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Comment by gtrubetskoy | Hacker News Reader

What sets Apple apart from Googles and Facebooks is that it's the only company that stores the data in way that Apple itself cannot read it. This is why the others have little to say on the subject - there is no issue of a "backdoor", because there is no wall to begin with when it comes to Google or FB, their business model depends on reading and analyzing your emails and posts.

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This just made me realise that Apple is a true "do no evil" company and not Google, for all its technology powress and fancy marketing. A sad realisation as I have been using Google products for almost everything-- they pitch up everything under the F/OSS banner and it's so tempting.

I think I should consider moving to iOS pretty seriously. I had been dismissing it for being over-priced and not being OSS. But the true fact of the matter is, the extra cost might be worth it, because frankly, Android without Google Apps and the Google Play Services is absolutely useless.

I feel the same way. I don't actually like iOS that much, and historically I haven't liked Apple for their human rights issues, but seeing that they relatively consistently take a stand on privacy is making me consider switching.

I don't mind the extra cost that much if I can be assured that the phone is the actual product the company is making money from—not by selling ads targeting me.

The problem is that Android phones are so much better now (IMO of course). :/

Agreed to both, I have a Macbook and that's the only apple product I own (sans mouse and keyboard of course), and I'll almost certainly NEVER use that finger print function on a device connected to the cloud (ostensibly), but I've kind of softened up towards maybe having an iPhone seeing the way Apple straight up tells the government "not just no, but hell no" regarding access to consumer data.

Yet....I love my S6 too damn much

Android M is fraught with issues (memory leakage, battery drain). Looks like the QA at Android HQ missed a trick or two before signing off this release.

Isnt it possible that apple wants to indirectly harm google, by raising the issue for returning information to users? Believing that corporations can be "good" or "evil" is real bad advice at best, cheap marketing speak at worse. I think tech people should be immune to such messaging.

Apple has its own share of evil of course (user lock-in etc.), but for one thing, when their CEO says "we won't hand your data" he knows that some day there will be another Snowden and he, the CEO of Apple, better make sure what he says today is actually true.

I honestly don't think Apple gave one second's thought about Google when they decided to take a stand on this issue.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/29/9413655/apple-privacy-poli...

Right, they are sometimes using it as a marketing advantage, but I don't think "hurting Google" is why they care about encryption/privacy in general or why they are standing up about this court case specifically.

They may be "do no evil" on privacy, but apple heavily pushes vendor lock in and basically does everything they can to keep you from being able to easily switch to a different vendor.

Google seems easier to switch from, they seem less concerned with vendor lock in (don't get me wrong though, they still have some vendor lock in. Just less than apple IMO).

I think in this case it is "choose your evil" and for a lot of people, for good reason, privacy is going to win.

Google makes more money from iOS than they do from Android. Of course Google doesn't mind if you switch hardware vendors, just so long as you keep using Google products.

Also, I disagree with the notion that Apple "heavily pushes vendor lock in". They certainly don't go out of their way to make it easy to switch, but I can't come up with any examples off the top of my head where they're deliberately making it harder to switch without having a good reason for that decision. After all, Apple doesn't really have to do anything at all to keep people invested in its ecosystem, since platform-specific software, by its very nature, already acts as a form of lock-in, and iOS has a lot of software that other platforms don't.

Re lock-in: I agree. I attempted to switch to Android (Nexus 4) several years ago from whatever iPhone I had at the time. I had no issue transferring data over (or data I cared about, at least). Services (mail, chat, etc.) mapped just fine. My primary complaint, at the time, was lack of a well-performing PDF reader/viewer, and a handful of apps that I'd become semi-dependent on and had trouble finding suitable replacements for (e.g., Omnifocus - which has nice intregration between the mobile and desktop versions). I only wanted to change my mobile workflow, not the rest, so I switched back to iOS (I also found the interface grating at the time, not certain why anymore).

This is not, strictly, the fault of Apple, but of app developers and myself. Either for not making multi-platform a thing (Omnifocus), or for others not stepping up to compete, or for my inability or unwillingness to continue my search for suitable alternatives.

All this said, most of my coworkers use Android devices, and several want to switch to iPhones, but have run into the same issue I did, but in reverse.

This one comes to mind, which they left unfixed for years.

http://www.minyanville.com/sectors/technology/articles/Apple...

