My ongoing effort to de-Apple the iPad

2025-09-24

As someone who had come to prefer using an iPad for all of my computing the switch to GNU/Linux was an unexpected turn but one that has been far better than expected. Delightful even. But, seven months in, a laptop is still a laptop with a permanently attached keyboard and no multi-touch screen. There's no denying it, I have missed the experience of using a detachable touch screen computer. And yet, a switch of sorts seems to have been flipped in my noggin and the notion of using Apple's closed, locked down OS disturbs me. It's kind of wild that it never bothered me before but now? Yeah, it does.

I wrote in late August of my process to de-Apple my Apple devices. Mostly, that consisted of logging out of iCloud as well as turning off any sort of Apple analytics or tracking. And yes, of course, it's still possible to use a Mac or iPad with no iCloud account. Some functionality is lost but I do not want MY devices talking to Apple or any other US-based tech giants that have bent the knee: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. I do not trust them and want no communications with them. It's that simple.

That post also covered switching to non-Apple, free/libre software. On the Mac there are quite a few free/libre applications. The ones I'm using: LibreWolf, Thunderbird, Signal, LibreOffice, Scribus, Inkscape, digiKam, Kate and GIMP. Basically, everything I'm using on GNU/Linux.

There's not as much for the iPad but there are a few: Free/Libre software for iOS/iPadOS on Wikipedia. Of course, I'm using Signal which is fantastic. Then there's Collabora for Open Document files. I've not used Collabora for much yet but will be giving it a try in coming days and weeks. I used it to edit a spreadsheet this morning it worked fairly well. On a larger Word file a client sent it's a bit rough. I'll also be taking a look at Only Office.

Firefox isn't great on the iPad. My initial motivation to use Firefox aside from it being the free/libre option is tab sync and that works fine. But there are issues in terms of design and function:

Zooming text has no keyboard shortcut and requires 3 taps/clicks to open. I do this often and there's no option to add this to the toolbar.
Downloads require extra clicking as they are siloed off in a Firefox download area rather than just saved to the Files app.
No extensions so, more ads.
Finally, tapping/clicking a link on a web page opens the link in a new tab with no option to turn that off.

Supposedly Thunderbird is coming to iPadOS in the not too distant future. I hope that's true. Apple's Mail and Calendar apps are excellent but I'd prefer Thunderbird.

While writing this post I had another look for a free/libre text code editor. I didn't expect to find one but I did. I'd missed it in previous searches: Code App. It's not GPL licensed but MIT and though I have determined not to use Apple services I've decided to make an exception for this and purchase for $7 to support the project. This appears to be a full IDE type app, from the site:

Code App is a MIT-licensed desktop-class code editor for iPadOS with built-in Node.js, Python, C, C++, PHP and Java runtime.

It's far more than I need (and nearly a 1GB download). Wowza. But it does proper html page previews like Textastic and has built in ftp support. Combined with Mobius Sync (another app I may purchase) I could do website management from the iPad. Mobius Sync is not free/libre but uses the Syncthing core which is. They address the issue on their site. They contribute to and sponsor the Syncthing project so that's something. Would be even better if it was a free/libre software though. In any case, this opens up the iPad as a more ethical option for website work using a free/libre application.

Finally, there's NetNewsWire for RSS. An app that's been around for a long time and works great with FreshRSS feeds.

In the end the iPad is still Apple hardware locked down to Apple's proprietary iPadOS. I won't buy another but as already I own it I plan to make use of it with a preference for free/libre software where possible. Short of Apple being forced to open it up to alt stores in the US we'll be stuck with the App store for now. My hope is that eventually more tablets running GNU/Linux will become available and that when these iPads finally stop working I'll have more choices. For now, my tablet computing will have to remain on the iPad.

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