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I think looking at ANY company as the savior of privacy is a waste of time. Companies have proven time and time again that they are unable to self-regulate this. Only way forward is to introduce legislation that makes it illegal to track users using privacy-invasive practices, otherwise we'll never get rid of it. A company can be privacy-preserving today, but then the leadership changes or acquisition happens, and now they change their practices, without informing users.

I simply see no technological solution to this problem, it'll always be a cat-and-mouse game, until governments catch up and makes it illegal.

I'm eager to hear if someone here does have any solution to this problem though.

>> I simply see no technological solution to this problem, it'll always be a cat-and-mouse game, until governments catch up and makes it illegal.

Then you we will have privacy-avoidance companies just like we have tax avoidance. Problem solved!

Exactly, and when they get caught, they get fines or prison. Sounds good to me, let's ship it.

Let me correct that for you: When they get caught thet get a small fine(somewhere close to 1% of their profit) or no fine at all.

Well, we're talking about a hypothetical law here, so we don't really know the amount... The low amounts for fines when it comes to big companies is a different problem that should also be fixed.

Often, the fines for breaking the law are factored in to the cost of choosing to do so in the first place.

This is justified, of course, because the gain for doing so vastly exceeds losses due to the fines.

This is webkit, which is open source. Apple took an existing HTML/CSS/DOM engine, rewrote it, renamed it, and opensourced its version, too.

It's compiled using LLVM, which also contains thousands of lines of open source code by Apple.

Of course you might argue that these examples don't prove your sweeping statement false, but please read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman before arguing.

Open source is not the same as open. You can't run Firefox on an iPhone.

Sure you can

https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/firefox-private-safe-browser/i...

Sure you can't. That's not Firefox, but Firefox-branded Safari.

You can run real Firefox too, if you jailbreak first.

Before someone says I have Firefox/Chrome on my iPhone; they are just skins for Safari. Same vulnerabilities which exist on Safari(Webkit) can be exploited there as well since they aren't allowed to use their browser engine.

If I understand you correctly, "open source" is not a kind of openness and should be disregarded. Assuming that is so, for the sake of argument, what does count as openness?

It was open sourced as WebKit because it derived from KHTML, which was copyleft, and it took lawyers getting involved before Apple played ball and released it as open source.

> They have always favoured closed systems even if didn't provide privacy advantages

Yes.

> or as in this case was counter-intuitive for privacy

I fail to see how this is counter-intuitive for privacy.

> iCloud hack

Targeted spearphising?

> Apple's response to iOS vulnerabilities targeted by state actors

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20897368

> Newer Safari being incompatible with privacy extensions such as uBO etc.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21025252

> I fail to see how this is counter-intuitive for privacy.

It makes it impossible to have an app that stores data in localstorage reliably, instead requiring it to be backed up on the app's servers.

In the browser, sure. But it prevents a number of issues with advertisements tracking people around the web.

When you use Apple Maps, Apple doesn't know who you are, where you go. There's not even a way to sign in.

It's not incompetence. When you request a route, your iPhone breaks up the request into separate, unrelated segments so Apple doesn't even know your total route. They've done work to avoid tracking you.

Call it a "marketing ploy" or "altruism" or whatever, but the fact is that Google wants to know where you go, and Apple doesn't.

Agreed — Apple’s trying to project a high-minded motivation here, but their real motivation is likely to try and limit web technologies so that companies must still invest in native iOS apps and remain within their walled garden.