From the article, it sounds like it was a hard problem to solve.

   > They certainly don't go out of their way to make it easy to switch, but I can't
   > come up with any examples off the top of my head where they're deliberately 
   > making it harder to switch without having a good reason for that decision.

Just an example for those that are not familiar with Apple devices.

You can sync your calendar, reminders and contacts with iCloud. But you don't have to.

iCloud calendar sync is basically a CalDAV server. You can setup your own CalDAV and sync with that if you like. On the iDevice you have to set the parameters for your server which makes it slightly harder to setup than iCloud, but that's just the way it is and not Apple's fault. There are no other stumbling blocks to make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Once set up it works like a charm. I can say "Hey Siri, remind me to buy pasta" and a split second later I have a new VTODO on my CalDAV server.

What do you use as a CalDAV server?

Simple Radicale[1] setup behind an NGINX proxy.

[1] http://radicale.org/

> Google makes more money from iOS than they do from Android.

Source?

It's been stated in numerous articles over the years. I don't have any source offhand, though a quick DDG search gives me a story from 2012: http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/03/29/iphone-4x-revenue-an...

> It's been stated in numerous articles over the years

Then it will be easy to find any source that it is not the same old "Google makes 4 times more from iOS than from Android" that was debunked years ago for using assumptions about a royalty figure in the Oracle vs. Google trial and nothing real

Here's an article from last year claiming that Google made 75% of its mobile search revenue from iOS: http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/05/27/apples-ios-drives-...

As I said, when you can find that "report" we can start to discuss about the figures. Until then, it has the same validity as using a random function in a computer to guess those numbers

That's completely ridiculous. Even if the exact figures in the articles are wrong, it's still generally accepted that Google makes a significant amount of its mobile revenue off of iOS. Demanding that I unearth some vague "report" to give you specific figures is completely meaningless. Doubly-so since it doesn't even matter what the numbers are, because the whole point was that Android users switching to iOS are still extremely likely to be using Google products, which means Google's still making money off of them.

> That's completely ridiculous.

What is completely ridiculous is claiming things without any proof

> it's still generally accepted that Google makes a significant amount of its mobile revenue off of iOS

This is not your claim

> Doubly-so since it doesn't even matter what the numbers are,

Oh, no, it matter when you have made a very specific claim that can't be supporte

I made a general claim based on a widely-held belief in support of the notion that Google doesn't care if people switch away from Android because Google still makes money off of those people regardless of which platform they choose, as they'll still be using Google products. Please stop trying to nitpick about specific irrelevant details such as how accurate the numbers are that have been reported in various articles.

> Google makes more money from iOS than they do from Android.

I think that statement's based on an old stat that, at that time, Google's revenue from licensing (Apple was paying for Maps) and advertising (including web and search advertising, and at the time Google was the default search provider on iOS and this was also before Siri was around to displace some web search) to iOS users was greater than its revenue from Android.

The facts on which all that was based (market share, basis of iOS revenue streams, etc.) have changed substantially since then.

Fair enough, it's certainly possible that the stat is no longer true. Unless they've talked about it recently, it's hard to know for sure. Here's an article from May of 2015 that says that 75% of Google's mobile search revenue comes from iOS, which probably hasn't changed too dramatically since then, but it may no longer be accurate: http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/05/27/apples-ios-drives-...

> Here's an article from May of 2015 that says that 75% of Google's mobile search revenue comes from iOS,

Ah, the other figure from a report from Goldman Sachs that nobody has seen but it is now dogma.

When you find the report, please, put it.

And, by the way, using Appleinsider as source is very funny

It is funny, but it was the first result my search gave me. The result after was from another site that reported the same figure though, so it's not like AppleInsider was alone.

So if someone texts me an address, I can have it open in Google maps by default when I click it?

> They may be "do no evil" on privacy, but apple heavily pushes vendor lock in and basically does everything they can to keep you from being able to easily switch to a different vendor.

This is often used as an argument against Apple, but having gone back and forth over the years, I just don't think it's true anymore. It certainly was a decade ago, but now I'm finding it hard to think of any issues I've had going from Apple to any other vendor – regardless of whether it's software (migrating data, chiefly) or hardware. At least, I don't think they're significantly worse than any other vendor.

Have you tried plugging an Android into a Mac?

