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Am I the only one who is convinced Apple is focused on privacy because its cloud tech is really far behind Google and privacy was a path largely ignored in a data driven world? Don’t get me wrong—I like that they pursue the privacy angle but if the company’s strengths allowed them to compete with modern web/ads services companies, I think they would not have focused on privacy as much.

You'd be hard pressed to find any credible source for your conviction.

Apple's privacy stance is what Steve Jobs believed in, and what Tim Cook has stuck with, because they know that leaving privacy-based decisions up to third-party developers never ends well.

Here are excerpts from Jobs 2010 interview with Walt Mossberg [0]:

“Silicon Valley is not monolithic,” Jobs responded, “We’ve always had a very different view of privacy than some of our colleagues in the Valley.” Apple, for instance, does not leave it up to developers to decide whether to be dutiful about warning users that their apps are tracking their location data, instead forcing pop-ups on users to alert them that an app is tracking them, and to turn off that ability if they don’t want. “We do a lot of things like that, to ensure that people know what these apps are doing,” he added.

"Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for, in plain English, and repeatedly. I’m an optimist; I believe people are smart, and some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you’re going to do with their data."

“A lot of people in the Valley think we’re really old-fashioned about this,” Jobs said in the interview, “And maybe we are, but we worry about stuff like this.”

[0]: https://qz.com/1236322/apples-steve-jobs-tried-to-warn-faceb...

> Apple's privacy stance is what Steve Jobs believed in, and what Tim Cook has stuck with, because they know that leaving privacy-based decisions up to third-party developers never ends well.

As opposed to leaving their API wide open so anyone could access anybodys photos and files? Hence, the fappening.

Apple is a marketing company, not a technology company.

Did an infinite number of marketing monkeys banging on keyboards produce the A12X design?

No. But they did cone up with a design that allowed infinite login attempts.

Very good find, but SJ was using a slight-of-hand here. While true, privacy has always been a feature of Apple products, this was said during the Amazon iBooks lawsuit when Apple suddenly added this 30% in-app purchase restriction.

SJ was obsessed with control more than privacy and believed developers would make a mess of his beautiful iPhone. Every decision always started from that angle.

No, I believe privacy that we understand it today is wholly Tim Cook. This is his vision for Apple and how he wants to run the company. Good for him and it definitely plays better against Android.

probably a typo: "sleight of hand" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleight_of_hand)

as for your point, i don't think it was an either-or situation. i think both jobs and cook considered both control and privacy (among considerations like litigation, as you mention). jobs seemed more overtly a control freak though (not that that's always a bad thing).

I honestly don't expect to be able to cite any sources regarding Apple's decisions based on their level of transparency into their business.

It seems perfectly compatible for Jobs to make those statements about privacy after weighing the cost for Apple to implement robust cloud infrastructure and services, and (potentially) deciding Apple would just not compete in that space.

It's like Google finally conceding it won't be a social network, only not having wasted a ton of resources before pulling the plug. Actually, with their messaging apps being spun up and spun down, Google may still be in the midst of pulling.

> (I honestly don't expect to be able to cite any sources regarding Apple's decisions based on their level of transparency into their business.

If that's the case, wouldn't it be better to not, you know, not speculate? Anyone can come up with a plausible sounding reason for x once there is some evidence of y, but it doesn't change the underlying fact that it is all a conjecture -- drawing conclusion(s) from incomplete information.

I pointed you to information refuting your central claim but since you are not privy to salient information, saying nothing is much better than expanding on your conjecture.

I'm not sure where you're going with not speculating and "better". What is wrong with a conjecture? Aren't some conjectures out of the set of all conjectures going to be right?

Also, how is an interview complete information?

I also pointed out later that I don't see the information you provided as refuting what I said, but compatible with it. From your response, it seems reasonable to ask what refuting is happening here.

OK, here’s your original claim about what you were convinced about Apple’s strategy with respect to competition from web/ads companies like Google:

“Am I the only one who is convinced Apple is focused on privacy because its cloud tech is really far behind Google and privacy was a path largely ignored in a data driven world?”

I pointed to the explanation given in 2010 by the founder/CEO of Apple, regarding their stance on privacy — it was conceived because of the risk of third-party developers going rogue as has happened with Facebook/CambridgeAnalytica (even though Zuck was in the audience). Apple’s privacy position was taken independent of Google.

