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Comment by azca | Hacker News Reader

As a lifelong Android fan, I'm more and more convinced that I want to pay for an apple product in the future.

I read a book at one point about amassing wealth. One of the principles it said was critical was to always make contractual agreements that are generous to yourself and the other party (something like that). I think there’s something at play with apples products in that regard. Back in 2003 when I first bought a Mac privacy wasn’t a sales point for their hardware. But overtime the profit margin on apples products may be why they haven’t felt the need to “sell their users”. There’s wisdom in being willing to pay fairly up front.

I agree with both of these statements.

My hacker side wants to get an android for all of the obvious reasons, but I really appreciate the fact that Apple's marketing interests are aligned with my privacy. I also appreciate that they are making a point of actively crusading for it. It's a fully selfish, profit-driven move on their parts, which is precisely why I like them: I don't have to trust them and their capricious future stockholders to "do the right thing", because they already make money by doing so. We're in equilibrium already. I am often disappointed by Apple's decisions, but their strategy is working on me, and I don't feel that I have a realistic alternative to protect me from hackers and over-enthusiastic government agencies (at least in the near-term future).

I agree with your assessment, I'm certainly warming up to Apple products, where I absolutely wouldn't have considering buying one just a year or two ago.

I'm still not fully convinced (I'm very comfortable in my DIY PC/Thinkpad/Linux/Motorola/Android device bubble right now), but considering I barely even play that many games or anything anymore, I just want a desktop and a laptop that let me run a web browser, Spotify, a media player and a few token games with relatively low system requirements. So far, my 7 year old DIY PC (3.3GHz Phenom II X6, 16GB RAM, Geforce GTX460) and a 5 year old refurb Thinkpad T420 are both doing quite well, so I am quite unlikely to spend the required money to get into the Apple ecosystem.

I do like playing around with old Mac stuff like System 6 and Mac OS 8/9 in emulators, but that's not really the same thing :-)

Yeah, my 7 year old middle-of-the-line MacBook pro is still kicking, so I haven't had to seriously think about upgrades. One of the annoying things is that I won't be able to make my next MacBook last that long because I won't be able to replace broken stock parts or upgrade ram/storage. I appreciate the tradeoffs inherent in modularity/replaceability vs. portability, but a huge part of the appeal of old macs was their ridiculous lifetimes, which I don't expect will be as long going forward.

I mean, my 2010 MBP has 16GB of ram and a 512GB SSD. The benchmark stats are awful for CPU/GPU/memory/storage speeds, but it's pretty pathetic that 7 years later I can't even choose to get a new mac with more memory.

Apple is in dire need of giving their entire lineup a serious kick in the pants, they've been way too focused on iPhones and iPads. The Mac Mini is crap, the Mac Pro is crap, the iMac is middling at best (the new iMac Pro looks reasonably sweet, but the price...), the Macbooks are severely spec-limited, it's just a mess.

They've painted themselves into a "thinness at all costs" sort of corner with the Macbooks, and they've have to go back on that and make them slightly thicker again, if they want to upgrade them. Last time they were backed into a serious corner (G5 PowerPC being completely unsuitable for mobile use and disappointing performance-wise), they took a chance and switched to Intel. They're going to have to mess with some important core design tenets this time.

For the desktop line, a new non-stupid Mac Pro will go a long way. They also need to seriously refresh the Mac Mini, because it's just a piece of junk right now.

Don't forget the upgrade factor. I find it totally ridiculous that you're forced to buy external enclosures for pro-grade equipment instead of just having a nice, toolless access panel for upgrades. I miss the tower Mac Pro, which looked beautiful partly because it looked like a practical, industrial tool designed for easy physical access. Not everything needs to look physically seamless...

The "cheese grater" was a beautiful machine. Sleek, serious, industrial. It looked powerful and cool.

Cool enough that a lot of people still reuse them as PC towers now.

The trash can looks like... A trash can. I'm kinda curious what they'll be going for in the next one, if they've learned something.

I think it has more to do with Apple. I say that because other luxury products, like expensive cars, track the shit out of you.

As a long time Apple user who has moved to Android, I wish that Apple's privacy also didn't come with a highly restricted walled garden.

