It depends on how you look at these things. Traditional, fat-client POP3 email was not syncing, it was just downloading from the server. In such a case, I would not expect it to be syncing.
In this particular case, I wouldn’t expect a sync at all. These are messages received on, and managed on, distinct devices.
That said, I did get a MacBook last month and have learned that these things synchronize. Which is cool but I didn’t expect that. Still wouldn’t expect it on deletes.
If someone sends a message to your email address or phone number using iMessage, you receive the message on all your Apple devices that are set up to receive messages sent to that email address or phone number. When you view an iMessage conversation, you see all messages sent from any device, so you can keep in touch with others wherever you are.
The article says nothing about deleted messages, but it does imply that what you see on one device is expected to match what you see on another. So it's reasonable to think that deleting on one device will delete on another.
I knew a guy when I served in the US military who got caught cheating in a semi-related way. He got assigned to a base in a new state and his wife refused to relocate their whole family for the few years he'd be assigned there, so he went by himself, leaving his wife and kids in his home state.
Turns out, he was sexting one of his younger subordinates at work. One of his daughters found out when she tried to use an old tablet and found out his account was still synced to it. She saw all his texts updating in real time.
He was ultra-conservative and didn't believe in divorce, so he was doing everything he could to save his marriage. His wife forced him to install security cameras in every room of his apartment and banned him from going anywhere after work. She knew his schedule and expected him home immediately after work ended. He was basically on house arrest until his job was done and he could move home.
The last I heard, he told his wife the landlord needed to paint the walls, so he removed all the cameras, dunked them in the bathtub, then played dumb when none of them would work when he set them back up again. He was seen inviting young women over to his apartment after that. So, you know... he didn't learn his lesson.
His wife forced him to install security cameras in every room of his apartment and banned him from going anywhere after work. She knew his schedule and expected him home immediately after work ended.
This is so toxic. Not saying cheaters get what they deserve but if you can't trust your husband, I think you have bigger problems than infidelity.
I found out my ex of 12 years was cheating in a similar matter. For some reason she liked taking screenshot of conversations, I had set up Amazon pictures auto backup on her phone at her request cause she was afraid of losing 16 years or pictures. One day I was looking through the backups cause my phone was also set up and I was looking for an old picture I no longer had on my phone.
I ended up finding plenty of screenshot of her texts with an old school boyfriend she had been cheating on me with for almost 2 years.
Nothing physical as far as I could tell but I can't say for certain it didn't happen, emotional cheating is just as bad for me anyways.
I also saw that some screenshot were from Instagram and I knew her tablet was logged in so I checked and it was all there. Worst part was, that she would often be texting him when we were together doing things and basically telling him she wish she was there. Worst 3 months of my life while I got my ducks in a row so I could leave without issue.
I found out she met him at least twice on her yearly trips back to her home country.
Unveiled at the recent WWDC, iOS 18 includes a much-discussed "hide and lock apps" feature that some worry could be misused for privacy concerns related to infidelity.
Critics have dubbed the new feature "a cheater's paradise" due to its ability to hide or lock apps on the iPhone home screen, potentially concealing private hobbies and information.
While Apple's promotion highlights the feature's ability to safeguard banking apps and prevent unauthorized purchases on Amazon, many users perceive it as facilitating infidelity. The new feature ignited a firestorm on social media, with divided opinions.
"Thanks Apple. I will be trying to hide online dating app from my wife," one X user shared. "With lock app and hide app, I can finally do it." Other users joked that the feature "is going to break up relationships."
Two things can be true lol. He should have insisted on disappearing messages and Signal use for the app but a lot of people are quite resistant to the notion that they don't get to "keep" your conversations forever for whatever purpose they choose
I was a huge Signal advocate at one time and would try to get everyone to install it and use it. Man, woman or child, I didn't care who it was. I was worse than a crypto-bro trying to jam BTC down everyone's throat.
I was chatting with a group of ladies at work and got a few of them to install it. When they did, Signal pushed notifications of them connecting to my wife's phone.
Needless to say, I got questioned fairly intensely about why there were other girls connecting with me on Signal.
Interesting. I've never liked those notifications but I've seen people on Signal message boards defend them to the death. There's no privacy issue! You're only getting it because they're already saved in your phone! This is a good scenario to illustrate the point.
I know this wasn't iMessage per se (altho its par for the course for that curs-ed app) but this serves as a good reminder for posterity.