I haven't, no, but it'd be interesting to learn what the pain points are. Care to share?

By default you can't. You have to install an app on your OS X that Google makes, then it opens a file browser that lets you drag and drop files out/in of your phone. It's a pain.

>This just made me realise that Apple is a true "do no evil" company and not Google, for all its technology powress and fancy marketing. A sad realisation as I have been using Google products for almost everything-- they pitch up everything under the F/OSS banner and it's so tempting.

There's nothing evil about wanting to provide contextual information and to do that they need the context. Its just the nature of the service they provide.

Apple does that/is moving into that area too. They use your own hardware instead of their servers to do it.

There's nothing evil about wanting to provide contextual information and to do that they need the context.

The argument you've presented is ends justifying the means. I don't mean to imply that there is no convincing arguments to be made involving the points you present, but this is not it.

The face value reading of purely "providing contextual information" is benign af. But that does mean evil can not lurk in implementation constraints, and/or the design decisions made in service of making that presentation monetizable.

What Apple is doing is protecting its business model. It is a good thing what Apple is doing, but they are doing it only because it is aligned with its business model. Apple is a for-profit organization. Same as Google. Same as Facebook.

It's on record that Apple has chosen to avoid the business model used by Google in order to avoid this compromise.

Apple chooses a business model that is aligned with what it thinks is right, not the other way around.

I'm sure that it's easier for them to do it because it's aligned with their business model but Tim Cook has shown himself willing to pursue policies that aren't solely ROI-related.

Cook very publicly tangled with shareholders that argued against Apple's environmental & accessibility initiatives:

"'When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI,' Cook said, adding that the same sentiment applied to environmental and health and safety issues.

He told Danhof that if he did not believe in climate change, he should sell his Apple shares. 'If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock,' he said.

Cook’s comments and visible passion over the issue are one of the strongest signals yet of his commitment to reducing Apple’s environmental footprint. He told shareholders that he wanted to 'leave the world better than we found it'."

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/03/tim-cook-...

It's not about evil vs not evil. It's about how to make profits. They've chosen different models. I tend to side with Apple's method, but that doesn't mean I don't use both companies' products, and I'll happily avoid one or the other when I feel that features are lacking.

>they pitch up everything under the F/OSS banner

Do they really pitch anything under the F/OSS banner? I don't understand why Google has this reputation. Android is OSS, but that's a fairly recent addition, and it's not really played up very much.

> I don't understand why Google has this reputation. Android is OSS, but that's a fairly recent addition, and it's not really played up very much.

In addition to AOSP, Chromium (and Chromium OS) are open source; while App Engine isn't, the App Engine SDK is, and Google has supported an open-source reimplementation of App Engine. Dart is open source, as is Go. And a lot of other stuff.

Well I don't think that Google really advertises itself under the OSS banner (and certainly not Libre/Free). And when compared to Apple, as the other poster did, I don't really see that Google is doing much more open source other than Android.

They definitely did advertise themselves with the motto "Do No Evil," which they dropped some time ago, but open source hasn't really been a part of Google's DNA. Google's extensive use of open source software without publishing their modifications is exactly the reason that AGPL was invented.

> They definitely did advertise themselves with the motto "Do No Evil," which they dropped some time ago,

Google has not dropped that motto

Oops, thanks for the correction! This was a bad memory. I can find no support to back up my claim, and though Alphabet has a different phrasing of it, that did not happen in the time frame I falsely recalled.

Well, Alphabet doesn't have that motto, perhaps is what you read.

I've actually been having similar feelings lately. I'm still not totally happy with Apple and fundamentally disagree with their closed ecosystem policy, but over the years I feel like they have been gradually gaining trustworthiness just as Google has been losing it. (Of course, Facebook never had it in the first place.) I still don't think it's so much a true desire to "do no evil" rather than Apple's business incentives happening to be more compatible with consumer privacy in this case, but that's really about the best you can hope for from any gigantic for-profit corporation.

I'm not quite ready to jump ship yet, but it's looking more and more tempting every day.

The problem as I see it: your stuck choosing the lesser evil. I agree with you on apple's stuff. If they opened up the ecosystem more, I'd like their stuff. And Google left "do no evil" so long ago, its not even funny.

I'd love a good FOSS alternative to their software/services. I try to run my own software/services, but there are some things I still just can't replicate.

