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> And of course Apple collects information on you to help improve its products - nearly every company in existence does this.

The article claims that Apple's privacy policy explicitly says that it can use that information for marketing/advertising. From the article:

the company plainly states in its privacy policy that it does use private data in many ways, including... to build its own advertising network.

That's actually pretty evil. Normally if I turn on "tell X about any runtime errors", I expect there to be pretty strong privacy protections in place. After all, I'm doing them a pretty big favour by donating (an admittedly tiny amount of) bandwidth and compute resources to their product improvement. The absolute least I expect is to not be shafted in return.

Honestly, that sounds more like CYA than anything else. If they use crash reports to say that OS 10.12 crashes at 1/5 the rate of 10.11, then they're using your data for marketing/advertising.

I'm willing to hold my scorn until they start saying "nmrm2's Mac has never crashed!" without clearing it or compensating you.

This is a business play, not a privacy one.

> No you wouldn't. A search engine is difficult to build, expensive to build, and hard to do right.

DuckDuckGo appear to do pretty well for themselves, running on $3m of funding and with a team of 21 people. I'm guessing Apple invests more in their products' packaging design than that. If their users' privacy were a concern to them, searching in Safari would use Apple's (privacy-conscious) search engine, and (until Apple perfected their search index) pipe in results from Bing/Google/whomever, just as DDG does.

Apple's working on a web crawler, AppleBot. So far it's not a full Google or DDG replacement, instead focused on app search and discovery.

The WWDC session on Search API covered its current uses, and some of the privacy controls they've built into it.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204683 https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=709

I don't understand this line of reasoning at all. Does anyone else not see the huge non-sequitur here? The fact that Apple said it cares about privacy doesn't mean it cares enough to build a search engine just for that reason. How can you even argue this with a straight face?

I don't even disagree with you. It's just that my perception of "caring about something" differs from yours. My point being, building a search engine can be done (and done well) with little resources. For comparison: Apple makes about as much profit per hour as DDG had in (total) funding. And (assuming an average tenure of 5 years), Apple hires three times the amount of people a day that make the DDG team. ^1

My argument, thus, goes as follows: If, as a company, you care about something only so little that you are not willing to invest an hours' worth of profit, you probably don't care about it at all. I don't fault Apple for not caring about privacy. Few companies do. I fault them for posing as caring about privacy when their behaviour clearly demonstrates that they care very little.

1: Yes, Apple's hires won't probably have the same skill set as the DDG team. And yes, scaling a search engine from 9M queries a day to what Apple Search would be hit with would take a fair bit of effort. I'm trying to illustrate a point here, so just bear with me ;-)

Why not? A search engine is one of the biggest leaks of information to third-parties. Apple has its own encrypted messaging system, and a search engine wouldn't be as big a project as that.

Please tell me you are kidding! A search engine is easier than an encrypted messaging system? Seriously?

Yeah, I would think so. You don't even need user accounts.

you fail to provide any valid counter argument.

from a naive standpoint i would call apple's point hypocrit, from a more cynical I'd call it an attack on the business of a competitor (while using the services provided by the same to empower their own products).

I think the parent comment is trying to say that the article did not provide any valid counter arguments.

It did, OP just chose to highlight what best suits his/her viewpoint.

Example : Safari on iOS and OSX defaults to Google for the search engine and Apple collects billions of dollars from Google to make it easy for you to sell your data to Google - the very thing Cook is trying to sell you as evil! Same goes for FB, Twitter and Bing.

Also Apple collects a great deal of data just like others and it is not provably different than others unless you insert irrational faith into the equation.

I can tunnel all network traffic from my Apple devices through a VPN and prove that they still work fine, and I can have a look at the amount of traffic Apple sends and see if it corresponds with the "yes" and "no" answers I've given to their privacy questions.

That's not a counter argument at all. Cook never said that user's shouldn't be allowed to use google. He said that there should be a privacy respecting option. That users shouldn't be forced to trade their privacy for free usage. It defaults to google because the majority of people want it to but at least it gives you the option. Android and google present no such option.

> it gives you the option. Android and google present no such option.

Umm, what? Did you really not know you can search with Bing on Android? You can also not choose to add a Google account and instead use alternative app store on any Android phone by the way. People user Google services because they like them and find value in them. No different than on ios.

i understand what the parent comment does, but i beg to differ.

i think the article very clearly states some valid arguments and the user in the parent comment fails to provide arguments countering those.

>> "No you wouldn't. A search engine is difficult to build, expensive to build, and hard to do right. Instead they offer users Google as default (which the majority of people would want) and a more private alternative in DDG.

