So recently WhatsApp cofounders left Facebook. Reasons not specified, but rumours are over ideological differences, the way Facebook handles privacy, reads/sells your data and plans to display ads inside WhatsApp.
In short, ads are coming to WhatsApp, now what ? Where can you go. Both of the most popular messaging apps WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have ads (duh!, they need some way to make money) and are controlled by Facebook which has a bad reputation to deal with privacy. Now where do we go, we need some text app, that is free, also ad-free and doesn’t sell your data. Plain text messaging is also not safe on Android, as you already have enabled ‘SMS read’ permission for dozens of apps including Google’s SMS app. sigh!
And that’s when it clicked me. iMessage!!! It qualifies all criteria and is an absolute delight to use. It’s also one of the reasons most people won’t switch to Android, as they will lose their precious iMessage. It comes inbuilt with most of Apple products, by default every Apple user has one. Apple has no reason to show ads there or track your data, and it updates and supports this messaging app very well.
The only catch to iMessage is you need Apple devices, and they don’t come cheap. But if you are willing to pay the premium for an excellent product and value your privacy, there’s nothing else that rivals Apple’s product.
And this is what got me thinking and looking at other Apple software products that are free and come inbuilt. Calendar, Notes, Reminders, Photos, FaceTime(video audio calls), Safari web browser, iWork. None of these has ads, respect your privacy and come free inbuilt (in your almost 1000$ devices) and are actually good software. They are good team players (that is they work frictionless with other Apple products, both software and hardware). And can help completely eliminate the need to use other software that stalks you.
So here’s a list of best Apple software to restart your privacy-focused digital
- Instant Text messaging – iMessage (Messages)
- Calendar – Calendar
- Notes – Notes
- Reminders – Reminders
- Photos, albums, sharing and sorting – Photos
- Video calls – FaceTime
- Audio calls – FaceTime
- Web browser – Safari
- Office Suite – iWork (Pages, Numbers and Keynote)
- Video Editing – iMovie
- email – Mail
- Maps – Can’t recommend Apple Maps, so I think I need to continue searching for this one
- Health – Health
- Radio/Podcast – Podcasts
Some might argue that it looks as if I am just listing down all Apple software, but if you sit back to think for a moment on each one, you will start to respect all these software that we took for granted and switched elsewhere by selling our soul (data in this case) to data mafias like Google and Facebook.
I can go into details for each product and how its better than its ads/tracking flooded competitors in separate posts in the future. Please comment below with your thoughts, arguments, or which products you would like me to go through one by one.