It's not that I think Apple is my friend, thier business and my interest align. I pay them money and they give me stuff. My iPhone doesn't have carrier crap, the Mac doesn't have any crapware on it.
Second this. I take privacy pretty seriously and their track record has been better than their competitors so far. I don’t care if they are riding a popular public opinion as long as it leads to a better outcome for their users.
I define “crap ware” as crippled software where a company is trying to get you to spend more money.
I just got a brand new iPhone running iOS 11 - as opposed to the prior phone that I had that was upgraded to iOS 11. I didn’t realize that all of Apple’s iWork and iLife apps were installed by default. They are full featured apps so I wouldn’t consider them “crapware”. I did delete them though.
I don't really get this logic. If your usage and data is worth something to Apple's competitors, its worth something to Apple too. Sure, "if you're not paying you're the product not the customer" but you could pay and still be the product all the same.
Their competitors cannot cash in public goodwill, but Apple can. Overall it seems as if this usage and data has no value to Apple because it's chosen that the good PR it gets from not collecting information outweighs the possible benefits that come from data collection.
It does have tangible, countable value. Apple may elect not to sell it for now, but they can change their mind at any time in the future. This is not to say that people shouldn't use them over demonstrably worse competitors (privacy-wise), just that there is no such thing as a company's soul, and they will betray your trust when the math adds up to it.
Yes it has value, but it also has cost. If Apple were to begin monetizing user data, their brand would be impacted and users would be less willing to purchase products from them. That has serious bottom line consequence, and Apple has spent years (decades!) building a particular brand image that this would undermine.
Re: company's soul, companies are made of individuals, and if those individuals are opposed to the companies practices, the company can lose those people. Apple has a particularly well-defined and long lasting culture, and it'd be a huge change to who they are and who works there. Talent+brand risk the kind of risk a business wouldn't take unless it was a last resort. Sure it could happen, but there's a lot of more realistic hypotheticals to ponder in the world.
Thanks to the Constitution that would be a three part effort but I have no doubt that it’s doable in today’s America. With one more Supreme Court vacancy Trump could surely do it.
Yeah, and this is strange. Why would Apple so strongly resist pressure from the FBI, and then cave to Chinese authorities? For the Chinese case, there was language about respecting nations' laws. So in the US case, were they arguing on Constitutional grounds?
The FBI was compelling Apple to develop new software for them for free. Caving would allow the FBI to make similar demands at will, compared to China having an entry requirement.
For those not clicking: the article writer did a (I think, not entirely certain) legally binding request for the data Google, Facebook and Apple have on him. Google delivered a 243Mb zip, Facebook a staggering 881Mb and Apple just 9Mb.
Let’s just get the obvious stuff out of the way and acknowledge that multi-billion-dollar companies don’t have fundamental values outside of doing what best benefits their shareholders. There’s no reason to believe Tim Cook lacks his own genuinely held beliefs that are nice and altruistic, but major corporations are more like nation-states today.
Agreed. Anyone who thinks of corporations (or nations) as their personal "friend" is most likely a tad confused. However, corporations are still entities with which you can interact in the real world. This means the level of trust with which you interact with said corporations is up to you. I am personally far more comfortable sending messages on iMessage w/ an iPhone, than with say Skype or Facebook Messenger.
One should not assume Apple is taking a strong position on privacy and security for altruistic reasons.
I assume they are competitively positioning themselves against Google, Facebook, etc. and will hopefully be rewarded by the market as more people wake up to the importance of privacy and security being designed into their hardware and software.
Apple is simply betting that privacy and security is great for business. No more. No less.
When someone takes an altruistic stance, it's easy for them to change their mind later if they decide $$$ is more important.
But when I see that an organization's actions align with their profit motive... then I find it much easier to rely on them, at least as long as I expect their position relative to the market/competition to remain qualitatively the same.
When Apple introduced Screen Time in this past keynote, I was pretty stoked about it, but not about Screen Time itself, but rather: when it seems every large corporation's product or application out there is tailored for more and more consumption (think Spotify, Snapchat, Netflix, Facebook, etc), where they disregard the mental well-being of their consumers, anything that tries to limit or stop that seems particularly grand, in my opinion.
It might be worth noting that Google announced similar features a few weeks before Apple. They'll come to my not flagship Nokia 6.1 2018 phone this summer since it is part of the androidone program.
Sure, Apple may not be my "friend". But its competitors clearly make money by violating my privacy, and Apple doesn't, so it's clear why I would choose them.
