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Try to avoid anything that accepts creeptocurrency as donations. Almost without fail these projects go down the shitter. E.g., Proton.
🚫 Crypto Cult Science
"Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely. Disregarding all of bitcoin's shortcomings, a financial instrument that brings out the worst in people—greed—won't change the world for the better." —https://www.arscyni.cc/file/crypto_cult_science.html
Monero is the most private currency soo crypto is a win in my book. Proton doesn't get recommended for other reasons (andy yen)
I’m the one who migrated off macOS, but I’m still heavily on iOS. All of my family is with iPhones, and we have a bunch of iPads. I’m having MacBooks, and they all run Linux (they’re old Intel models, and work perfectly well on Linux). Our home computer is on Fedora too.
As for the migration, I’d suggest making an attempt at migration with some old laptop: ThinkPad or even older Intel MacBook, the Retina 2012…2015 line up works really well for me. That way she’d have an opportunity to slowly learn and compare.
Apple’s ecosystem wasn’t bad when I migrated, and I was somewhat scared to switch fully. I did that only when I realised I haven’t touched my macOS MacBook for years! (We’ve been watching TV series off it, to keep the battery functioning more or so.)
Also, what helped is me realising I don’t need that tight integration between the phone / tablet and laptop / desktop. They’re different devices: to consume content vs to create it. So, it helped. But, I’m still learning the new apps. Particularly the design ones are awful on Linux. Figma is mostly the same, but Inkscape is just miserable, but I’m trying to keep using it, even despite the interface being terrible. Gimp turned out to be okay, more or so. Krita was mostly good too, so I don’t miss Photoshop. But I do miss video editing software. I hope Blender might help some things I miss, but I’m yet to learn it.
Interface wise, I think Gnome is perfectly fine for a macOS refugee (just search for the solution to keep cmd + v behaviour, there’s the project for that, I forgot the name: Toshy something; I use my own shortcuts now). However, you can make KDE behave very similar to macOS, to ease the transition.
The primary pain point is the apps. They’re different, and usually worse. Sometimes they’re better, if you strive for simplicity. So, it’s a mixed bag. Myself, I don’t see myself going back. I may use a MacBook with macOS, but my primary system at home would be Linux. As I have too many tiny little things now that are Linux exclusive.
Tether is a useful tool for keeping an iPhone, but switching off MacOS. The main features I use it for are:
Works over a combo of bluetooth and wifi. It's not as neat as the MacOS / iOS version, obviously, I was a heavy user of the clipboard sync between phone and laptop and this works well enough to replace it. localsend can do some of the same, but I haven't found it all that reliable.
Apple Watch does not really pair with Android devices, so be aware of that. Changing your phone also drops you out of that.
If she’s developing apps for iOS, there’s no other alternative to XCode for Linux.
I am currently in the process of doing this to; I have been using raspberry pi’s off and on for years for pihole, I think pihole is always going to be part of my network now that I have fallen down the rabit hole of home labbing. I had practically already given up on MacOS for iOS and was more than happy to SSH, VNC, or use apps WebUI with the raspberry pi’s. I was more than fine with the AppleTV, whatever the subscription service was called, iCloud, and whatever else I was paying for. The services where the first to go, I had pi 5’s with PoE++ NVMe hats with drives in a few of them so I started using Jellyfin for some of my things; than later on I started using the *arr apps to get and follow TV shows and Movies, if buying is not owning pirating is not stealing. I had already had a personal domain but they did not have a wildcard email service so I did the calculations and it was going to be less expensive to get the business plan for unlimited email address (I already had well over 100 apple hide my email addresses) for four years than it was going to be for Apple’s hide my service so I had done that, as I had a formula for creating random email addresses (Service name).(Saskatchewan slang)(3 random numbers)@my domain.ca I was peachy with that but it got frustrating needing to go to the webpage create a new address than sign up (or renew my trial period) for a service. I eventually dropped them and moved to easydns who offered wildcard email addresses, so I could create email addresses on the fly. And they where considerable less expensive.
As I had said I started using the *arr apps after I started using Jellyfin was because my place flooded and my TV was put into storage, I had just been using the channel apps on the AppleTV for them to bring up the shows I was watching but the TV app on my iPad was not nearly as good so off to the high seas I went and found the *arr apps, I had tried coding a script to watch for TV shows but that failed horribly.
