
Apple is not your friend - kgraves
https://twitter.com/aral/status/1182186665625960448
======
dang
This submission has no content. Please do better than that. An OP needs to
have interesting information for the reader to process—otherwise we get lame
and tedious discussions that we've all heard before.

In short: more fiber less sugar. Some sugar is ok, but not only. Indignation
counts as sugar.

------
rekabis
However, out of that list of four, Apple is the one that I have seen being
“least evil” with me and my data.

Google dropped their “don’t be evil” motto for a very damn good reason, and
the safety of their own app marketplace is a fucking joke.

Facebook is even worse than Google, in that it has never stopped trying to
appear innocent of wrongdoing while paddling like mad under the surface.

Microsoft… has gone all Spyware with _all_ of their products as of late,
although at least their business-class stuff is moderately neutered.

Apple may Hoover up some data, but it does at least employ actual security and
privacy in many places. They make stands where it makes sense to take stands,
and they bend in the wind where the hurricane would snap a stiffer branch.
Finally, their walled garden - although not perfect - is far safer than any
other one out there. They make missteps just like any other entity run by
humans, but a fair number of their actions do point in the correct direction.

If given no alternative choice that is evil-free, I _will_ chose the least
evil option as my vote. Apple it is, at least for all my personal devices.

~~~
mantoto
Google hast the most transparency for your data. Google was one of the first
to allow you to download it. It shows you all services you use. It tells you
constantly that this is the case.

It has the best 2fa.

~~~
Nextgrid
I don't really care how transparent they are if they still try to stalk me
everywhere I go both online (with Google Analytics, ads, ReCaptcha, etc) and
offline (buying card transaction data from MasterCard).

------
tomashubelbauer
Off topic for this particular submission but on topic for Twitter submissions
in general: is anyone else rate limited like 90 % of the time when accessing
Twitter using the mobile browser on mobile data? Maybe it is because I'm
signed out of Twitter in Safari, but I can't read most of the tweets and
threads posted to HN.

~~~
newscracker
Yes, I’ve seen this quite often and been annoyed with it. I thought it had to
do with the embedded web view in certain apps or the user agent used by an
app’s web view. Whenever this happens, I just skip going to that tweet. If
Twitter wants to make things so frustrating and tough, I don’t need to
patronize that platform further.

~~~
basch
any time I click back, and click the link a second time, it loads.

------
zapzupnz
Apple mightn't be your friend, it's true, but it's not as though they're
blocking the web app version of this which has been available to any device
from day 1.

I'm not stating this to defend Apple, whose decision I also find questionable
(although relatively consistent with some other rejected/pulled apps, like the
one for locating and avoiding alcohol-testing checkpoints), but rather to give
us all a bit of perspective — the same information remains available and
usable via a web app, probably the better place for it anyway as then no store
front can limit it.

~~~
dannyr
Apple intentionally held back mobile web that companies cannot build mobile
web apps that are as capable as native apps.

So this is partly why we're all at the mercy of walled garden App Stores.

~~~
soraminazuki
> Apple intentionally held back mobile web that companies cannot build mobile
> web apps that are as capable as native apps.

Are you suggesting that random websites should have the same level of access
to your device as native apps?

~~~
danShumway
Well... it's kind of a catch-22 though.

If we all agree that it's good for web apps to be less capable than native
apps, then we shouldn't be using the open availability of web apps as an
excuse for censoring native apps. There's a lot of stuff this app can't do as
a web-app that it can do as a native app.

There's a faction of HN that wants to the web to be for read-only documents,
and there's a faction of HN that wants the web to be an open, device-agnostic
distribution platform for politically risky apps that Apple would otherwise
lock off of its devices. But it can't be both.

Those two factions often end up talking past each other. It's a very difficult
balance.

------
_Understated_
I've fallen for these mega-corp's marketing bullshit many times over the
years: It's easy done!

It's also easy to forget that they only care about appeasing shareholders and
the way to do that is to make money.

At any cost!

I am currently working on a (personal) .NET Core project so I'm using Windows
10 but when it's up and running I am going to spend some serious time looking
into Linux instead and developing my .NET core stuff there. I'm also waiting
for the Librem 5 now: All other phones are thinly-veiled spyware as far as I
am concerned.

*takes off rose-tinted glasses!

Edit: changed focus from Apple to mega-corps instead

~~~
m0xte
I would walk away from .Net Core as well. Microsoft have proven themselves on
several occasions that they don't give a crap about the end user. The whole
default opt-in telemetry nightmare of .Net core is an example. The final
result of the discussion was a "fuck you, we're still doing it" and nothing
more. Also getting support on anything is now basically "it's open source,
raise a ticket we'll never fix". And not to mention the insane versioning,
churn and schizophrenic direction changes.

