5 ms·

Moving data from iCloud may need to be made easier, by EU law

55 points by janandonly 3y ago

FollowingTheDao 3y ago
Why does the EU get all the nice things? Apple's piss poor Document apps and their horrible Photos app made me give up on the whole ecosystem. The download and upload of photos to iCloud is painful even on fast wifi.
- mhoad 3y ago
  Because they have spent a long time building out good consumer protection laws. The US could have this also, it’s a political choice not to and is instead more of an enterprise owned state at this point.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > Apple's piss poor Document apps and their horrible Photos app made me give up on the whole ecosystem. The download and upload of photos to iCloud is painful even on fast wifi. Did you last use these in the 90s? iWork's native apps are great (I can't speak the web apps), and I moved my personal library of 50K photos (many RAW) to Apple Photos from Lightroom after months of evaluating literally every other solution.
  - FollowingTheDao 3y ago
    Apple photos turned my raw images white space into a pink hue. It was totally unusable to edit raw photos from a canon camera. Never mind how long it takes to back up rough photos in iCloud.
    - CharlesW 3y ago
      > Apple photos turned my raw images white space into a pink hue. Apple Photos does non-destructive editing only, and the nice thing about that is that your captures are always sacrosanct. https://tidbits.com/2019/06/14/the-ins-and-outs-of-non-destructive-editing-in-photos-for-mac-and-ios/ https://tidbits.com/2019/06/14/the-ins-and-outs-of-non-destr... I don’t know how Apple’s RAW converter stacks up against professional alternatives, but happily there are great professional options that plug into Apple Photos. (I use RAW Power, created by the lead developer of Aperture.)
- arlcode 3y ago
  Part of the reason is that the Big Tech companies are great at making money without paying taxes or providing jobs in the EU. They are also syphoning European data for free to the US which weakens the European position in transatlantic negotiations about bilateral data access for law enforcement (why would the US agree to anything if they can simply issue a domestic court order). All in all Apple and friends have very little political leverage on EU law making (direct bribes are very risky and rare) and given the size of the European market they will comply with almost anything. If they leave after all, a European competitor might fill the void. Also many people welcome the regulation of market domineering companies and more won't care. Remember that many European societies are traditionally somewhat sceptical of unrestricted markets and their players. It's therefore a viable political strategy to continue the path of putting them in their place.
WirelessGigabit 3y ago
Everything Apple needs to be made easier. I should be able to put in my own dialer, one that can record phone calls. After all, I am in a one-party consent state. I should be able to switch out the Photos app, one that integrates with Google Photos or Amazon Photos or Synology so that it natively back ups there and where it can natively pull the photos from.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
  Apple didn't get to nearly $3Trillion market cap by letting people do what they want.
  - type0 3y ago
    how is this related?
    - Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
      It was a reply to a comment by someone listing the things they wanted Apple to make easier/possible to do.
- threeseed 3y ago
  > I should be able to put in my own dialer, one that can record phone calls Allowing third party apps to actually record your voice. In a climate where many types of apps make money purely through selling your data to data brokers who in turn syndicate that data to countless other companies and governments. All without your knowledge or explicit consent. And where mere snippets of your voice is enough to have a model authentically replicate it and use it for social engineering or to access services that rely on voice identification e.g. Australian Tax Office. In terms of the worst ideas ever, this is easily one of them.
  - Ukv 3y ago
    > > I should be able to put in my own dialer, one that can record phone calls > Allowing third party apps to actually record your voice. Android/iOS already allow apps to request microphone access. > In a climate where many types of apps make money purely through selling your data to data brokers "my own" should be able to include something I've compiled myself - not just Apple's App Store or Google Play Store, which even when source code is available elsewhere there's no guarantee that's what was used for the binary available on the store.
gumby 3y ago
Compared to Google, moving out of icloud is mostly pretty easy (mail, photos, contacts, calendars, files). imessages, safari tabs and bookmarks, and health data less so, but not sure there are many others from Apple. Proprietary programs that store their data in icloud are harder to export but that's the problem of the app vendors. This includes Apple office apps like Pages or Numbers, but for them at least you can use applescript to export those files in non-apple formats. Easier than Google, TBH.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Google has Takeout which makes it pretty trivial to export everything.
  - ishanjain28 3y ago
    Does takeout include backups to drive made by applications on your phone?
  - TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
    Apple also has a Takeout-style service, although it is unavailable when Advanced Protection E2E is (edit: ~~available~~) enabled (arguably understandable that exporting a bunch of encrypted blobs is not helpful to most users). You can also revoke iCloud web access from an authenticated Apple device, which disables the exporter service too.
- TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
  I’ve done an absolute ton of iCloud data management in the past few years and one of the most frustrating things is how easy some data exporting is, but is not documented at all. For example, you can copy a list of every URL open in a Tab Group, and just paste it somewhere. Unless you have a ton of Tab Groups, it’s the fastest way I’ve found. I never have more than 20 or so, so it’s barely worth scripting. On Macs, depending on your configuration and apps, a lot (or all) of the app-specific iCloud data is synced to the local file system. Finder refuses to interact with that hierarchy, but Terminal and third party file browsers don’t care. Not that it shouldn’t be even easier, mind you. I think it absolutely should.

