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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

#201
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except now you don't have control over your own device. I don't think they are orthogonal goals. Give me root on my iPhone and I'll switch for the privacy. Leaving gapps off an Android install is becoming crippling.

"control over your device" isn't a big concern for many in the way privacy is, though. Certainly, in the early days of smartphones I rooted my Android phones and iPhones but these days I just see my smartphone as a utility that I want to work well. There isn't really anything I want to do with my iPhone that Apple blocks me from doing.

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

#202
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there was never a demand for a new social network. Apple is now big enough that anything they build becomes trendy and something people will jump into.

No. Failed because they refused to open up user info. Remember Ping and iAds. Ask the bitter people running those project what they think. To get any user's info you have to go through chains of managers and then a sign off from a board member.

You act as if that’s a bad thing....

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

#203
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not arguing that it's easy. Or even possible. What I am arguing is that Apple has been BSing people. > What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone. Because that's just not true. Unless, I suppose, you don't install any third-party apps on your phone. So then, that privacy claim should look like: > What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.# > # Unless you install third-party apps. Otherwise, disside…

Apple is talking about what their own products do. Their cameras, their apps, their devices. They can't 100% guarantee that third-party apps won't spy on you, and they don't even promise to do it. You might want to bash Apple for something they haven't promised and is probably not even possible. But that's on you, just baseless bashing.

These apps are in their store. That implies that they have approved them.

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

#204
post #191

I am clearly in the minority here but I think "Sign in with Apple" is terrible for consumers. You keep your email address hidden from service providers, sure, but you are also placing your online identity entirely in the hands of Apple. If you get on the wrong side of Apple's algorithms, there is zero recourse. At least in the case of Facebook and others the third party still has your email address so you can always…

> If you get on the wrong side of Apple's algorithms, there is zero recourse. I don't follow what you're implying.

If Apple decided you're a bot and deletes your account, everything tied to it will also go.

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

#205
post #73
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are a B2B SAAS company offering analytics and marketing data. We wanted to offer our customer the ability to have a free app to interact with our service on their phone. We wanted our customers to subscribe on the web but not using in-app subscriptions. We are unable to release this app on the AppStore until we change our whole payment/subscription/billing stack to support Apple subscription system and agree to gi…

> We wanted our customers to subscribe on the web but not using in-app subscriptions. But you can, and that's what a lot of companies including Netflix do?

Netflix offers subscription through the app as well. If you offer those and do not advertise your other channels, you are allowed to publish. The important part here is that you have to offer the same subscriptions at the same price between your web version and your in-app version.

But this would require a significant amount of work on our side to support both web and mobile subscription. We do not expect to get any new business straight from the mobile app, we just want to offer an additional free service to our existing and future customers.

It would take us at least 2 to 3 man-month to rework our billing stack so that Apple has a chance to get 30% on some subscription. Which they won't since we really doubt B2B customers will subscribe to $2k+ yearly contracts using in-apps purchases. So it's really spending all that time/effort so that the Apple reviewer feels OK can safely check the little box on his list next to "in-app policy" :-(

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there was never a demand for a new social network. Apple is now big enough that anything they build becomes trendy and something people will jump into.

Apple is not that big when it comes to market share - yes they have the most affluent users - but you can’t make a social network from that.

Smartphone market share wouldn't be the defining factor in whether you could jumpstart a social network, given there are billions of active smartphones.

The actual size - not relative size - of your base would define that. The only way relative would matter is if they needed to be larger than eg Android to do it, for some reason (they don't).

They have ~1.4 billion active devices world-wide (900+ million active iPhones). You're acting like they have more like 50 million. They'll soon have a billion people using their various services.

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

#207
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are a B2B SAAS company offering analytics and marketing data. We wanted to offer our customer the ability to have a free app to interact with our service on their phone. We wanted our customers to subscribe on the web but not using in-app subscriptions. We are unable to release this app on the AppStore until we change our whole payment/subscription/billing stack to support Apple subscription system and agree to gi…

This is not true. Using apple's in-app billing system is optional. You can always keep your billing entirely out of your free app.

Not anymore, they updated their policy recently

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

#208

I feel Apple is abusing their dominant position (single app store) to force all the developers to implement & maintain Sign In with Apple as a new SSO method: https://developer.apple.com/sign-in-with-apple/ I'm really curious to see how this will fly with the Antitrust

I suspect perfectly fine, actually. Why would this somehow trigger just above a certain threshold?

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

#209
post #191

I am clearly in the minority here but I think "Sign in with Apple" is terrible for consumers. You keep your email address hidden from service providers, sure, but you are also placing your online identity entirely in the hands of Apple. If you get on the wrong side of Apple's algorithms, there is zero recourse. At least in the case of Facebook and others the third party still has your email address so you can always…

If you're worried about that for a particular service you don't have to anonymize your email address – in fact it's opt-in not opt-out. When signing up it will use your real email address for the service or you can check a box to provide an anonymized one for free as shown in the keynote.

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

#210
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it's because of their business model is an important question though, because it may tell us if we this has a good chance of being genuine and whether we can expect this to last. If it's in their financial interest to protect users' privacy, then I'm much more inclined to believe that they are actually trying to do that. If they right now appear to care about privacy, but it's for some other reason, I'd expec…

Am I the only person we thinks Apple might be setting itself up to take a shot at a private, secure, ad-free, paid for social media play? I mean there are a growing number of people leaving Facebook (ok mostly for Instagram and WhatsApp) who would be willing to pay a few dollars a month to have an advert free experience in a private social media network.

Yes, and they should call it Pong.

Jokes aside, isn't that, functionally speaking, iMessage?

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