Long rambling ahead.
I inherited an iPhone 5s. (Which, by the way, is still supported.)
It has a much better camera than my current cell phone. That's the only
reason why I had any interest in it in the first place: The camera.
I wanted to copy photos from that phone to my Linux box. Here's my
journey.
First, I spent an awful long time trying to wipe the device. The
previous owner didn't care at all and left all their files and accounts
on there. That's fine, it's from a family member. But I wanted a clean
phone. So, uhm, how do I wipe it? Ah, you can do that from the settings
menu. But I need the password for the iTunes account to wipe the phone.
At this point, I was still somewhat happy and laughing a bit.
I tried some button combinations I found on the internet that were
supposed to wipe the phone, even if you didn't know the passphrase. Now
that I think about it, it would have been very weird if that had worked.
Because *anybody* would be able to quickly grab my phone, press those
keys (no need to unlock anything), and thus nuke all my data.
So, yeah, it didn't work. Luckily.
I knew that the previous owner had no clue about which password it was,
because they were constantly complaining that this thing asked for "some
password" all the time.
Eventually, I was able to wipe the phone. Because I guessed the password
correctly. Oof.
Still, maybe it would be okay to wipe an unlocked phone *without* having
to know that password? I don't know.
Anyway, back to copying photos.
Connecting the phone via USB yields ... nothing. No USB storage device.
Installing some Linux tools, that were supposed to let you mount the
thing, just threw errors. Apparently, those tools are no longer
maintained.
The phone doesn't offer OBEX FTP over Bluetooth, either (like my current
Android phone).
No normal FTP server built in ... No SSH ... No samba ... Nothing ...
How do you get files off of that thing?
Needless to say, this is the only Apple device I own, so no fancy
schmancy AirDrop or whatever.
So ...
Eventually, I installed some FTP client on the phone. Luckily, that
program indeed does have access to photos (but nothing else, really).
So, connecting the phone to my WiFi (typing a 64 character long password
is a lot of fun -- if only QR codes had been invented in the 1990ies), I
was able to copy the photos to my normal Linux box.
That's a first success.
Usability is horrible, of course. And I have to run an FTP server on my
Linux box. I really don't want to have that running all the time. I want
to briefly start such a server, transfer the files, then turn it off
again. This is super hard to do with standard FTP daemons, because they
all assume to be running 24/7 with special FTP users and chroots and
what not. Way too complicated.
So the next step was to use pyftpdlib instead of a true FTP daemon:
<
https://www.uninformativ.de/git/bin-pub/file/ftp-here.html>
At least that lets me transfer files to and from the phone.
It's annoying that I need a special "app" for this on the phone, though.
Worse, that "app" is nagging me to buy the "pro" version. Go away, leave
me alone. Christ.
So, what now? Launch a little HTTP server on my Linux box instead and
use Safari on the phone to just post the files via an HTML form:
<
https://www.uninformativ.de/git/bin-pub/file/http-collect.html>
That's quite a bit easier to use than FTP. And that's what I'm using at
the moment.
Now, please. For the love of god. If that phone simply connected as a
standard USB storage device, *none* of this would be necessary and it
would work on *any* modern operating system without having to install
*any* software. It could be so easy. But no. They don't let you do it.
*Instead* they activate photo uploads to "iCloud" automatically without
asking you. I took some test pictures and then noticed by accident that
they had been uploaded. Without my consent. What the hell?
I don't know if I'm going to keep using this phone. The camera is much
better, everything else is worse. I already despise Android and that
iPhone is just as bad. Maybe it's irrelevant anyway, because it's so old
and its battery doesn't last a long time anymore. We'll see.
I cannot understand, at all, why smart phones are so popular among
nerds. For "normal" people, yes, they are absolutely awesome! Sure
thing! But for someone who has used Linux or BSD before? How do you not
lose your mind while using a smart phone? I feel trapped, constantly. I
feel like I have an amazing piece of technology in my hands, something I
have been dreaming about for ages -- but the manufacturers don't *WANT*
me to use it as I'd like to, they want to enfore their policies instead.
I'm clearly not their target audience and I shouldn't even own such a
toy. (Luckily, I didn't pay for the iPhone and my Android phones all
were super cheap and second-hand anyway.)
I don't know a lot about it, yet, but maybe the PinePhone might be
interesting instead? Dunno. I'll have to take a closer look.
See, smart phones could have been the revolution. They could have made
desktop PCs mostly obsolete, if they had been able to perform the same
tasks and if you were able to connect keyboards, mice, monitors, run
normal desktop environments. But no. Just no. The manufacturers took
this opportunity to lock down all users. Everything is a (rotting)
"walled garden" now, you need an online account for everything, you get
spied on all the time. Nobody cares. Normal people don't care anyway,
the nerds don't care, either. It's a long lost battle, but I'm still
massively frustrated with all of this. Such great hardware, but you're
just not allowed to use it.
Don't tell me that I should just "jailbreak" that thing. Don't tell me,
"there's always a way!" Jailbreak shouldn't exist. It shouldn't be
necessary. I don't want to fight the manufacturer. You don't buy a cup
with 1000 holes in it and then tell me, "oh, it's fine, you just patch
up those holes and then you're good to go!"
What a frustrating topic.
