I find myself dreaming more and more about PostMarketOS [0] and it's potential. I cannot wait to try this out after cell and data have been integrated (I have not checked in 30 days in case it anyway had but I suspect it is at least a few months out)

[0] https://postmarketos.org/

What do you think about the Librem 5 phone, who are collaborating with the KDE and GNOME people to create a consistent mobile interface where Matrix is a first-class citizen?

I am interested to see where the librem phone goes but I am not sold on it yet.

I am excited about it, but do not like the idea of asking for donations/funding without having design completed yet... my concern is I give money then do not like a decision they have made.... in any case I am watching it closely, what about you?

Which kinds of restrictions have you run into, in the Apple ecosystem?

I'm asking because I've only ever owned one Apple products (an iPad Air 2 that was gifted to me) for a short while, and I chalked up all the limitations to simply being due to being a tablet, and not an full-featured computer.

If I had only Apple products, my Amazon Echo would be useless (no app in the store in my country to activate it -- I sideloaded it on Android). I run Firefox as my primary browser on my Android tablet, on my iPhone it's Safari only. I run a few different mail clients on my Android phone, on iPhone you have one default mail client. Etc.

The Echo thing is an Amazon problem, I think.

And I was under the impression that there were several third party email apps for iOS?

The echo thing is that Amazon makes it US-only and Apple happily obliges and hides the app from me. There isn't a lot that is more anti-consumer than that.

I downloaded the Android APK and sideloaded it on my Android device. Sure, the echo doesn't support Canadian addresses (although it does have Canadian content) it otherwise works fine.

Again, that's an Amazon issue. Apple doesn't region restrict apps, the app developer does that when they add it to the App Store.

The Apple issue is that you have no alternative. The app is similarly region restricted on the Google Play Store. If there was a Windows version, it would be similarly restricted on the Windows store. But only on iOS do I have no alternative to getting it.

I'm happily running the app on my Android device despite it being region restricted. Sweet sweet freedom.

Your wish will never come to be as the very reason for apple's privacy is the walled garden and vendor lock-in.

Which is why I'm not getting into the apple walled prison with a garden inside.

That's not true though. The OS provides most of the security (and should). I'm not against the existence of an app store is a primary install source that is vetted for quality. But I appreciate the option of being able to side-load applications and choose which applications I want to use for primary tasks like web browsing, email, etc.