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Forget iPhone X–Apple's Best Product Is Its Privacy Stance

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Re: Forget iPhone X–Apple's Best Product Is Its Privacy Stance

#41
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Apple has had the same business model always, which is to sell you hardware differentiated by software at a premium. Apple doesn't have an advertising-based business model[1] because such a model is fundamentally incompatible with their existing business model. The reason is that for an advertising based model to be truly successful, you have to reach as many consumers as possible, which ultimately means that you…

I think its more complicated than that. There are reports that Apple has an internal committee, including a high level executive, dubbed their "privacy czars" which are required to unanimously sign off on any instance of user data collection, and this committee has actively limited products like Siri over concerns [1] There's also the San Bernadino customer letter, which has become a defining point in their privacy h…

Are you disgreeing with him/her? I cannot tell lol.

May you please elaborate on this > Apple is fundamentally different.

What you said is just a little confusing considering that they all (the companies you mentioned) manufacturer hardware in some capacity.

Re: Forget iPhone X–Apple's Best Product Is Its Privacy Stance

#42
Would this be a fair assessment: ?

Facebook, Microsoft and Google collect all your private information and share it with themselves, the government and some with the advertisement industry.

Apple collects some of your private information and is forced to share it with themselves, Nuance and the government (subvertly see snowden and interpolate).

Amazon is in a special position.

Re: Forget iPhone X–Apple's Best Product Is Its Privacy Stance

#43
post #25

This might as well be titled - Forget Iphone X-Apple's Best Product is that they are not out to sell you anything else - ads (Google) or other products (Amazon). If a stance on something is due not having a particular type of business, is it really worth the praise?

Why would you want to "praise" a company. Publicly traded companies operate for financial gain. If you feel a company is supporting your interests you might want to consider buy their products. Make sure it's known that you're buying their product because they support your interests. They will hopefully see that it's good business to continue doing so. That's a much more robust way to get the products (and ecosystem)…

> Why would you want to "praise" a company. [...] Make sure it's known that you're buying their product because they support your interests.

That's commonly known as praising a company. "Thanks, Apple, for supporting privacy!"

Re: Forget iPhone X–Apple's Best Product Is Its Privacy Stance

#44
Reading about all of this is so surreal for me as a German. I read about these "great" policy and all I can think is ... "so, they do the minimum required" .. what's there to praise? Then I remember how US (companies) tend to think about privacy and get very sad. Stronger penalties for anyone breaking relevant privacy rules cannot come fast enough.

Re: Forget iPhone X–Apple's Best Product Is Its Privacy Stance

#45
post #28
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel this is a legitimate criticism of Apple. Not only do they sell the product at a price that funds development (and gives them a healthy profit) they also sell unavoidable Ads (in the AppStore). Ads in apps themselves I'm reasonably ok with (just avoid those apps). But having an unavoidable advert in the Appstore is annoying. Overall however, I find it to be a minor annoyance.

The ad system for apps doesn't even exist anymore.

I think the parent poster was talking about the ads inside the app store itself, not Apple's ad service.

Re: Forget iPhone X–Apple's Best Product Is Its Privacy Stance

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's chicken and egg, right? They don't have that particular business because they made the choice of privacy long ago? Even if they're not in the ads business because of a series of lucky decisions that just happened to steer them this way, there's nothing wrong with touting a selling point.

No. Apple has had the same business model always, which is to sell you hardware differentiated by software at a premium. Apple doesn't have an advertising-based business model[1] because such a model is fundamentally incompatible with their existing business model. The reason is that for an advertising based model to be truly successful, you have to reach as many consumers as possible, which ultimately means that you…

Even iAd was a way to allow the sale of ads while still respecting their user's privacy.

For instance:

>Apple doesn’t like to hand over information about its users, not even to benefit its own business. When the iAd team wanted to use information about users’ iTunes purchases to target ads, Apple execs said no way.

https://www.macworld.com/article/3046539/privacy/how-iads-cl...

Re: Forget iPhone X–Apple's Best Product Is Its Privacy Stance

#47

From what I've heard from a friend who works for Apple, it's more than skin-deep, they have a strict internal culture of user privacy. It's difficult to get permission to report any kind of user data or to bypass the sandbox, for example.

This is true of all large corps. Accessing user data without a really good reason will get you walked out the door instantly.

Re: Forget iPhone X–Apple's Best Product Is Its Privacy Stance

#48
I work closely with Apple so need to post anonymously.

I believed everything in this until something that happened in late July this past summer.

In China, their fastest-growing market, China demanded all secure messaging and VPN apps be removed from the App Store and Apple complied.[1]

So privacy matters, unless it's in your fastest-growing market.

I intend to discuss with Tim next time I see him.

1: https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/29/apple-removes-vpn-apps-fro...

Re: Forget iPhone X–Apple's Best Product Is Its Privacy Stance

#49
Apple's position on privacy also led me to switch to iCloud recently. I migrated my mail and drive to iCloud (from GMail, Google Drive) for this very reason and while there isn't always a 1-1 feature parity, I prefer to know that my data won't be used to analyze and categorize me for the purpose of advertising.

Re: Forget iPhone X–Apple's Best Product Is Its Privacy Stance

#50
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Apple has had the same business model always, which is to sell you hardware differentiated by software at a premium. Apple doesn't have an advertising-based business model[1] because such a model is fundamentally incompatible with their existing business model. The reason is that for an advertising based model to be truly successful, you have to reach as many consumers as possible, which ultimately means that you…

I think its more complicated than that. There are reports that Apple has an internal committee, including a high level executive, dubbed their "privacy czars" which are required to unanimously sign off on any instance of user data collection, and this committee has actively limited products like Siri over concerns [1] There's also the San Bernadino customer letter, which has become a defining point in their privacy h…

Do you really think other companies don't have internal privacy reviews?
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