I'm not sure what you are talking about here. Apple's _Cloud Services_ i.e. iCloud, do not prevent Apple accessing the data, and Apple does comply with 'valid' requests for that data, just like Google and Facebook.

As for data stored on user's devices, Google also ships their phones with full disk encryption which Google cannot bypass - the implementation isn't as good as Apple's, but the concept is the same. Facebook doesn't sell any end-user devices so I'm not sure why they are even in your comparison.

> What sets Apple apart from Googles and Facebooks is that it's the only company that stores the data in way that Apple itself cannot read it.

FWIW, Mozilla does the same thing for Firefox Accounts sync data - it's an opaque blob that we couldn't decrypt even if we wanted to.

(Disclosure: Mozilla employee)

This is good to know. Might tempt me back to Firefox from Chrome.

I switched to chromium with homebrew via

    brew cask install chromium

last night. AFAICT, it's exactly the same as chrome minus the proprietary code. I literally haven't noticed a single difference other than the nicer icon.

For the record, Chrome's sync data can also be an encrypted blob that Google can't decrypt[0].

[0]: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1181035?hl=en

Probably because at Apple the consumer is not the product.

The product is the consumer.

Apple also makes most of it's money by selling phones, not user information...

>Apple also makes most of it's money by selling phones, not user information...

Google is the advertiser. I'm surprised how often people make this mistake. They don't sell user data to other advertisers. This not only goes against their terms of service, but also makes no business sense. Why would they give up their best signal for targeted ads?

It's like keeping the cow and selling the milk. It's pedantic, but google is collecting rent from user information.

They effectively sell user information by way of allowing their customers to target individuals for a price. They aren't directly selling the data itself but they are selling a service that is an extension of that data. I think the semantics are negligible. They make money selling [ads based on] user data.

> They effectively sell user information by way of allowing their customers to target individuals for a price.

That's not selling user information in the same way that Ford doesn't sell automobile factories.

> They aren't directly selling the data itself

Nor are they indirectly selling the data. No one else gets the data.

> they are selling a service that is an extension of that data.

They are using the data to produce a service that they are selling, in the same way that Ford uses a factory to make a car. No one else gets the data, in the same way that no one else gets the factory from Ford.

> I think the semantics are negligible.

I think there is a substantive difference between transferring data to third parties and over whom neither the person the data describes nor Google exercises control and retaining the data internally and using it to provide a service to third parties. And I think that is a critical difference when it comes to privacy.

I mean, you erase the distinction between a armed security guard (who sells a service which involves a firearm) and an arms dealer (who sells firearms).

The difference is not semantic. It's an immense difference. One is an ad inserted into your Visa statement, the other is Visa selling your personal data to third parties. Completely different.

The incentives of those two business models could hardly be more different. The value of their services derives from the exclusivity of their data. It is directly in their financial interest to ensure that no one else can access that data.

> They effectively sell user information by way of allowing their customers to target individuals for a price

If you're implying that advertisers can target an specific user, this is false

The data that Google (or anybody else) collects is probably going to be around approximately "forever". Do you really believe Google will:

1) never sell that data at any time in the future (perhaps if they should suffer a bad year financially), and

2) that they will be able to retain control of that data (no leaks, no employees that abuse access, no attacks from other people interested in the data).

Without these criteria, saying anything about what Google "re4ally does" with their data is a best describing the past and maybe the present. Why does everybody act as if current business plans are some sort of Truth that we can rely on? Plans change, management changes - unless it's in writing on an actual contract, it's just wishful thinking.

Of course, this doesn't matter when talking about Google and their data. We already know they give data to the government because they are part of PRISM[1].

As for advertisers, the scenerios "Google gave customer data to an advertiser" and "Google did the targeting work for the advertiser as a (paid) service" differ only in minor details. The end result is the same. There numerous creative ways the data can be moved by proxy or as a service.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Prism_sl...

> Do you really believe Google will:

The same can be said about other for profit organization. If the times changes and the board changes they can change their behaviour. So, it is only ifs.

> Of course, this doesn't matter when talking about Google and their data. We already know they give data to the government because they are part of PRISM[1].

So is Apple

> As for advertisers, the scenerios "Google gave customer data to an advertiser" and "Google did the targeting work for the advertiser as a (paid) service" differ only in minor details. The end result is the same

Minor details? Yes, NOT giving access to the data to advertisers is just a minor detail /s

> The same can be said about other for profit organization.

