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Strategies and advice for transitioning out of Apple's ecosystem of devices? (piefed.social)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I transitioned to Linux a few years ago, which has piqued my partner’s curiosity. She's been genuinely interested and asks questions about it, but she is so deeply integrated I don't know where to start. She uses iCloud, an Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, a Mac desktop, plus whatever default proprietary software. She has a semi-technical background.

I want to help and be encouraging without overselling the ease of transition. There's always some friction with transitioning technology, and of course Apple makes that intentionally difficult. I came from a Windows ecosystem, so I'm lacking any direct insight for potential challenges.

Any advice or personal experiences on moving from the Apple ecosystem to Linux would be hugely appreciated!

(I can host services on my local server, so transitioning to something like Immich vs iCloud for photos is one option we've discussed).

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[–] 12 points 1 day ago (9 children)

Excellent advice!

I'd like to add to the list:

  • Calendar, Contacts - Nextcloud (via cal/cardDAV)
  • Bookmark (and tab?) sync via Firefox Sync (or similar)
  • AirDrop to Syncthing
  • Check whatever other software and features she uses daily for work, communication, or leisure, and make sure it either exists on the Linux side or there's a viable alternative, and get her used to that first

I'd only make the switch once you've made sure that

  1. she knows why she's doing this, and is determined to. Doing it because you made her is bound to lead to failure.
  2. you know all the features and software she's used to and have tested and established a working alternative.
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  • [–] 1 point 9 hours ago (2 children)

    I would push back on using Nextcloud for contacts and calendars, as I think that is Nextcloud trying to do to much and failing. I use Baïkal as that is its only focus.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 hours ago (1 child)

    Admittedly, Nexcloud does try to be the everything app, and for several of those things, it naturally loses out to more specialised applications (e.g. photos vs. immich). Contacts and calendars, however, are such a no-brainers (particularly when run through card/calDAV, not the web apps) that I don't see why I'd set up yet another service just for that.

    Feel free to sell Baikal to me a little more, though! ;)

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  • [–] 1 point 7 hours ago*

    I admittly have not been able to shake the Apple out of my LAN fully yet. And I was having difficulties with my iphone, ipad, and linux devices syncing with Nextcloud. That was when it was hosted elsewhere. So I I stopped trying that as I was still whenning myself off of icloud, I later tried selfhosting Nextcloud and same problem plus it was not syncing contacts. I was almost ready to throw in the towel and call Nextcloud useless and started just using smb and fiddled with syncthing I recently went onto my Nextcloud webui to find my halloween counter and decided I may still use it as a file server, syncthing may still be running somewhere on my LAN no idea! lol

    I needed something to sync my calendars so I went searching, I remember checking out a few things (some of which may still be running on my homelab but Baikal is what I use) and Baikal won out just because it was dumb simple and only did calendars and contacts it did not try to do more, the moment it tries to do more I will be looking for a new service.

    It could also be that I use caddy with https and my devices did not like using nextcloud with https for calendars and contacts, but Baikal works fine with the https. I get the ssl certificate from my web host, easydns hosts my VNC and email.

    Fun side note: I originally was going to host my blog out of my place but decided to use a VPS instead, I had already moved my domain name and email to easydns so I got a VPS instead.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 day ago (5 children)

    AirDrop = LocalSend

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  • [–] 5 points 20 hours ago (1 child)

    It depends what you want from this.

    • LocalSend shines with single files that you specifically select.
    • Syncthing is great for zero-hassle synchronisation of multiple files and even entire folders.

    Personally, I prefer the latter because it's much more powerful. Also, I've experienced issues with LocalSend and VPN usage.

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  • [–] 1 point 15 hours ago

    Yep, Syncthing is great, and I use it heavily. What I meant is that AirDrop is for sending files you select, from one device to another, so LocalSend just closer to that. As the sibling comment pointed out, AirDrop is more robust.

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  • [–] 5 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

    This is such bad advice. If you tell people that, people expect it too work like AirDrop, which it doesn't.

    LocalSend is great, but it is much more limited than AirDrop. As the name suggest, it only works if people are in the same network. If you're in your home network, and both devices are yours, that's probably fair enough, but that isn't the point or (only) use case of AirDrop.

    Also if you're installing it on a Linux machine which happens to have a firewall enabled by default, you will have to open the correct ports for it to to work out even just see the other devices.

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  • [–] -1 points 15 hours ago (1 child)

    I won’t call it a bad advice, because I’ve been struggling without LocalDrop, as there’s no similar thing for Linux world. AirDrop is surely works better, you can send files just being on the street, connected to no WiFi. However, I had a number of issues with it for family usage, while LocalSend just works seamlessly between my Linux computers and iOS devices.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 hours ago*

    You misunderstood my point. LocalSend is great. It does exactly what it promises, and works well.

    But you're claiming "AirDrop = LocalSend" and that is not true and causes false expectations. People used to Apple think they can use it in all the same situations and for the same things, which they can't. Just because you mostly used it in the same network doesn't mean most people use AirDrop that way, and I know quite a few that mostly use it while out and about, meeting new people etc.

    The "Good advice" version is too tell them there is LocalSend, which can do quite a few things like AirDrop, but not all. Basically make it clear they need to be on the same network.

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