# FreeBSD and iOS



## knightjp (Aug 7, 2019)

One of the things that I pretty much love about MacOS is the way it integrates with my iPhone. All the contacts, etc., using my iCloud account.
If I was wondering how to do this on FreeBSD. Would it be done through the Desktop environment?


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## Sevendogsbsd (Aug 7, 2019)

Which desktop environment are you referring to? Out of the box, there is not a desktop environment, you have to install and configure one. As for integration with iOS, no other OS has the integration with iOS that Apple does so the experience will not even be close. I have not owned a Apple device since 2012 so am not in a position to provide my experiences with this. A FreeBSD and iPhone user may be able to help you more with this though.

I suspect the best you are gong to be able to do is transfer files, but since Apple has seen fit to not allow you access to the iOS file system, there may not be much you can do.


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## knightjp (Aug 7, 2019)

I was thinking of the KDE desktop or Gnome in terms of a desktop environment. Look forward to hearing from someone who uses both FreeBSD and iOS as a daily.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Aug 7, 2019)

Right - those are the most full-featured. Not sure about iOS integration on either though.


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## mark_j (Aug 8, 2019)

I know Apple use cardDAV and calDAV as their protocols so it should be a matter of finding some applications in ports that support such. Roundcube supports carddav. Caldav is supported by Evolution and perhaps Thunderbird?
I even found a quick link to Evolution:








						Using iCloud calendars on GNU/Linux
					

My week, courtesy of iCloud.   iCloud isn’t just for your Apple toys. Since iCloud uses an open standard called CalDAV, you can synchronise your calendars to your other devices on other operating systems like GNU/Linux.1 To use your iCloud calendars under GNU/Linux2: A. Install the required...



					ar.al


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## NapoleonWils0n (Aug 8, 2019)

The only Desktop environment that works with ios is Mac osx

You can use kde-connect on Linux or Freebsd to control your Android phone but not ios
Freebsd has a kdeconnect-kde-1.3.4 package, but i havent tried it

For syncing calendars on the command line you could try khal

_Khal_ is a standards based CLI and terminal calendar program,
able to synchronize with CalDAV servers through vdirsyncer.

I made some notes about using khal
just ignore the sudo pacman -S python-pip because i was using Arch linux at the time


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## ralphbsz (Aug 8, 2019)

You need to learn about Apple's "walled garden" mindset. As long as you stay within Apple's ecosystem, things will work together exceedingly well. Apple strives to make life easy for their users, and delight them with a good user experience. But this can only work as long as you stay within their software and data ecosystem, meaning within the walled garden. My favorite example is integration of music storage and playlists through iTunes on all devices and data repositories, namely iTunes.

The moment you leave that walled garden, and try to get data in or out, or get things to interoperate across that boundary, it gets hairy. It's not that Apple deliberately creates problem for no good reason, they simply don't care about this use case. In particular, they don't document many of their external interfaces, because that's simply not required for their goals. And because they care deeply about good integration within their ecosystem, and good security and privacy within it, getting data in and out of it can be pretty hard.

My suggestion is: Try it, for example with Gnome or KDE. Don't invest much time in it, and in particular don't invest much emotion. Sometimes, it can be a better approach to use a tool that's within the Apple ecosystem to push data in/out, instead of trying to pull it from outside. For example, for Calendar integration, can you use AppleScript on a Mac to get contacts and calendar events within the Mac, and then push them out to outside tools?


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## kpedersen (Aug 8, 2019)

It also starts to become a legal grey area but you can possibly run macOS within VirtualBox and pass through the USB?

This used to work OK in the past to port software to Apple's crap but I am sure they have long since broken things now.

But I agree with ralphbsz, don't spend too much effort on this; in the future when your iOS hardware breaks, instead buy something that does work.


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## xtremae (Aug 8, 2019)

In my opinion, the correct thing to do would be to open a topic on the relevant _desktop environment_ mailing list / forum.


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## stratacast1 (Aug 11, 2019)

I can't talk from a FreeBSD -> iOS perspective, but I can from a Linux -> iOS perspective. Which, for day to day desktop software will more or less be the same in this scenario. The short answer: you can't. As everyone said, once you break out of Apple's walled garden, you can expect integration to go bye bye. However, this can be accomplished with third party software, and I have done this very successfully over the last 3 years with Nextcloud.

Since iOS supports CalDAV & CardDAV you can easily sign in to your Nextcloud account and use Nextcloud to be your central source for contacts, calendar events, and reminders (or tasks in Nextcloud). Then the Nextloud iOS app lets you do camera roll upload so you can upload your iPhone cameras to a folder on your server. (Honestly this is something Apple does better than Android since you have to pay $5 to get any reasonably functional CalDAV/CardDAV support on Android)

On the desktop side I have found that KDE Plasma (Kontact?) and GNOME (Evolution) have been the best for integration. Or even just good old Thunderbird, which has covered my whole workflow with contacts and calendar. The contacts extension for Thunderbird kinda sucks but it works. It lets you autocomplete for email addresses at least!

