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Apple is not your friend

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Re: Apple is not your friend

#21

Post by ladberg »

thefz wrote: post #17
rekabis wrote: post #9

However, out of that list of four, Apple is the one that I have seen being “least evil” with me and my data. Google dropped their “don’t be evil” motto for a very damn good reason, and the safety of their own app marketplace is a fucking joke. Facebook is even worse than Google, in that it has never stopped trying to appear innocent of wrongdoing while paddling like mad under the surface. Microsoft… has gone all Spyw…

Apple still complied with the alphabets, according to Snowden. IIRC they even let some NSA infiltrate into their supply chain to inject malware at the firmware level on phones and laptops.

Do you have any source for the supply chain claim? All I can find is about the Bloomberg article, which isn't related.

Re: Apple is not your friend

#22

Post by zapzupnz »

Apple mightn't be your friend, it's true, but it's not as though they're blocking the web app version of this which has been available to any device from day 1.

I'm not stating this to defend Apple, whose decision I also find questionable (although relatively consistent with some other rejected/pulled apps, like the one for locating and avoiding alcohol-testing checkpoints), but rather to give us all a bit of perspective — the same information remains available and usable via a web app, probably the better place for it anyway as then no store front can limit it.

Re: Apple is not your friend

#23

Post by TeMPOraL »

ohduran wrote: post #4

Capitalism is founded on the idea that the consumer is a means to an end. Apple, Google, Facebook, etc, can do as they please insofar as they keep creating value to their shareholders. Which is another way of saying "if you don't like my garden, get the hell out of it!".

Capitalism is founded on the idea that if we let everyone focus on making money for themselves however they like, the emergent feedback loops will sort things out and we'll have a world where everyone's needs are met.

In the past two or three centuries we've identified a lot of ways in which this turns out wrong. There's a kernel of a really good idea in there, true, but it also needs a lot of tuning.

Re: Apple is not your friend

#24

Post by jeswin »

I have a lot of privacy concerns with Google. But they have also enabled my phone to run on mostly Open Source code, both OS and applications. This is important to me, and for that reason I bunch them apart from Apple and MS.

Re: Apple is not your friend

#25

Post by megous »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #18
mda wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is flawed. How do you know that Apple protects personal data better than others? I think it has the least experience and probably Google is the best in that area. Microsoft is maybe second.

Apple makes money on their HW and their media sales and application sales. You have to spend the money by choice for Apple to make money. What does most of the world pay Google for? At Google you are the product. Why is that so hard for everyone to understand. The same goes for FB.

Just because you pay for something doesn't make the incentives to screw you over to get even more money go away.

Does it? Various user-blaming shenanigans, when Apple messes up their HW design can serve as an example. "You're holding it wrong", "You're putting the phone in your pocket", "You're using keyboard wrong in a real world with dust and stuff", etc.

Re: Apple is not your friend

#26

Post by CraneWorm »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #18
mda wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is flawed. How do you know that Apple protects personal data better than others? I think it has the least experience and probably Google is the best in that area. Microsoft is maybe second.

Apple makes money on their HW and their media sales and application sales. You have to spend the money by choice for Apple to make money. What does most of the world pay Google for? At Google you are the product. Why is that so hard for everyone to understand. The same goes for FB.

> Apple makes money on their HW and their media sales and application sales.

I don't see why they can't make some extra by making you the product as well.

Also, people who are into Apple are known to be willing to pay for stuff. A very lucrative group for everyone.

Re: Apple is not your friend

#27

Post by jackweirdy »

_Understated_ wrote: post #16
rekabis wrote: post #9

However, out of that list of four, Apple is the one that I have seen being “least evil” with me and my data. Google dropped their “don’t be evil” motto for a very damn good reason, and the safety of their own app marketplace is a fucking joke. Facebook is even worse than Google, in that it has never stopped trying to appear innocent of wrongdoing while paddling like mad under the surface. Microsoft… has gone all Spyw…

> If given no alternative choice that is evil-free, I will chose the least evil option as my vote. I was on Android until the start of 2019 when my wife bought a new iPhone and I took her 6S. I'd had enough of Android spying on me. My argument was the same as yours: Apple don't make (that much) money off my data so they MUST be better than Google. Right? When I think about it, I honestly cannot say that they have bet…

I don't think services have to be open source for us to trust their privacy. In the context of Apple there has been enough conflict in the press with the FBI and other authorities that their actions speak enough I can trust them in the absence of source code.

And I think there is enough financial strategy for other companies - such as Samsung, who for example sell smart TVs at a loss to recoup money from Ad/tracking information sourced from the tv - to know that others are trying this while Apple doesn't seem to be.

on iPhones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute

and Smart TVs: https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/how-to-turn-off-smar...

Re: Apple is not your friend

#28

Post by Fnoord »

Not sure about how newsworthy this is, as it seems rather obvious and is based on different newsworthy sources. By itself, it is not high of content though.

Still, discussion about this issue is worth it.

Given the author's other post on Twitter

> In the 1930s and 40s, Thomas J. Watson’s IBM punch-card mainframes helped Hitler perpetrate the Holocaust.

> Imagine what IBM Watson can help dictators achieve today with AI.

(Apart from having to think about China's credit score system about which a Black Mirror episode is devoted already.)

This made me think of the tangent of the book IBM and the Holocaust [1] which is still on my to read list. AFAIK, in my country (NL) IBM's machines were used to sort based on religion [2]. It is a major historical reason why one's religion is nowadays consider PII. Of course, it is easy to check is someone regularly buys kosher or halal meat at the grocery store...

Data is a ticking time bomb. Or, as Bruce Schneier wrote in an essay, "data is a toxic asset." [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_subsidia...

[3] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_tox...

Re: Apple is not your friend

#29

Post by enriquto »

rekabis wrote: post #9

However, out of that list of four, Apple is the one that I have seen being “least evil” with me and my data. Google dropped their “don’t be evil” motto for a very damn good reason, and the safety of their own app marketplace is a fucking joke. Facebook is even worse than Google, in that it has never stopped trying to appear innocent of wrongdoing while paddling like mad under the surface. Microsoft… has gone all Spyw…

your argument does not hold water since there are many more alternatives to use. You are in no way forced to use either of these services.

Re: Apple is not your friend

#30

Post by dannyr »

zapzupnz wrote: post #22

Apple mightn't be your friend, it's true, but it's not as though they're blocking the web app version of this which has been available to any device from day 1. I'm not stating this to defend Apple, whose decision I also find questionable (although relatively consistent with some other rejected/pulled apps, like the one for locating and avoiding alcohol-testing checkpoints), but rather to give us all a bit of perspec…

Apple intentionally held back mobile web that companies cannot build mobile web apps that are as capable as native apps.

So this is partly why we're all at the mercy of walled garden App Stores.

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