Its actually one of the issues with iCloud and the signin process because if you do the normal thing trying to sign into your account anywhere outside of AppStore, it automaticaly opts you in to iCloud and its showtime for all your data in terms of transit and restoring it and activating all of the crappy, leaky things like iMessage and Backup in addition to all 500+ apps you have that automatically synced themself the moment you opened and all times you used them if you didn't de-toggle and delete whatever it shared up to that point
All he had to do was put his wife on a different account on the Mac or use another messenger on his phone. I don’t see iMessage as being “leaky” in this instance. His messages didn’t appear anywhere they weren’t supposed to from a technical perspective. He used the same account on the Mac and iPhone, syncing messages worked as advertised. I’d expect this to happen with any message sync feature, it’s not iMessage specific.
It’s like complaining that your wife found out your were cheating because you used FB messenger, yet didn’t create a separate login for your wife on your Linux desktop, and the sole account’s web browser is logged in to your Facebook. He fucked up, that’s poor computer security to let someone else use your account. A major Mac feature is a lot of activity is easily shared across devices you’re logged into. Photos, messages, calendar, reminders, all sorts of things. This tells me to be careful where I log in with my iCloud account and who uses it. Why would you not have a separate login for your wife, especially if you’re fucking around on her and she regularly uses that computer?
I don't like apple either, but in this case you're right. I have signal on my phone and on my linux machines, if I share those computers with someone else and let them use the same user, they can open signal and see my messages. The guy in the article is an idiot.
I use Signal as well and that’s what came to mind. Let’s assume I cheated on my wife and hired prostitutes using Signal on my phone. She could use my Windows PC, open Signal there, then see the cheater texts. This isn’t the fault of Signal, Apple, or Microsoft. It did the thing I asked it to do - sync messages. I would have fucked up by letting someone use my Windows login.
Good thing we don’t share accounts, aside from some very short term usage. That’s just a bad idea, even if it’s little personalization type things. Not messaging hookers probably goes a long way too.
I think the issue comes that it only syncs messages one way and doesn't sync on deletions. Apple should have messages that are removed from all devices when removed from the phone, but it didn't remove messages when deleted.
Sure the guy is a moron for being a cheater and scumbag, but Apple should remove deleted messages. That's a privacy problem with Apple's sync. I don't use Apple devices due to other Apple crap, but setting up iCloud sync should have a warning when items won't be deleted and only will be downloaded to devices.
Wasn't an entire stupid movie about the horrible sync pitfalls in Apple devices premiered years ago?
Why? My laptop has more storage than my phone. Sometimes I need to save a conversation for future reference, and want photos on my laptop where I have more storage, not on my phone.
I think that's the one thing Apple did wrong here. The way it seems to work currently, I would have to manually delete the same message from each device one after another. That's stupid.
Good question. It should sync deletes per their support article, and that’s my experience with iMessages. Wonder if this was an SMS conversation and it only delivers to multiple devices, but doesn’t actually sync SMS like it does iMessages.
If you use Messages in iCloud, deleting a message or conversation on your Mac deletes it from all your devices where Messages in iCloud is on.
Because it deleted from the cloud, the synced message is already on the device. Once there's a digital copy, it's like a carbon physical copy. Just because you shred the white and yellow copy doesn't mean you've shredded the yellow copy in the file cabinet you forgot about.
I think it's changed recently. Even if you have icloud messaging on you used to have to explicitly turn it on per device. But I recently got a new iPad and when I went to check that setting it was already on.
It does that for Mac too. They do it for all devices I believe altho I can't speak to Watch or the glasses. Likely so for them to be consistent but can comment outside of conjecture
Anywhere outside of AppStore signin, you're basically getting factory defaults which is
Just wiped and installed Sonoma on a MacBook, can confirm it defaults to on when you sign in with your Apple ID. Handoff is nice and all but I don’t need every device in the room dinging when the local car wash sends me a spam text. The watch is iffy, it mirrors the phone settings but sometimes my phone dings and sometimes my wrist does, not entirely sure why.
I had to turn it on, but that was a 6s. Currently running android without much storage and I'm loathe to back up to cloud, unless it's business that doesn't require extra privacy, but may needed as a reference, later.
You are mistaken at least as of the present and even a while back. They reset all defaults everytime you log into iCloud, its likely an attempt to discourage logging out
Since it's been mentioned a lot this week because of these changes, here's David Revoy's guide to a fully FOSS professional digital painting setup, not perfect because many, MANY things aren't working as they should yet (both the move to Wayland and to Appimage/Flatpak have complicated things and lots is broken), but he guides you to a setup that works today.
There's also the option of different commercial stuff (The Affinity suite, DaVinci products, etc.), but i'm a bit biased
Time to switch to Linux 😁👍 (there are plenty of Adobe alternatives for it, although they don't necessarily offer 100% replacements). I'm convinced that Adobe is one of the major reasons that people stick with windows. If worse comes to worse you can run windows on Linux using a virtual machine (and believe you me, if I can do it then you can too).