Um, Apple replaced Google Maps with their own Map service which is hard to build, expensive to build and they still haven't gotten it right. Despite that, I want Apple to do the same for search so I can remove Google from my iPhone.

>> "I could continue going through the article explaining how it is utter rubbish but it should be pretty obvious."

This is why Apple fanboys have such a bad reputation on the web and spoil perceptions for those of us who own Apple products without subscribing to the fanaticism. Stop the snark. Respond to the actual argument.

acc created „7 minutes ago“ - nuff said

Everyone has a first post.

You have a marketplace of alternatives to choose from.

Why would you think that demanding that a hardware company should develop a search engine is a better alternative to companies that have chosen to try and invest in search?

I am totally baffled by this mental leap.

You seem to be implying that because Google Maps exists, Apple is only allows to provide Google Maps integration.

Apple hasn't "replaced" Google maps, except in its own apps. Google Maps still is on the iPhone.

Plus, remember the conflict over Google maps was because Google wanted too much personal information about he users and Apple wasn't comfortable with that. Apple spent a lot of effort to replace something for the purpose of protecting users Privacy. I'm not aware of google ever going thru such extensive efforts (despite the cheap website propagandizing the contrary we saw the day of the WWDC keynote.)

>> "This is why Apple fanboys have such a bad reputation on the web and spoil perceptions for those of us who own Apple products without subscribing to the fanaticism"

I'm tired of this smear from people who hate Apple. For the record, you can stop pretending to own Apple products. You're not going to convince us your somehow objective with this lie. When you smear people defening Apple as "fanatics" then you miss the point that Apple is constantly being attacked.

It is the existence of Apple that you cannot tolerate causing you and your kind to constantly attack Apple, and this has been going on for 40 years.

Mac users just want to be left alone, instead of constantly having to defend against dishonest hit pieces like this article in the NYT.

Some people dislike Apple solely based on the fact that it makes highly popular devices, calling everyone that likes Apple "sheeps". Now what's funny is that if someone doesn't like a product not because of the product itself, but rather because too many people like/adore it, then their decision is still dictated by the crowd.

I try to judge a product not based on who/how many people use it or don't use it, but rather by trying the product itself. Because I realized a few years ago that there were a lot of things that I disliked not because of my dislike for the things themselves, but because of my dislike of the people using that product (whether it being a song, and artist, a movie, a book, an app, hardware, the list goes on). A friend once told me that he hates [it/telling people] that he likes Drake. He does like Drake, he just doesn't like to admit it because idk, media, people that listen it him, etc. If you don't like Drake because of who listens/talks about it rather than because of his music, then you're letting everybody else dictate part of what you're listening to. Isn't that weird ? I think it is.

>> You seem to be implying that because Google Maps exists, Apple is only allows to provide Google Maps integration. Apple hasn't "replaced" Google maps, except in its own apps. Google Maps still is on the iPhone. Plus, remember the conflict over Google maps was because Google wanted too much personal information about he users and Apple wasn't comfortable with that. Apple spent a lot of effort to replace something for the purpose of protecting users Privacy. I'm not aware of google ever going thru such extensive efforts (despite the cheap website propagandizing the contrary we saw the day of the WWDC keynote.)

I never use Google Maps on my iPhone, I only use Apple Maps now. Apple Maps works with Siri and my Apple Watch. Apple Maps is the default. I prefer Apple tracking me instead of Google (home, work locations etc) I want Apple to do the same for search.

>> I'm tired of this smear from people who hate Apple. For the record, you can stop pretending to own Apple products. You're not going to convince us your somehow objective with this lie. When you smear people defening Apple as "fanatics" then you miss the point that Apple is constantly being attacked. It is the existence of Apple that you cannot tolerate causing you and your kind to constantly attack Apple, and this has been going on for 40 years. Mac users just want to be left alone, instead of constantly having to defend against dishonest hit pieces like this article in the NYT.

What smear? This paranoia is what I don't like about Apple fan community. I'm not even criticising Apple and you've already jumped to the conclusion that I hate them and don't own any Apple products. I want Apple to succeed, I prefer their products which is why I want a Google search alternative with better privacy protection. But because I disagreed with a snarky comment you accuse me of being dishonest. Wtf

"the conflict over Google maps was because Google wanted too much personal information about he users and Apple wasn't comfortable with that. "

Please tell us more of your insider information about the negotiations between Google and Apple regarding maps apps for iOS.

This isn't insider information, it was widely published at the time in mainstream media.

And the people the info came from were certainly not biased or trying to use the press to influence the negotiations.