Same old corporation. They just worked out how to label customers as consumers
and pacify the userbase by putting it on GitHub instead of Connect and
reducing the support availability (have you tried getting desktop support,
even paid per incident on windows 10? Don't bother!)

For me a software ecosystem has to stand 100% alone for me to invest in it.
That basically leaves Python and C at this point which I'm honestly not that
unhappy with.

~~~
_Understated_
On that note, what ecosystem gives me the coverage that .NET gives? I've been
Microsoft-focused for 20+ years.

By ecosystem I mean, an IDE as good as Visual Studio and the simplicity of
pressing F5 to test my code... that sort of thing.

~~~
m0xte
I've been using Microsoft stacks since 1991. I am at home with Python, an
editor and a terminal at this point.

F5 to run is terribly inefficient in the long run (wait until you get a 2MLOC
recompile and then secondary compile when your project is starting in IIS)

------
saagarjha
Based on the linked content, a better title might be "No venture-capital-
funded startup, no billion or trillion dollar corporation is your friend."

------
akmarinov
No company is your friend, they just want your money.

~~~
danieldk
There are a lot of mom and pop shops, which just do what is their passion and
they want their customers to be happy. Money is just a means to support
themselves. E.g. I frequented a lot of local record shops and it was clear
that their owners did not want to get rich. They would talk to you for 15-30
minutes about bands and new releases, even if you just bought one record with
a < 1 Euro profit margin. They just loved music and they enjoyed customers
that loved music.

No _profit-driven_ company is your friend. When it's about profit, money
becomes the end.

~~~
gremlinsinc
How many of these mom and pop shops are 'venture-funded'? that's the point I
think he's making. Venture funding and selling out takes all the passion out
of the business and makes it into a greedy Mr. Burn's style enterprise.

Edit: Let me add -- just look at what happened w/ WhatsApp. The guys who sold
it to Zuck n co, regret it fully but can't take it back. They know they sold
their souls to satan, and at least now they're outspoken against the turn
Whatsapp took, though a bit late and a few pay-days past.

------
hrbf
When did people begin to think that corporations of any kind could be their
friends? Did they even? Or is this just another tantrum by yet another man-
baby? I don’t want to be rude here, just wondering. Also: given the point is
valid, isn’t this largely preaching to the choir? Or is this a predominantly
American thing? I’m genuinely interested.

------
hewrin10
Why do people expect Apple to be their friend?

~~~
tumetab1
There was a recent trend, since mid 00's, that some organizations have the
world best interest at heart.

------
Upvoter33
Sadly, in relation to this, governments could be your friend. A good
government could stand up for the "right" thing instead of the thing that
makes money. But somehow, large subsets of the population have been convinced
that government is inherently evil.

Companies exist to make money; why would anyone think differently?

~~~
thrower123
Government is never your friend.

It's a bandit that's too big for you to stare down, shaking you down for money
every time you turn around.

------
panpanna
Comments here summarized in one sentence:

Google/Microsoft/Facebook are a bunch of horrible companies, ergo, Apple is
good.

~~~
DavideNL
I would summarise it as:

Google/Microsoft/Facebook are a bunch of horrible companies, Apple is _least
bad_.

~~~
danShumway
Which is still broadly missing the point.

What the tweet says: "None of these major companies are your friend. Some are
better than others, but none of them, when push comes to shove, _care about
you._ "

How HN is responding: "But Apple's still technically the best amoral company,
right? I mean, if we're gonna rank them. Let's rank them."

I agree that people need to be pragmatic about the companies they interact
with. Realistically, very few people are going to cut the entirety of FAANG
out of their lives, so ranking has some value. But don't let ranking companies
get in the way of recognizing that when push comes to shove, even the least
bad companies will still throw you under a bus for a buck.

That's all the tweet was saying -- recognize that Apple is also an amoral
company. Be pragmatic, not loyal. The people on here setting up company tiers
are missing that point.