55 points by janandonly 3y ago

Why does the EU get all the nice things? Apple's piss poor Document apps and their horrible Photos app made me give up on the whole ecosystem. The download and upload of photos to iCloud is painful even on fast wifi.

mhoad 3y ago
Because they have spent a long time building out good consumer protection laws. The US could have this also, it’s a political choice not to and is instead more of an enterprise owned state at this point.
CharlesW 3y ago
> Apple's piss poor Document apps and their horrible Photos app made me give up on the whole ecosystem. The download and upload of photos to iCloud is painful even on fast wifi. Did you last use these in the 90s? iWork's native apps are great (I can't speak the web apps), and I moved my personal library of 50K photos (many RAW) to Apple Photos from Lightroom after months of evaluating literally every other solution.
- FollowingTheDao 3y ago
  Apple photos turned my raw images white space into a pink hue. It was totally unusable to edit raw photos from a canon camera. Never mind how long it takes to back up rough photos in iCloud.
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    > Apple photos turned my raw images white space into a pink hue. Apple Photos does non-destructive editing only, and the nice thing about that is that your captures are always sacrosanct. https://tidbits.com/2019/06/14/the-ins-and-outs-of-non-destructive-editing-in-photos-for-mac-and-ios/ https://tidbits.com/2019/06/14/the-ins-and-outs-of-non-destr... I don’t know how Apple’s RAW converter stacks up against professional alternatives, but happily there are great professional options that plug into Apple Photos. (I use RAW Power, created by the lead developer of Aperture.)
arlcode 3y ago
Part of the reason is that the Big Tech companies are great at making money without paying taxes or providing jobs in the EU. They are also syphoning European data for free to the US which weakens the European position in transatlantic negotiations about bilateral data access for law enforcement (why would the US agree to anything if they can simply issue a domestic court order). All in all Apple and friends have very little political leverage on EU law making (direct bribes are very risky and rare) and given the size of the European market they will comply with almost anything. If they leave after all, a European competitor might fill the void. Also many people welcome the regulation of market domineering companies and more won't care. Remember that many European societies are traditionally somewhat sceptical of unrestricted markets and their players. It's therefore a viable political strategy to continue the path of putting them in their place.

WirelessGigabit 3y ago

Everything Apple needs to be made easier. I should be able to put in my own dialer, one that can record phone calls. After all, I am in a one-party consent state. I should be able to switch out the Photos app, one that integrates with Google Photos or Amazon Photos or Synology so that it natively back ups there and where it can natively pull the photos from.

Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
Apple didn't get to nearly $3Trillion market cap by letting people do what they want.
- type0 3y ago
  how is this related?
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
    It was a reply to a comment by someone listing the things they wanted Apple to make easier/possible to do.
threeseed 3y ago
> I should be able to put in my own dialer, one that can record phone calls Allowing third party apps to actually record your voice. In a climate where many types of apps make money purely through selling your data to data brokers who in turn syndicate that data to countless other companies and governments. All without your knowledge or explicit consent. And where mere snippets of your voice is enough to have a model authentically replicate it and use it for social engineering or to access services that rely on voice identification e.g. Australian Tax Office. In terms of the worst ideas ever, this is easily one of them.
- Ukv 3y ago
  > > I should be able to put in my own dialer, one that can record phone calls > Allowing third party apps to actually record your voice. Android/iOS already allow apps to request microphone access. > In a climate where many types of apps make money purely through selling your data to data brokers "my own" should be able to include something I've compiled myself - not just Apple's App Store or Google Play Store, which even when source code is available elsewhere there's no guarantee that's what was used for the binary available on the store.

gumby 3y ago

Compared to Google, moving out of icloud is mostly pretty easy (mail, photos, contacts, calendars, files). imessages, safari tabs and bookmarks, and health data less so, but not sure there are many others from Apple. Proprietary programs that store their data in icloud are harder to export but that's the problem of the app vendors. This includes Apple office apps like Pages or Numbers, but for them at least you can use applescript to export those files in non-apple formats. Easier than Google, TBH.

Gigachad 3y ago
Google has Takeout which makes it pretty trivial to export everything.
- ishanjain28 3y ago
  Does takeout include backups to drive made by applications on your phone?
- TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
  Apple also has a Takeout-style service, although it is unavailable when Advanced Protection E2E is (edit: ~~available~~) enabled (arguably understandable that exporting a bunch of encrypted blobs is not helpful to most users). You can also revoke iCloud web access from an authenticated Apple device, which disables the exporter service too.
TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
I’ve done an absolute ton of iCloud data management in the past few years and one of the most frustrating things is how easy some data exporting is, but is not documented at all. For example, you can copy a list of every URL open in a Tab Group, and just paste it somewhere. Unless you have a ton of Tab Groups, it’s the fastest way I’ve found. I never have more than 20 or so, so it’s barely worth scripting. On Macs, depending on your configuration and apps, a lot (or all) of the app-specific iCloud data is synced to the local file system. Finder refuses to interact with that hierarchy, but Terminal and third party file browsers don’t care. Not that it shouldn’t be even easier, mind you. I think it absolutely should.