The boycott the US movement had also started here in Canada, so me being a good little Canadian girl wanted to limit the amount of US services I was using, so that meant moving away from Apple. I had orignally paid for a hosted version of Nextcloud on a Canadian server, but I quickly fell out of love with Nextcloud, I felt that it tried to do to much and failed at most of it. I thought I would self host it and work out the things that did not work, I ended up forgetting about it and just self hosting seperate services for things like my calendars, contacts, notes, and whatever else. I may go back to it for files though, right now they are just in a smb share.
I had an extra pi 5 just hanging out hosting my blog so I thought I could put it on something else so I got a VPS from easyDNS, more or less to get it off my LAN I thought it was the pi 5 hosting Jellyfin that was making my jellyfin things choppy and the such so I thought hey I have a 2014 mac mini just collecting dust I could install Debian on it and Jellyfin would just magically work on the pi 5 attached to my TV, this could not be further from the truth. My father is going to be replacing his 2018 Mac Mini soon so I am going to be getting it handed down to me so that I can install Debian on it and attach it to my TV, it sadly does not have CSC but I think I will get HA to fix that.
Thinking about HA, I have HAOS running on a pi 4 to replace apple Home and a few other services. I sadly still have two home pod minis but they work with home assistant, I have 2 pi zero 2s that I want to get microphone and speakers for to work with the nabu system.
I use Vaultwarden to replace Apple passwords, I get all the paid for benefits of Bitwarden but it is running on a pi 5, being backed up to my VPS. I use immich for all my photos, again backed up to my VPS.
Because I was bored out of my mind with half my place going through the process of insurance I got a Flint 2 that I could install vanilla openWRT on and get static IP addresses from my ISP my orignal plan was to self host a email server hence 2 IP addresses, but I like my hair and I really did not want to pull it all out! I have a domain so I installed the Caddy docker image on one of my pi 5’s and I can access all my things away from the LAN.
I sadly still have not replaced the homepods, the iphone, the ipad, or the watch. I entend on replacing the homepods soon, the iPhone next year because updates are done, the ipad in a few years when I have the money for a Laptop (as much as I hate it being a US company I will probably replace it with a frame work), and the watch needs replacing but I like apple’s wallet I will need to find an alternative for it once I replace my phone.
Side note I have an old iPad in my kitchen running HA kiosk so I can see a few things.
I used to use an iPhone, and moving to an Android device was relatively smooth bar WhatsApp, which was incredibly annoying to deal with. It is possible to transfer message history though, and my family (now on Android) are very happy to get much better battery life!
If you need specific recommendations, I would go for the Fairphone if possible, else Sony Xperia and OnePlus devices are pretty neat too (former if you like headphone jack and notchless display, latter if you want top spec mobile gaming). You also have mobile Linux being a real option nowadays with the Jolla Phone (SailfishOS) and Nura devices (OnePlus 6/6T, Pocophone F1, Fairphones, etc.)
As for smartwatches, you have WearOS watches of course, but jumping into another ecosystem isn't great. Pebble is really fun, and if you are into fitness Garmin has lots of options, and both work for iOS and Android (nice!), meaning it is an easier transition.
For Android tablets, OnePlus ones are pretty good though, and GrapheneOS can run on the Pixel Tablet. You of course have the various x86 tablets that can run Linux, as well as many ARM devices that support Nura (formerly postmarketOS), the latter usually being some sort of Chromebook (please don't use ChromeOS)
And of course, the laptop. If it's an M1/2/3 Mac, Asahi Linux could be an option, then you don't need to buy any hardware! Old Thinkpads are awesome on budget, and you have a variety of Linux oriented laptops (System76, Tuxedo, etc.), and most Windows laptops will run Linux just fine as long as you're not running an old kernel (e.g. Debian) on very new hardware.
As for desktops, you have endless amounts of Windows mini PCs and old workstations to choose from, buy used because memory prices are insane. Go for the ones available on the nearest used marketplace for cheap! It's amazing how compatible Linux is with older devices, even more so than Windows.
If you need good alternatives to proprietary software, you have LibreOffice, Pinta (or GIMP if you are fancy), Inkscape, Kdenlive, Audacity/Tenacity, an endless number of code editors, etc. If you want to game, Linux is a lot better than Mac in this respect nowadays with Proton and such, Steam, Lutris (all-in-one, super customisable), Heroic (for GOG), and Minigalaxy (also for GOG) are awesome
For me, I would first replace the smartwatch, since that's the most intertwined with the "ecosystem" (more like a hellish prison, but whatever...), then try and replace the computer(s), since Linux devices will work better with iPhones than Mac does with Android (and mobile Linux) devices.
Unfortunately I think her case is terminal.