It's competitors include linux. That surely is the most privacy friendly option. You have to trust apple but when you use open source you can trust yourself or the community.
Would you really consider Linux to be a serious competitor? Sure, it's the most privacy friendly, but that's ignoring the fact that privacy is a sliding scale. Apple has generally shown itself to be on closer to the Linux end of the scale than the Android one, so I compromise some of that trust for increased convenience.
Well, yes, Linux is a serious competitor in that it is (still - Fuchsia might change this in some future release) used underneath Android. While a regular Android user might not know, care nor notice that it is there, for those who do care this opens possibilities. It makes it possible to run a device which - apart from the seemingly mandatory closed-source radio-related blob (which can do all sorts of nasty things outside of the control of the user) only contains free software and only runs such software as the user chooses to run. This is possible with the combination of Android and Linux, impossible with iOS or MacOS. In this sense Apple is far removed from what I consider to be one of Linux' defining attributes, namely the fact that it allows full control over what gets run on my hardware (apart from that radio-blob, that is). As there is no such freedom with anything Apple I don't consider them to be 'close[r] to the Linux end of the scale', not by a far stretch.
> Would you really consider Linux to be a serious competitor?
Can only speak for myself but I much prefer Linux and even if I had to pay for it that would be my preferred choice.
As for why I'm a heavy multitasker and a keyboard addict and in my three years with a Mac I realised it wasn't for me. (If anyone is interested, feel free to ask.)
Do I say Mac is bad? No. I guess more people should use Macs.
Is Linux a serious competitor? For some of us: definitely.
Hey, I'm curious now. I'm a keyboard addict, but I typically use a mac at work and windows at home. I have previously used linux, so I have nothing but love for it, but how does it enable me as a keyboard enthusiast in a way I'm not getting with osx or windows 10?
Windows have been very easy for me to use wrt keyboard. (I had other issues with it.)
On Mac I had three big problems and one small:
- ctrl and fn was swapped on the laptoo and I configured a lot of non Mac machines as part of my job so I could never relearn that part permanently. Also their own full size keyboard had ctrl in the usual spot
- cmd-tab made me think way to often. I might be a bit impatient yes, but there is something good about being able to go back to any window with just one keyboard combo instead of alt-tabbing to the correct group then alt-| to the correct window.
- the "jumping a word at a time" shortcut was inconsistent between apps. IIRC some used alt-arrow, some fn-arrow, some cmd-arrow, some ctrl-arrow. Also the lack of home and end keys broke my workflow. (I think some of these are fixed now and I also hear rumors that fn and ctrl can be swapped with some tool now)
- inside applications I'd struggle to access settings etc without reaching for the touchpad.
I recognize what I said was a *little vague, and definitely was not constructive. (sorry)
You made a good point about how you choose your products, I can't argue against the fact that you weight privacy as a factor in buying from Apple. However, I don't see that Apple protects your privacy enough that it should even be a factor. Sure they aren't exploiting your data now, but Apple still stores a bit of data about you forever. (https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/) I don't think you get very much control over it either. How do you not know a struggling Apple in 3 or 4 years may not be willing to exploit your data?
I honestly hate Apple's locked down ecosystem and have bought Android consistently for the last 7+ years. I've considered getting an iPhone as my next phone because of privacy concerns. I'm leaning more towards not carrying a phone or carrying one with a removed sim though as the cell providers still sell my location data.
I’m in China, I use Apple for privacy and a foreign SIM so my data never touches any servers here. I did use Android but I’ve heard horror stories and decided to get an iPhone instead, price and shinyness doesn’t factor into it.
A few years ago, I visited Tibet with friends. One of our group was a T-Mobile subscriber, and was able to leverage their roaming agreement with the PRC (and its bypassing the Great Firewall) to read and post on Facebook, among others.
Some Hong Kong sims can roam in China outside of the great firewall. Also, it used to be kindle would work in China on twice of the GFW to, for some odd reason.
Right. Conversely, if you are a foreigner in China with a non Chinese Apple account, you skip the Chinese server as well. This is just a matter of setting your country, and you can still use the Chinese App Store if you wish (just set it to China, install app, then set it back to the USA).
I think better evidence is just to point out what Apple is doing in China when principles and money go head to head. Apple has acquiesced to censorship of VPN apps by the government as well as turned over iCloud to be hosted on servers owned in part by the PLA.
Apple could have refused, and gotten banned from the domestic Chinese market, but they made a decision to damage the liberties and privacy of their customers there, because the market is worth a lot to them.
Cook even IIRC, humiliated himself by praising the CP management of the internet in China at a conference there.
