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Comment by crooked-v | Hacker News Reader

Apple doesn't trust other providers. See, for example, the ongoing attempts by Facebook & co to exfiltrate as much data as possible. A theoretical Facebook alternative here to super-Siri would have a pipe to slurp up the entire phone's data.

This kind of thing overlaps with the anti-competitive practices driven by Apple's MBAs (like the whole thing with Epic), but it's a genuine concern and one their engineering people think about a lot.

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That sounds legit, but do you think its out of scope? Scam texts and emails result in exfiltrated data, maybe they have to require iMessage and iCloud Mail too?

If Facebook's Meta-Siri is being sketchy, that's a problem with Meta-Siri. Take it off the market, bring down the law. Promote competition, and bad actors must be made to loose. Can we not just status-quo fallacy that re dysfunctional consumer protections? or at maybe agree that the perfect-world scope is one that puts exfiltrators in jail, not just rejected from the app store.

Instead we'll just have Siri AI and Google Assistant AI, and no decent competition. I guess maybe we'll get a Meta phone, if the only way to compete is on the entire mobile computing vertical.

Is the end state that countries regulate app stores and approve apps? Apple has legit concerns. The majority of users would happily sell their own data for some tiny benefit. However, like you say, Apple has a perceived or real conflict of interest. Are Apple being benevolent or acting in their own interests?

They are doing both.

That’s how I read this too - I specifically use Apple because I can get what I need to done with little hassle, I can routinely use the same phone for _years_ and not even think about upgrading (my last upgrade was “forced as my iPhone was stolen), and I have a much higher confidence in Apple not being crappy with my data vs Google.

I know there are alternative phones that are more open, and I recognize that the level of ease and comfort I get from a big name phone requires some of those trade-offs. Linux was my desktop of choice and probably would be again if my employer allowed it, but I don’t necessarily want to deal with all the tiny sharp edges of Linux on a mobile device.

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