Google’s competitive advantage over Apple today wrt cloud tech comes from public-facing cloud infrastructure & expertise that was previously internal to Google — Google’s cloud advantage was completely non-existent back in 2010 when Jobs granted that interview.

In 2010, GCP didn’t really exist yet, developers/end users could only interact with sandboxed apps on App Engine; GCP was still in infancy, the market leader in cloud tech was and still is AWS.

Google’s main competitive advantage back then was in search, Apple recognized this and did not try to compete head-to-head with Google (like Yahoo! or Bing), or the way Google competed but failed against Facebook. (Apple would later go up against Google in maps.)

OTOH, Apple did try to compete head-to-head with Amazon using iBooks, but they shot themselves in the foot by colluding with publishers to raise prices.

I think there's some misunderstanding about what I'm saying, but unfortunately, I don't think clarification will make this discussion any more fruitful for either of us. I'm sorry, I think it's best for me to disengage for now.

People learn about new things through two ways: through algorithmic recommendations, and through social media / real life social networks.

From what I can tell from recaptcha requests, Google still hasn’t figured out how to teach something to identify storefronts, bicycles, crosswalks, or traffic lights.

Apple doesn’t offer a consumer cloud, what they refer to as iCloud is just a SaaS similar to Dropbox. For their internal requirements they use both GCP and Azure IIRC.

I don't know if it's because they are behind in cloud tech, but I do believe their privacy stance can change as quickly as market changes. As soon as selling iphones or apps on the app store won't be enough, apple will have to change its business model. I'm not saying that making money out of the data they collect is what's gonna happen, but it's a possibility.

Even if that’s the case, rewarding Apple for that decision is still the right thing to do because in a free market, companies will make decisions where they earn the most money. If the company that out of selfish reasons is promoting privacy makes the most money, other companies will also shift to a more privacy oriented business model rather than business models which rely on selling people’s information.

Right, I would hope it encourages more consideration for privacy in other business as well. I wonder though if people with privacy concerns will turn to non-profits or other orgs instead of companies. For instance, lots of people on Hacker News will voice support for Firefox, but dish dirt on Brave or even Chromium.

That said, more consideration of privacy as part of product development practice in business, even if non-businesses may end up winning more from this, is a good thing.

Most of Google's competitors would do well to focus on privacy, because that is one area in which Google will most likely not be able to outdo them. Google is likely to be better at machine learning or most other technical qualities of whatever products you're competing in. It still is, however, a data analytics company - that's where its main strength is, and that's what pays the bills. It will therefore be almost a guarantee that it will be worse in the privacy department than a competitor for whom that is not the case, so that's what they should capitalise on.

Apple's privacy stance is based on the fact that they can make money just selling hardware. The recent news of 'pivot to services' suggests Apple's stance would loosen on privacy.

Apple now controls aprox 10% of mobile marketshare and I believe most people consume most content on screens bigger than their iPhone which can also be used to sign up for Netflix.

Nobody much cares about Apple TV either.

Apple is taking a sizable chunk of revenue and they don't have enormous leverage.

Taking away Netflix from Apple users would hurt Apple more than Netflix and people will happily sign up on via their browser. It's not like Netflix is a fly by night org they have a similar rep to Apple because users don't make fine distinctions.

Apple will suck it up and any negative for Netflix will be a rounding error compared to the pile of cash saved.

Fair point, although I would bet that the share of Netflix customers using Apple devices is significantly higher than 10%. For one thing, in the US, iOS has more like a 45% share. For another, wealthier people are more likely to own iOS devices (worldwide), and I’m guessing they’re also likelier to be Netflix customers.

> But Netflix is still YAFS (Yet Another Friggin Subscription) that I have to manage on some other platform. I prefer to have Apple be the "overseer" of even Netflix.

Would you pay 30% more via the App Store if given the choice?

I'm not the person you replied to, but yes. I can't think of many subscriptions I have that I wouldn't happily pay more for if it meant having one central place to manage them all, overseen by a company that I fully believe gives a shit about my privacy.

Is your bank not one place? You can just block the payments

Or Paypal ...

If you block a payment with your bank or credit card the other end can attempt to charge you anyway. You can sometimes dispute and lose and still pay.