Edit, QUOTE:
"During his speech, Cook declared that China’s vision “is a vision we at Apple share.”
“The theme of this conference — developing a digital economy for openness and shared benefits — is a vision we at Apple share,” he proclaimed. “We are proud to have worked alongside many of our partners in China to help build a community that will join a common future in cyberspace.”"
This is not an apt comparison. There’s a big difference between choosing a certain direction in a free market and complying with government requirements in a limited market. Apple has set the bar at a certain height for privacy in whatever markets they participate in, and that is clearly higher than their competitors in those same markets. The Chinese government has forced them to lower the bar in that specific market not by choice.
Why not just opt out of that market? Well, obviously it’s a huge market and that would be stupid, but also you can’t make changes if you don’t have a seat at the table. It’s a better strategy to maintain a presence there, be able to at least have a chance at influence, and already have a foothold if things change.
Frankly, as an American, why should I care about this as far as my own privacy is concerned? Of course Apple has a price for which they’ll “sell” user data, but all that this says is that that price is less than the profit that it makes off of those users...and that seems like a pretty obvious upper bound.
As neither an American nor a Chinese national, I think you should care because if Apple can do X with the Chinese government, Apple can do it with America too.
I'm not saying it has. I'm not saying it will immediately begin doing so. But there's clearly a limit where they will, and all America has to do is push it to that limit. American governments and American intelligence agencies have shown repeatedly (via gag orders and secret courts) that they're not above making companies spy on their users (domestic and foreign) and forcing them to stay mum about it.
I love to see Cook doubling down on their branding as a privacy-centric company. The work Apple has done to bring usable security and end-to-end encryption to the masses is, IMO, Nobel worthy.
Like you said, there are very few companies who have done nothing wrong. But there certainly are companies who are better than others, and it's fine to praise them for that, just as it's fine to call them out for their mistakes.
Then go support Librem 5, Tinkerphones/OpenPhoenux, Pyra and other similar projects. Apple doesn't differ much from others like Google - at best it's just the friendliest of your enemies.
You're correct. But I feel that the innate californification of Apple along with systemetic PR showing Apple to be saviour of privacy is stopping privacy enthusiasts from putting Apple into same rigor as we do for Google, Facebook.
You're correct. But in my opinion the innate californification of Apple & systemetic PR helping itself to project as saviour of privacy has prevented the privacy enthusiasts from putting Apple through same rigor as we do for Google, Facebook.
I might have missed something, but I though Google at least did get a pass for prism because not only were they not involved voluntarily but they reacted to the news by going all out in encrypting internal communications in an effort to make sure it couldn't happen again. Or am I confusing 2 separate programs?
You are. PRISM is a lawful program that Google agreed to be a part of in 2009. Google's data centers were hacked (or the link through the dark fiber was) by the NSA and that's when they started encrypting that link.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t PRISM an endpoint for companies to comply with legally mandated warrants? I find it very hard to fault them for reducing their compliance burden - it was either have employees pull that data or have a computer do it. The data is getting pulled either way.
This article is basically all about commercial ad-tracking and spying, so this is mostly off topic, but if you want something to look at, Apple is repeatedly hardening their hardware against FBI surveillance and congressional demands.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't get what this is doing on HN. as far as I can tell this is just a long winded rant about the ad industry. The writer of which assumes he knows Apples morals, motives & business schemes. It doesn't give us any good reason to distrust apple other than that they are profiting from Facebooks recent scandal(s)
& I say this as a Linux user, I am no fan of Apples closed system ideology
It's a privacy argument: Facebook has a track record of violating it, and Apple has done things to protect it. It's your choice if that's something that matters to you.
Apple has also done things to violate it (see Apple's compliance with the Chinese government). The difference between Facebook and Apple is that Facebook's primary business objective is making money off people's data, not that Apple will never violate their users' privacy.
Gizmodo is still not over with Apple! I noticed this so many times. After the lawsuit between Apple and Gawker media - which is the parent of Gizmodo - they've been acting like this.
>To be clear, we have no certainty of what Apple’s grand plan is
Sp, the author don't know what apple want, just a conspiracy theorist? But under the same argument or deduction, any company isn't my friend, this author is not my friend, too.
In what deranged worldview is US Telecom an example of the “free market” at work? I think the author needs to look up what that term means and how tightly related and crony the industry is.
Another sterling example of millennial clickbait “journalism”
Didnt the article just say iAd failed because apple held high standards unlike cheaper ad prociders like g and f? Now he is comapling that apple lets customers down?
