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neogodless

When Microsoft has telemetry:

* Windows is a spyware machine - how can anyone use it? Year of Linux baby!

When Apple has telemetry:

* It's working as expected.

So... to be fair, is there a thorough comparison of the two? How are they the same, and how are they different?

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But the things mentioned in the post above yours have nothing to do with telemetry. They're more like core functions to make the system work at all.

take a look at fbs.smoot.apple.com and argue that isnt telemetry?

why does an os need to hit the internet AT ALL to work? osx doesnt of course

> why does an os need to hit the internet AT ALL to work?

Does it actually need to hit these to work?

no, as i indicated above, and is patently clear to anyone who has turned off wifi

> Which then becomes a question of how much time/money to they invest in features for 1% of users? Now how much time do they invest in those same features when the 99% will stumble in there, turn a bunch of stuff off, then call support and ask why their weather widget isn't updating?

That sounds like telemetry?

The features I was referring to would be a control panel to list all the various remote calls to let uses micromanage what calls they wanted and which ones they didn’t.

Inside of those settings could be options to enable/disable telemetry, sure. But also push notifications, weather updates, virus definition updates, etc.

That's how it should be if all was fair, I feel like what we have here is a "dark pattern" whereby keeping all the telemetries opaque ... enables one to keep around the nasty sort of telemetry the company very much wishes to remain opaque.

The article, then again, specifically talks also about telemetry. The parent commenter conveniently chose to ignore them because of the Apple reality distortion field.

> fbs.smoot.apple.com - for crash reports, analytics, or user feedback.

> purchase pancake.apple.com - telemetry

> xp.apple.com - telemetry

No that's incorrect. It is listed in TFA.

I didn’t see the person you’re replying to ever mention Microsoft. It seems weird to accuse them of hypocrisy?

This is a very valid criticism of my post and many that group "opinions" as if they come from a single source.

Here, the top-voted comment is OK with Apple software phoning home, but there's no evidence they are not equally OK with Microsoft software phoning home, so I'm contrasting this popular opinion with another popular opinion elsewhere.

Here's one example from a different user, where Microsoft is described as "the big daddy of spyware."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22246187

See also this sibling top-level comment from today:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44256951

Microsoft put ads in their OS menus. Kindof a stretch to "both sides" this one.

Apple does too! Drives me crazy, although it’s not nearly as bad as Windows.

I have never seen this. What ads are you referring to in MacOS?

They keep trying to get me to buy iCloud space in the settings menu

Uh…where?

You don't see them if you're already paying for all Apple services.

But otherwise, you get constantly nagged to get iCloud and also sometimes for their media and gaming subscriptions

Finally, what people for some reason ignore: Apple has been an advertisement company ever since their app store became the majority share of their revenue.

Ah okay yeah I have Apple One so I wouldn’t see them

Also, no, Apple makes nowhere close to a majority of its revenue from its App Store (source: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-how-apple-makes-its...)

51% are iPhone sales 9% are wearables and home device sales 8% are Mac sales 7% are iPad sales

A portion of the 25% that make up services and subscriptions is advertising, in addition to Apple Music, iCloud, Google’s search default payment (20B/yr), etc.

Apple makes less than 5% of its revenue from advertising

Oof, I meant to write "a majority share", not the.

I still believe that to be true, as you're splitting the advertisement revenue - in my opinion, all app store revenue is related to their advertisement business.

From my perspective, only counting the money that went into the advert itself is misleading, as the store itself is what the adverts are shown on.

If it was a more general advertisement network I'd agree with your splitting though.

No, that is how Apple split them. There is no ad revenue in any segment outside of services. “Belief” is not necessary, this is accounting

I’m a shareholder, I read the reports. Apple make 70%+ of their revenue from direct device sales (no one else comes close to them)

I can see where you're coming from, but I still feel like you might be putting too much trust into how apple splits their revenue in documents as they're provided to the public.

I'm not saying that the numbers are false, but apple can ultimately freely choose how to categorize their revenue itself.

From my point of view, their advertising revenue inherently cannot be split from their app store revenue.

It's akin to me saying "I've only spent $50 on groceries yesterday", but omit that the actual cost was $100 because of added fees and taxes.

It's still technically correct, and a bookkeeper will categorize it as such, but it also incredibly misleading.

I hold that opinion because in the apple ecosystem, the customer journey doesn't end with the advertisement. Every successful capture inevitably ends with more revenue via their 30% cut.

And btw, I'm technically a shareholder too - though only in the low thousands (value, not #), so prolly a lot less then you ( • ‿ • )

App Store and ad revenue are part of the same category

But in aggregate, it's 25%, right?

