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Comment by _bxg1 | Hacker News Reader

Let us not forget that Apple isn't doing this out of altruism, but 50% because it hurts their competitors and 50% because it makes their users happy. That said, being 50% motivated by making their users happy is more than can be said about Google or Facebook.

Edit: To be clear, I am an Apple customer and it's mainly on privacy grounds. I just like to keep realistic expectations about their present and future behavior, instead of buying into Tim Cook's rhetoric of idealism.

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It doesn't matter that a business isn't making a business decision based on altruism. What matters is that the incentives of the users are aligned with those of the business

I think it's considerably better when it's not based on altruism, because it's easier to predict how stable or sustainable an alignment of interests might be.

At an Apple all-hands around 2005, an employee asked Steve why they made the iPod, and he said "because we love music." And the answer was so simple and so earnest, that you just knew it was true.

Apple, for better or for worse, makes products based on what its executives personally want to use. That's not the only consideration, but it's unusually salient compared to other companies.

My guess is that Apple works to limit ad tracking because its executives personally do not want to be tracked.

> My guess is that Apple works to limit ad tracking because its executives personally do not want to be tracked

I'm going to guess that their CEO, growing up gay in 1960s Alabama, has a strong connection with the human need for privacy.

Apple under Steve Jobs 2005 and Apple under Tim Cook now are different beasts. Steve would go crazy at the executives releasing all the buggy/unpolished products Apple released recently. Imagine the Macbook keyboard or the Touchbar being released under Steve.

iPod was a great product. But time has changed, and I would be cautious in extrapolating that experience to Apple today. I can't imagine Apple executives saying "We change the keyboard because we love typing".

I feel the same way. Imagine how Steve Jobs would feel if he found out you could go to an Apple store, buy a Macbook and an iPhone, and still have to buy an additional cable to connect them together!

He'd probably be satisfied knowing that a significant fraction of iPhone users never connect their phone to their computer.

You don’t. Anything you need to do can be done via iCloud.

Also the newest generation comes with a usb-c to lightening port.

He would wonder why they need a physical cable to connect at all.

To charge, if you forget, misplace, or just don't want to carry your phone charger brick.

The iMac caught so much flak for omitting the floppy drive.

It's be less ridiculous if the iphone didn't come with a USB cable. It did, though, just the "wrong" one (I understand from elsewhere in the thread they've finally fixed that, however).

You think that’s bad, you should’ve seen the work I had to do to plug my Model 3 into my Model S.

No, Steve would correctly point out that the supplied cable isn’t for connecting to a computer, it’s to charge the phone or dock with a car.

Connecting an iPhone to a Mac is a niche activity these days, and anyone who needs to do that surely understands what USB-A and USB-C are.

"The future's USB-C! Convert!"

"So, the iphone charging cable will connect to USB-C?"

"What, are you crazy? Literally everything is USB-A."

Apple had plenty of misfires under Steve as well. iTools, Apple Hi-Fi, etc. People forget.

The crappy MBP keyboard illustrates my point. I suspect that Apple neglected the Mac for a long time (in many ways) because its executives switched to using primarily iPads [1].

1: https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/11/09/apple-ceo-tim-coo...

> Imagine the Macbook keyboard or the Touchbar being released under Steve.

Imagine the G4 cube, or the puck mouse, or the Motorola ROKR.

Watching video of Steve introducing the ROKR makes it very clear he was...underenthused.

Really? Remember Ping?

I'd believe that about Steve Jobs. I don't believe that about Tim Cook, and definitely not about the average Apple exec.

Nothing wrong with that.

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." - Adam Smith

Apple now treats privacy as if it were another product in its lineup; they clearly feel it’s a competitive advantage: https://www.apple.com/privacy/

This is why I bought a brand new iPhone last week. It is my first Apple product.

I like this, and I am willing to spend a lot of money. Best I can do is probably let my wallet do the talking.

I like the term that Ben Thompson (who writes Stratechery) uses for this kind of thing: "strategy credit":

> Strategy Credit: An uncomplicated decision that makes a company look good relative to other companies who face much more significant trade-offs. For example, Android being open source

More here: https://stratechery.com/2013/strategy-credit/

> Apple isn't doing this out of altruism

Of course not - who said they were?

These days they try hard to sell themselves as "the good guys of tech". Tim Cook grand-stands about privacy rights, etc. It's easy to forget that it's all just business, so it's good to be reminded.

Agree -- total red herring. And I'm much happier that Apple has a financial incentive to keep this up. "Corporate altruism" has a tendency to go poof! the instant it conflicts with the bottom line.

One can make the argument that Google's "do no evil" was pure altruism. And indeed, it did go poof! the instant it conflicted with their bottom line. Astute comment, parent.

>That said, being 50% motivated by making their users happy is more than can be said about Google or Facebook.

They all have products to sell to users so in that sense they all have to strive to make those users happy. Some business strategies use lock in to keep consumers but unless you want to wage that accusation against one of these three companies it seems like they should all be equally motivated by consumer happiness.

The closed/open/free/freedom paradox of Apple is something people should be thinking more about:

They are in many ways the most closed of all the big tech companies. Their flagship platform (in revenue terms), iOS, is the most closed general purpose computing platform in history. Overall it's second only to things like game consoles for being locked down to everyone including the owner.

They are also the platform and OS that offers the best privacy and security to the average user, and the only mainstream platform/OS actively pushing back in any way against surveillance capitalism.

Why is this? Three reasons I think, listed in order of importance:

(1) Economics: Apple's closed premium brand gives them pricing power, causing the majority of their revenue to come directly from their users. This makes it at least economically possible for Apple to prioritize their users' privacy and security at the expense of other potential secondhand sources of revenue. If you're playing in the bargain bin or worse are "free" then you must seek revenue elsewhere, and monetizing users via surveillance and other scummy methods is the easiest and most lucrative way to do that.

(2) Security: being unbelievably locked down is a double edged sword: it robs users of choice, but also robs malware and adware of attack vectors. Android is more open and as a result is a spyware disaster and seems to be getting worse. There's so much un-policed attack surface that Android's permissions don't really mean very much.

(3) Corporate DNA: Apple still has some DNA left over from the personal computing era back when PCs were about empowering users rather than monetizing them and the Internet was supposed to be about communication rather than manipulation. Apple still thinks it's making products for people, not productizing people.

  > iOS, is the most closed general purpose computing platform
  > in history. Overall it's second only to things like game
  > consoles for being locked down to everyone including the
  > owner.

So, overall it is not "the most closed".

Yes it is. Game consoles aren't general purpose computing platforms.

And what makes phones "general purpose" computing platforms?

A wide range of applications. For example, games are available as well as mapping and image editing software.

There’s a whole bunch of non-games in the Xbox store

It's fair game, that is why competition is healthy. If other companies don't try other formulas you end up with having all tech companies be ran by ad revenue.

people are too prone to anthropomorphizing companies. capitalism in two words: incentive alignment. people should really never be expecting business decisions to be motivated by morals.

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