John Doe wrote:

It's a walled garden, intended to wall off the copying of
commercial content all over the place (except as vetted by iTunes
policies, whatever they are this week).

You can't argue with success?

In short, Apple has a policy of making money at all costs, even to the
point of restricting what the iOS user can do.

This has been a hugely successful money making business for Apple, and, in
fact, it has led to the Android success for those people who don't wish to
be limited in what they can do.

For example, there are zero app functionalities on iOS that aren't already
on Android, simply because the hardware on Android and iOS is about the
same, while Apple severely restricts what the apps can do.

Meanwhile, there is tons of app functionality on Android that isn't on iOS
simply because Google does not limit what the apps can do. For example, on
both the Google Play and F-Droid repositories is a YouTube clone that never
shows ads and can download videos. Could Google kill that clone? Sure. Do
they? Nope. It's been around for years.

But that Google YouTube clone isn't availble on iOS. Why? I don't know why.
But it's not. I can list a ton of app functionalities on Android that
aren't on iOS though. Things like bit torrenting is on Android but Apple
disallows it. Same with automatic phone call recording although I don't
know if Apple disallows it - I just know it doesn't exist.

Same with loading any app launcher, or with something as simple as spitting
out your installed apps to a text file on the device, or something as
simple as having an app icon in two relevant folders, or even something as
simple as removing an empty dock.

The list goes on for a long time of app functionalities on Android that
don't exist on iOS. For example, I can easily graph the signal strength of
all access points visible to my phone over time as I walk about the house
and yard on Android but that simple task is impossible on iOS. Why is it
impossible on iOS? I don't know. I just know that it is.

Same with me viewing the unique cellular tower id of my femto tower versus
my cellular repeater in my house. On Android, you get the unique tower id.
On iOS, that's impossible (they revoked the API after iOS 4.x apparently).

This list of app functionality on Android that isn't on ioS goes on for a
very long time, while the reverse has zero app functionalities on iOS that
isn't already on Android.

Since there is zero app functionality on iOS that isn't on Android, but
there is a ton of app functionality on Android that isn't on iOS, the user
is the one who chooses whether that matters to him or not.

If app functionality is your shtick, then you use Android.
If app functionality isn't your shtick, then iOS might work fine for you.

BTW, I've already given empirical evidence for the well known fact that
there is zero app funcdtionality on iOS that isn't already on Android while
there is tons of app functionality on Android that isn't on iOS.

But there is a rational logic to that fact.
1. The hardware is about the same
2. Apple severely limits what APIs the apps can access
3. Google limits that API access far less than does Apple

Bingo. That alone is why iOS will always be less functional than Android.

Nonetheless, this thread wasn't about that.
This thread was simply how to get iOS to work with Windows in the real
world.

We've tried the following, to varying degrees of success:
1. USB (I have this working only one way, & only for Camera files)
2. FTP (I have this working flawlessly both ways on Linux & Windows)
3. HTTP (I have this working flawlessly both ways on Linux & Windows)
4. SMB (I don't have enough knowledge of syntax yet to test this out)
5. BT (I don't have a Bluetooth PCI card or USB dongle on this desktop)
6. App-specific transfer (e.g., "File Explorer", "VLC", etc.)
7. Desktop apple-services (e.g., iMazing - which works - but not on Linux)