I would love it if the level of Apple privacy came to Android but not if it meant losing the tiny bit of openness that Android has over Apple.

I find myself dreaming more and more about PostMarketOS [0] and it's potential. I cannot wait to try this out after cell and data have been integrated (I have not checked in 30 days in case it anyway had but I suspect it is at least a few months out)

[0] https://postmarketos.org/

What do you think about the Librem 5 phone, who are collaborating with the KDE and GNOME people to create a consistent mobile interface where Matrix is a first-class citizen?

I am interested to see where the librem phone goes but I am not sold on it yet.

I am excited about it, but do not like the idea of asking for donations/funding without having design completed yet... my concern is I give money then do not like a decision they have made.... in any case I am watching it closely, what about you?

Which kinds of restrictions have you run into, in the Apple ecosystem?

I'm asking because I've only ever owned one Apple products (an iPad Air 2 that was gifted to me) for a short while, and I chalked up all the limitations to simply being due to being a tablet, and not an full-featured computer.

If I had only Apple products, my Amazon Echo would be useless (no app in the store in my country to activate it -- I sideloaded it on Android). I run Firefox as my primary browser on my Android tablet, on my iPhone it's Safari only. I run a few different mail clients on my Android phone, on iPhone you have one default mail client. Etc.

The Echo thing is an Amazon problem, I think.

And I was under the impression that there were several third party email apps for iOS?

The echo thing is that Amazon makes it US-only and Apple happily obliges and hides the app from me. There isn't a lot that is more anti-consumer than that.

I downloaded the Android APK and sideloaded it on my Android device. Sure, the echo doesn't support Canadian addresses (although it does have Canadian content) it otherwise works fine.

Again, that's an Amazon issue. Apple doesn't region restrict apps, the app developer does that when they add it to the App Store.

The Apple issue is that you have no alternative. The app is similarly region restricted on the Google Play Store. If there was a Windows version, it would be similarly restricted on the Windows store. But only on iOS do I have no alternative to getting it.

I'm happily running the app on my Android device despite it being region restricted. Sweet sweet freedom.

Your wish will never come to be as the very reason for apple's privacy is the walled garden and vendor lock-in.

Which is why I'm not getting into the apple walled prison with a garden inside.

That's not true though. The OS provides most of the security (and should). I'm not against the existence of an app store is a primary install source that is vetted for quality. But I appreciate the option of being able to side-load applications and choose which applications I want to use for primary tasks like web browsing, email, etc.

I agree. I wonder how many people are in this same boat. Judging by the strength of this particular marketing push, I'm guessing it's a lot. I've had an Android phone for years now and it's getting a tad too creepy - which is a shame, because I much prefer Google's services to Apple's.

What do you find creepy about your phone? The difference between Android and iOS is that with the former, you get to choose which services to use. If you want maps that track you to show traffic, you have multiple options. If you want offline maps that don't send any data off the phone at all, you have multiple options there too. Any of them can become the default maps app that gets loaded whenever you click a location link. Same for browser, email, phone calls, contacts, etc.

I think the point is that it’s a surprising amount of work to make all these choices right, so it’s sort of easier to pick a platform that aligns with your view on privacy by default.

It seems to me you cannot make the right choice at all. In either case (android/iOS) you have to relinquish a very significant amount of privacy.

Another way to look at it is that there is a spectrum between privacy and usefulness where Android lets you choose any point on that line, defaulting to usefulness, while the iPhone forces you into a strange point on the spectrum between privacy and usefulness that doesn't seem to be a good fit for anybody. For example, Apple's email service and maps service are both significantly less convenient than Google's, but a privacy-conscious user would use neither (offline maps and PGP email), which is not an option on iPhone but is on Android with the simplicity of installing an app. Similarly, a privacy-conscious user would not want anybody to know what apps they have on their phone, which is not an option on iPhone but is on Android (simply don't install apps from the Play Store).

which is not an option on iPhone but is on Android with the simplicity of installing an app.

The iPhone also supports installable apps :)

But as I noted above, the iPhone does not let you change the default apps by simply installing them. Instead, you have to hack your device.