For messaging...you're outta luck. iOS will ONLY play with macOS via Handoff and that's it. Can't get that anywhere outside of the Apple ecosystem. Your best bet is to convert everyone and your mom to something that is more platform agnostic. Or more realistically, deal with the nuisance of having to take your hands off your keyboard and pick up your phone.


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## drhowarddrfine (Aug 11, 2019)

ralphbsz said:


> You need to learn about Apple's "walled garden" mindset. As long as you stay within Apple's ecosystem, things will work together exceedingly well. Apple strives to make life easy for their users, and delight them with a good user experience. But this can only work as long as you stay within their software and data ecosystem, meaning within the walled garden. My favorite example is integration of music storage and playlists through iTunes on all devices and data repositories, namely iTunes.


Soooooooooooo many people don't understand this.


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## getopt (Aug 11, 2019)

ralphbsz said:


> The moment you leave that walled garden, and try to get data in or out, or get things to interoperate across that boundary, it gets hairy. It's not that Apple deliberately creates problem for no good reason, they simply don't care about this use case.


You well described what you call "walled garden" but it is not so that they "simply don't care". It happens not by accident but by design of what you later call the "ecosystem". It's about making customers depend on Apple Inc. for generating more profits (mostly not taxed).

Having said "by design" I do not mean some pretty look. It is about intentionally binding customers, that is what they care about and that not just happens somehow. There are multiple levels/methods for binding customers by hardware/(missing) interfaces/EULA/DRM/GUI etc. Apple's view on compatibility was reluctant since the Apple II. Fencing the garden started since Macintosh. Now it became more like the border to Mexico.


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## LakeCowabunga (Aug 12, 2019)

So many "opinions" here...


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## Nicola Mingotti (Aug 12, 2019)

my experience is this. If you want to work with Apple stuff and FreeBSD then AVOID all specific Apple apps/services. Eg. use Dropbox for files and pictures, Google documents, Google calendar/TODO ,  Thunderbird , Whatsapp for webCalls and instant messaging.

Pictures are the worst beast. They flow very well between iPhone, ipad and macOS ... i copy them by default in dropbox, but it is not superfast, nor always reliable, unfortunately. 

Accessing Dropbox itself can be annoying from FreeBSD. I struggled to have it half/working.

My books/papers are all in Dropbox. I read/annotate them in the iPad. But still can find them in FBS. 

For working in Mac, VMware is better than Virtualbox.

Use iCloud only for the Apple backups. 

This is my way. I can work. 

HTH. bye


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## drhowarddrfine (Aug 12, 2019)

getopt said:


> It is about intentionally binding customers


Probably not. As ralphbsz is trying to point out, if you want to guarantee your product works with all software and hardware, you need to control the software and hardware. Does Microsoft guarantee the hardware or software works with that new board you bought at Best Buy and inserted into your Windows box? No they don't. Apple does. Apple also provides hundreds of service centers throughout the country and the world where you can bring your unit in for service. (Microsoft has few by comparison but their support is limited.) Most manufacturers of anything are the same way. They do not support or guarantee anything will work that you do not buy from them.


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## ntcarruth (Sep 20, 2022)

I know this is an old thread, but one useful tool I have found for integrating my iPad with my (Open)BSD machines is a small app called iSH (see https://github.com/ish-app/ish, or search the App Store) which allows running an Alpine Linux kernel within an iOS app. In particular, one can mount arbitrary directories from the iPad (though not pictures) and then use ssh/scp to get the files to a computer. It tends to die sometimes (I think iOS kills it) so it isn’t the kind of thing one can start up and then leave running forever in the background, but it is useful. (Recently I also discovered I can use it to copy/paste stuff between my iPad and computer using an ssh session with tmux, and having the same tmux session attached on both iSH and my computer.)


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 20, 2022)

ntcarruth That program is for running Linux on IOS. How are you getting OpenBSD to run? How does it apply to FreeBSD?


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## ntcarruth (Oct 5, 2022)

drhowarddrfine said:


> ntcarruth That program is for running Linux on IOS. How are you getting OpenBSD to run? How does it apply to FreeBSD?


Unfortunately I don’t know any way of running OpenBSD or FreeBSD on an iPad.

My point was that iSH provides a UNIX (specifically, Linux) environment on the iPad which one can then connect to from other UNIXes (whether that be FreeBSD or OpenBSD). I think that gets us partway at least to what the original post was asking for.


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## WMByj2SUUa (Oct 5, 2022)

You can synchronize your contacts through the SIM card reader.


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