Apple has been beating the privacy drum louder every time it makes an announcement on its software, hardware and features, and at the same time, the silence from the other big players (like Google, Facebook, Microsoft) seems damning on them. People who do keep up with tech news know about these differences.

People who are worried about this and who can afford to buy Apple devices (in a worldwide market where very cheap Android devices rule) would likely do so even in the face of losing some flexibility and freedom (compared to what they could do on Android). For this to take off in a bigger way, Apple could at least do the following two things:

1. Sell devices with good hardware at price points that are considered cheap enough (not necessarily "cheapest") in developing countries too.

2. Improve significantly on the software experience and storage front. For example, providing free cloud storage as large as the capacity of the Apple device purchased (or even more) and avoiding competitors like Google Photos taking over Apple customers (and their data) for photo storage and sharing is one thing. Another example is improving maps, which is utterly terrible compared to Google maps in many places around the world.

A data point: Yesterday, a German net politics outlet published a representative poll conducted on behalf of the German government, which showed that 92% of citizens polled want the government to take a stronger stance on data protection. Source: https://netzpolitik.org/2016/bundesregierung-befragt-bevoelk...

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