Forget iPhone X–Apple's Best Product Is Its Privacy Stance • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by adamlett » Thu, Nov 02, 2017, 10:49 AM UTC

013a wrote: post #34

adamlett wrote: post #27

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…

There's really no fundamental reason why iAd couldn't have become a more powerful revenue generating part of their platform.

Maybe iAd could have performed slightly better if certain policies had been different. But iAd still had to compete with Google and Facebook whom by virtue of reaching effectively everybody, offer a much more attractive value proposition to most advertisers. Apple simply can't compete with that. And every decision Apple would have to make in order to be more competitive would be at cost of harming the user experience of their products, ie. the very thing that makes them able to charge a premium in the first place.

Of course, you can argue that maybe they wouldn't take that stance if they weren't so successful in hardware

That's not the argument I'm making. At all. My argument is that advertising as a business model is fundamentally incompatible with selling premium hardware products. To be succesful at one means making strategy choices that prevents you from succesful at the other.

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

#142

Post by ewzimm » Thu, Nov 02, 2017, 12:49 PM UTC

jernfrost wrote: post #138

ewzimm wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, there are important differences, and I don’t think Ethereum will fill the various needs, which is why I said “something like Ethereum.” With all the differences in nation-states, we have come to a kind of equilibrium today where each one has a convertable fiat currency through historical convergence. Each one has a similar hierarchical government claming authority through popular mandate. That’s an amazing consistency considering the different origins.

I’m not wishing for any particular outcome, but considering past convergences and future potential, I’m simply saying it’s likely that some kind of smart contracts operating on distributed computing platforms will eventually become standard processes for law enforcement once computation is more ubiquitous.

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

#143

Post by rconti » Thu, Nov 02, 2017, 6:26 PM UTC

andreareina wrote: post #133

spike021 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gen…

Anecdotally, I just never see cracked screens on phones anymore.

Only data I could find, but very, very old (only covers to iphone 4(!!)

https://www.squaretrade.com/cell-phone-comparison-study-nov-...

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

#144

Post by seba_dos1 » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 1:43 PM UTC

0xJRS wrote: post #33

seba_dos1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor as private as you wish.

As someone who does own an iPhone i'm genuinely curious what your largest concerns are about its privacy

You have absolutely no control over what runs on your phone. You cannot even audit the software without breaking into your own device. The broadband firmware is known to be bad quality security-wise and it's tightly connected to the rest of the system. It's a walled garden where specific corporation has complete control over your privacy and you have no other choice than to trust them. Plus Apple has been already seen granting exceptional permissions to some apps like Uber for unclear reasons, so you have to trust third parties as well.

As someone who uses free software and worked closely with some mobile privacy-related projects, it's headscrambling to see iPhone users talking about privacy. I won't use it; you're free to do so, but when it comes to your privacy, it's just a delusion. At least be aware of what you've got - no security and privacy is way better than a false sense of it.