I find it difficult to trust Apple for security considering their morally bankrupt behaviour in rest of their business. They have proven their sole principle is monetary, so I find it difficult to perceive their recent claim to care about user security as anything beyond opportunism.
I can’t think of a big tech device company that’s any less driven by money than apple. What makes them so unique, in your mind? In my experience I’ve had less unwanted tracking and advertising, and better support compared to other phone and laptop manufacturers I used to buy from.
Not everything needs to be a "big tech company", but you are right big tech companies are quite similar in this respect. At critical mass capitalism seems to cause companies to lose their driving principles that made them unique - their behaviour becomes more of a mindless ecology driven solely by money.
Now look at Mozilla, it's a non profit, look at everything it does, they have never lost their principles. They will never reach the scale of Apple, Google or Microsoft, and that's a good thing.
> What makes them so unique, in your mind?
Beyond the negatives that come at their scale, Apple are doing some systematically deceitful things directly to customers that make them stand out from other companies ([edit] talking about their attitude towards customers with defective hardware). If they think that little of individual customers, how could they possibly care about an individuals privacy?
> Now look at Mozilla, it's a non profit, look at everything it does, they have never lost their principles.
I take issue with this. Mozilla has a corporate arm and they're the ones in control of Firefox marketing and development. Take for example the fact that they were (most likely) paid to install an extension to advertise a TV show.
Apple has yet to display any ads to me on my Mac, unlike Microsoft in Windows. I think your criticisms are well intended, but your conclusions are way off.
> It owns a taxable subsidiary: the Mozilla Corporation [...] The subsidiary is 100% owned by the parent, and therefore follows the same non-profit principles
This is just one example, In general when Apple hardware fails from any kind of defect, one of two things happens:
1. They blame the customer and suggest replacing large portions of the computer (unnecessarily) at such a high cost as to justify recommending buying a new machine.
2. In the rare cases they have been publicly pressured into admitting fault, they will replace parts with newer parts with the same defect and repeat this cycle until out of warranty or the customer just gives up.
For the cases where the user is to blame for damage, #1 is also applied, this would not be such an issue if Apple wasn't also lobbying against independent repair shops and seizing their parts under false claims of trademark violations.
A large chunk of their marketing nowadays is around privacy and it looks like it's more and more in their priorities, and Apple is a company that has historically loved by suckling at their customers sweet wallety nectar.
So yeah even if they're driven by money, their best interest is aligned with their customers'- living up to the promise that your data is yours with them.
The other thing is that there seems to be a better chance at being private with a company that does not start its promise by telling they want to know everything about you and "index the world"
Yup. They're in privacy because their biggest competitor is Android and this is their best angle. Tech advancements for phones are ho-hum at this point, so this is how they compete with carrier-based incentives for android phones on upgrade.
That's all fine and good, but privacy is a float, not a bool, and let's not assume Apple's going to go any further than they have to. They won't ever ask their users to do something inconvenient to get better privacy. They're not discussing specific threat models that they're trying to protect their users against. Just features that they support in specific use cases.
Which may sound like a hollow problem, but it leaves each user to deal with understanding all the threats they're under and what measures they should take. That's fertile ground for an adaptive adversary to work with.