I'd consider that a majority share, or would you say the term should only apply if it's over 50%? I considered it to be a majority share because it's a significant chunk of the total revenue and not just a minor footnote, but looking back, "a significant amount" would've probably been better

“majority share” means > 50%

“plurality” means it’s the biggest number

Neither apply in this case

No it isn't. The context is telemetry and spying, not built in advertising.

And none of the items in the original thread post were about telemetry. They were about functional requirements.

That's a stretch, but giving the benefit of the doubt, you alone say potahto, most here are saying potato.

I guess you didn't read the article then, there are entries for telemetry. He even helpfully listed the official use case next to the domain name that was accessed.

Thread post. Not article post. Try to keep up.

You made the claim that apple didn't make any telemetry requests in response to someone pointing out the double standard for Apple.

Yes the person further up in this thread lists features other then telemetry, but that's literally the double standard. It's also did telemetry, just like windows does. Did you unironically think windows phones home only for telemetry, and not for various features too?

Because the article you're commenting on lists telemetry requests.

Your comment makes straight up no sense.

Okay buddy. Enjoy your day.

Plus, the ads for Apple are like “buy our cloud storage solution” and the ads for MS are like “10 foods to make you SEXY this summer!” I’m not a fan of either, but one is significantly worse than the other

That's a hyperbolic cherry picked comparison from different areas. If you compare the settings and start menu equivalent they are the same.

I read it as a criticism of HN not the GP.

Apple users tend to trust Apple (whether or not that trust is misplaced is a different topic). Very few people trust Microsoft.

Honestly I would say “working as expected” for like 99% of Microsoft’s telemetry. I think the only difference is that I fucking hate hate hate OneDrive and so I’m gonna be more upset about the fact that Windows uses it. iCloud does not bother me so I don’t complain about it.

Apple is nowhere near as evil as Microsoft, so I’m willing to put up with it.

Apple has been involved in all the same government spying programs as Microsoft. They do not offer any services or products with E2E encryption that they do not control the key too.

But at least they have E2E encryption. The whole point of which is not having the key to.

The whole point is that a 3rd party (Apple) doesn’t have the key. It’s not real E2E and it’s still susceptible to government overreach.

It is not. It is real E2E. Or at least, here is my evidence (and before you balk at a chatgpt link, the links to the sources are also in there). What do you have?

https://chatgpt.com/share/684dae83-a980-8004-8226-d6e13a673d...

Not every Apple service is E2E encrypted, but some of them (like iMessage) are, and it's 100% real E2E.

It's now way more than iMessage, especially if you opt into more:

https://chatgpt.com/share/684dae83-a980-8004-8226-d6e13a673d...

If you do a forgot password and move to a new device do you lose all your chats?

AFAIK, if you can't get a previous device to authenticate your new device, you will indeed lose your chat history. However, I have several devices that can always authenticate for new ones, so I can't verify this empirically.

As the other person stated, in theory yes, but in practice, if you are an "Apple ecosystem" participant, you usually have another Apple device available that you can auth on.

https://chatgpt.com/share/684dae83-a980-8004-8226-d6e13a673d...

Still need your password to use the key

No Apple can unlock your phone with the master key they used to generate your phone hardware enclave key. This is how the FBI has pressured them in the past to unlock devices.

Apple claims what you’re describing is impossible

https://support.apple.com/en-ge/guide/security/sec59b0b31ff/...

Which specific part of the enclave doc refutes it?

This Quora claims otherwise: https://www.quora.com/How-can-we-unlock-our-iPhones-if-we-fo...

The exact section is "Root Cryptographic Keys," here is the key passage:

``` A randomly generated UID is fused into the SoC at manufacturing time. Starting with A9 SoCs, the UID is generated by the Secure Enclave TRNG during manufacturing and written to the fuses using a software process that runs entirely in the Secure Enclave. This process protects the UID from being visible outside the device during manufacturing and therefore isn’t available for access or storage by Apple or any of its suppliers. ```

That may no longer be true.

https://chatgpt.com/share/684dae83-a980-8004-8226-d6e13a673d...

> They do not offer any services or products with E2E encryption that they do not control the key too.

Are you saying that Apple still has the keys when Advanced Data Protection is turned on? And has access to the covered data even though they say the keys are only on the trusted devices?

> They do not offer any services or products with E2E encryption that they do not control the key too.

That’s way off the mark from reality. You can look at Advanced Data Protection. It’s not enabled by default for the sake of convenience, but it’s an option available to the users.

Well if you're going to throw that out there, you might as well explain.

The people who complain about windows telemetry, arnt going to Mac, they use Arch Linux btw.

Are you sure Mac users (or at least fans) don't also call or consider Windows telemetry "spyware"? I suspect they hold that opinion too.

But yes, Year of the Linux Desktop, baby!

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