Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by banachtarski » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:15 AM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #43

nafizh wrote: 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?

It's all over the place I can't even begin, or do you not see the plethora of ads plaguing apps available in the app store and mobile web. If you think tracking isn't involved, you're sorely mistaken. Apple set the 30% tax for premium goods, and effectively killed the premium market as a result. Google followed suit largely because it aligns with Google's core business. Apple's angle is? Honestly, I have no clue. I'm inclined to think it's incompetency at this point.

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

#92

Post by bashwizard » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:16 AM UTC

That's all fine and very good for the consumer. Now they just have to get the fuck out of PRISM and I'll start taking them seriously in the privacy realm.

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

#93

Post by propertymagnate » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:17 AM UTC

rapsey wrote: post #46

propertymagnate wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not arguing that, I'm responding to this part of your comment, by showing products the privacy obsessed segment are presumably happy with as they are paying for:

"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."

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

#94

Post by craigsmansion » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:19 AM UTC

Next up: Aaas, Anonymity as a service...

The bottom line is, only you care about your privacy, because you're the only one who can care about your privacy. You can do that by voting, and by running Free Software.

Effective privacy and anonymity are based on control:control of your software, control of your hardware, control of your life.

Everyone asking you for control in exchange for anonymity or privacy does not necessarily have your best interest at heart.

Apple's business model is about monetising control, and now they're extending that by ostensibly selling some of that control back to you. Apple will only grant you privacy as long as it doesn't interfere with them taking control.

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

#95

Post by braythwayt » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:27 AM UTC

banachtarski wrote: post #86

nafizh wrote: 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.

You know when I'll believe it? When the un-screw up their app store which vastly incentivizes the development of free-to-use ad-driven apps that prey on user tracking data over premium alternatives. Ad-based revenue has a higher value proposition to developers because it dodges the inane anachronistic 30% tax. "Privacy" first is an utter illusion when the majority of apps approved in this closed ecosystem that ostens…

It’s not a dichotomy, so I will just say that in addition to circumventing the app store’s take, developers have users to “blame” for the race-to-the-bottom of the surveillance capitalism bucket.

As long as users will balk at paying even 4.99 for an app, developers will make them free and then engage in dark business models like surveillance and terrible in-app purchases.

To be fair and stop “blaming the victims,” this is a classic hard problem in psychology: The purchase price is an immediate, objective cost. Surveillance and the possibility of getting sucked into in-app purchases are subjective, uncertain costs with consequences in the future.

In aggregate, humans are really bad at making those judgments, trebly so when other humans are rigging the game to make the judgment difficult to evaluate.

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

#96

Post by josteink » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:30 AM UTC

dijit wrote: post #55

josteink wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you outline what kind of problems you had with android and integration? In my experience android is the superior platform for plugging in your own modules and your own data where you want it.

The way you describe it; I would agree. You can "do anything" on Android, but this leads to poor implementations for common things. What I'm referencing is that the OS and Apples own applications are built to support what I would be consider very sane defaults (as in, it supports me doing my own thing, without the need for plugins/modules). My experience is that on Android I had to have many third-party integrators t…

> My experience is that on Android I had to have many third-party integrators to get things up and working

That you have to buy/install CalDAV AND CardDAV connectors is indeed a weird shortcoming of Android. On the flip-side you had the option to do so.

Also, in the age of everything-SaaS, a one time payment of $10 for basic infrastructure isn’t all that bad.

> IMAP/SMTP Were less of a problem but it always /felt/ very third party when using tools for that purpose, where google mail was truly first class.

What Email app did you use? Gmail (which obviously treats Gmail better) or something else?

> But the experience of actually using it is so incredibly poor

Different strokes to different folks I guess.

I never experienced Android to be that different (or worse) when using my own standards-based providers.

That said iOS feels a lot more coherent if you stick to Apple apps all the way. But not being able to set another default browser or email client is just weird.

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

#97

Post by tanilama » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:31 AM UTC

Paraphrase it: you are paying Apple a premium to not sell your data.

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

#98

Post by mirimir » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:39 AM UTC

nafizh wrote: 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.

Until a month or two ago, I was believing that Apple was committed to protecting its customers' privacy. Sure, it had been caving to the Chinese government. But I accepted that it had to, or stop doing business in China.

And then I learned that Apple does not guarantee that apps from its online store respect users' privacy. That rather gives the lie to its commitment to privacy.

I mean, it did (along with Google) take down that Facebook app that exploited the enterprise loophole to basically log all phone usage. And it has taken down apps that block ads in other apps.

So why has it been more-or-less lying by omission about tracking by third-party apps? Apps that it has supposedly vetted.

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

#99

Post by robkop » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:40 AM UTC

rapsey wrote: post #30

nafizh wrote: 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.

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.

Just anecdotal data but I for one am very happy to be switching to apple this year after almost a decade of android.

I'm only too happy to pay a premium if that gives me some control over my own privacy.

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

#100

Post by lotsofpulp » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:41 AM UTC

olivermarks wrote: post #88

My cynical side read this as cheap/free = google/android who own your data in return for their services vs expensive = Apple who are selling you some degree of perceived privacy baked into the operating systems of their primarily hardware offerings, which you pay more for.

Why is that cynical?