It also can trigger negative repercussions if you do have an ongoing relationship with the company, like IIRC Steam locks your whole account if you go that path on the basis that it indicates fraud to be blocked (not just that you wanted to cancel)

It's not uncommon for the terms to require an explicit cancellation. People who try to cancel gym memberships by just letting their payment card expire find this out when they get sent to collections.

Other than the slightly obscure menu option to get to your list of subscriptions, how nice is the process to cancel an Apple subscription? Any of them – an app, Netflix, whatever.

1. Navigate to list of subscriptions.

2. Find desired subscription in list.

3. Click cancel.

Nobody else does that and it is so nice.

On Android:

Play Store > Menu > Subscriptions > select subscription > Cancel Subscription

Seems pretty similar to me.

The Netflix cancellation process is also 3 steps, for what it’s worth:

Click “more”

Click “account”

Click “cancel”

Off course, this isn’t the same as having a centralized location for managing all subscriptions, but at least in this case the cancellation process is the same number of steps.

Sure, if you ignore the biggest glaring difference both things are the same.

We should consider one other party: your credit card provider.

I've always believed that they should be the ones providing subscription management, because scummy "hope they forget to cancel!" business practices exist offline too, so Apple could never become the central place for managing all of your subscriptions.

I vaguely feel like that would be even worse somehow.

It's strange. Sure I trust Visa and my bank with the literal fruit of my labour so far in life, but I don't think I could abide them knowing what exactly I use their financial tools to do (besides what little information a vendor chooses to share).

It probably doesn't make any difference in reality, but I just feel more comfortable with one party having full access to my funds but little to no information about how those funds are used, and another with all that usage information but little/easily revoked access to my funds.

Edit: I also think the current rigorous process around directly contesting transactions with your bank/card provider does more good than harm, and on contemplation wouldn't scrap it for ease of canceling subscriptions.

I used to have a Capital One card, and one thing I liked about it was that it sent me emails when my monthly charge from a company was higher than expected. This was especially helpful for Verizon/Comcast bills, which shot up unexpectedly on a few occasions.

Funny you mention that. I have a friend who works as a 'think up interesting new products' person for one of Australia's big 4 banks. On their list of stuff to try is some way of centrally managing your subscriptions for you.

No idea how they'd pull it off – do you have to set up relationships with every provider, globally?! – but it's certainly an interesting idea. The number of subscriptions we have is only going in one direction.

In terms of execution, I believe subscription charges are a distinct "type" of transaction.

I have a weird money management system that involves two bank accounts, one of which regularly can go down to a zero balance. When this happens, I rely on the bank to deny the transaction when I use my debit card, which they do—I have overdraft "protection" turned off—unless it's an autorenewing subscription. My bank has told me these types of transactions can't be blocked because they're considered pre-approved.

My point being, the credit card company knows which transactions are "subscriptions", so they should be able to provide you with a list. No provider relationship needed.

(I'm in the US, no idea if Australia is the same)

One way of doing it is flagging all subscription payments as "requires me to give it the thumbs up each cycle otherwise the payment is declined or trigger a charge back". This would not require any integration with any service provider as you're simply declining any payments that weren't explicitly agreed to by the user.

A big bank has the muscle to attempt this, because most service providers would be too scared to let these transactions fail and send collections after people because having too many charge backs paints a target on your back and they could get booted off the network.

This generally lines up with my philosophy that all payments should be initiated by users on a one-off basis. It really shouldn't be too much hassle to approve every monthly recurring cost you have.

If you look at the post I was responding to, it said "how nice is the process to cancel an Apple subscription". I was pointing out that it is no easier than canceling directly through Netflix.

I would pay more for that service. Not 30% more. 5-10 is more reasonable.

Why is it naive to think they just simply want to keep $250 million a year for themselves? Find me a CEO in America who wouldn’t go for that option first

I agree with your point on need for a strong middleman that can look after interests of its customer and defend against greedy sellers who are after customer's data and money. I would love to see Apple expand its role further and spearhead initiatives to safeguard interests of buyers from behemoth internet service/product providers, something that we desperately need.

Your credit card company is one intermediary already.

Not sure what I’m adding here, but I used to feel this way about PayPal and Amazon too. PayPal lost my loyalty years ago, Amazon I now run all products through a review checker and don’t buy clothes from them anymore

What’s a review checker?