I've got a significant amount invested in the Google ecosystem, but I think when this S8+ stops getting updates I'll be going to Apple (it was a tough choice between an iPhone 7 and the Samsung this time). Besides, I can always get a ~$150 phone from AliExpress to hack on.

As a former Windows fanboy and current Open Source/Android/Linux proponent, steps like these move me slightly closer to not being completely opposed to the idea of owning Apple products.

I used to own an iPad Air 2 (given to me during a course I was taking), and it was a super slick and very well-integrated device. It just had some odd limitations that I was not a fan of, so I moved back to a Thinkpad running Linux. But I had pretty much the same experience with my previous tablet, an Asus Transformer Infinity, so it was probably more of a general tablet thing.

The main thing keeping me from buying Apple products these days is the price, and of course the fact that no proper Apple desktop exists, outside of the super underpowered Mac Mini and the silly trashcan Mac Pro. I have a perfectly good display already, which I intend to keep for a long time, so I don't want an iMac.

And I very much dislike the Apple Evangelism and super-annoying slavering fanboys, to whom Apple can do no wrong ever, and all other tech companies are basically banging rocks together, in their perception.

Same here, next phone iPhone 8 is going to be my phone of choice.

Privacy over freedom?, both get data, information. both don't sell. Google sell AD, not your personnal data.

I am an Android user and I feel more safe with my data there than on an Apple device. I'm open to being wrong - why is iOS more safe?

It's much less about being hacked, and much more about what Apple will do with your data vs. what Google would do.

Apple sells hardware, resells apps and media. Google sells advertising.

The hardware company's interests are much more in line with the interests of your privacy than the advertising company. It's about what Apple will do willingly with your data and what it won't do.

Google's entire purpose is classifying and measuring you so that the ads it serves you are the most effective. In other words you are their product, or more specifically, they sell the ability to manipulate you to the highest bidder. Ok that's a little harsh, but with the last election a large (and seemingly apparently growing) factor in the result was the ability of each side to manipulate populations of voters. It's not too much to want as much as possible to minimize the attack surface for organizations to profile and serve you information tailored to shape your behavior.

The issue with how far Apple apparently went to protect the data of one of it's (mind you, entirely guilty) customers[1] makes a person think that buying Apple is a preferred choice. I'd like the ability to own my devices and data to the extent that the government or the manufacturer cannot give it away without my agreement.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/29/apple-vs-fbi-all-you-need-to...

Was an interesting to read (albeit wrong) until the election conspiracies.

You try to separate the two companies using their main source of income, but in the end they are both surveillance apparatuses. Their surveillance may end up being used against your favor despite the unofficial contracts from their PR. Read the fine print for more information.

> they sell the ability to manipulate you to the highest bidder

This seems more like a description of Amazon. I understand Google and Facebook to be data hoarders: they build up the ability to manipulate you and use it in putting together the ads they serve, but they jealously guard it, rather than sell the ability on.

They're selling it by exposing targeting tools to advertisers which can only get more elaborate with time.

But the advertisers don't know anything about me personally. I don't really mind if I'm just an anonymized data point in a sea of millions.

Personally, I am not worried about being advertised to. I'm worried about my data being my own. As in, not accessed by other people. In this respect, Android seems no less safe.

Consider photos. If I understand correctly, Apple is trying to do all the object/scene recognition stuff on the device itself, while Google requires you to upload your photos to the 'cloud' so they can analyze it there.

Apple still needs data to build these locally running models. They advertise differential privacy as a solution for that but researchers aren't impressed (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.02753.pdf).

Meanwhile on Android you can opt for a different photo gallery app, giving Google _nothing_ to work with, while on iOS you're stuck with whatever Apple allows you to use.

Meanwhile on Android you can opt for a different photo gallery app, giving Google _nothing_ to work with, while on iOS you're stuck with whatever Apple allows you to use.

You can install whatever photo gallery app you want on an iPhone and use that. It’s mildly less convenient, but not really a big deal.

That's good to know, thanks!

When have iCloud users been hacked outside of phishing attacks?

I was thinking of the iCloud celebrity hack, but you're right - Wikipedia explains that it was initially thought to be a hack, but turned out to be due to phishing. (Though it does mention an exploit that could have been taken advantage of at the time.) I've edited my original comment to remove that part.

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