Time to switch to Linux 😁👍 (there are plenty of Adobe alternatives for it,
Unfortunately this is not really true. I think people who say "just use GIMP" have only ever used PS to open and crop images. Inkscape is also nowhere near Illustrator, and Scribus feels more like QuarkXpress circa 1998 than a viable InDesign replacement.
If you just want to crop and adjust levels, GIMP is fine. If you want to clone stamp or replace backgrounds etc (or of course work with motion graphics) then there's no comparison. Nondestructive editing has been a huge drawback for GIMP since its inception but they are finally adding that, which is good. I'm not even sure if they've added CMYK support. Text editing is also godawful. I could go on, but for real work, it just isn't the same at all.
People who say they are interchangeable is like saying an e-bike is the same as a pickup truck. If you just need to commute downtown, they can both work. But if you need to move a half ton of crushed stone, they are not comparable.
Photoshop select tools are awesome back to like CS4. Magnetic Lasso and Quick Select are super powerful and let you chain other tools together, and I remember something about Photoshop having good feather select features as well. Not having that base in other software severely limits what you can do.
Photoshop's healing and clone stamp tools are also good at predicting what I want to fix or patch. If GIMP or other OSS editors have those features, they'd be in my toolbox for sure.
Disclaimer, my old copy of photoshop was "gifted from a friend" so I'm not trying to shill them. I haven't used GIMP in a few years, so maybe (hopefully) it's better than it was back then
I have to agree. I've used a great many software packages over the years, but having been given an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription by my university, as several of Adobe's programs are required for the degree I'm doing, I've been very annoyed to discover that the alternatives really aren't on the same level. They work, sure. You can get the job done with them. But I am genuinely finding Photoshop to be significantly more powerful than everything else I've used. And it's really annoying because I've never liked Adobe as a company.
The only apps I've used that come even remotely close are those by Serif/Affinity, but even they don't have feature parity. They were also just bought out by Canva and will likely become fully enshittified soon.
The one thing I've been dissatisfied with Photoshop for, in comparison to another app, is its traditional media analogues do not come even close to Painter's, and I've not been able to get any brushes set up in a way that replicates them. There's professionals that use Painter in addition to Photoshop because of that, and I expect I will as well - but I really notice the features missing that I use a lot in Photoshop.
Been a while since I used Krita, so it's hard to compare Krita from 3 or 4 years ago with Photoshop 2023, but it was okay. Better than GIMP, but unless there's been some major changes, it doesn't have anywhere near the versatility in tools and filters as Photoshop.
This feels like the key difference between Photoshop and the others. There's an awful lot of stuff that previously I would have to do manually, sometimes over several hours, that Photoshop can do in seconds, either because there's a tool or filter for it, or sometimes just because Photoshop is so much more responsive. This is really hard to quantify in an objective way, far more so than pointing out whether a feature is present or absent, but... I use an art tablet and Photoshop just responds to the pen better.
So like it's not really that it's impossible to do amazing work with the free apps, it'll just take a lot longer. I liked your analogy in your other comment, about the e-bike vs pickup truck: you definitely can move that half a ton of crushed stone with an e-bike, but it'll be quicker and less work with a pickup truck.
This is just even more justification to use alternatives. If a mass migration to alternatives occurs, those apps will flourish and more dev time can be arranged via new devs interested in volunteering or outright being employed to meet demand.
Adobe is only so big because of their userbase. Migrate that userbase to a less cancerous set of applications and the userbase stands to benefit greatly.
That would probably work for hobbyists, but I have my doubts that professionals, who rely on Adobe products for their livelihood, could use unsuitable software for years in the hopes that volunteer devs will eventually add the features they need. In the other post about this topic, someone commented that GIMP's devs are refusing to fix problems that are repelling new users, which is not going to encourage Adobe users to make the switch. GIMP still doesn't have fully functioning, reliable non-destructive editing, which is 100% essential for anyone beholden to a boss or client who is going to change their minds a couple of times between now and next month.
Adobe is big because of their userbase, but their userbase is big because they make genuinely powerful software that fits the needs of professionals. The free options (and the cheap proprietary options) are not there yet, and probably never will be. Professionals aren't going to switch until the features they need are there (because seriously, why would anyone use a tool for their job that doesn't actually allow them to do their job properly?), but the features aren't going to be added until the professionals switch over. Catch22.
use unsuitable software for years in the hopes that volunteer devs will eventually add the features they need.
There's an opportunity here to unbundle Photoshop from itself.
