If Apple is the only organisation defending our privacy, it is time to worry

Is this true for every country where Apple operates? Especially where it's forced to host servers in? We know for certain that Apple cannot do its business in certain high value market(s) unless it offers unrestricted access to its customer's data.

But we don't see *privacy applicable to U.S. or X countries only disclaimer in any of it's marketing or promo materials. An uninformed Journalist or Human rights activist can be at severe risk due to this.

Especially when,

> Cook argued that people choose iOS specifically so they won’t have to make risky decisions with sensitive data.[1]

[1]https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/22/22448139/tim-cook-epic-fo...

You can't install your own apps. Safari is not fit for PWAs. Repairability is not encouraged. All of this is for your own benefit and privacy. Want those things? Go to Android and sacrifice your privacy.

With this approach, Apple comes out looking privacy-focused, justified for their App Store fees, and their stance on right to repair.

I'm not educated enough to know if those restrictions are absolutely needed for privacy or privacy is a blanket excuse for how Apple operates.

Maybe this is just a shallow read of it, but it feels like sort of a similar dichotomy to that between Apple's rhetoric about objectionable content on app stores and... well, its inclusion of a web browser.

If I might offer a less glowing perspective

Apple is a highly vertically integrated company unlike anybody else in the "top end" of SV. They don't "need" your data

Facebook only exists as a website, so of course they want to data mine you to death, use psychological tricks to keep your eyeballs scrolling their website so they can shovel ads at you

Google effectively gives away Android. They make money by data mining you for advertisements and through providing a wide array of services (Gmail, Maps, Search etc) to augment the things you do on a day to day, in exchange for the reams of data it provides about you

Amazon doesn't really data mine you nearly as much, since their business is more selling you physical goods (or the dominance of AWS, depending on your point of view)

Microsoft wants to chase after what Google and AWS are doing, though their products feel more like pale imitations than anything. Granted that isn't particularly new for them (Zune vs iPod then is Bing vs Google today)

Apple doesn't "need" your data. They have no reason to. They've created products that effectively half of the first world wants to buy through iPhones and iPads

They've spent two decades working to build themselves an outright fortress. They sell you a phone they make, which runs apps from their app store that requires developers to play by their rules

The amount of money Apple makes simply by collecting its 30% revenue cut on everything done on iPhones alone dwarfs what they could get if they even attempted to muscle in on Google in the ad revenue business

This is what Apple is trying to change, basically convince people (through ads) that they need to care about their privacy, because they know it's a competitive advantage they have when compared to the other big companies.

I use a T500 I plucked from the trash for secure libre street cred. No blobs anywhere afaik.

There are still countries where being LGBT is a capital crime, where the colour of your skin will be used against you, or where your political affiliations can be used against you.

When governments and societies start to turn against people who are different from them, the mass surveillance and profiling makes it much easier to locate all of these people to round them up.

So Microsoft's privacy is worth as much as its poorest paid employee with access.

Even worst, consumer products like Windows 10 and tools like Visual Studio Code come with extensive telemetry and tracking enabled by default. Remember recently the office 365 fiasco when they thought it will be ok to track employees and make reports out of it?

What makes Apple different, is the decision to design all their products and services in a way that limits (or avoids all together) collection user information. For example, almost all of the "smarts" of the iPhone are executed on the device, without sending your data like location and pictures to Apple's servers for processing.

Apple also enforces through App Store review that app developers are mindful of user's privacy and every instance where data is collected needs to be explained and properly justified.

Regarding the story about the 128 million infected devices, it was a virus which infected developer Macs, resulting in some apps also including malicious code. No user data was leaked and it seems end-users suffered no ill-effects cf. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/07/xcodeghost-malware-2015...

Of course, no product and service can be 100% secure forever... hacks and malware happen sometimes. That's when practices like app isolation or sandboxing (which is very strict on the iPhone) and explicitly asking users for permissions (so apps can't just choose to get any sensor telemetry they want) comes into play. If an app has been compromised, then the malware is limited to the permissions already granted to the compromised app. Nothing more.

I am not sure how much information Apple gets but if with an in app purchase of say a eBook, they get to know which eBook it was, it is creepy.

Apple really doesn't have to do any ad personalisation but still they are doing it as it is just more money for them. My fear is, eventually when they monetize more of their web properties, the data collection will increase.

While they might not allow others to sniff your data, they are in too much of a dominant position to not use it for themselves like the purchases data.

