I think it's a genius move. People will begin to understand in the coming years just how much information these companies are tracking/extracting, and turn(or stay) to Apple.
I think users would care about privacy, if they truly knew just how much information is being gathered.
https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rej...
And with regard to displeasing shareholders - Tim Cook has no problem with that - to quote, "if you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock."
http://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-versus-a-conservativ...
In other words: It was a niche product and always has been, but that niche has played a large role in the success of iOS. It should be one of Apple's primary concerns to keep them happy.
I don't know how real the difference between Jobs and Cook is regarding the product line. They worked together for a long time and what you're saying seems like the romantic apple media. True to a degree probably though.
10 years ago is when Apple started to neglect the Mac Pro, and the Mac Mini is embarrassing, but the rest of the line has been doing great in sales and attention from Apple save a few missteps here and there.
> You mean the platform where iOS development happens?
Yes, that one. I doubt "iOS developers" can keep Apple alive.
In q3, mac sales represented ~12% of revenue which is greater than the iPads ~11%. I wouldn't exactly call it tiny.
And yes, I guess tiny is not a good word, still very small.
Embarrassing is an understatement, I'd say it's overtly consumer hostile https://d2w9rnfcy7mm78.cloudfront.net/1000779/large_7cbe8b3f... 2012 Mac Mini on the left; 2014 Mac Mini on the right. The unscrewable bottom was one of the championed features when this design initially launched
Tim Cook is no Steve Job, but Steve Jobs was no Tim Cook. They’re good at different thing, but Tim Cook will probably go down in history as one of the greatest CEOs of all time.
The original iPod was only possible because one of Apple's suppliers happened to make a 1.8" disk drive. iPhone and iPod were only possible because flash storage, batteries, screens, and mobile processors all got to a point where the original iPhone was (barely) viable as a product. Apple can't just will that the underlying technologies which will make autonomous cars or AR glasses possible come into existence now. They can nudge things a little here and there, but, for the most part, they have to wait just like everybody else.
Regarding Tim Cook: my take on Steve Jobs is that his most recognized success at Apple was creating the best products in the world. His collaborator for this was Jony Ive. But he had another accomplishment that is much less recognized: he put a tremendous amount of energy into building Apple the company. His collaborator for this was Tim Cook.
IMO, while Tim Cook may not be a product visionary, I think he is unrivaled as a business visionary. Calling him merely a "good" operator does the man a tremendous disservice. Nothing about the way Apple operates is typical. Their organizational structure is almost unheard of for a company of their size, they refresh almost their entire product portfolio every year, they release 3 new operating systems every year, they rarely make acquisitions, but when they do, it almost always works out. They have built an utterly dominating advantage in mobile processors. Etc, etc.
As I said elsewhere, this bothers me too. Cook is damn good at what he does, the problem is what he does is product delivery, not product development. The solitary new line they've launched since Job's passing was new sizes of iPhones and iPads, and the only entirely new product was the Watch, which arguably the first gen (Series 0 now) should never have left Cupertino. It wasn't ready, and I'm sorry but I think Jobs would've told them to take it back to the lab and make it GOOD before they released it.
Much hay is made out of the fact that version 1 of the watch wasn't 100% spot on. But again, that's fine. No company in the world is as good at Apple at iterating on products. So they iterated and the watch is a pretty great product now (and they sold a bunch of version 1 despite it's shortcomings).
The watch, which has been the only product released since Jobs his passing (and I'm definitely not a Jobs fanboy) is.. garbage imo. I'll take my mechanical watch any day of the week, thanks.
1) Lots of people are buying them.
2) They have incredible customer satisfaction numbers. Higher than any other Apple product, I believe.
They see the Mac like a truck. Yes, most people will buy cars, but we'll always need trucks too.
Further, best as I can tell, Mac continues to grow, both fraction of new sales and installed base.
Also, the gimmicky as hell trash can Pro with no meaningful upgradability was a slap in the face to anyone who loved the silver full tower BEASTS that preceded it. We STILL have some of those in service than were manufactured in 2008.
By having both consumer-oriented and pro-oriented hardware, Apple makes the most of the (admittedly limited) Mac marketplace. Plus, the simple fact is you cannot hackintosh a PC that would be equivalent to even a late 2012 Macbook Pro in terms of reliability, battery life and portability.
I also find it far more convenient when working. One usb-c plug to plug into my entire work desk (monitor, backup hard drive, power, various chargers and connector cables).
Perhaps you haven’t invested in a decent usb-c switch? Only upsides for me so far.
It's pretty obvious the iMac Pro was supposed to replace the Mac Pro lineup (despite having all the same problems) then at the last minute they decided to start working on a New New Mac Pro.
Not sure who has this vision if it's Tim, Ive or someone else but whoever it is they don't respect the idea of an actual computer like Jobs did. From what has been reported Cook doesn't even use a laptop anymore.
For the record I'm not saying they are taking this stance for some charitable reason, I'm saying it would/could make financial sense for them, especially considering their branding as a premium product.
(Besides Apple's CEOs tend to last a long time. 14 years with Jobs at the helm for example, and 6+ years with Cook and counting).