Something like https://fakespot.com

It analyzes product reviews to detect fake ones.

Thanks

What do you use instead of PayPal? Just enter your credit card on every site you buy something from? Definitely curious, because Google Pay and Amazon Payments are the only alternatives I can think of and neither are as widely adopted as PayPall.

Yep, credit card everywhere and trust the fraud teams to save me. Only had a single fraudulent transaction once ever.

Be careful, a few fraudulent transactions and the teams would start thinking you're just trying to get out of paying your bills instead of helping you out.

Lots of banks have virtual cards now that you can generate for one time use or for subscription services with a dollar/expiration date limits. I highly recommend seeing if your bank has such a feature.

  This is also about Netflix having a LOT of extra data on their customers

If you have a Netflix subscription in the first place, you've already given them a superset of what you've given Apple's app store, haven't you? (Aside from specific card details if you use a unique card for your Netflix payment.)

Still, it doesn't seem reasonable for Netflix to get 30% less revenue from users who happen to be using iOS. I guess the fairest thing for Netflix to do is to charge 40% more (so they get roughly the same amount after Apple takes their 30% cut) for people who sign up through Apple. That way, customers get the choice to go through Apple or not.

  >  I don't have to worry about my credit card being stolen.

I still think it's bizarre that you even have to authorise payment through the vendor you're buying from, rather than through your bank. This credit card-based payment system the internet accidentally foisted upon us is completely backwards.

What is this "Stripe Madness" to which you refer?

According to Google Stripe was posted on HN 130 times in the last month. I'm guessing for someone who uses HN daily this might skew their world view to assume that Stripe is everywhere.

What is privacy is just their marketing selling point.

Apple did try ads and they failed. So they changed their business to something they can handle. Something even required by law through GDPR.

The most obvious prove was that Apple had insufficiently implemented GDPR according to a consumer organisation on the EU, a month after implementation. Where they surveyed all tech companies.

They love GDPR because they think it would hurt their competitors though

As long as Apple operates its services in china, I have no faith in ANY of their empty privacy promises. Publicly refusing to unlock phones and yet always allowing persistent backdoors used by anyone with 40k and a cell searching device is a nice way of turning their heads and proclaiming everything is fine.

> I am in control with Apple.

Steve Jobs is laughing in his grave.

> Don't be naive, everyone. This is more than just about the 30% cut. This is also about Netflix having a LOT of extra data on their customers they can't get within the Apple ecosystem.... home addresses, full names, credit card data, and possibly (yes, quiet possibly) cross-referencing that with other data providers to determine credit scores, income brackets, lifestyle choices, etc.

I am no developer of iOS, but I am quite sure that Apple gives this information to developers. I worked in a payment system for years and this kind of information is quite common to share with your API users. I think they're even obligated by law because you can't really have a monetary transfer without sharing more details between both parties involved (yeah, you also have more information about the seller when money is involved).

I mean, I don't see how Apple would share less information with Netflix, them say, Stripe itself. Of course Netflix has some more information about you because you're using their platform to make the payment, however about the payment data itself I would say the information they can get with both Apple or Stripe is similar [1].

[1]: Unless of course Netflix made their own payment system, that also would make sense considering their size. In this case they would have more information about you, like full Credit Card number instead of only the bin number of your Credit Card. However I don't think this would make my point much different.

While it's been a long time since I played in Apple's sandbox, I can tell you from experience in Google's that this is most certainly not how things work for your average app store developer.[1] The transaction is between the customer and the app store (i.e. Apple/Google) and the app store then acts as an intermediary telling your app if the user (effectively just a meaningless ID number from the App point of view) is authorized etc. About the only times a developer even knows that someone is a user of their app is when they need support or leave a review.

[1] There was a very brief period of time in the early days of Google supporting paid apps when some very limited customer information was provided (iirc, it was maybe email address and city level information) but that changed very quickly and I don't believe Apple ever provided this.

Apple shares exactly none of this information with developers.

Apple doesn't hand over customer data.

They did bend enough in 2011 to allow their customers to choose to share some limited information when subscribing to the digital version of a magazine.

>As for subscriber data, Apple will allow customers to provide publishers with name, e-mail and zip code information at the time of subscription. This is optional

https://mashable.com/2011/02/15/apple-subscription-model/