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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

#61

Post by MBCook »

sgift wrote: post #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.

In everything that keeps happening in the US with regard to leaks and advertisers watching you and Facebook profiling you... I’m not sure it’s fixable.

Until a large chunk of congress, and probably the R chunk due to their privacy law stance, gets a TON of embarrassing stuff leaked to the public or better yet ‘shared’ when they weren’t expecting it... I don’t think anything will change. We won’t get real laws to protect people.

And a decent sized part of me says not even incidents like that would do it. It would just be blame-the-victim and you-accepted-that-policy and the laws wouldn’t really change.

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

#62

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

damnyou wrote: post #47
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #39

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.

I don't mean accessing data on their servers, but rather analytics and the like. They don't get shader content in their crash reports because it might have been generated from user data somehow.

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

#63

Post by microtonal »

exitreturn123 wrote: post #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://techcru…

It has always been clear to me that this privacy stand is maybe 20% Tim Cook and 80% strategy. The privacy card works well as a differentiating feature from Google products. So, we have a situation where the interests of Apple and a chunk of users are temporarily aligned.

We have stay continuously aware that this is probably a temporary situation and laying all your eggs in one basket is a bad idea. When governments of larger economies start forcing their hands with bans, etc., they will follow the money.

In hindsight, I think the popularity of macOS among UNIX fans has been detrimental to the development of open source software and open ecosystems that can provide more long-term privacy, by sucking a lot of manpower/energy out of the Linux/BSD ecosystem. (I am also guilty as charged.)

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

#64

Post by MBCook »

freehunter wrote: post #60
jonknee wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the correct move? Refuse to follow the law and withdraw from the market completely? How about when Apple removed apps from developers based in Iran because of US sanctions? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/technology/apple-iran.htm...

>Refuse to follow the law and withdraw from the market completely? Your tone of voice seems to indicate you don't think that's actually an option.

You can’t do that. It’s China. It’s one of the largest markets on Earth and Apple is a public company.

Cook would immediately be fired by the board. They’d put someone new in, and that someone new would comply with China’s demand.

And no one would be better off. As Cook says at least Apple does the best they can and holds the line on other things like encrypting iMessage.

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

#65

Post by sgift »

kobeya wrote: post #58
sgift wrote: post #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.

Europe may have strong laws regarding privacy. Those laws don’t apply to government requests. That’s a difference.

Germanys data protection laws bind the government too. The government cannot request any data they like without a valid reason (though still too much in my opinion).

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

#66

Post by microtonal »

jonknee wrote: post #57
exitreturn123 wrote: post #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://techcru…

What is the correct move? Refuse to follow the law and withdraw from the market completely? How about when Apple removed apps from developers based in Iran because of US sanctions? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/technology/apple-iran.htm...

What is the correct move? Refuse to follow the law and withdraw from the market completely?

Which is what Google pretty much did:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China#Ending_of_self-ce...

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

#67

Post by CaptSpify »

andreareina wrote: post #2

The iPhone is unbelievably fragile, before you look at the high price. Apple bends over backwards to deny the existence of design flaws, to the point of blaming users for doing it wrong. Despite this I am seriously considering an iPhone, their stance on privacy is the only reason.

The only real reason I haven't switched is because they won't give me control of my phone. At least with Android I can root it, install custom roms, and mess with pretty much any non-google software that I have on there.

Android is far from perfect, and I still hate it, but at least I can still control most of it.

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

#68

Post by MBCook »

criddell wrote: post #56
singularity2001 wrote: post #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.

> some with the advertisement industry I'm always interested when people say this. Say I want to buy some person's data. Is there a way I can do that with Facebook, Microsoft, or Google?

No, because it’s far too valuable to them. If they sold it it wouldn’t be valuable for long.

They do it ‘the other way’. You say “I want to buy some eyeballs like X” and they sell you access to the eyeballs.

But they don’t give you the person’s information.

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

#69

Post by chimeracoder »

MBCook wrote: post #64
freehunter wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Refuse to follow the law and withdraw from the market completely? Your tone of voice seems to indicate you don't think that's actually an option.

You can’t do that. It’s China. It’s one of the largest markets on Earth and Apple is a public company. Cook would immediately be fired by the board. They’d put someone new in, and that someone new would comply with China’s demand. And no one would be better off. As Cook says at least Apple does the best they can and holds the line on other things like encrypting iMessage.

> You can’t do that. It’s China. It’s one of the largest markets on Earth and Apple is a public company. Cook would immediately be fired by the board. They’d put someone new in, and that someone new would comply with China’s demand.

Somehow, that didn't happen when Google effectively withdrew from China.

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

#70

Post by joshuamorton »

jonknee wrote: post #57
exitreturn123 wrote: post #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://techcru…

What is the correct move? Refuse to follow the law and withdraw from the market completely? How about when Apple removed apps from developers based in Iran because of US sanctions? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/technology/apple-iran.htm...

>Refuse to follow the law and withdraw from the market completely?

That's exactly what Google did:

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-chin...

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