How to get Google Home / Google Assistant to call your iOS iPhone

If you have an iPhone, Google Assistant and Google Home won't be able to call or ring your phone out of the box, since it's an Android-only feature. If you are not in the US, you cannot even use the workaround of calling your number. So what can you do, if you tend to misplace your phone around the house ? (ahem)

1. Get an account on IFTTT
2. Install the IFTTT app on your phone
3. create a new applet, click on "this" and select Google Assistant
4. select "say a simple phrase"  and enter the details you prefer (e.g. "make a noise on my phone" or "ping my phone". Note the most common "ring my phone" or "where is my phone" are reserved by Google and won't work).
5. click on "then" and select VoIP Calls
6. enter a message the phone will tell you if you pick up (e.g. "Glad you found me!")
7. Save the applet.

Now, when you say that phrase to Google Home / Goole Assistant, it will ring your phone, so you can dig it out of the sofa or the Lego box (ahem).

iTunes "File Sharing" is a ridiculous pain

There is no way to programmatically access the application-specific "File Sharing" directories on iPhone from OSX. You are forced to start iTunes and manually select the phone, select "Apps", select your app, drag&drop files.

In 2013.

With a unix-based OS talking to another unix-based OS.

This is ridiculous.

No, I will not jailbreak my phone. This is something that Apple should expose in an API, either via iTunes / Scripting Bridge or via direct Obj-C calls. iCloud simply doesn't cover all use-cases (and, reportedly, it's broken anyway).

This is the frustrating side of the Apple ecosystem: sometimes, you'll be prevented from doing something very simple and very obvious, for some obscure reason nobody cares about (except Apple, of course).