
Apple dismisses Google’s criticism over turning privacy into a ‘luxury good’ - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/27/18641372/apple-craig-federighi-privacy-criticism-google-luxury-good
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wvenable
Ridiculous criticism. If Google wanted to bring privacy to the masses for
cheap, they could do it. Nobody is stopping them. If Apple makes it part of
their sales pitch, regardless of the price of their devices, I see no problem
with that.

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threatofrain
The funny part is that it's precisely Google and friends who are giving Apple
this position to make privacy a selling point.

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beaner
How? Google respects privacy more than Apple does.

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TwoNineA
> How? Google respects privacy more than Apple does.

[citation needed]

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beaner
Google lets you delete more of the things they record of you doing. Google
gives you more control.

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x3ro
The fact that this criticism was uttered by the Google CEO is deliciously
ironic.

I do think, however, that it is a valid point in general: I would love to see
Apple selling low(er)-cost devices that appeal e.g. the Indian market, so that
they too can benefit more from the privacy advantages of an iPhone. While I do
see that, at first (and second) glance this would be hard to reconcile with
Apple's general strategy and image, I'm sure a company with Apple's resources
would be able to "sell" this move well.

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threeseed
Apple is selling older models in those markets e.g. iPhone SE/6.

And remember that India is rapidly moving towards a typical middle class
society and so people want premium products to show off their new found
wealth.

~~~
wtmt
People look at older models as older models, even though they may be good
enough and may provide software updates for longer compared to many Android
phones in that price range. It also looks odd (to the purchaser) when one is
buying something that's a four year old model. Android phones, with the range
of hardware differences, don't yield to such simple comparisons, and many of
them offer slightly better hardware Year on year at the same price points.

Apple probably needs to come up with newer, refreshed (hardware), low priced
models to beat this. But I wouldn't hold my breath on such a move happening.

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tonyedgecombe
Apple’s focus on privacy is quite a smart move. Google can’t respond to it by
tightening the privacy of their devices because that would undermine their
business model.

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symfoniq
I find both viewpoints laughable: That Google thinks it has any shade to throw
at Apple over privacy, and that Apple doesn't think it has become a purveyor
of luxury goods.

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Despegar
Apple's installed base is 1.4 billion devices. 1.4 billion of any consumer
product isn't "luxury".

Words mean things and "luxury goods" are from brands like Hermes, Louis
Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci, Rolex, and Ferrari. Scarcity is an actual strategy for
those companies. And if you actually consider the total cost of ownership
rather than the upfront price, Apple products will either be equivalent or
even cheaper than the competition.

Pichai and Zuckerberg have both tried this deflection now, and it just isn't a
very good line of attack for the above reason. Apple products are too
ubiquitous that everyone intuitively understands it's nonsense.

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hyperbovine
Right, that’s exactly the brilliant insight that made Steve Jobs the genius he
was: offer a product that is unquestionably luxurious, yet somehow also widely
attainable. Result: the richest, most successful people in the world are
sporting the exact same iPhone as my mom.

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lawrenceyan
To be fair, the cheapest phone you can buy right now from Apple is an iPhone 7
which comes in at a hefty $450. For a large majority of the world's
population, this is pretty much completely unaffordable.

People in developing countries have maybe $100 - $200 maximum they can afford
to spend on a device, and that's often through a very long time spent saving.
Such a purchase is more akin to buying a car for these people. You could see
then how having the price be doubled in order to be able to get access to a
new Apple device would scream "luxury" in many ways.

That Apple dismisses these criticisms so lightly shows to me, a lack of
perspective, that is frankly quite concerning. The world is a lot bigger than
just Cupertino or the Bay Area, and it seems like Google has managed to
understand this point. I wonder when Apple will too. Perhaps a new CEO is
needed? Someone like Sundar who has actually lived through the experience of
growing up in a developing country, and truly understands the pain points and
thus opportunities that come with it.

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least
Luxury of course is a relative term and in many parts of the world a $450
device would be considered a luxury. I don't think Apple is lightly dismissing
the point, however. Apple does not leverage user data in the same way and
their profits are driven by sales of goods and services. Federighi implicitly
states that there is an amount of private user data utilized by Google in
order to subsidize the cost of the phones.

Apple is often compared with Google, but it'd be more appropriate to compare
them against Samsung, Huawei, LG, or another phone manufacturer. They produce
a limited amount of products that largely serve a higher end market. They
produce all their own processors and they don't design low end versions of the
chips like Qualcomm do.

Could they afford to design lower end chips and offer low end offerings that
could serve a broader base? Perhaps, but I doubt they'd like to dilute their
brand image in order to do so.

Google can say privacy shouldn't be a luxury item but until real action is
taken on their part to eliminate their own exploitation of user's private
data, it holds no value to me.

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lern_too_spel
> exploitation of user's private data

You don't understand privacy. If Apple collects the same information as
Google, that is just as bad for your privacy as Google collecting that data
and doing something useful with it (e.g., allowing you to search your images
by content or providing reasonable spam filtering). Of course, Apple collects
_more_ information, so it is actually worse (e.g., banking details for
developing apps for your own device and location data for AGPS that cannot be
disabled).

