventually try to fuck you. I've gone through that same process with my Matrix/Element chat app and it works a lot better than what you're describing.

People making closed-source software that requires connecting to their server (rather than yours or one you choose) hate you and hold you in contempt.

Tbf, a lot of apple users deserve to be held in contempt, technology wise. I think it's fine to have a phone that's designed around minimizing user-agency so they can't fuck themselves. All the smart people should just use a different phone.

I like Apple because I pay the manufacturer directly for the product. All the android phones are full of spyware, aren't they? I've never liked the idea of giving Google access to my personal life - I only have an account for work. Even then, I logged into Youtube on my phone once, and Google has never forgotten it. Are there android systems without heavy google integration?

There are still ads and tracking in MacOS and iOS. The only claim is that it's less than Microsoft's and Google's. A difference of degree, not kind. To your other point, GrapheneOS and CalyxOS are options.

I knew that but I hoped the difference would be a large degree since Apple doesn’t make their primary revenue from ads AFAIK. I’ll look into the options you mentioned.

Well, the best chat app or social network is the one with the people you want to communicate with. I tried to switch all my contacts to my Matrix server to mixed results. The upside is that it's a great filter on the people who really want to communicate with me. ;)

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