Since my background is print, I can say for at least a few more weeks, there's an audience interested in reading RAW, cropping, toning for both CMYK and RGB, scratch removal on negatives and cutouts. And literally nothing else.
And so now imagine anyone else. They don't need CMYK. What the fuck is that, anyway?
That Photoshop has gained bloat is not something to emulate. FOSS shouldn't try to replicate it so long as there's a universal file format one can jump between apps to manipulate.
I don't particularly want to jump between a dozen different apps to have access to every single tool and filter I use, especially when even when using a single file format (PSD), not every app treats layers in the same way. In a detailed digital paint, you can very easily have hundreds of layers, so it's absolutely a deal-breaker if your layer groupings or group masks are destroyed when switching between apps.
How often does "a bunch of non-devs flock to a half-baked community FOSS project and suddenly gain a bunch of devs" actually play out?
The one reasonable possibility is that they might pick up a designer or two, but how many community FOSS projects seriously consider non-code or non-art contributions? Because based on the FOSS software I've used, it's a vanishingly small number.
Coders over-value code, and under-value everything else.
We'll agree to disagree I suppose. The alternatives don't necessarily have to be FOSS either. A perfect example of a viable alternative to a predatory "industry standard" exists in the audio production world; REAPER.
When I was in College, Pro Tools was the required software. Pro Tools at the time was a walled garden ecosystem, trapping anyone who sunk their hard earned cash into an environment rife with anti-consumer practices, hardware brand restrictions and invasive DRM.
It cost me over $600 CAD at the time for a bundle containing a feature-limited copy of Pro Tools and a Digidesign MBox.
Meanwhile, REAPER's noncommercial license was $60. That $60 got you a full featured copy of the DAW with support for the next two full version upgrades (which turned out to be nearly a decade of updates). You could also use any hardware interfaces you desired without restriction.
REAPER also has a free trial that is full-featured. No restrictions at all, even the trial length is unlimited. Why? Because they respect the consumer and trust that if you find value in the software you'll support their work by paying for a copy. That purchase is one of the best I've ever made.
In my experience, REAPER was equally as capable as Pro Tools or any other DAW on the market at the time. As of now I'd wager it's the superior product.
A world where consumers are respected currently exists, its just not in the hands of the corporate world. The best way to make a better future for everyone in the software world is to not put up with anti-consumer practices and engage with companies and developers that respect our time and hard earned cash instead of treating us like cattle.
I feel like Linux alternatives often falter by trying to offer as extensive of a feature set as the proprietary options. GIMP would be better if it simplified it's menu's and focused on offering a strong central feature set, then expand on that core over time to offer a powerful workflow of it's own.
I noticed this especially with FreeCAD, which is trying to do like 12 things for some reason? Just offer intuitive parametric cad and focus on it. We don't need OpenSCAD inside FreeCAD because OpenSCAD is already it's own thing for example.
This happens when a small project has 12 developers each scratching their own itch in their own time, not a team of 120 developers getting paid to work on the same itch 8 hours a day.
In the case of FreeCAD they're actually starting to reign in and focus more now, and there are more contributors.
I'm curious about what you think is missing from Inkscape. I use it and illustrator for design work all the time, and I've never run into issues with something missing from Inkscape.
For example you can't adjust spacing between paragraphs at all. I think that's because it's unsupported in the SVG spec rather than an Inkscape issue, but still. Adding printer's marks is also a total shitshow.
I will say however that Inkscape vs. Illustrator is the closest matchup of the three Adobe design apps. I like Inkscape and use it whenever I can to avoid firing up my Windows VM.
This was very much me, and for a rather stupid reason: My resume was in InDesign.
It would have served me well to realize InDesign resumes are a bad idea to get past ATS years ago, but I eventually came around.
I can still fire up CS6 in a VM; for my needs, CC never made sense. Like, seriously, for ID, layers and transparency and trapping and anything else I might need for offset or digital is taken care of. Illustrator has a competent Live Trace feature. Photoshop has the magnetic lasso, which is about as advanced as I need to get past cropping and toning. Audition lets me make really bad mashups.
The only subscription I have that is not a utility or insurance is Mullvad. I don't want to rent anything on my computer, thank you very much. Yarr!
I agree. The problem is there are too many people who make excuses for switching which wouldn’t exist if they just actually switched. Saying the alternatives suck compared to Adobe products…well if everyone stopped using Adobe products today and all switched to the various other software out there that does run on Linux, I guarantee you within a year, they would be all on par with the Adobe products because they would finally have the financial backing necessary to accomplish that goal.
Adobe still exists simply because they are a behemoth due to existing for 40 years. People have choice, even professionals, even businesses.
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