Apple is not your friend
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In short: more fiber less sugar. Some sugar is ok, but not only. Indignation counts as sugar.
Google dropped their “don’t be evil” motto for a very damn good reason, and the safety of their own app marketplace is a fucking joke.
Facebook is even worse than Google, in that it has never stopped trying to appear innocent of wrongdoing while paddling like mad under the surface.
Microsoft… has gone all Spyware with _all_ of their products as of late, although at least their business-class stuff is moderately neutered.
Apple may Hoover up some data, but it does at least employ actual security and privacy in many places. They make stands where it makes sense to take stands, and they bend in the wind where the hurricane would snap a stiffer branch. Finally, their walled garden - although not perfect - is far safer than any other one out there. They make missteps just like any other entity run by humans, but a fair number of their actions do point in the correct direction.
If given no alternative choice that is evil-free, I will chose the least evil option as my vote. Apple it is, at least for all my personal devices.
I was on Android until the start of 2019 when my wife bought a new iPhone and I took her 6S. I'd had enough of Android spying on me.
My argument was the same as yours: Apple don't make (that much) money off my data so they MUST be better than Google. Right?
When I think about it, I honestly cannot say that they have better privacy than Google. How can I? They may market themselves as having that but Apple products and software aren't open source. And even if they were, how do I know that the version of some product that my phone is connected to is using a "non-evil" version at the backend.
I now don't believe any of them give a shit about privacy. At all! Not one bit! They say marketing-speak to reach the most lucrative audience and from a financial perspective it makes perfect sense.
However, there is/may be another choice! The Librem 5 could maybe just start something: I'm not in the queue for the first batch but by the start of next year I hope to have one.
And I think there is enough financial strategy for other companies - such as Samsung, who for example sell smart TVs at a loss to recoup money from Ad/tracking information sourced from the tv - to know that others are trying this while Apple doesn't seem to be.
on iPhones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute
and Smart TVs: https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/how-to-turn-off-smar...
I agree that we don't NEED open source but it would definitely help.
In all honesty I'm not sure any corporation could fully reassure everyone that they are trustworthy but being open source would at least show they are serious about it: they may have a back door but there's a risk it will be spotted!
That being said (and is pointed out by another commenter here) Microsoft are showing that on one hand they can giveth (open sourcing .NET) and on the other they taketh away (the incessant forced telemetry).
Now that I write this I believe the answer is something like the Librem 5 with self-hosted backend infrastructure (I'm not a employee but I will be buying one at the start of 2020 when my current contract expires - I wish I had backed them at the start :()... it's not ideal but I think it's the only solution going forward.
On a slight tangent, there was an experiment done with bookies and laymen to predict winners based on 5 points of data then scaled up to around 80 points of data and it showed that the bookies were no more accurate than the laymen regardless of how much data they had at their disposal (my Google-fu is not working today so I can't find the experiment and my figures may be a bit off).
I've asked on here before for a link to research that shows more data moves the needle enough to justify its collection... At the time of writing this, I do not believe it does.
Yes you can. One is a data mining company that sells gateway drugs to its services, one is a hardware/os/framework company that transitioned in to an app marketplace company. Google makes money collecting data and targeting advertising. Apple makes a cut, like Visa, on transactions.
What prevent them to do it later?
There's investigation about iOS/Android telemetry: https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/android-devices-send-10...
It doesn't. It has total control over what you can use which is the least privacy and security friendly option you can have. That control means they can give up any privacy and security promises under a bit of government pressure, like Apple already did plenty of times. It's the same problem as with end-to-end encryption in vendor controlled binaries, they promise you it's there, but they can and will silently compromise it if pressured or decide to do so.
> Finally, their walled garden - although not perfect - is far safer than any other one out there.
Walled gardens are not inherently safer than anything out there.
Does it? Various user-blaming shenanigans, when Apple messes up their HW design can serve as an example. "You're holding it wrong", "You're putting the phone in your pocket", "You're using keyboard wrong in a real world with dust and stuff", etc.
Nothing prevent Microsoft to sells Windows Home/Pro as beta version of Enterprise and gets money & free QA.
If you pays money nothing guarantee your personal data will be used too.
You can of course sniff your network traffic to see what does get collected, and that way you at least know what they collected and you can imagine how it can be used and abused.
I don't see why they can't make some extra by making you the product as well.
Also, people who are into Apple are known to be willing to pay for stuff. A very lucrative group for everyone.
And if it leaked, Apple would be in very deep doo-doo with easily the largest class action the company has ever been hit with. It would be an unacceptable risk to even contemplate such a stupid idea. All for what, a few extra pennies?
Adobe is making money from selling software. They also make money from their telemetry system.
etc...
Google is an advertisement platform so they are the most experienced in using and selling your data (indirectly).
