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My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

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Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#11

Post by simondotau »

The way I see it is either you trust Apple or you don’t. To be clear, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to arrive at either conclusion, as it relates to your own needs and security posture.

Personally I choose to trust them. My trust is not blind, and they could lose my trust very quickly. But as it stands right now, they have my trust.

If you say that you don’t trust Apple, I don’t see how you could tolerate running any of their software. Relying on an operating system made by a company I don’t trust seems wildly irresponsible to me.

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#12

Post by bmacho »

fortran77 wrote: post #4
thomassmith65 wrote: post #2

With Apple, you want to block *.apple.com and white-list subdomains as you need them. If instead you black-list apple subdomains, the battle will never end.

Why use Apple at all if it’s so user-hostile? (I’m a Windows user.)

Probably in exchange of some privacy it gives its users time/money?

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#13

Post by sybercecurity »

footlose_3815 wrote: post #5

I'm curious what Microsoft and Ubuntu's experience is as well, so there's a frame of reference. I skimmed that list, and Devil's Advocate; It seems like most of that is functional, stuff that they want to update in the background to make sure you have a better experience when you're back? On the flip, I guess we think Apple is up to something shady? My last understanding was that they were firm they didn't sell user…

My initial thought as well. May be overly chatty, but there may be a good intention behind it like "system seems to be idle for a while, now would be a good time to check for updates"

I'd wager Windows does something similar. Linux distros may do it, but also may not since they may not be obsessed with happy eyeball problems and user perception of speed/latency.

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#15

Post by cynicalsecurity »

fortran77 wrote: post #4
thomassmith65 wrote: post #2

With Apple, you want to block *.apple.com and white-list subdomains as you need them. If instead you black-list apple subdomains, the battle will never end.

Why use Apple at all if it’s so user-hostile? (I’m a Windows user.)

Why use Apple or Windows at all if they are so user-hostile? (I’m a Linux user.)

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#17

Post by al_borland »

While this seems like a lot, in some ways this is what user's expect. Push notifications should be coming all the time, assuming the system is on. Most users expect various maintenance services to run when the system idle so it doesn't interfere with their active use of the system. When users open apps like Weather (or view a widget), they expect it to already be up to date without having to manually refresh or wait for data to load when the app launches.

I'm sure some fat can be trimmed, and it may not all be user-centric, but a lot of this had to do with the expectations users have these days with the data being always up to date, instantly available, and proactive about alerting them to things they may want to know about, like rain coming to your area in 30 minutes.

One of my big pet peeves is when I pick up my phone in the morning, go to open an app, and it starts updating, so I need to wait for the download/install. It just had 8 hours on a charger to do that, and instead it seems to wait until it's taken off the charger and unlocked. With auto-updates on, I'd much rather this happen when placed on the charger and inactive, than actively in use and off the charger. The same can be said for a lot of things on the desktop.

This ends up mostly being a question of transparency and user control. Which then becomes a question of how much time/money to they invest in features for 1% of users? Now how much time do they invest in those same features when the 99% will stumble in there, turn a bunch of stuff off, then call support and ask why their weather widget isn't updating?

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#18

Post by roblabla »

footlose_3815 wrote: post #5

I'm curious what Microsoft and Ubuntu's experience is as well, so there's a frame of reference. I skimmed that list, and Devil's Advocate; It seems like most of that is functional, stuff that they want to update in the background to make sure you have a better experience when you're back? On the flip, I guess we think Apple is up to something shady? My last understanding was that they were firm they didn't sell user…

A default linux install is incredibly silent on the network. You might be seeing some mDNS stuff, gnome/firefox may do some requests to detect captive portals, but overall the amount of network traffic is pretty small and manageable.

It's important to note that, generally speaking, Linux software does not come with default-enabled telemetry, and for those that do, distros like Debian will routinely patch out phoning home and telemetry from the software they package.

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#19

Post by jqpabc123 »

footlose_3815 wrote: post #5

I'm curious what Microsoft and Ubuntu's experience is as well, so there's a frame of reference. I skimmed that list, and Devil's Advocate; It seems like most of that is functional, stuff that they want to update in the background to make sure you have a better experience when you're back? On the flip, I guess we think Apple is up to something shady? My last understanding was that they were firm they didn't sell user…

My last understanding was that they were firm they didn't sell user data. Did this change?

My understanding is they have a long term relationship with Google worth about $20 billion a year. Other than money, does anyone really know the full extent of what they exchange?

Maybe this doesn't technically count as "selling" your data but it certainly counts as selling access to something important to Google --- which most likely, ultimately involves your data.

In other words, I don't believe Google pays them $20B to help maintain user privacy

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#20

Post by SimianSci »

Polling domains when attached to the network like this doesnt suprise me in the least. Apple's ecosystem has often been praised for its tight integration, and this consistent network connectivity is the result. Anybody who has worked with large scale services that rely on messaging services to ensure people get timely notifications and data, knows that you need services which are continuously polling endpoints to check and see if they have new information.

Organizations like Apple who service billions of devices cannot rely on a "push data to system only when something has updated" type of system, as such a system doesnt operate at their scale. They have to operate a system where individual clients are assumed to have an unreliable connection to the service, and where the client does the legwork of checking for new data stored in a centralized system.

This is what you are seeing in the article. Domains like [gdmf.apple.com] which govern device management, are where the declarative device management system is checking Apple's various databases to see if they need to update their configuration.

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