That's definitely a great reason to get one. A nice bonus you'll find, once you do, is that they're nowhere near as fragile as you fear.
As someone who uses free software and worked closely with some mobile privacy-related projects, it's headscrambling to see iPhone users talking about privacy. I won't use it; you're free to do so, but when it comes to your privacy, it's just a delusion. At least be aware of what you've got - no security and privacy is way better than a false sense of it.
NSA likely exploited the SSL vulnerability in iOS 6.0 (released Sept 2012, NSA added Apple Oct 2012) and got access to snoop on Apple's data.
After pulling the phrase "participate knowingly" out of thin air, Washington Post was forced to walk back that statement:
"Hours after the news broke, and every company bar PalTalk and AOL denied any knowledge of the program and allegations of their involvement, the Post has changed its stance. The phrase “participate knowingly” has been removed from the article, a new passage suggests the firms were unaware of PRISM"
https://thenextweb.com/us/2013/06/07/wapost-backtracks-on-cl...
Are you really suggesting that prior to Sept 2012 there were no critical zero-day vulnerabilities to which the NSA had access? Surely by your reasoning, Apple should have been included in PRISM years prior. And yet, it wasn't until after Steve Jobs died that Apple began to participate.
The only reason I would consider getting an iPhone too is Apple's privacy stance. They seem like the only company in the big five (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft) that don't seem to be that interested in my data. They just want to sell me the product, and that product is, in essence, a piece of hardware.
http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-iphone-app-secret-access...
Apple always refuses to comment on bugs, security holes and basically anything they can not use for marketing. You WANT to believe that Apple is better.
They signed on to PRISM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) , they happily work with the government over user privacy in articles all the time, and those are just the things we know about. I'm sure there are more PRISM-like back room government deals that we haven't heard of out there, and I haven't seen anything that would make me believe that Apple wouldn't sign on to them.
It is completely unrelated.
Intel ME is about a remote servicing interface that exists on all current Intel processors. While it has some usages for managing computers in a corporate setting or managing servers (keyword to look for: Intel Active Management Technology (Intel AMT), which needs Intel vPro), it exists on nearly all current Intel processors (except, I think, Intel, Quark; but this processor is built for completely different purposes). Thus there are rumors that it is a backdoor for, say, 3-letter agencies. I don't want to spread any rumors here, but just say: Because Intel ME is very large and complicated (according to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iffTJ1vPCSo 5 MB in size) it is a real concern that lots of security gaps will be found (and some have been found in the past), which, because of Intel ME's structure (according to https://schd.ws/hosted_files/osseu17/84/Replace%20UEFI%20wit... it runs on ring -3) can easily lead to really dangerous security holes. Just for this reason alone any responsible admin should try to disable Intel ME so that this security liability does not have to stay open.
PRISM is a surveillance program by the NSA.
And yet, making the actual switch is a tremendously difficult task. On the software side alone, it requires recompiling every application you want to run on your platform. That doesn't even touch the cost of rolling the actual hardware. There are more than a few examples of this: Intel's Itanium, Oracle's SPARC, Berkeley's MIPS, Transmeta's Crusoe, etc. Sure, these all had niches (embedded systems, research hardware, a few high-end servers) -- but breaking out into the mainstream (a.k.a. like x86-64 and ARM/ARM64) is damn near impossible.
Nobody expects RISC-V to beat i7 or Ryzen in any benchmarks.
IMO its purpose is to be the in hardware what GNU/Linux was in software.
edit: GNU/Linux, not just Linux :)
Crusoe and ARM were not about the promise of better performance, but of being much more energy-efficient for the intended purpose (though since a few years ARM tries to get into a (more) high-performance field).
What I wanted to say is that the major selling point of RISC-V would be its open-ness rather than anything performance (or power) related. In that respect it has already captured the attention of interested parties, regardless of that the actual performance will be.
- Less bugs
- Potentially better applications since the lower layers are stable and don't require you to fight it (as an example, pre vulkan drivers were hell, linux software has to circle around that)
I'd say I _mostly_ disagree.
Many times over the years there have been "major" problems (i.e. antenna-gate and bendgate to name a couple). I've never experienced those issues, and I'm sure neither have many others. The iPhones through the years have been mostly solid for me in terms of hardware without significant design flaws.
Now, I don't try to claim iPhones are perfect, but I think this is an over-reaction.
It took two years for Apple to acknowledge[1] that #staingate was a real issue.
I do think their hardware is generally high quality, but there are holes, and they are magnified by their positioning as a premium brand and certain high-profile denials of said holes. Which for a brand that lives and dies on its reputation seems less than smart. Adding to the weirdness is that I've alternately received excellent support in cases of hardware issues, and next to none. My guess is that the frontline has a whitelist of issues that they can okay, and have no little latitude beyond that.
[1]: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/02/24/apple-extended-anti-ref...
Only data I could find, but very, very old (only covers to iphone 4(!!)
https://www.squaretrade.com/cell-phone-comparison-study-nov-...
Android is far from perfect, and I still hate it, but at least I can still control most of it.
and not just you :P
>Jailbreaking permits root access to iOS, allowing the downloading and installation of additional applications, extensions, and themes that are unavailable through the official Apple App Store.
This is such a handwavy statement.
Fragile, compared to the competition? Can you point out any objective measure that supports "Unbelievably" fragile?
All modern phones are fragile. Some slightly more than others.
> Anecdotally (but with n = many), I see many more scratched/broken iPhone screens than premium Android. Similar prices, same peer group. There are probably other sources of selection bias I'm not seeing, but it's a large enough effect that I'm cautiously positive of my determination absent an actual survey.
> Anecdotally (but with n = many), I see many more scratched/broken iPhone screens than premium Android. Similar prices, same peer group. There are probably other sources of selection bias I'm not seeing, but it's a large enough effect that I'm cautiously positive of my determination absent an actual survey.