lol. It's just marketing, nothing more.
b) iPhone parts showing errors issues was a bug that was already fixed and applied to TouchID security validation. If it's something new then it's almost guarenteed that this is a good thing i.e. you're trying to tamper/remove the biometrics components.
c) Apple's customers don't want 3rd party App Stores. It's not a computer to them but an appliance like a microwave. They want security, privacy, moderation, convenience and alternate stores trade those away for features e.g. flexibility, price that no one really wants.
2) Apple customer support has a history of being deceitful. In the US it is illegal for them to reject jailbroken devices from warranty and I've been told by apple they will void your warranty on their internal services if you bring them a device.
3) Not all customers want a 3p App Store. Some do. iPhones are not microwaves, they are computers.
> They want security, privacy, moderation, convenience
Like a microwave? Wtf. Also, all these things can come through 3p app stores. Security is provided by the OS not App Store. Privacy is by app. Moderation apple still doesn't do right. Convenience is IAP that apps will actually use.
It's not scanning on the client side, it's hashing. People on this site should really understand the difference. The alternative, as many have pointed out, is them uploading your whole image to be scanned server side.
Smart money is that this is a move in front of Apple encrypting your whole icloud backup, and they have to do something if they don't want the legal, political, and social liability of being a free encrypted cloud storage for CSAM.
There's lots of reasons to criticise Apple, this isn't one.
Privacy is #1 selling point for Apple phones for geeks, it for sure ain't some mediocre hardware catching what chinese manufacturers released 1-2 generations before, nor sheepish bragging mentality that is so popular in poorer parts of the world.
They broke privacy. It ain't some super bendy term that you can argue about and twist to suit your current needs, in similar vein as ie truth. Lets break it down - private means mine and mine only, 0 other access, here, there, everywhere. Anything else is not private, whatever 'noble' cause you wrap it in that keeps shifting with time, location, political regime etc..
They claimed they had it. Many honestly believed them. They openly kicked it out and failed at it so badly they didn't even grok it could be an issue. Then whole clusterfuck happened as we all saw from first row.
Apple doesn't have privacy, period. It can claim to have some other features, and with some they are correct. And that's about it.
First, the FBI (which supposedly stopped the last attempt to introduce E2E) has more concerns than CSAM.
Second, the current scanning system + E2E will have significant weaknesses* compared to server side scanning. As it is, Apple will pay the same legal costs as it would be if it had implemented E2E without scanning.
The only way to answer both concerns is to have way more invasive scanning than Apple told us it would do. IMHO, iCloud E2E is just a made up slogan to justify Apple snooping on the device. The real future is just way more scanning.
* The scanning database must receive updates after the images have been uploaded, because the hash as described inherently cannot catch most offenders right away. It's an issue of both space (the proposal is based on a perceptual hash, but the hash must be far smaller than the original, so similar images can't all get the same hash) and timing (NCMEC can't find new CSAM right away).
However, the images were likely deleted on the device, so neither side has access to allow rescanning in the E2E scenario. Unless.. The solutions here all involve more scanning than the original proposal.
They are (their code is) looking at every item and reviewing it opaquely to us, and deciding if they should have an employee look at tiny thumbnails to tell the cops the owner is a pedophile. Its (a) not real hashing - its "perceptual" which is fancy math that says they're looking at thumbnails and (b) cycling through every item in a list and running an Algo against it is what I'd call scanning - lets not get bogged down on the terms.
We all know the tech details they shared, people on this site all understand the difference. We know the algorithm is easy enough to produce collisions. We know that apple said multiple 3 letter agencies can determine what goes in the bloom filter, and it would be downloaded from the internet and not audited. We know they are going to open it up to other countries governments too. We know that its on if you want to use opt-out services.
> The alternative, as many have pointed out, is them uploading your whole image to be scanned server side.
> Smart money is that this is a move in front of Apple encrypting your whole icloud backup
The whole image is being uploaded server side anyways.
My smart money says that this won't lead to encrypted backups anytime soon. Too many other things in those backups.
> social liability of being a free encrypted cloud storage for CSAM
I don't really think there is much tbh. That said, it is clear people would rather have non-absolutely-private cloud than a non-absolutely-private personal device. I know I would!
People criticize apple for "not letting you own the device" and this is a much bigger step down that road. I would rather a less-absolutely-private cloud service than an absolutely-private-everything where my local stuff is scanned.
> There's lots of reasons to criticise Apple, this isn't one.
There's lots of reasons to criticize Apple. Including this one.
1. Apple has blocked apps as objectionable because they were political even though simply factual. [1]
2. Apple's lock on the App Store facilitates government blocks on apps that Apple itself would otherwise deem fine. [2]
3. Apple blocks "adult" oriented apps. How many times do people have to rehash the lines between art and porn with authority gatekeepers instead of making their own choices?
4. Apple blocks game streaming apps, and other apps that act as front ends to other app-like worlds on the web, a whole new category of innovation cancelled. [3[
5. Apple inserts itself into otherwise peer-to-peer transactions, i.e. in-app non-code content purchases. This economic tax is both unfair, but also a dampener on innovation.
6. Apple on iOS restricts the downloading of code within apps to educational situations. (Currently rule 2.5.2 [4]) This is a huge dampener on innovation. Coding, including no-code coding, should be available to anyone wanting to be code literate or want to make their own tools. I get that their are safety issues, but those can be addressed with sandboxes, etc. Again, another layer of innovation killed off.
In summary, instead of being a bicycle shop for the mind, Apple's app stores block many kinds of innovation, tax providers in ways unrelated to Apple's role as phone provider, and routinely censor useful apps that are politically unappealing to Apple or governments, threaten Apple's lock on development tools, or based on Apple's sensitivity to safe (from a tech point of view) material where legitimate opinions vary as to what is desirable or not.
This is all user hostile.
Noting that there are alternative phones isn't a good response, as Apple's phones are at the center of tightly knit ecosystems. Customers do not have the ability to mix and match products between a few ecosystems and get the same value.
I view the App Store as Apple's new Achilles heal.
Apple's gatekeeper role has created perverse incentives for Apple to block significant innovation, economic viability, and freedom of expression on devices at the center of many of our lives.
Perverse incentives don't go away. They tend to metastasize (pun very much intended) [5].
[1] https://9to5mac.com/2017/03/28/apple-drone-striking-app-remo...
[2] https://www.vox.com/recode/22680010/russia-apple-app-store-s...
[3] https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/07/apples-block-of-x...
[4] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/29/facebo...
How can a company claim to be privacy friendly because it blocks ads while sharing private messages with a genocidal government?
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-knowingly-used-child-l...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-mining-children-trfn/...