------
drukenemo
How could a company ever be the friend of somebody? That's silly from the get-
go.

------
Fnoord
Not sure about how newsworthy this is, as it seems rather obvious and is based
on different newsworthy sources. By itself, it is not high of content though.

Still, discussion about this issue is worth it.

Given the author's other post on Twitter

> In the 1930s and 40s, Thomas J. Watson’s IBM punch-card mainframes helped
> Hitler perpetrate the Holocaust.

> Imagine what IBM Watson can help dictators achieve today with AI.

(Apart from having to think about China's credit score system about which a
Black Mirror episode is devoted already.)

This made me think of the tangent of the book IBM and the Holocaust [1] which
is still on my to read list. AFAIK, in my country (NL) IBM's machines were
used to sort based on religion [2]. It is a major historical reason why one's
religion is nowadays consider PII. Of course, it is easy to check is someone
regularly buys kosher or halal meat at the grocery store...

Data is a ticking time bomb. Or, as Bruce Schneier wrote in an essay, "data is
a toxic asset." [3]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_subsidia...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_subsidiaries_of_IBM#The_Netherlands)

[3]
[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_tox...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_toxic.html)

------
TwoNineA
Thank you, Captain Obvious.

~~~
rvz
Yes, Aral Balkan has at it for years and appears to be the heir-apparent to
Richard Stallman's ethics and principles.

------
ensiferum
Business aligns itself with money. It's just that simple.

------
jeswin
I have a lot of privacy concerns with Google. But they have also enabled my
phone to run on mostly Open Source code, both OS and applications. This is
important to me, and for that reason I bunch them apart from Apple and MS.

~~~
paulcarroty
> mostly Open Source code, both OS and applications.

It's not true. Without closed kernel drivers and closed-source Play
Store/Youtube/Pay apps any Android is just piece of plastic.

~~~
Yetanfou
The device drivers can be a problem on many devices, even when running AOSP-
derived distributions many of these are lifted from a stock distribution and
used as blobs. The bit about Android _needing Play Store /Youtube/Pay apps_ is
not true though, I do not have any of these on any of my devices which
continue to work just fine - I'd go so far as to say that they work better
without these parts: battery consumption goes down markedly, privacy invasion
goes down tremendously. I might not be getting the 'Android experience' as
Google intends but seeing as I do not want that anyway I don't see this as a
negative.

~~~
paulcarroty
> can be a problem on many devices

Can you provide a _one_ 100% working Android device with open drivers?

~~~
Yetanfou
Replicant [1, 2] supports 13 (older) devices. As to whether they are _100%
working_ depends on what you intend to use the device for given that some
functions (e.g. GPS) are not supported. If you're genuinely interested in this
subject a search for _blob-free android_ will give more results, also pointing
out alternatives like PostmarketOS and Librem which are not Android-based but
(in the case of PostmarketOS) can run on Android hardware [3].

[1] [https://www.replicant.us/](https://www.replicant.us/)

[2] [https://www.replicant.us/freedom-privacy-security-
issues.php](https://www.replicant.us/freedom-privacy-security-issues.php)

[3]
[https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices](https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices)

------
ohduran
Capitalism is founded on the idea that the consumer is a means to an end.
Apple, Google, Facebook, etc, can do as they please insofar as they keep
creating value to their shareholders.

Which is another way of saying "if you don't like my garden, get the hell out
of it!".

~~~
TeMPOraL
Capitalism is founded on the idea that if we let everyone focus on making
money for themselves however they like, the emergent feedback loops will sort
things out and we'll have a world where everyone's needs are met.

In the past two or three centuries we've identified _a lot_ of ways in which
this turns out wrong. There's a kernel of a really good idea in there, true,
but it also needs a lot of tuning.

~~~
sjwright
Agreed, but "tuning" is an understatement.

Capitalism worked well when most businesses were local and being a large,
successful company meant employing a lot of people from the same communities
as your customers. This proximity is largely responsible for that emergent
feedback loop.

Today, many businesses can become exceptionally profitable with relatively few
employees. And they can treat those few employees as poorly as the market can
bear because 99% of your customers don't live anywhere near them.

And those forces of change are still as strong as ever. Technology and
automation is speeding up change in the economy faster than ever before. Maybe
there'll always be enough work for full employment, but maybe not—and the pace
of change is now far too fast for human capital to keep up.