For me, this fight will always be, who will watch the watchmen? Regulatory hammer seems to be the only long term solution I can think of. As Apple's integration of hardware + software + software gateway + services, is just too scary and eventually will give them too much power.

Apple certainly is not shy about collecting biometrics. They have the most complete set of biometrics of the FAANGs. I'm not certain what their motive is.

I'm honesty surprised that in 2021 people still believe the US is the only good place to live/be a citizen.

No, I don't, yet i use tech made by American companies, and my (meta)data was also probably lumped in there for use by american intelligence agencies, who have zero jurisdiction over me.

It's definitely not common, but it happens.

They don't need to use weapons to spy on citizens. The constitutional right to privacy was stripped in the Bush era and it's been open season ever since.

When people are upset that a company violates their privacy with the government of their country, I feel as though their ire is misplaced.

We had a time in United States history when companies were essentially more powerful than the government that organized the structures in which they operated. John Rockefeller, through Standard Oil, became the wealthiest and most powerful single individual in the entire world. He routinely told governments to pound sand. He was a kind and generous person to those whom he felt deserving or who treated him well. He was ruthless to those whom he felt had slighted him or stood in his way. I don't want to go back to that.

Does it frustrate me that my government is essentially spying on me? Yes! Can I hold Apple responsible for that? Not for my government having made those decisions, no. That's asking that Apple be stronger than my government when, given a choice, I'd rather have an elected government operating transparently in free elections than a company that's primarily responsible to its owners.

Apple can very much fight this fight on behalf of its customers. Every time Apple refuses to write backdoors into its products at the behest of a law enforcement agency here, Apple is taking on that fight. Apple will sometimes lose that fight, as it is currently losing in China. Apple, as a participant in United States society, will sometimes win that fight, too. But ultimately it comes down to the decisions that our government(s) make.

Is that reasonable? If the government is your adversary and you suspect they aren't playing fair, then it's only a matter of time before the government puts the pressure on that company as well. Either they play ball, or they fold like Lavabit did.

At that point you need to self host all your infrastructure as well as you can, and it becomes difficult to trust anyone else.

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelin...

Maybe in theory "more stores" sounds like "more good" to you as a consumer.

But the large mass of consumers are not in a position to judge things like safety, performance, reliability, sustainability. They're only in position to judge things like "$3 is less than $4".

So the systematic effect of multiple stores will be that everyone will flock to the cheapest stores, which won't have the means or motivation to do what Apple does. Many of those stores will also be offering pirated applications.

So this will destroy many developers who will lose a lot more than 15% or 30% of their potential revenue to piracy, and it will also end up destroying Apple's own store.

This is what "be careful what you wish for" means. Eating fast food every day is cheaper and tastes better than whole foods, for you as a consumer. By the time your body is destroyed, it'll be too late to have some important realizations.

Apple gives apps the ability to track and users the option to disable that feature, but they built it with dark patterns.

Now they've removed the dark patterns, but you can still have this awful feature that nobody wants. Why?

And why is Apple getting credit for removing dark patterns that they created earlier? Why does this feature exist if 99.999% of people don't want it in the first place?

1. zero tracking (not even sure you can do this)

2. apple tracking, and the ability to chose others who track you

To be equal Apple would have to allow blocking Apple's own tracking while still allowing user selected 3rd parties to track. Apple doesn't give this option. If you don't want them to track you you're required to turn off all tracking, not just Apple's tracking.

They definitely consider themselves more than that. They pride themselves in being the farm, to hen, to egg, to plate "lifestyle" service.

Maybe one day they'll start making decent software though.

Apple sees all your data before it is ever sent to Facebook.

I agree with your last point, but the first two is asking for the impossible. You'd need multiple technological breakthroughs for that to happen.

On Android it's much easier to intercept and modify the behavior of apps and tell the system to disregard signatures and things of the sort.

> everyone who wants to manually inspect the bytes coming out of their phone

== everyone who actually gives a damn about their privacy

Do you even know what your phone apps are sending about you? I know what my apps are sending about me. Some of it is pretty scary, honestly.

I'm not sure if that's the case still but I've run into several other apps that do similar things. It's pretty widespread.

In any case, it's awesome to have an OS that can make apps think they got permissions and just shove fake data at them.

Apple’s services category made $16 billion in revenue last quarter and includes ads in addition to other businesses like music and TV. Apple’s growth story to investors hinges on the services category.

That only tells you how they're doing competing against the other ad networks, not how much they're trying to monetize the data. Instead since they couldn't compete, they drew a moat around their devices where other companies can't get the data apple can, now.