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Comment by defaultname | Hacker News Reader

Do you believe that most developers are up in arms about this, ready to abandon the platform? I doubt more than a tiny fraction really care about this at all, and the hysterics on HN (threads brigaded by a small percentage of HN users) are not representative. Predictions of some massive sales drop -- or even a sales drop at all -- are deluded nonsense.

Apple is delaying this, I suspect, because it confuses the privacy message: If every time they talk about privacy someone can make them look like hypocrites by pointing out the on-device scanning, well that's just ugly for Apple. I suspect the on-device scanning element is going to be removed and it'll be on ingress to iCloud, which is what I said on my very first post to this. It was ill-considered to do it on device given Apple's privacy push.

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Most? Probably not. But developers are more sensitive to privacy issues in general, because they work in the most privacy invasive industry that ever existed. They know how much corporations dig into your stuff, and they might have even implemented some of it. At least speaking personally, I know my purchasing behavior changed on Amazon when I worked for them and realized how much they tracked me.

More importantly, there is an oligopoly in tech and up until now, only one of the manufacturers of tech devices cared about privacy. And to that extent, I wouldn't be surprised if vast majority of developers who care about privacy have biased themselves towards apple. And now they have a reason to treat apple like every other privacy invading company.

> And now they have a reason to treat apple like every other privacy invading company.

That’s right. I like the idea that on android, I can use stock tools like rsync to manage the photos/music on my phone. With Apple it’s been a constant battle against iTunes to do those basic things. The only reason I chose Apple last time I bought a phone is because I’m willing to sacrifice a bit of convenience for the perception of better security/privacy. If they lose on that front, then I’ll hop to whichever phone is easiest for me to use the way I want to.

What does Amzn do besides tracking your purchases?

> Predictions of some massive sales drop -- or even a sales drop at all -- are deluded nonsense.

I remember, when that recalcitrant dentist was dragged of a United plane, endless predictions of United's imminent demise, people would never fly United again, yada yada yada. Needless to say, nothing much happened.

> I suspect the on-device scanning element is going to be removed and it'll be on ingress to iCloud, which is what I said on my very first post to this. It was ill-considered to do it on device given Apple's privacy push.

Not sure about that. Apple's approach (private set intersection run on half client, half server) preserves more privacy than scanning it in the cloud, and leaves the door open for E2EE.

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