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iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

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Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#111

On the other hand Apple has forced apps to use location data for purposes it should not be used for. Termius, for example, is my favorite iOS SSH app. But according to them, they can’t keep an SSH session running in the background unless they’re constantly tracking your location data. And somehow Apple approved this usage of location data. I don’t want to give Termius my location. I don’t want them tracking me everyw…

In all likelihood, Termius isn’t collecting your location at all and it’s never leaving the app. Test it, but I’d be willing to bet that their servers never see your geolocation.

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ If apple allowed easily sideloading apps I would consider moving over.” This was the reason I was an android guy until my wife told me to just get a phone that works. And you know what? Not letting you side load is a feature. When you see it like that, you care a lot less about your phone, and just appreciate that it works and that you can trust it as your more intimate possessions .

Without sideloading I can't use a 3rd party youtube app that has no ads, no tracking and allows downloads. I also can't use my pebble watch because the official app is unsupported and only community supported software exists. I also am restricted from some content that android users of the same app can view because apple prohibits adult content inside of apps. I see a phone as a tool to do what the user needs. Not th…

I have a little "share" button on my iPhone that invokes Youtube-DL via Pythonista, so I can open any Youtube video and get a locally saved copy pretty much instantly. I can use VLC to stream YouTube videos without ads.

There's a bunch of apps that let you load pretty much arbitrary code onto the platform - Pythonista and Scriptable are two of the top ones (Python and JS interpreters respectively), and with those you can do quite a lot.

It's not the same experience - that I'll grant you - but if you're moderately a power user iOS gives you enough to work with.

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never owned an ios device in my life and strongly avoid them but this makes drift slightly over considering one. If apple allowed easily sideloading apps I would consider moving over.

“ If apple allowed easily sideloading apps I would consider moving over.” This was the reason I was an android guy until my wife told me to just get a phone that works. And you know what? Not letting you side load is a feature. When you see it like that, you care a lot less about your phone, and just appreciate that it works and that you can trust it as your more intimate possessions .

> This was the reason I was an android guy until my wife told me to just get a phone that works.

I have not heard anything that suggests Android phones work less than iPhones. That's certainly not been my experience, anyway. I've been using Android phones for 10 years now and they've always worked just fine. And I can sideload things, which I still do, and wouldn't want to give up.

> Not letting you side load is a feature.

I absolutely do not see it that way.

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#114

I'm probably saying the complete obvious, but Apple can completely crush Google if they execute this angle properly. Google has no choice but to support ads. They're an ad company. Apple has to keep hammering how bad the ad and privacy experiences are with Android. Make iOS an absolute delight to use in contrast. I'd pay a premium for that. Android has done a great job making me want an iOS device again, these last t…

I have never owned an ios device in my life and strongly avoid them but this makes drift slightly over considering one. If apple allowed easily sideloading apps I would consider moving over.

>If apple allowed easily sideloading apps I would consider moving over.

This is definitely the major pain point. For device owner controlled root software cert (and independently device owner controlled hardware cert too) I'd certainly like it to be an option of some kind, because there are real tradeoffs between security and configurability here. It could for example be restricted to an order-time config, or maybe a one-time significant charge. I could even accept certain kinds of measures by Apple to combat piracy and cheating, with owner signed apps segregated somewhat say or some low level signing merely to indicate that it wasn't a restricted device. But it's definitely objectively proved to cause real problems to have Apple be the sole legitimate gatekeeper. A single central point can be an advantage in resisting certain kinds of attacks, but simultaneously a disadvantage in being subject to other kinds of social and economic pressure. Jailbreaking has also demonstrated lots of extremely useful functionality and apps that aren't allowed vanilla.

Unfortunately I doubt it gets resolved without legislation mandating that hardware owners should have the option to load root level signing certs, which leaves everyone forced to make some hard tradeoffs. Hopefully society eventually catches up with that, but in the mean time one ameliorating factor is its becoming ever more feasible to just own a couple of devices for specific purposes thanks to the improvement curve flattening out. Particularly with Apple, they've got long enough support cycles now that getting a 2-3 year old phone still leaves at least a few years of support but the discount vs new hardware is high too.

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#115
Apple is clearly taking a position that some of the other big players can’t, and all indications are that they will squeeze this play very hard.

