This might sound a little extreme and I don't advocate that everybody should do as I'm doing - though it will work. If you've been around long enough, this might not sound as extreme.
With the UK now actively exercising powers to be able to ask Apple (and all other cloud providers, even ones you might rent a full on private server from) for your data, without needing to inform you, get a court order / warrant or have any reasonable suspicion of a crime. Sure, you and I, have nothing to hide or nothing bad enough to so much as make you look bad, and arguably with that you might not care... but the principles are what matter to me (and maybe many of you).
I am moving away from Apple platforms, since they are by far the worst offenders of 'Sign in to your Apple Account' and 'sign up for iCloud' - you can't use them without some sort of Apple cloud based control that can be handed over even if it's for the bare minimum. Me on iOS / iPad OS lately also, gives less freedoms. On a Mac you could do some Terminal work to truly bend it to work how you want.
My solution... to move to Linux via Ubuntu on what is immediately an old HP PC and eventually one of those StarLite tablets as the tablet first lifestyle was really working for me with the iPad Pro. It will be no iPad Pro with the display, surreal thinness and ecosystem fluidity... but it will be free. Speccing it with 2TB, everything will be local on the machine. I'll even go back to a downloaded music library. That will be backed up every few days at home on an even bigger RAID set of hard drives. The only thing I'll depend on is email on one of their servers, but I have already migrated my backlog of emails to a local folder on Ubuntu and as things come in, they'll get filed there too. My calendar etc. will all live locally on Ubuntu too, the tablet will take over how my phone and watch would move around the house with me ticking off reminders and note taking.
As for my iPhone and Watch, well, I can't find a decent Watch replacement. Everything Watch is very heavily tied to connected services on either an Android phone or iPhone. For the phone... I made a post about pre-ordering that Jolla phone. Again, like with the computer, a totally different relationship with tech. No great magical sync of iCloud. KDE Connect for basic transfers. It will mostly act as a tether hotspot for the tablet. That won't come until next summer at best so a lot of iPhone without the magic until then.
This all stems from legislation encroaching on our freedoms. Nobody on this forum is shy of the idea that 'private website, we make up the rules as we go along, we host what we want' - that's just how it is. But the internet itself depends on freedom and privacy. Lazy governments are ignoring their voting public and punishing everyone because it's much easier than actually going after real criminals. For anyone who read on this site, Apple were asked to give back door access to user data for worldwide users... they put up a fight. UK then backed down and said 'UK only citizens', well... Apple withdrew and said fine. They're doing here exactly what they do for actual oppressive regimes (not getting political - you get what I mean though) but it won't stop, they will comply, they're too big to put up a fight for you and me, the shareholders are boss.
Take back your data. Perhaps next year I'll invest in some household setup of Nextcloud which does sync with the Jolla phone. If the government feels like it has a need to my data that's fine... but they can tell me... have a solid reason and get a court order to do it, full stop.
With the UK now actively exercising powers to be able to ask Apple (and all other cloud providers, even ones you might rent a full on private server from) for your data, without needing to inform you, get a court order / warrant or have any reasonable suspicion of a crime. Sure, you and I, have nothing to hide or nothing bad enough to so much as make you look bad, and arguably with that you might not care... but the principles are what matter to me (and maybe many of you).
I am moving away from Apple platforms, since they are by far the worst offenders of 'Sign in to your Apple Account' and 'sign up for iCloud' - you can't use them without some sort of Apple cloud based control that can be handed over even if it's for the bare minimum. Me on iOS / iPad OS lately also, gives less freedoms. On a Mac you could do some Terminal work to truly bend it to work how you want.
My solution... to move to Linux via Ubuntu on what is immediately an old HP PC and eventually one of those StarLite tablets as the tablet first lifestyle was really working for me with the iPad Pro. It will be no iPad Pro with the display, surreal thinness and ecosystem fluidity... but it will be free. Speccing it with 2TB, everything will be local on the machine. I'll even go back to a downloaded music library. That will be backed up every few days at home on an even bigger RAID set of hard drives. The only thing I'll depend on is email on one of their servers, but I have already migrated my backlog of emails to a local folder on Ubuntu and as things come in, they'll get filed there too. My calendar etc. will all live locally on Ubuntu too, the tablet will take over how my phone and watch would move around the house with me ticking off reminders and note taking.
As for my iPhone and Watch, well, I can't find a decent Watch replacement. Everything Watch is very heavily tied to connected services on either an Android phone or iPhone. For the phone... I made a post about pre-ordering that Jolla phone. Again, like with the computer, a totally different relationship with tech. No great magical sync of iCloud. KDE Connect for basic transfers. It will mostly act as a tether hotspot for the tablet. That won't come until next summer at best so a lot of iPhone without the magic until then.
This all stems from legislation encroaching on our freedoms. Nobody on this forum is shy of the idea that 'private website, we make up the rules as we go along, we host what we want' - that's just how it is. But the internet itself depends on freedom and privacy. Lazy governments are ignoring their voting public and punishing everyone because it's much easier than actually going after real criminals. For anyone who read on this site, Apple were asked to give back door access to user data for worldwide users... they put up a fight. UK then backed down and said 'UK only citizens', well... Apple withdrew and said fine. They're doing here exactly what they do for actual oppressive regimes (not getting political - you get what I mean though) but it won't stop, they will comply, they're too big to put up a fight for you and me, the shareholders are boss.
Take back your data. Perhaps next year I'll invest in some household setup of Nextcloud which does sync with the Jolla phone. If the government feels like it has a need to my data that's fine... but they can tell me... have a solid reason and get a court order to do it, full stop.