Microsoft is moving heavily in the SaaS direction with an insane amount of telemetry going out towards their servers from Windows 10. (If you have any concern for your privacy you will have to either disable that via powershell or 3rd party scripts/applications and verify that after every update it is still disabled.)
Facebook is infamous for their facebook pixel, they're looked upon as invading the privacy of everyone in multiple ways. So they're rightfully looked upon as an evil. They've sold and continu to sell private data directly and indirectly, including people who are not on their platform.
Finally Apple doesn't make their money using your private data (at least not on the same scale as those other companies mentioned). So you can view them as the least evil, at least when it comes to private data.
The other main use of telemetry is to power active threat protection. Having it turned on on more machines makes everyone safer.
It has the best 2fa.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/13/google-lo...
You don't see Apple doing shit like that... quite the opposite.
They didn't drop it though.
>> "And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!"
The press at the time ran articles like "Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code Of Conduct" (https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/05/google-removes-dont-be-ev...), even though they mention keeping that mention at the end.
In addition if you look at the alternatives in the smartphone branch you get the choice between high-end android-based devices and iOS devices or outdated mid-range hardware with relatively poor support and you might not have all the apps you require.
In addition to that there aren't any services out there as well integrated as apples ecosystem is. (device to device), so if you want features like that you don't really have much of a choice outside of the big three.
Yes, there are compromises to be made between convenience and freedom. You are arguing that you prefer convenience than freedom; congrats.
From almost all perspectives they are objectively worse, except for privacy. Features, Security and convenience are all significantly better on Apple, Microsoft and Google products.
This is not a value-statement, I'm not saying one approach is better than the other. This completely depends on what you personally value most, if you care exclusively about your privacy then you will have to sacrifice a lot of in other departments to achieve that, if it's worth that to you go for it.
The point I was arguing though; if you have to make a choice between these large corporations and what you care about most is your privacy, then Apple is probably your best bet.
I am not implying that. You have alternatives, and they are less convenient, but more respectful of your rights. You get to make a choice, depending on a trade-off between your values.
Which is essentially selling data in the same way that other advertisers do…
Not really: https://searchads.apple.com/privacy/
Only way to get around it is to check "Request Desktop Site" but that's an annoying workaround.
Never understood how such a major website could be this broken.
[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.stoutner.privacybrowser....
I'm not stating this to defend Apple, whose decision I also find questionable (although relatively consistent with some other rejected/pulled apps, like the one for locating and avoiding alcohol-testing checkpoints), but rather to give us all a bit of perspective — the same information remains available and usable via a web app, probably the better place for it anyway as then no store front can limit it.
So this is partly why we're all at the mercy of walled garden App Stores.
Are you suggesting that random websites should have the same level of access to your device as native apps?
If we all agree that it's good for web apps to be less capable than native apps, then we shouldn't be using the open availability of web apps as an excuse for censoring native apps. There's a lot of stuff this app can't do as a web-app that it can do as a native app.
There's a faction of HN that wants to the web to be for read-only documents, and there's a faction of HN that wants the web to be an open, device-agnostic distribution platform for politically risky apps that Apple would otherwise lock off of its devices. But it can't be both.
Those two factions often end up talking past each other. It's a very difficult balance.
Web apps that can ask permission to access features of your phone like a native app.
There are Progressive Web Apps now that are decent like Twitter's but it's still not as good as a native app.
Websites that are given consent? Sure.
It's also easy to forget that they only care about appeasing shareholders and the way to do that is to make money.
At any cost!
I am currently working on a (personal) .NET Core project so I'm using Windows 10 but when it's up and running I am going to spend some serious time looking into Linux instead and developing my .NET core stuff there. I'm also waiting for the Librem 5 now: All other phones are thinly-veiled spyware as far as I am concerned.
*takes off rose-tinted glasses!
Edit: changed focus from Apple to mega-corps instead
Same old corporation. They just worked out how to label customers as consumers and pacify the userbase by putting it on GitHub instead of Connect and reducing the support availability (have you tried getting desktop support, even paid per incident on windows 10? Don't bother!)
For me a software ecosystem has to stand 100% alone for me to invest in it. That basically leaves Python and C at this point which I'm honestly not that unhappy with.
By ecosystem I mean, an IDE as good as Visual Studio and the simplicity of pressing F5 to test my code... that sort of thing.
F5 to run is terribly inefficient in the long run (wait until you get a 2MLOC recompile and then secondary compile when your project is starting in IIS)
I know what you mean though, I've been a VS user for a long time and find it very productive.
You mean opt-out. Opt-in is when it's off by default.
`export DOTNET_CLI_TELEMETRY_OPTOUT=1`. Wow, such nightmare.
That's enough to cause a major issue in some organisations with strict security policies.
Opt in telemetry is fine. Opt out definitely not. This is a major inversion of policy.