I think a mismatched CEO would either lose fighting it, or destroy the core of what makes Apple great, which shareholders will not like.
Care about privacy? Ok, don’t use gmail instead setup your own mail server and configure gpg.
Vs
Care about privacy? Ok: use apple products when they work for you.
Apple is underdog in services. To this day Apple Maps is a pale shadow of Google Maps. They're getting better to be sure, but still an underdog.
Apple maps transit experience is, in my opinion, much more carefully though out than Google's, so I know they can do something with the right information.
It would be nice if Apple users had the ability to submit corrections to Apple somehow.
What's neat about this is if you report a map error and they correct it, you actually get a push notification telling you that it's been fixed.
Taking it one level of abstraction up, I don't see a future where using your data for efficient targeting of advertising isn't happening (and I don't consider that an obviously bad thing), and I consider Google a net positive force in shaping a responsible way of doing that.
Isn't basically all your data, everything you type being sent to Apple?
Issues with iOS include:
* iCloud not encrypting data securely serverside (i.e. they can potentially get at the data). You can avoid this by not using iCloud. * They have Ads in app, and now in the Appstore directly. Potentially this changes the dynamic, between user/advertiser in a negative way.
There are probably other issues... but I'm not currently aware of them. Overall it still seems like the best option from a privacy perspective.
When I didn't used 2-step, I forgot my password, called them and they reset it for me (I had to confirm my identity providing them a code sent to my mac).
"All iCloud content data stored by Apple is encrypted at the location of the server. When third-party vendors are used to store data, Apple never gives them the keys. Apple retains the encryption keys in its U.S. data centers."
and
"iCloud content may include email, stored photos, documents, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, Safari browsing history and iOS device backups. iOS device backups may include photos and videos in the Camera Roll, device settings, app data, iMessage, SMS, and MMS messages and voicemail. All iCloud content data stored by Apple is encrypted at the location of the server. When third-party vendors are used to store data, Apple never gives them the keys. Apple retains the encryption keys in its U.S. data centres. iCloud content, as it exists in the subscriber’s account, may be provided in response to a search warrant issued upon a showing of probable cause."
So in short, Apple retains encryption keys for much of the data (including iOS backups), and will provide decrypted data to US law enforcement on request.
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelin...
Much of the data listed as encrypted on server is available to US law enforcement under warrant.
It would be nice, to have an option available where data is encrypted on server, with your key. But that would mean you couldn't recover your data if you lost your key of course (and I think Apple consider that a poor user experience, or are under pressure not to do that...).
https://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/20/apple-spotlight-suggest...
see also
http://bgr.com/2015/04/01/iphone-location-tracking-map/
I recommend don't trust Apple. It's not your code, it's not your hardware.
So turn off Spotlight Suggestions? Obviously if you're searching the web there will be traffic to the search engines.
> http://bgr.com/2015/04/01/iphone-location-tracking-map/
Frequent Locations is on-device only.
It may be on-device only but it's not clear to the end-user that it's happening at all. No visible setting to disable it and vulnerable to malware.
No. And I have looked.
Apple is very up front about the features that do and don't talk to the mothership. It has been a while, but I recall that as you go through the setup process, there's always info available telling you when they'll see your info, and more info online. But it tends to be pretty obvious - Apple has slurped up sensitive data before[1], but it did look like an accident, they fixed it, and were forthcoming about what happened.
They're very clear that security related stuff (Secure Enclave - the thumbprint/faceprint data) never leaves the device.
Things I know that talk back:
- App store (obviously, and they care about analytics) - News app (ditto, it is basically a thin web browser) - iCloud (ditto, clearly, and pay attention to the various modes for encryption: IIRC, you need 2FA enabled for the encryption key to not be recoverable on their end. But you should double check for yourself, I don't use iCloud, so I haven't paid attention.)
And looking at my phone on my local net with Wireshark, I also see some chatter that looks like things saving config information, similar to what you see on a Mac. I'm guessing this is them just not being careful - they want everyone backing up to iCloud, and even though I don't, various daemons keep nattering. I block all that stuff when on wifi (both Mac and iOS), with zero problems.
On iOS, you mainly need to be concerned with third-party apps. Some of them build in shady libraries for adtech shitheads, do stupid things with analytic/instrumentation libs, etc. The ecosystem seems less bad than Android, at least.
As close to a bottom line as I can come: turn off cloud backup and the syncing crap, use 2FA, don't download sketchy free games that ship your data to some guy in Romania, and you're leaking significantly less than on Android. Take more precautions (a content filter/ad blocker more aggressive than the defaults, disable wifi and bluetooth to avoid snoops along wherever you go, run your own mail/calendaring, etc.) and you're in pretty good shape, relatively speaking, and depending on your threat model.
[1] IIRC, location data was being logged such that it ended up being sent back in crash reports.
AFAIK iCloud backups are not end-to-end encrypted. I believe this past February Tim Cook, or someone else at Apple, was indicating that they were working on changing that. (It was coming up because everyone was wishing the San Bernardino shooter's phone had been backing up to iCloud, so they wouldn't need to get in the phone, they could just access the iCloud backups—IIRC.)
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelin...
Yeah, it is. Welcome to what it feels like to be wholly the customer, instead of partially the product.