
Apple’s research secrecy hurts industry and academic research - stevep2007
http://www.networkworld.com/article/3083278/ios/why-apple-s-photos-announcement-should-offend-you.html
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_ph_
I am offended by this kind of headlines.

In the field of software, Apple uses open source and provides a lot of open
source of their doing to the community. So, if there is an imbalance in the
field of science, it should be discussed for sure. But if I am offended by
Apple's Photos, it is for other reasons.

Edit: my comment refers to the top headline of the article, also used in the
link from Hacker News when I wrote it "Why Apple’s Photos announcement should
offend you"

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patorjk
It'd be nice if HackerNews put a star or something by headlines that have
changed. I was really confused about what you were saying until I read your
edit.

~~~
dharmon
And doubly so for when they change the underlying link!

It is frustrating to make a comment then get a response, "ugh, didn't you even
_read_ the article?" Uh, yes, I did, but it was a different article!

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zepto
Firstly, the research is paid for and is public domain - that's the whole
point - so that people can use it without paying.

Secondly, the author betrays himself by dismissing Apple's open source
efforts. Their contribution to WebKit is the only reason there is competition
in the browser space, and saying Swift and LLVM are 'proprietary' and
dismissing their impact is either ignorant or dishonest. As far as I can see
LLVM is the backbone of a huge amount of academic programming language
research.

Thirdly, Apple's photos 'AI' seems like a pretty modest application. Hardly
groundbreaking stuff that they are keeping 'secret'. If they owe taxes for
this, then all corporations owe taxes for ideas they've incorporated.

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dragonwriter
> Their contribution to WebKit is the only reason there is competition in the
> browser space

There have been competing closed-source browsers, plus Mozilla, that weren't
dependent on WebKit. Without Apple's open-source work on WebKit, maybe Google
wouldn't have done Chrome (or maybe Google would have forked Firefox as its
starting point, instead), but there'd still be browser competition.

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yanilkr
Apple does things that are good for themselves and their users. The scope is
narrow, they are not biased by existing ways of thinking and most of the time
they deliver. Thats a very lean mindset. They are doing something right. I
cant complain that they are not doing enough of something.

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orik
"Why Apple’s Photos announcement should offend you"

What a click-baity article.

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aub3bhat
Consider the fact that Google open-sourced pioneering RAPPOR when it started
using it for collecting information about malicious websites visited by the
users on Chrome. Apple on the other hand is collecting far more invasive data
about keystrokes while hiding the details of implementation. Why should we
trust whoever apple trots out at its keynote? How is this different from
people who trusted Theranos since its board was filled with former secretary
of state and such.

Apples approach towards research and privacy is designed to make press
headlines and fool reporters similar to Theranos. Its time to hold Apple to
standards of Peer Review as practiced by Google, Facebook and others.

[https://research.googleblog.com/2014/10/learning-
statistics-...](https://research.googleblog.com/2014/10/learning-statistics-
with-privacy-aided.html?m=1)

~~~
yardie
_Apple on the other hand is collecting far more invasive data about
keystrokes_

Wait what?! Do you have any evidence of this or you just pulling this out of
your butt?

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aub3bhat
"Improving quicktype predictions" => "sending keystrokes with randomized
response"

[https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/14/apple-differential-
priva...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/14/apple-differential-privacy/)

~~~
NEDM64
So you're citing crap bloggers that don't have a clue about what they are
talking about, and don't present any evidence for what they write?

Good!

~~~
aub3bhat
Just look at official Apple keynote video at 1 Hour 40 Minute mark. They
clearly show Differential Privacy next to contextual typing suggestions.

