Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 488 posts

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

#221

Post by chapium »

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 feel its a good market differentiator in such a crowded market. Android phones are very similar to iphones in many ways and most of them are focused on data collection.

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

#222

Post by fastball »

goodmachine wrote: post #156
rapsey wrote: 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.

Last time I checked, 25% of the internet used a VPN at least once a month. We can argue (somebody here will) as to the actual level of privacy conferred, but the segment is far from miniscule: https://thebestvpn.com/vpn-usage-statistics/

Pretty sure 90% of that is people wanting to watch geo-restricted Netflix content...

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

#223

Post by rauhl »

SXX wrote: post #6
blatchcorn wrote: post #2

Apple is a 'use all of our products, or else we will make life inconvenient for you' company. The fact that this happens to offer some privacy benefits is just a strategy credit[1] [1] https://stratechery.com/2013/strategy-credit/

I'm not in any way an Apple fan and only look at their ecosystem via VM, but I curious. What company have more convenient integration of both own proprietary services and 3rd-party one? As I see it with Apple you can be at least fairly sure their products going to have good integration within their closed-garden ecosystem. With anyone else not even this is guaranteed and you'll likely be bombarded by ads. I'm among t…

> What company have more convenient integration of both own proprietary services and 3rd-party one?

Most others. Google’s services work on Linux, macOS & Windows (and, I assume, the browser-based stuff works on the BSDs, too). Even Microsoft’s stuff works many places.

But Apple just locks one out if one is not using an Apple device. Two of my brothers’ families use iCloud exclusively to share & comment on family pictures; I’m locked out of my family’s life because Apple thinks it’s too difficult to display images and text on a web page (and, of course, because I value my freedom too much to use an Apple device).

And yes, I am bitter about that. The photos-and-comments stuff is bog-standard; there’s absolutely no good reason it should only work on iPhones & macOS computers.

I’m actually hoping someone will take a second to post ‘you dolt! Apple has had a website for the last 3 years to support exactly that!’ That’d be great. But that last time I checked — they didn’t.

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

#224

Post by Jagat »

IMTDb wrote: post #205
dewey wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>> 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.

I don't think that's true. Youtube premium costs $16/mo when you subscribe using their iOS app, but $12-13 when you subscribe on the web.

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

#225

Post by Jagat »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #128
threeseed wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can tell people how to subscribe outside the app. But you just can't use Apple's own platform against them.

You can't link, at least, to an external website to buy https://www.pcworld.com/article/229880/Apple_Backs_Off_In_Ap...

You can't even tell that such a thing exists. E.g., Audible only gives you an option to add to the wish list, and is mum about how to buy a book.

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

#226

Post by pxtail »

DonHopkins wrote: post #146
craigsmansion wrote: post #94

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 ne…

Daas: Doxing as a Service, on an Open Identity Marketplace (meBay). Users can selectively sell their anonymity and personal information, consensually doxing themselves to the highest bidder, and Apple gets a 30% cut.

Applause, that's how disruptive unicorns are invented.

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

#227

Post by scarface74 »

adventured wrote: post #206
scarface74 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 iPhon…

The whole idea of a social network is being able to connect with anyone not just 20% of the market.

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

#228

Post by rikkus »

kfrzcode wrote: post #178

Is there an existing alternative service (read: FOSS) that would auto-generate temporary emails and manage identity for services like "Login with Apple"?

Using a password manager and a catch-all domain works fine for me. I don't use the federated systems (any more - I used to use Google) - I just make up an email address for anything I want to sign up for and save the credentials.

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

#230

Post by mft_ »

fyoving wrote: post #217

It's worth remembering that Apple's privacy spin began with people noticing that Siri is a joke and other ML powered functions in Apple's software are not nearly as good as the competition's, so the company line basically became "our software sucks because we don't spy on you" and because tech journalists are predisposed to hate everyone else and really love framing their stories as rivals dueling they gladly adopted…

My read (at the time) was that it was simply a clear play against Google/Android, as their main competitor in the mobile space.
Post reply on HN