Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex” • Hacker News Board

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#321

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 2:54 PM UTC

WhompingWindows wrote: post #284

Spooky23 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. They own like 50% of the market. They position like 1960 GM. The $1,500 iPhone is the aspirational thing that everyone talks about. If you have money, you buy the iPhone Xs (ie the Cadillac), if you want to look "better", buy the Xr (Buick), if you don't care, you buy the iPhone 7 (the Chevy). There is almost nothing that the $1,500 phone does that the $1 phone does not. The cheapo androids are more like…

Where is your evidence supporting the claim that Apple owns 50% of the market? That is way above the figures I have seen. Seems to me you are just pulling metrics out of thin air in this post.

Try Google.

I focus on the US (and UK and Japan), it's a two horse race. You can segment it all sorts of ways. iOS is somewhere between 40-60% in a given segment, and usually around 43-48% overall. Overall share has been declining as the market growth slows and prepaid plans make total device cost more relevant.

Nothing I said means anything ex US, as the solutions, costs and requirements vary.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#322

Post by bootlooped » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 2:56 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #181

mark_l_watson wrote: post #32

I like Tim Cook, I think his heart is in the right place and as much as a corporation can, Apple generally does the right thing. I was having lunch with several lawyers at my company a few weeks ago. One of them was talking strongly about quality devices and Apple’s strong privacy stance. He literally said that we as a society should be grateful for having Apple.

Apple sells a walled garden that controls what software you can use, forces upgrades by forbidding repairs and slowing down old phones with software updates, and sells more dongles by eliminating features and changing ports in every generation of their products. I admit they are better than Google on the privacy issue, but should we be grateful for having an alternative that abuses us in different ways?

Being in a walled garden is not a concern of most users, and it often works to their benefit. If dear old grandma can barely tell the difference between the internet browser and Facebook, I don't think I care if she doesn't have root access to her phone.

To roughly quote another HN user who I don't recall, "Not everybody wants to sysadmin their phone".

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#323

Post by spery » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 2:56 PM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #249

Ensorceled wrote: post #194

The only problem is that Apple is the Mercedes of mobile devices. We really need a Honda and Kia version, a more affordable device that doesn’t track you. Apple is never going to give up their premium position.

Just buy an Android device and opt out of all the tracking? People behave as if this is impossible, but the options are all right there in the settings. There are a few places you lose some features but not super significant ones, and mostly those are because the tracking is intrinsically involved in the functions of the app.

This is farm from the solution you present it to be. Opt out of google maps history and try the maps search for few days. Then turn it on again and compare the results.

I've even had 'Saved Places' not render without search history being enabled.

My next phone will sadly be an IPhone. Not because I love apple(I don't), but just because I'm quitting google.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#324

Post by realusername » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

rubatuga wrote: post #307

WhompingWindows wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is your evidence supporting the claim that Apple owns 50% of the market? That is way above the figures I have seen. Seems to me you are just pulling metrics out of thin air in this post.

Also, they're probably implying the US market.

Yeah globally it's probably closer to 20%...

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#325

Post by callalex » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 2:59 PM UTC

mcbits wrote: post #231

MarHoff wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With DuckDuckGo you can always use the !g syntax to switch to google if first results don't suit you need. By my experience DDG usually provide way more appropriate answers when you are looking for a reference or a documentation entry. Google still is better for recently pushed contents like news and is still marginally better for finding result inside Q&A sites. After 1-2 years of DDG by default I tend to know in ad…

I don't know why so many DDG users use '!g' unless they're using Edge or just aren't aware that Chromium and Firefox both let you create an arbitrary keyword like 'g' for a search provider, which is a lot easier to type. Some of the other bang commands do look useful, though.

That won’t take you through DDG’s anonymizing proxy though.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#326

Post by kodablah » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 2:59 PM UTC

cal5k wrote: post #252

parthdesai wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always baffled how even the tech-literate crowd here continues to give Apple a pass. This is the same Apple that gave up its encryptions keys to Chinese government for the servers located in China. If it actually had user's privacy in mind, it wouldn't give those up.

I think that’s an over-simplistic view. Failing to adhere to Chinese law would mean exiting the Chinese market. If the US passed a similar law, Apple would be forced to comply with it (although they would at least have recourse through the courts to eventually show that such a law was, perhaps, unconstitutional).

> Failing to adhere to Chinese law would mean exiting the Chinese market

So? Failing to adhere to ad-tech needs would mean exiting the ad-tech market. Did I miss the other company CEOs' blistering attacks on the "Chinese anti-privacy cooperation complex"? Can we at least admit, since violation of privacy by chosen market is a choice, that Tim Cook is a hypocrite?

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#327

Post by danaris » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 3:00 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #254

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple bans competing apps regardless of app quality or safety. I don't know what criteria they actually use, but this is at best incredibly inconsistent. There's heaps of competing mail apps, calendars, camera apps, photo apps, weather apps, notes apps, reminders app, messaging apps on iOS, including a Google one in most of those categories.

I know that once upon a time they banned competing apps, including Google Voice. I don't know if that behavior continues but I think it's a bit too soon to forget. https://techcrunch.com/2009/07/27/apple-is-growing-rotten-to...

This is from nine years ago, when the iOS App Store (then just the iPhone App Store, as the iPad didn't even exist yet!) was less than 2 years old.

Calling that "a bit too soon to forget" seems...problematic on several levels.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#328

Post by diegoperini » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 3:00 PM UTC

Is there a video of the talk I can watch?

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#329

Post by Tehnix » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 3:01 PM UTC

macintux wrote: post #305

Tehnix wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the second point: Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services and then set the app to “While using the app”.

That's not quite the same thing, because with that setting apps can run in the background and continue to track your location. Usually you want this (e.g., Waze), but not always (e.g., Uber).

No. That would quite literally be the “Always” setting... For example, for Messenger to share live location, it needs location sharing to be always, and not just “While using”. With while using though, you are still able to share a pin point of you current location.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#330

Post by matwood » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 3:02 PM UTC

joejerryronnie wrote: post #271

nneonneo wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iTunes wasn't fantastic while Jobs was around, either. The first versions of OS X downright sucked. The build quality and aesthetic of the iPhone X rival anything from the Jobs era in my view, and the recent improvements on mobile performance have been nothing short of amazing. I feel like people get these rose-tinted glasses when they look back on past Apple products, like they were all 100% perfect or something. Tr…

My concern with a post-Jobs Apple is not their ability to iterate on existing product lines. I'm not confidant Apple can shift paradigms and disrupt whole industries the way the did under Jobs' leadership.

Even if Jobs was still here, I'm not confident Apple could do it again. That kind of thing is hard.

One place Apple has disrupted/built an industry is with the smart watch. I was skeptical, but got a Series 2 on sale to try it out and recently got a Series 4. When I got the Series 2 I wasn't sure what I would use it for, but it's something I would miss not having now.