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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

#131

Post by CaptSpify »

fermienrico wrote: post #122
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 iPhone is unbelievable fragile. This is such a handwavy statement. Fragile, compared to the competition? Can you point out any objective measure that supports "Unbelievably" fragile? All modern phones are fragile. Some slightly more than others.

Just because a lot of other people on the market make fragile phones doesn't change the fact the that the iPhone is also fragile.

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

#132

Post by scarface74 »

MrBingley wrote: post #74
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…

Never forget people, Apple's emphasis on privacy is only a means to an end, that end being "making money". If Apple needs to relax privacy to help its bottom line, it will, as this example so incisively demonstrates.

It's not that anyone is "forgetting it". Right now Apple's chosen way of making money - charging more than its competitors so it doesn't have to collect and sell users data (Google) or install third party crapware on its devices (almost every OEM) aligns with my interests.

I am not bombarded with ads when I use iMessage on my Mac like I am when I use Skype on my Windows PC.

Apple has built in support for third party ad blockers. Google would never develop a system to allow ad blockers in Chrome for Android.

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

#133

Post by andreareina »

spike021 wrote: post #98
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 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. I'd say I _mostly_ disagree. Many times over the years there have been "major" problems (i.e. antenna-gate and bendgate to name a couple). I've never experienced those issues, and I'm sure neither have many others. The iPhones throug…

Anecdotally (but with n = many), I see many more scratched/broken iPhone screens than premium Android. Similar prices, same peer group. There are probably other sources of selection bias I'm not seeing, but it's a large enough effect that I'm cautiously positive of my determination absent an actual survey.

It took two years for Apple to acknowledge[1] that #staingate was a real issue.

I do think their hardware is generally high quality, but there are holes, and they are magnified by their positioning as a premium brand and certain high-profile denials of said holes. Which for a brand that lives and dies on its reputation seems less than smart. Adding to the weirdness is that I've alternately received excellent support in cases of hardware issues, and next to none. My guess is that the frontline has a whitelist of issues that they can okay, and have no little latitude beyond that.

[1]: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/02/24/apple-extended-anti-ref...

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

#134

Post by andreareina »

fermienrico wrote: post #122
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 iPhone is unbelievable fragile. This is such a handwavy statement. Fragile, compared to the competition? Can you point out any objective measure that supports "Unbelievably" fragile? All modern phones are fragile. Some slightly more than others.

I'll quote my reply[1] to 'spike021

> Anecdotally (but with n = many), I see many more scratched/broken iPhone screens than premium Android. Similar prices, same peer group. There are probably other sources of selection bias I'm not seeing, but it's a large enough effect that I'm cautiously positive of my determination absent an actual survey.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15607637

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

#135

Post by andreareina »

rconti wrote: post #104
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.

They're certainly fragile, but I don't believe they're any more fragile than other major flagship phones.

I'll quote my reply[1] to 'spike021

> Anecdotally (but with n = many), I see many more scratched/broken iPhone screens than premium Android. Similar prices, same peer group. There are probably other sources of selection bias I'm not seeing, but it's a large enough effect that I'm cautiously positive of my determination absent an actual survey.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15607637

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

#137

Post by terlisimo »

wolfgke wrote: post #37
terlisimo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a bit different. Itanium, Sparc, Crusoe, ARM... all these CPUs were offering is the promise of better performance in some aspect. Nobody expects RISC-V to beat i7 or Ryzen in any benchmarks. IMO its purpose is to be the in hardware what GNU/Linux was in software. edit: GNU/Linux, not just Linux :)

> This would be a bit different. Itanium, Sparc, Crusoe, ARM... all these CPUs were offering is the promise of better performance in some aspect. Crusoe and ARM were not about the promise of better performance, but of being much more energy-efficient for the intended purpose (though since a few years ARM tries to get into a (more) high-performance field).

Energy efficiency kind of falls under the "performance" category. Just not raw MIPS performance but "performance per watt".

What I wanted to say is that the major selling point of RISC-V would be its open-ness rather than anything performance (or power) related. In that respect it has already captured the attention of interested parties, regardless of that the actual performance will be.

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

#138

Post by jernfrost »

ewzimm wrote: post #128
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter how well-engineered software might be, it's ultimately subordiate to national and international law. For now. I argue that there will be a technology corporation more powerful than the reach of any nation-state within 50 years.

I agree with you. I'd even bet that in 10-20 years, the primary purpose of nation-states will be technology management, if that isn't already the case. Administration by software seems inevitable, with the main problem being ensuring that the software is acting in our interests. We'll likely encode policies into something like Ethereum contracts once we have more reliable infrastructure.

Ethereum does not have that broad of an application. You are engaging in rather wishful thinking. Nation states exist because people have different traditions, values, language, history, economic and political systems.

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

#139

Post by jernfrost »

microtonal wrote: post #63
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…

Quite the contrary, macOS has been a boost to Unix. You are rather naive idf you think all macOS users are potential Linux users. macOS helped make Unix a strong competitor to Windows. It helped demonstrate that a Unix system CAN be user friendly something many people used to think was impossible.

Thanks to the rise of macOS windows has become a second class citizen for many development tools.

The non-gui layer of macOS and Linux can for the most part easily be shared. It means open source developers of non-gui tools have a much bigger usergroup and potential contributors.

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

#140

Post by pilif »

microtonal wrote: post #66
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...

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...

That way, Chinese people would be worse off security and privacy wise though. Think it through: Apple pulls out of China, the Chinese government makes the use of iPhones illegal, the Chinese people lose access to iPhones and with that to the secure enclave, end-to-end encrypted iMessage, secure boot, etc.

So in the end, Chinese people wouldn't just lose 3rd party VPNs (the first party ones are AFAIK still present in iOS), they would lose all the security features.

Is that still worth the moral stance?

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