2026-04-03
Apple iOS lock-in is painful
Disclaimer
Main
- Consider following use cases:
- contact list (.vcf)
- books (.epub)
- calendar and alarms (.ics, ???)
- latest notes, not necessarily all notes (.md)
- On linux or macOS you can write all these in plaintext-equivalent formats, and use simple bash scripts to manage everything.
- On iOS you have to use apps that lock-in for everything:
- phone and email contact lists won't sync
- apple books won't let you export the .epub files
- there is no command at all for triggering notifications, you need a full-fledged app to do so. if you're locked in a calendar app (google calendar or apple calendar), you're stuck in that
- rsync doesn't work, iOS has done app-level filesystem sandboxing. I currently put all my notes in a single file because you can sync files using icloud and runestone, but you can't actually sync folders without a seperate app to do so.
- Waiting for the day we have a good open source mobile OS
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