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

Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 903 posts

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#351

Post by musicale »

mortehu wrote: post #253
majormajor wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's reported seeing that sort of network traffic sent off of iOS devices. It's trivially easy to spot it, and it's well documented, going to Google and others across the web, though.

On my iPhone, Safari browser history synchronization to iCloud was enabled by default.

According to Apple, Safari history and bookmarks are end-to-end encrypted and Apple cannot read them:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

Is there any evidence that Apple is lying, and is actually decrypting them somehow and using them for advertising purposes, rather than for the "coherence" feature?

I don't actually want browsing sessions to be unified across devices, so I do wish that it was turned off by default. (Though being able to close tabs remotely is a sort of interesting capability.) However, it doesn't seem to be actual spyware used for advertising or tracking purposes.

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#352

Post by lazzlazzlazz »

donmcronald wrote: post #5

I want the option to control my devices. I don’t understand the arguments that claim Apple needs to rule the device with an iron fist. What problems does it cause to make the locked down experience the default with the option for me to disable that and take control of the device after I buy it? I want to own my stuff. I want to repair it and I want complete control over it. I think that in 10 years we’ll all have car…

Apple wants to control your device because if you have too much control, you could create a situation that makes you, a government, Apple as a business, application developers, or other users feel that Apple did something wrong.

Whenever there is a centralized entity with the power to change things, people will eventually treat it as though it is responsible to change them. This is why we need decentralized systems. Freedom, choice, and efficiency for users comes from using decentralized systems — like the web + browsers.

I don't think the argument is good enough to justify their behavior. But it is why they do it.

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#353

Post by _-david-_ »

prettychill wrote: post #304
_-david-_ wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PWAs on iOS have certain limitations. I am not sure if Spotify could fully recreate their app. Even if they could, it isn't really the easiest thing for the average person. Everybody knows how to install an app. How many people know how to install a PWA on their phone?

Isn't the argument to add sideloading / other stores to ios? How does installing an alternate store to get a cheaper spotify app compare to installing a PWA?

>Isn't the argument to add sideloading / other stores to ios?

Yes, but the person I was responding to was talking about PWAs.

>How does installing an alternate store to get a cheaper spotify app compare to installing a PWA?

If you can install an alternative app store through Apple's app store the learning curve might be lower, but I'm not sure. Ultimately none of this would be an easy thing for most users.

I think the best solution would be to require Apple to allow repositories (like Fdroid and Linux have) to their store. The end user wouldn't have to learn anything new since the app store would be the same.

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#354

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #342
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically, no, Samsung are one of the few manufacturers who consistently don't lock bootloaders. I've been flashing Samsung Android phones for over 10 years: https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/Heimdall That said, they have locked bootloaders on some devices. Predominantly in the US market, I believe at the request of carriers. However, it's traditionally been the minority of devices.

What? Samsung is the most hostile of manufacturers in this regard. Unlocking the bootloader, installing another bootloader, or running a different kernel burns fuses permanently in the device and renders it unable to use their version of hardware-secured storage, aka "Knox." Kiss some multimedia apps, payment apps, and enterprise security features goodbye...along with a bunch of random features like private mode in t…

Flashing an unsigned (or potentially differently signed) bootloader burns fuses. Sure. However, other manufacturers don't just burn fuses, you specifically need to apply for permission to flash your bootloader e.g. https://www.oneplus.com/support/answer/detail/op588

Samsung at least don't require personal details for you to take control of your device. Sure, you lose access to some multimedia, but don't blame Samsung for that, blame Widevine DRM certification. Knox goes out the window, but the entire point of Knox is to (try) guarantee a device isn't tampered with. At least you can remove it!

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#355

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

endisneigh wrote: post #86

Stop buying Apple if you don't like it. Seriously. At the end of the day all of these companies would do the exact same thing as Apple if they were in Apple's position. The real solution to this is improved functionality of web apps and complete migration to those, then you can be free of the duopoly. Other than using phone specific features, why can't all apps run on your desktop, laptop or elsewhere? I'll never get…

Buying Apple? Musk and Ek are tired of playing Apple's stupid game to be on their platform because if they aren't on their platform they might as well not exist.

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#356

Post by rosnd »

grepLeigh wrote: post #161
rosnd wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android is Linux.

Sure, in the way orcs were elves once.

That's a ridiculous comparison, the Android kernel patchset is tiny https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/common-patches/

It consists of "massive" changes such as:

> Enable writable clock debugfs files which are required for debugging and testing

and

> Allow drivers to register hooks when IPIs are sent and handled. The statistics of these IPIs are helpful in predicting CPU idle states

I suppose any distro backporting fixes is also not Linux? RHEL definitely can't be Linux if Android isn't.

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#357

Post by nordsieck »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #334
donmcronald wrote: post #5

I want the option to control my devices. I don’t understand the arguments that claim Apple needs to rule the device with an iron fist. What problems does it cause to make the locked down experience the default with the option for me to disable that and take control of the device after I buy it? I want to own my stuff. I want to repair it and I want complete control over it. I think that in 10 years we’ll all have car…

You (and anyone reading this comment) are a rare exception. Users of this site are interested in how tech works. You spend time to understand what it’s doing and make things work for you. And that’s awesome! Personally I’m the same way. But an overwhelming majority of people do not want to fight with or customize their tech. Opening the tech actually tricks them into causing more problems by clicking random pop up’s…

> Maybe we need an actually viable Linux phone for tinkerers, while also having a locked down iPhone for the less tech literate? Maybe Apple can introduce a less locked down version of iOS for power users?

A key problem with this is volume.

Most people fall into the "less tech literate" group, which means that the devices made for that market will be better (more capable and/or less expensive).

Maybe there's a solution (I'm think about "developer mode" and "linux development environment" in Chrome OS); but I think it'll always be not so great in the best of cases.

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#358

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

philliphaydon wrote: post #289
TeeMassive wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Stop buying Apple if you don't like it" I'm afraid this is not an option most app devs can even entertain

Don’t buy Apple to consume as a user if you don’t like it. If you’re an app developer then pay by the rules… It absolutely is an option.

I guess it's technically an option to go out of business by removing your app from the Apple App Store.

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#359

Post by musicale »

rtsil wrote: post #300
girvo wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm dreading the day my 4K "dumb" LCD TV dies. It's now basically impossible to replace.

You can replace it with a monitor + a pair of stereo speakers.

I like this option, though I have noticed that monitors seem to be more expensive and are not always available in the TV size you might want.

Re: Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

#360

Post by 7e »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #326
davidlumley wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding around how this works (and I might be wrong!) is that Apple tracks a variety of usage on device and your device itself knows which ad to serve, versus say Google or Facebook collating your data on their own servers. I'd not be surprised to learn there was some level of phoning home though.

There’s a common misconception that ad tracking is all about targeting ads. That’s part of it, but the truth is that tracking conversions is a more important differentiator for advertising platforms. A conversion is where the user clicks on the ad and then makes a purchase. The top digital ad companies (Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon) all charge for conversions. There is no way to charge for conversions without sending…

That’s not true. They could use differentially private on-device joins using anonymously downloaded ad data. Or they could securely aggregate the results. Or both.
Post reply on HN