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Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

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131–140 of 224 posts

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#131
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if I bust your little bubble of joy here but: Apple is not made of decent human beings and do not care for employees that much. Just look at how their devices are manufactured. Apple cares about profits and money, just look at their tax evasion schemes and how they store their cash overseas waiting for a tax break to bring it back to the US.

> Apple is not made of decent human beings This just isn’t true. Most people are decent human beings. Employees of Apple are no different. Don’t box them in as “the other.” They’re just people. > Just look at how their devices are manufactured. This is a valid criticism. Also an industry wide problem. Apple is very transparent with problems in their supply chain, even when it reflects badly on them. This is a problem…

how is it difficult to have a stance on privacy while its ok to basically have people manufacturing your devices in conditions you would not accept in your own country? As a leader they have to show the way, its not like they are not drowning in profits and unable to make any change.

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you view it as expensive does not make it overpriced. Apple certainly has no trouble selling at their prices.

no problem selling to a minority of users worldwide. The rest simply enjoy PCs and other options and ignore Apple.

So what? Are you claiming that all luxury products are overpriced because most people can't afford them?

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#133
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could almost see Apple buying DuckDuckGo, given that a) Apple cares about their users' privacy, and b) Apple cares about having control over the entire user experience. DuckDuckGo would fit right in with both of those core pieces of Apple (no pun intended). I don't think it'll actually happen, but it doesn't seem too far-fetched.

Apple doesn't care about it's users' privacy. It only ever started making a big deal about privacy when people started criticizing Google for hoarding too much personal info and using it to target ads, which people think is evil. Apple doesn't do these things (it's not Apple's business model), so they began heavily marketing "privacy" as something you'd get from them and not the competition. They make sort of okay at…

Their privacy-initiatives runs on Courage™.

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Create a separate account for them, and make sure you have FileVault turned on so your home folder is encrypted. I've managed to get this concept across to authorised repairers who don't speak english (and I don't speak Thai).

Exactly. Or just enable the guest account. That's what I always do.

I assume they might want admin permissions honestly.

Having said that, prior to my recent visit (failing mbp fan) my trips had always been for failing/failed discrete graphics (about 5 trips on 2 different generations of 17" mbp) so a reinstall is inevitable because making macOS work properly after a mainboard replacemnt is more work than reinstalling from scratch

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#135
post #9
post #3

I wonder how this will work with apples recent fight against online advertisers. If google does track users but it is all anonymous from the advertisers perspective, does that mean Apple is okay with it?

Maybe thats the reason they went back with Google now they didnt want Google to have apple customer data for competitive reason but now that they have a system in place to block that they have gone with the best search engine.

I doubt that google would pay $3B for just anonymous search texts. They must be tracking you.

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#136
post #96

Why doesn't Apple open their checkbook and start their own search engine. I mean, really open it. It's not like they don't have the money and it's not like this is a logical step. They can't start small, meaning the need users to train the SE? What else can it be. Of course they can't put live a horrible version...

Doesn't Microsoft also basically have a bottomless checkbook to spend on search? And Bing can't compete.

I think MS just does not care too much about Bing anymore, it's all about Azure nowadays.

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#137
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the amount of data Apple has from Siri I’m constantly surprised they don’t at least have a stab at building a search engine, possibly one with very fine grained privacy/accuracy controls.

I don't think Apple does "fine grained controls"

It’s one setting thinking about it: “Track me and make my search results more accurate”.

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#138

Bing is still poor for obscure searches, e.g. today Im searching for other poor folks dealing with ebay's API and the message "Invalid store category name" in quotes. Bing 0, DuckDuckGo 0, Google plenty. Reality is most of my tech searches are like this and hence I can't give up Google, or I can at cost of either my time or my clients. It be nice to have another search engine with depth of Google but nothing comes cl…

While Bing was poor for tech related searches in the earlier days, I find it's no longer true. Are you sure it’s 0 results on Bing? I get a bunch of relevant-looking results, and they’re all different from what Google gave me (just the first page):

https://www.bing.com/search?q=%22Invalid+store+category+name...

Some weird personalization thing? Interested in seeing what others see when they click that link...

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#139

Bing is still poor for obscure searches, e.g. today Im searching for other poor folks dealing with ebay's API and the message "Invalid store category name" in quotes. Bing 0, DuckDuckGo 0, Google plenty. Reality is most of my tech searches are like this and hence I can't give up Google, or I can at cost of either my time or my clients. It be nice to have another search engine with depth of Google but nothing comes cl…

When I tried I got 2 results on Google, with about 7 if I selected the option to show duplicate results. Is that what you saw?

The results were all on eBay's developer forums, maybe their robots file only allows google?

One advantage to DuckDuckGo is that when searching it was fairly easy to flip and try google with !g and bing with !b after getting no results on DDG.*

It would be nice if bing/google got that feature since it's really handy, and it would be exceedingly nice if they all got the ability to add custom user defined !bang commands.

*However, annoyingly, there was a bug on ddg on iPhone that would clear the search input box when it was clicked to add !g then another error when clicking in the location bar to add the !g that the '"invalid store category name" !g' query was no longer editable instead it was the URL of the encrypted Google search making it difficult to remove the !g and add the !b.

Re: Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search on iOS and Mac Spotlight

#140
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree strongly. Apple pays a serious price for their privacy stance, which they would rather not pay. Doing machine learning on-device makes it less effective. Apple's directions aren't as good as they could be because Maps randomly segments trips and masks its users identity. Apple's App Store revenues are lower because they limit how apps can identify users. This difference is deeper than business models. Compar…

> Apple's App Store revenues are lower because they limit how apps can identify users. I think this is less about privacy and more about control. Only Apple apps are allowed to track Apple users.

We must remind ourselves that Apple is a closed social network based on hardware whereas lets say FB is software. So Apple plan to monetize this walled hardware/software garden for its own needs
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