Only those for-profit organizations that are keeping personal data for long periods of time. This is not at all universal, and nobody[1] is collecting data on anywhere near the scale that Google is, across such a wide range of data sources. How many other corporations have entire browsing histories (google-analytics), email histories, and phone call and location logs?

Do you deny that the aggregation of this data is a risk, should someone abuse it? Do you think this data is going to ever be deleted? You call this "only ifs", but this is a constant risk as long as the data exists. The numerous leaks of personal information we've heard about in the last ~year prove this risk exists. I suspect that Google will do a better job at securing their valuable data than most organizations, but nobody is perfect.

> So is Apple

Entirely off topic. The fact that there are risks when giving data to other businesses doesn't make the risk of giving data over to Google go away. While it is a common meme recently, appeal-to-popularity is still a fallacy.

> Yes, NOT giving access to the data to advertisers is just a minor detail /s

Advertisers... like Google.

[1] save for a couple other corporations that are in the data-collection business

Google's CEO had at least a short response to Apple's letter on twitter.

https://twitter.com/sundarpichai

https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/700104298600886272

Don’t the modern Android phones with Trusted Execution Environment do about the same?

I think what gtrubetskoy is talking about is Google (namely: search, Gmail, calendar, contacts, Plus--which are all tied to your Google account) and Facebook (namely: relationships, posting content, private messages, what you look at, etc) is information which is then mined or allowed to be targeted by advertisers for a handsome profit.

Apple doesn't do that. Their iAds are nothing in comparison to Google/FB's data mining. The only thing you get to go off of is the Advertising Identifier and the user can change/reset that at any moment effectively not tying them to any specific targeting.

I'm not sure what could be said of iCloud, but Apple itself isn't a big player in the ad-selling market unlike Google and Facebook. So unless Apple is straight selling off iCloud user data, it's a different ballgame.

edit: you also have to take into account Google and FB's ability to track you across the (near)-ENTIRE internet. Every FB/G-Plus share button, every video, image, asset loaded from FB/Google can track you via cookies. You could be reading a blog about pregnancies and how to prepare for a newborn on a cute little blog and Facebook may then target you for pregnancy/newborn products and services, etc. Unlike Apple, Google and Facebook aren't limited to their own properties in terms of info harvesting and ad-targeting.

> The only thing you get to go off of is the Advertising Identifier and the user can change/reset that at any moment effectively not tying them to any specific targeting.

People say this a lot, but Apple disagree: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223

Highlights: name, address, age, iTunes/app etc. purchases, offers in Wallet, news read.

There is an opt out of those ("Limit ad tracking") but by default Apple will target on those things.

Probably semi-irrelevant because of Apple stepping away from iAd but Apple clearly use the Apple ID to target advertising.

Google has a lot to lose in this debate though. If government encroachment on security/privacy online becomes enough to worry people, they'll be less willing to share data. Less data means less effective advertising and lower rates, killing Google's business model.

Regardless of whether Apple profits from iCloud user data, the key question how well they protect the data on iCloud. Do they encrypt the data at rest? Are the links between data centers encrypted?

Do you seriously expect Samsung to come up with something like that? Because here's what they are shipping so far: http://uk.businessinsider.com/android-phones-fingerprint-sca...

> Don’t the modern Android phones with Trusted Execution Environment do about the same?

Not from what I've been able to determine doing some research today. Or at leaast they're very poor at advertising it if they do.

Samsung KNOX uses the ARM TrustedZone to provide remte-attestation of running software, but I can't see anything similar to Apple's Secure Enclave for filesystem encryption keys.

If anyone does know an Android phone that does this properly, please let me know and I'll buy two this week. I am very impressed at the engineering Apple have built in this regard.

They probably mean this. https://source.android.com/security/encryption/

Pretty sure anything made in the last few years has had a secure element because you needed it for Google Wallet. That might have changed for Android Pay though.

> What sets Apple apart from Googles and Facebooks is that it's the only company that stores the data in way that Apple itself cannot read it

In an smartphone with encryption. If the data is on iCloud they can read it

Ups, the same case than Google

> What sets Apple apart from Googles and Facebooks

And here I believed that the difference was that one sells hardware and the others software.

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