Yes, this benefits Apple customers. I'm pleased.
But it also attacks the revenue of the other 3 horsemen (Google, Facebook, Amazon). Which also pleases me.
If I was Apple, I'd mess with advertising, just because.
But it also attacks the revenue of the other 3 horsemen (Google, Facebook, Amazon). Which also pleases me.
If I was Apple, I'd mess with advertising, just because.
Apple focuses on the mass consumer as their sole and perpetual customer. This allows them to maintain laser focus on solving the problems of the end users rather than solving the problems of an advertiser and forcing the solution on end users.
Apple's refusal to "innovate" on its business model has actually put them where they are today. Most other tech companies have other motives in making mobile devices: Amazon wants to sell you content, Facebook and Google want to show you ads, while Apple just wants to make the best damn phone out there and sell it at a very high price.
If the market definition of "best damn phone out there" starts to include "protects your privacy", Apple doesn't have the conflicts of interest that Google or Facebook do. I'm sure everyone else will eventually follow suit, but Apple is the only one with the capability to take the lead on privacy.
What are you talking about? Did iTunes add back DRM? Around 2009 or so Apple made all of iTunes DRM-free and were, I believe, the first major online music store to do so. It was a huge deal; Apple published an open letter from Jobs on their home page and everything.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/companies/07app...
"iTunes Plus refers to songs and some music videos* in high-quality AAC format that don't have Digital Rights Management (DRM). All songs now for sale in the iTunes Store are iTunes Plus."
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201616
and, as of 2014, you could kill DRM on DRM-ed iTunes purchases made before 2009 https://www.wired.com/2014/03/kill-itunes-drm/
Plus, not all DRM schemes are equal. One that is exclusive to Apple is worse (IMHO) than one that isn't. For example, I can go to a store and buy a DVD or BluRay disk that has DRM yet I am very sure that I can play it on every player I own.
I was originally responding to the person that said the iTunes store doesn't sell DRM'd stuff. The movies definitely are but I don't know if the DRM restricts the movie to being played on an Apple device or if it uses some non-Apple DRM making it playable elsewhere.
Ultimately if you have the money for a premium phone and just need it to make phone calls, browse the web etc (the basics) then the iPhone really is the best option as it's more secure at the moment.
The place where the iPhone doesn't sell to someone like me is the hand holding babysitting it does preventing you from manipulating the device as I wish. Again this is a non-issue to them.
It can be frustrating to see someone overpaying for what you consider an inferior product but they're not using it like you are.
Really though; there's very little you can't do with an iPhone as long as you're willing to pay $99/yr and write some code...
Personally, I think more than 50% of users would benefit for more flexibility than iOS offers, even at the cost of less ease of use. I don't think it has to cost that much ease of use though. I think the ideal for most people is somewhere in between Android and iOS, but probably closer to Android. Android is not that hard to use. It is also not impossible to have a highly curated app store like Apple's, and allow apps from other sources at the same time of people want to install them. Ideally we'd have more diversity in OS implementations I think, based on one or a small number of actual OSs. Android based OSs that are more heavily modified to be easier to use etc. This would be easier I think if phones were more like PCs in that you could install your own OS and get the drivers for your hardware. I think Android is somewhat moving in that direction so there is hope for that in future.
First, is that phone users value weight and size above all else. Regardless of what that means to each individual user, it does mean that any design compromises will need to come out favorably for weight/size considerations. Modular phones have been released, but they largely failed because they provided very little benefit for the added weight/size. Phones absolutely must be integrated devices as a result (i.e. no modular components, making them impossible to repair).
Second is that because of the above, basically every chip in a phone is a custom SoC. So not only do you have to support many flavors of devices, you also have to support different flavors of SoCs, often used in different ways in different devices. This isn't insurmountable with the right driver repository structure, but good luck getting vendors to update those drivers.
Third, I don't exactly know what benefits a less restrictive OS ecosystem would provide. Apple's App Store rules are not insane (there are so many bad actors out there, the curation is a huge benefit to users); and if you ever want to run programs that aren't "blessed" by Apple, you can buy a $99 developer license, sign the binaries yourself and sideload them through XCode. Could it be easier? Sure, it could. But it's realistically an edge case, and Apple is focused on the main use cases.
> "When you visit a site, any cookies that are set can be used in a third-party context for twenty-four hours. During the first twenty-four hours the third-party cookies can be used to track the user, but afterward can only be used to login and not to track. This means that sites that you visit regularly are not significantly affected. The companies this will hit hardest are ad companies unconnected with any major publisher."
Since the average internet user (aka not us) visits Facebook constantly and Google regularly, will this really have an impact at all?
Google and Facebook may know too much about you, but I'm not really worried about them selling that data, which is some small relief. They are the ferryman at the river, and they charge to take advertisers to their audiences. They aren't in the business of selling boats.
Why aren't you worried about that? How about in 15 years when they've gone downhill and are looking for ways to make some quick cash?
If we don't make headway on this issue legislatively and soon, I'm not sure it matters, as your profile information's privacy at all these sites has a shelf life in my eyes. Both sales and security breaches with exfiltration of data at random adtech companies will eventually lead to most this private profile data being publicly available anyway, so unless we put some strong limits on what can be collected, how it must be stored, notification of who is storing it, and the ability to review and remove items (and all of this at a minimum), I think it's a moot point who has it now, since everyone will eventually.