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).
I would not try to plan a way to replace the whole Apple ecosystem in one fell swoop. It’s just too much. Apple has really good integration between all their products, so you need to unwind it in as low friction a way as you can.
Apple Watch? That’s not going anywhere. Plan around it.
iPhone and iPad? They’re just hardware and they work. Don’t waste time trying to replace them. Changing a user’s OS is a great way to ruin everyone’s day.
iCloud? Here you can get to work. Immich can kill Photos (and save a ton on monthly cloud costs). Email? I would probably leave it alone, unless you just want to sidestep to another provider like Proton. iMessage? Good luck. Apple has that pretty locked down, and no long term user wants to try to get all their friends to install Signal or anything like that.
Try tackling photos first and go from there. You might discover that they pain of switching is so high it’s just not worth going any farther. Or you’ll learn how to navigate the bumps and can be better prepared for the next product you try to de-Apple.
Hardly agree here. I’d try not even replace a MacBook, but provide an alternative calm laptop to, say, browse the internet at home. (For that, iPad often beats any laptop, however. Say, my wife doesn’t even have a laptop of her own, but she uses iPad all the time, and I don’t see how to change that.)
We migrated to Immich this summer, and I’m mostly happy with the transition. (We migrated off Google Photos, which we were using since day one. So that wasn’t an iCloud migration.)
Some things, like passwords: she uses the integrated one, that comes with iOS. I’m just having duplicates in my vault. (I use pass.) So, overall it’s not an easy fight, but I consider us a Linux household, since the primary devices — servers and desktops with laptops — are all Linux, with no macOS (so far), and iOS. We don’t have Apple Watches right now, but I think we may try them. I think you won’t be able to replace them with Androids. To me, Android phones are just unreliable (hardware wise), and software is just an ugly mess. I haven’t tried GrapheneOS yet, and Lineage OS was good the last time I tried, but it’s still a toy device in comparison to iOS, reliability wise, not feature wise. I don’t see them as a replacement to an iPhone, they’re just a different league. For myself, I see Android phone (with Lineage OS) as a second phone only: and only till the moment a true Linux phone would replace it.