NSA probably have full access to the backend of this service
Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company
331–340 of 488 posts
Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company
#332Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company
#333Lots 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.
The biggest problem that I have is that it's privacy built on a closed source platform that works extremely hard to wall users in and create substantial vendor lock-in. As someone who has tried multiple times to dip their toes into the Apple world, I can tell you that it's highly hostile to users who try to pick and choose how much they want to be an Apple citizen. If you don't agree to sign up for Apple cloud on the…
I agree. They are sitting on more and more data they will be very tempted to use if they can’t hit their growth rates in the future. It would be better if no single entity had that much data.
Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are most people using VPNs for privacy? Every individual I know that pays for one does it so they can watch TV in a different country or something similar. There's also lots of businesses that use them for accessing internal networks externally. I've never met anyone in real life that is using one for privacy reasons.
Using a VPN to watch TV in another country is a privacy reason.
The end result might be privacy, but the demand is for bypassing content blocking. Your average user of a VPN doesn't care if it prevents people from identifying them, all they care about is if it lets them watch The Office from wherever they are.
Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company
#335Lots 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.
Do businesses have to sell every aspect of your life to make money? Less than 10-15 years ago, they did not (not to this degree), and they survived just fine. Go back further and you'll find business made plenty of money with less and less of this practice.
As a society, we're able to establish laws and protections against trends where capitalism goes awry. We banned lead usage in products like paints and set regulations to protect dumping anything and eveverything into rivers (hey its cheap).
Privacy may be no different and if market forces are somehow perpetuating it to remain competitive, we as a society need to intervene in a regulatory fashion and redirect businesses to pursue other approaches to increasing revenue and implementing cost saving mechanisms.
Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Websites track iPhone users too. Is that also Apple’s fault?
Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company
#337Lots 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.
The biggest problem that I have is that it's privacy built on a closed source platform that works extremely hard to wall users in and create substantial vendor lock-in. As someone who has tried multiple times to dip their toes into the Apple world, I can tell you that it's highly hostile to users who try to pick and choose how much they want to be an Apple citizen. If you don't agree to sign up for Apple cloud on the…
I'm unclear about your iMessage comment, as Android or other platforms can send and receive messages just fine with users on iMessage.
As a followup, how is Android, or chromium any better in that regard, given Googles plans to disallow proper adblocking as it interferes with their business model?
Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company
#338It'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…
I disagree. Case in point -- Linux on Desktop. Despite being open source and privacy respecting, Linux never managed to make significant innards into the desktop market. And for good reason. Nobody, except for hardcore hackers, wants to play the sysadmin all the time -- and that is what it takes to keep Linux running -- I am speaking from years of experience here. It is successful on servers because there are battalions of engineers employed by the companies deploying and/or supporting them. Even the most user friendly distros don't hold a candle to Windows when it comes to UX -- let alone macOS.
If the situation is so dire on desktop/laptop, which is a fairly impersonal device, I don't even want to think about running the equivalent of Linux on Mobile (I am not talking about Android). Imagine troubleshooting WiFi/Bluetooth -- or worse Cellular Radio -- issues after every update -- sometimes without any updates -- on your phone.
> Truth be told, the software development cost of these systems (Android and iOS) is not that huge.
What makes you think so? Android/iOS have been developed over years -- the cost of developers itself will run into hundreds of millions of dollars. And then you have designers, project managers, testers etc. to pay -- not to mention the infrastructure costs. Or do you expect everyone to work out of their basements on their personal machines?
> a reasonably good open source alternative could probably be created for less than a billion dollars, knowing how financially efficient are open source projects compared to commercial companies.
Again, what is the basis of this statement?
> That's a few cents per smartphone user per year, for the next decade, negligible compared to hardware costs.
That is assuming you convince everyone to use the shiny new OS.
> If this order of magnitude funding could be secured for a well organized open source project, we could have the best of both worlds, a truly open ecosystem with privacy at it's center.
And there is the crus of the matter! Who is going to pay for the project? Projects like Linux are funded by large companies like IBM, RedHat, Microsoft, Google etc. who use them to make billions. Who is going to fund a mobile OS that is actively going to hinder the money making?
The problem with Open Source projects is that they are driven by developers volunteering their time. There is little incentive for them to see the project to a point where the UX is polished enough for a non-technical user to be happy. It takes a lot of work. It is easy to build an OS that will run on a cellphone, but the real challenge is building the UX and the ecosystem around it. It is not going to be built by developers working in their spare time with no real incentive -- like a five/six figure paycheck. No, engineers tend to work on open source projects till it is either good enough for them, or till they get bored and move on to other things.
Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that open source software is in any way inferior technically. If anything, it is the other way round. Bound by deadlines and other constraints -- or simply because of unreasonable expectations, proprietary software may not be as good technically as the open source counterparts. I am merely pointing out that open source community doesn't typically spend time polishing the software to the point where it becomes palatable to general populace.
Update
And let's not forget, we did have free and open source mobile operating systems -- Ubuntu Touch/FirefoxOS anyone? These operating systems were backed by giants in the open source arena -- yet they failed to gain any traction.
Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
Arm-twisting? You are conflating two issues here. Every company wants to retain users and their business. That is how every company operates. You should judge a company on what they offer as an incentive to keep them. Privacy as a service on their platform is a great thing. Compare that to what other companies offer as incentives.
> Every company wants to retain users and their business. I think GP's point is that Apple is doing this using lock-in, rather than having the best possible products. If there were multiple app stores for iOS users, you could argue that Apple is behaving just like every other business. But they're not. They're stifling competition to lock their customers in.
Purely as a user, I don’t want to deal with 5 competing app stores. That sounds like a mess.
I think there is a reason there is basically one App Store on each platform (outside desktops).
Re: Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company
#340Lots 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.
The biggest problem that I have is that it's privacy built on a closed source platform that works extremely hard to wall users in and create substantial vendor lock-in. As someone who has tried multiple times to dip their toes into the Apple world, I can tell you that it's highly hostile to users who try to pick and choose how much they want to be an Apple citizen. If you don't agree to sign up for Apple cloud on the…
Furthermore, they're based in a jurisdiction that's subject to warrantless blanket subpoenas with zero oversight. They may not be selling our data explicitly to the lowest bidder, but everything they gather is still accessible to whoever sits in the White House and whatever their minions think would be fun to dig up.
What makes Apple different is that since their business model doesn't depend on gathering and selling our data, their infrastructure gathers less data. And it sounds like they've taken active steps to make sure they gather as little as possible and that it's as useless as possible for nefarious purposes.
That takes extra effort in software design and testing, and they're hoping to see the return on that investment by explaining to their customers how that translates to value in our hands. If that's a stance they're actively taking, I think any reversal would eviscerate their image, and that's my reason to actually have a little faith.
It's not as secure as some alternatives, but it's a lot easier to use, and in the real world where not everybody compiles things from source, that matters.