Privacy is inconvenient. To maintain your privacy, you will have to put up with missing features that were so convenient and to adopt to a different workflow to get things done.
For iPhone users, the cost of gaining freedom from Apple spying is more noticeable that someone coming from a regular Android phone. iPhone users may notice absences such as:
- no more Siri and using your voice
- no more FaceTime chats
- no more iMessages
Free applications (apps) are often than not, not your privacy friends. They offer you free functionality in return to tracking and data mining the heck out of you. They use that data to make money off of you.
When you can, rather than install an app, go visit the website. For example, rather than installing the Facebook app, just go to a browser, type in the Facebook link, and sign in. You will not be tracked to the extent that you are when the app is installed on your phone.
The exception is free open source software (FOSS). They are free AND some of them respect your privacy by not adding trackers to their app. You can check their privacy rating via the Exodus Privacy website.
The degoogled phone that you purchase will have selected apps which do not track or identify you. You will need to cultivate the patience to endure the frustration of a new operating system and a new way of doing things. It mostly like won’t be as intuitive.
One of the major features that I missed coming from a Google environment, was the keyboard swyping. This keyboard feature is when you keep your finger of the virtual keyboard and then you glide your finger over the letters that form the word that you’re wanting to input. It is super intuitive in my view and very efficient. The regular peck-peck-peck of tapping each letter in a word drives me crazy!
However, Google gets to see everything that you swype, because their proprietary GBoard software sends all that you enter back to Google (I do believe). Zero privacy there!
So peck-peck-peck it is for me now. It’s a sad loss and I don’t like pecking at all. But I put up with it.
So intuitive as you knew it (eg in the iPhone IOS environment or in apps) is most likely related to proprietary, with all their built-in tracking mechanisms.
Intuitive/convenient or inconvenient/but private?
It’s your choice to make. There will be a learning curve.