Apple's imho one of the worst players, they have the most closed ecosystem imaginable it should be illegal to require a developer to buy your hardware just to develop apps on your platform. I'll never support or use an apple unless mandated by a client and they'll need to supply the hardware.
Google's bad too but at least I can side-load apps and install custom rom's easily enough.
No profit-driven company is your friend. When it's about profit, money becomes the end.
Edit: Let me add -- just look at what happened w/ WhatsApp. The guys who sold it to Zuck n co, regret it fully but can't take it back. They know they sold their souls to satan, and at least now they're outspoken against the turn Whatsapp took, though a bit late and a few pay-days past.
These entities aren't traditional companies, like your local newsagent or plumber or whatever. They've reached a level that they can influence governments and can control entire populations (to a degree).
They have immense power and can effectively wield it as they please to further their own ends.
They are related to small local companies only as they have to file a tax return... that's about it!
Companies exist to make money; why would anyone think differently?
It's a bandit that's too big for you to stare down, shaking you down for money every time you turn around.
Google/Microsoft/Facebook are a bunch of horrible companies, ergo, Apple is good.
Google/Microsoft/Facebook are a bunch of horrible companies, Apple is least bad.
What the tweet says: "None of these major companies are your friend. Some are better than others, but none of them, when push comes to shove, care about you."
How HN is responding: "But Apple's still technically the best amoral company, right? I mean, if we're gonna rank them. Let's rank them."
I agree that people need to be pragmatic about the companies they interact with. Realistically, very few people are going to cut the entirety of FAANG out of their lives, so ranking has some value. But don't let ranking companies get in the way of recognizing that when push comes to shove, even the least bad companies will still throw you under a bus for a buck.
That's all the tweet was saying -- recognize that Apple is also an amoral company. Be pragmatic, not loyal. The people on here setting up company tiers are missing that point.
No problem with that, but why does every single post criticizing apple for something end up this way??
Still, discussion about this issue is worth it.
Given the author's other post on Twitter
> In the 1930s and 40s, Thomas J. Watson’s IBM punch-card mainframes helped Hitler perpetrate the Holocaust.
> Imagine what IBM Watson can help dictators achieve today with AI.
(Apart from having to think about China's credit score system about which a Black Mirror episode is devoted already.)
This made me think of the tangent of the book IBM and the Holocaust [1] which is still on my to read list. AFAIK, in my country (NL) IBM's machines were used to sort based on religion [2]. It is a major historical reason why one's religion is nowadays consider PII. Of course, it is easy to check is someone regularly buys kosher or halal meat at the grocery store...
Data is a ticking time bomb. Or, as Bruce Schneier wrote in an essay, "data is a toxic asset." [3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_subsidia...
[3] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_tox...
It's not true. Without closed kernel drivers and closed-source Play Store/Youtube/Pay apps any Android is just piece of plastic.
Can you provide a one 100% working Android device with open drivers?
[2] https://www.replicant.us/freedom-privacy-security-issues.php
Which is another way of saying "if you don't like my garden, get the hell out of it!".
In the past two or three centuries we've identified a lot of ways in which this turns out wrong. There's a kernel of a really good idea in there, true, but it also needs a lot of tuning.
Capitalism worked well when most businesses were local and being a large, successful company meant employing a lot of people from the same communities as your customers. This proximity is largely responsible for that emergent feedback loop.
Today, many businesses can become exceptionally profitable with relatively few employees. And they can treat those few employees as poorly as the market can bear because 99% of your customers don't live anywhere near them.
And those forces of change are still as strong as ever. Technology and automation is speeding up change in the economy faster than ever before. Maybe there'll always be enough work for full employment, but maybe not—and the pace of change is now far too fast for human capital to keep up.
No it's not, and repeating such myths only helps abet companies who act in such a way.
Now, at this point, it occurred to me that if I want to access the market being created by Apple Store, I have to comply with the rules of that market. That's it. Protest is futile if you still buy the next iPhone. Buying is another way of saying "I vouch for what you're doing".
Are there alternatives to not buying their stuff if you want to alter in some way how they act? My opinion is there aren't. Thus, the consumer is a means to an end. If there are no consumers, I must pivot my strategy in order to have them, but make no mistake here: Apple isn't here to make the world a better place, but to make money.
You can see other places where this has happened (and in this, other explanations may also fit). Say, for instance, taxis. They used to be bad and expensive, but people had to put up with it because there were no clear alternatives. Like the Big Swinging Dicks in Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker, they can be rude because they have the power to be rude. Now, enter Uber, or a broader competitive landscape in the municipal bonds, and these behaviours are gone.
Compare how a taxi driver treats you in San Francisco vs how you are treated in remote places where Uber hasn't landed yet (Santorini island in Greece is the first one that comes to mind to me) and you understand that monopolies breed this sort of reckless behaviour towards their users.