The likes of Google have rough waters ahead. Advertising on the internet is obviously here to say but the future of targeted ads based on all this tracking data is clearly looking very shaky.

Google and other companies have likely not done enough to diversify their business models to weather the coming storm without a lot of hurt.

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#116

I'm probably saying the complete obvious, but Apple can completely crush Google if they execute this angle properly. Google has no choice but to support ads. They're an ad company. Apple has to keep hammering how bad the ad and privacy experiences are with Android. Make iOS an absolute delight to use in contrast. I'd pay a premium for that. Android has done a great job making me want an iOS device again, these last t…

I have never owned an ios device in my life and strongly avoid them but this makes drift slightly over considering one. If apple allowed easily sideloading apps I would consider moving over.

for most people the last thing they want is to add another app on their phone. but somehow the need for more apps is what keeps you away?

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#117

I'm probably saying the complete obvious, but Apple can completely crush Google if they execute this angle properly. Google has no choice but to support ads. They're an ad company. Apple has to keep hammering how bad the ad and privacy experiences are with Android. Make iOS an absolute delight to use in contrast. I'd pay a premium for that. Android has done a great job making me want an iOS device again, these last t…

There's probably more money to be made in Apple themselves becoming the middle man for location data, rather than charging a very small number of people who care a premium to prevent sale of said data. From an ethical standpoint, I see where you're coming from, but from a business acumen perspective, I can't see it being more profitable.

I disagree. Treating customers badly is not a good long term business strategy. You can get away with it when customers don't know what you're doing, and you can absolutely get away with it by trading reputation for money for a long time when you have major market penetration or pseudo-monopoly, but eventually the public sours on the relationship. This trend has been seen in major retail stores. (Sears comes to mind as a good example) Compare and contrast to costco which works relentlessly to get their customers better deals, even at their own expense. They've seen massive growth where a ton of other retailers that focused on driving margins as high as they could get them (where costco literally hard caps margins internally) have seen major losses and then proceeded to blame those losses on online retailers. You can only abuse your customer for as long as you have a monopoly.

For a closer analogy, look at how fit bit numbers dropped when google announced they were buying Fitbit. (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/17/people-getting-rid-of-fitbit...)

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never owned an ios device in my life and strongly avoid them but this makes drift slightly over considering one. If apple allowed easily sideloading apps I would consider moving over.

“ If apple allowed easily sideloading apps I would consider moving over.” This was the reason I was an android guy until my wife told me to just get a phone that works. And you know what? Not letting you side load is a feature. When you see it like that, you care a lot less about your phone, and just appreciate that it works and that you can trust it as your more intimate possessions .

Strongly agree. When I was younger and had free time to tinker I loved highly customizing my phone. But now I have so many things I'd rather be doing. I just want the defaults to take me 90% of the way there.

If I spend more than 20 mins a month "managing" my phone, I'm irritated.

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#119

I'm probably saying the complete obvious, but Apple can completely crush Google if they execute this angle properly. Google has no choice but to support ads. They're an ad company. Apple has to keep hammering how bad the ad and privacy experiences are with Android. Make iOS an absolute delight to use in contrast. I'd pay a premium for that. Android has done a great job making me want an iOS device again, these last t…

There’s two things about iOS that bothers me, privacy wise:

- Apple still makes money off of ads, creating a conflict of interest. By default, users have a unique tracking/advertising ID attached to their phone.

- iOS is extremely restrictive, making certain privacy adjustments impossible.

Re: iOS 13 app tracking alert has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry

#120
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the real fix here is to move off ssh onto a mosh server, as it's specifically designed to fix this use-case without requiring a persistent connection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosh_(software)

The problem as I understand it isn’t the ssh connection being dropped but the app being closed and needing to reload. Because iOS devices don’t have enough RAM to keep an app in the background while also running Safari.

the application being closed and needing to reload at some future point effectively drops the connection from the client side

mosh solves this use-case because there is no need for the client to remain connected to persist. It's like a tmux/screen terminal running in detached mode. When the app loads back up, it picks up the mosh session again.

> Mosh maintains the terminal session (not "connection" in the TCP-sense because Mosh uses UDP) even when a user loses their Internet connection or puts their client to "sleep." In comparison, SSH can lose its connection in such cases because TCP times out.[5]

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