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Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company

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Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company

#41
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its still fine, as long as someone can afford it. We can't ask them to be fair its just take it or leave it. These days privacy is a luxury, rather than a fundamental right.

> These days privacy is a luxury, rather than a fundamental right. The EU things differently. For us privacy is very much a fundamental right, such as right for access to clean water/air, right for free access to information (internet) etc.

> privacy is very much a fundamental right

Looks good on paper but in reality what's being done about it? Apart from a few token court cases. People are still dumping their data wholesale in to social networks and EU is mostly powerless when faced with these companies (FB, Google).

> right for access to clean water/air

Here in Brussels you can't throw a rock without hitting 10 diesel cars that come with almost every desk job and include free diesel no questions asked. They spend most of their time sitting in some of the worst traffic in Europe.

Air quality is constantly at the worst end of the scale, both indoors and outdoors and takes years off your life. At the same time there's more and more calls for regulation of Lime scooters.

EU cares but mostly just pats itself on the back for churning out reports.

Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company

#42

Apple's strategy is simple. They want to retain control over their customers; at the same time, force the developers into relying entirely on Apple as a middle man so that they can't cut Apple out of any transactions. This way, Apple gets their cut and user's get some level of privacy. That they can get away with this arm-twisting as "privacy" is to give credit to their brand positioning.

You can release a free app and sell subscriptions through real world means e.g. advertising, PR. You control the customers and you pay Apple nothing. So this idea that Apple is forcing developers to do anything is nonsense.

This is totally incorrect. If you have an app on Apple store and sell subscripttions through your website, or other means, Apple forces you to sell the same subscriptions through their store.

Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company

#43
post #22

Lots of negativity/skepticism here which is reasonable I would say given tech companies' abuse of our trust. I for one, am happy that Apple can afford to offer privacy as one of its strong suites. Whether they can do it because of their business model or not is moot IMO. Everyone is here to make money, I would rather have someone who doesn't have to sell every aspect of my life to do it.

I don’t understand the hate. Is there an example where Apple has not delivered on their promise?

Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company

#44
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet Google and Facebook still regularly invade privacy and build shadow profiles of users.

We have laws against murder and yet people commit it all the time. What kind of argument are you trying to make? Both Google and Facebook have been hit with lawsuits in the EU. The laws are there and companies violating them are being punished. One could argue that the punishment is not large enough, if companies still repeatedly violate the laws. It'll take some time though until we see whether companies change thei…

Did anything ever come of this? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-belgium/facebook...

Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company

#45
post #18
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet Google and Facebook still regularly invade privacy and build shadow profiles of users.

Whether what they are doing is legal or will go unpunished remains to be discovered. In the meanwhile there is a considerable increase in public awareness of (e.g.) how creepy facebook is (I know that the biggest facebook competitor is instagram, but there is a real difference between how people interact with the two platforms and also in expectations on how much public your profile and post are)

> In the meanwhile there is a considerable increase in public awareness of (e.g.) how creepy facebook is

Every non tech person I know has some notion of FB being creepy but not a single one has changed their online behavior in any way. Everyone cares until it's actually time to delete your account.

Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company

#46
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to sell something to privacy obsessed tech segment is a futile effort. They are never happy and don’t want to pay for anything anyway. But that is not their target market anyway. It is the general public and these comments are just noise.

I don't think that's true, there's quite a thriving privacy based market for the tech obsessed. take librem one and purism's products, the VPN market, the pinephone, proton mail, or lavabit as examples. https://puri.sm/ https://lavabit.com/ https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ https://protonmail.com/ But yes, these comments are likely just noise.

Thriving as in their own miniscule segment destined to remain marginal. Definitely not apple target market.

Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company

#47
post #43
post #22

Lots of negativity/skepticism here which is reasonable I would say given tech companies' abuse of our trust. I for one, am happy that Apple can afford to offer privacy as one of its strong suites. Whether they can do it because of their business model or not is moot IMO. Everyone is here to make money, I would rather have someone who doesn't have to sell every aspect of my life to do it.

I don’t understand the hate. Is there an example where Apple has not delivered on their promise?

iCloud leaks?

Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company

#48
post #25

It's a devil's bargain: now we have to choose between walled gardens that offer some privacy and extract their revenue from lock-in, and more open systems that live off spying our data. Truth be told, the software development cost of these systems (Android and iOS) is not that huge, a reasonably good open source alternative could probably be created for less than a billion dollars, knowing how financially efficient a…

> the software development cost of these systems [...] is not that huge > probably be created for less than a billion dollars I don't think I've worked anywhere that's put more than $500M into a single software project. That is "huge" cost. (Except maybe Yahoo! but even then I'm not sure.)

Something like an Android clone is a conglomeration of many, many different projects.

Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company

#49
post #14
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how true this is. I run my own infra (caldav,carddav,imap/smtp) and all of it intergrates seamlessly into iOS and macOS. I tried the same on android and it did not work seamlessly with anything except google services. Sure, their own stuff works better with their own stuff, and yes, the watches can't be configured without a phone, but that's also true of android.

What software are you using for caldav?

Radicale, it's really good for personal use. :)
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