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Comment by asymmetric | Hacker News Reader

I see a lot of people saying they're impressed, admired, etc. at Apple for doing this.

It's not about giving props: Apple is not doing this out of goodwill, or because they believe in protecting privacy. Apple has a competitive advantage against Google/Facebook in that its business model does not depend on violating their customer's privacy.

They are just exploiting that competitive advantage.

Cfr. https://ar.al/notes/apple-vs-google-on-privacy-a-tale-of-abs...

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What you're saying sound like a win-win situation for Apple and its customers. So whatever the reason is for them to speak out, it's a good thing that they do speak out. Isn't it?

A man went to his local parish priest and asked "Father, is it permissible to smoke while praying?" "No, my son, when praying you should show the utmost respect and attention to God" he answered. The next day, another man asked the same priest "Father, is it permissible to pray when I smoke?" "Of course, I encourage you to make your whole life one long prayer!" was the priest's answer.

So, is Apple defending rights while advertising, or advertising while defending rights?

It will become obvious, I think, in the following days. If they challenge the court order and fight vigorously to have it lifted, I am willing to believe that it is about the privacy. If they give in and say, "but we really didn't want to, they made us do it", I will consider their resistance more of a PR stunt.

That story, by the way, is really nice. ;-)

I'd place a hefty wager on Apple fighting this until there is no legal recourse.

I sure hope so! And given how much Apple has to loose if they just cave, it is reasonable for them to do so.

Exploiting is a bit loaded. Where I’m from, we call this “a free round”. There’s no downside to doing this, and a sizeable one to complying with the order. Still, it’s nice to see that Apple don’t hesitate, which makes me feel good about any other future challenge the feds will throw at Apple.

If you want to describe Apple's actions in terms of market competition, then you should also describe the consumer (our) reaction in similar terms.

We as consumers should support the companies that have the best, in terms of product usability as well business ethic, market strategy by buying said companys product and recommending and commending their actions.

So props to Apple for leading an ethical business strategy.

> Apple is not doing this out of goodwill, or because they believe in protecting privacy.

Personally I think this is ridiculous.

If Tim Cook was born in a range of other countries around the world he would be persecuted and quite likely killed (and not in a pretty way). As such I am sure he is very aware that for many people their privacy is a life and death matter.

Also there would be many people at Apple who would've been dealing with China's aggressive attacks against their users and their own infrastructure and not be too pleased. And to a lesser extent their own government.

I can't imagine the extra few billion that comes from goodwill being a major factor in their efforts to go to all of this trouble.

I don't see why it couldn't be both - seems to me like they both believe in protecting privacy and (possibly even therefore?) follow a business model which deeply respects privacy.

Seems to me both of those things are worthy of respect in today's society.

Their business model just happens to align well with what is best for their customers. It's interesting that it's almost an anomaly. The business models of Goole and Facebook in comparison does not really align with what is best for their customers.

Apple are a company so they'd be stupid to not take advantage of this and as a consumer I am happy that the premium I pay for Apple products is benefiting me.

We've seen that bad that comes of corporations chasing a bottom line, perhaps this is the good.

And honestly I don't mind if my digital rights are defended as an advertisment.

> They are just exploiting that competitive advantage.

... and that's what I paid them for, thanks for not taking money both from me and from FBI :)

Why wouldn't they believe in protecting their customers privacy? In Apple's case there is no conflict of interest to make you doubt that statement. If it came from Google or Facebook I would be more skeptical.

So, their motivation is even better and more effective than idealism.

"we believe the contents of your iPhone are none of our business."

You are right. What you say about Facebook is true, but Google's Android is open source, so there is no way they can plant a privacy-invading code and get away with that.

No phone on earth runs the open source version of Android that you can download from git. They all run custom versions that include not only closed source personalizations to the system, but they also run lots of closed code as root (play services first and foremost).

The reason why this doesn't happen with Android is much more mundane: most Android phones are not encrypted so the FBI doesn't need help to read all the customer data. They just need to open the phone and dump the flash.

Just because it's open source doesn't mean it's safe. You have no control of what happens to that code before it gets installed on a phone. Samsung, whomever can and do modify the code -- those modifications aren't generally open source.

Ruby on Rails is open source but that doesn't mean that all applications on rails are open source.

> Samsung, whomever can and do modify the code -- those modifications aren't generally open source.

That will certainly change quite soon. In the earlier days, FOSS was not a concept that masses were aware of, but now is different. There is increasing competition in the smart-phone world and if one of the other manufacturers (say ASUS) makes their Android modifications open-source, they will see a drastic increase in Sales. To keep up with competition, Samsung, etc. will also have to do the same. In other words, competition will ensure the success of open source.

>if one of the other manufacturers (say ASUS) makes their Android modifications open-source, they will see a drastic increase in Sales

Can you expand on this? I don't think enough people care about source access. RMS's exact hardware choices don't go on to sell millions.

edit: I didn't see your username before now.

There are parts of Android phones that are closed and proprietary now. Even CyanogenMod.

None that are necessary to run it, still (not including drivers, but that's hardware dependent)

> open source, so there is no way they can plant a privacy-invading code and get away with that

Compare and contrast with today's "Typo in PHP's Mersenne Twister" story - https://twitter.com/i0n1c/status/699860681487708160

Seems to have been broken since 2007 (the 'broken' line appears in the 2007-01-01 commit "Bump year" but not in the 2006-10-06 commit "Mark rand.c functions with U.")

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