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Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

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Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#241

Post by stephenr »

kylnew wrote: post #233
Ensorceled wrote: post #194

The only problem is that Apple is the Mercedes of mobile devices. We really need a Honda and Kia version, a more affordable device that doesn’t track you. Apple is never going to give up their premium position.

I wonder if they could make a whole new company/brand that’s competes at the low end. If it ran iOS though, would that be enough to cannibalize too many iPhone users than would be acceptable? Wondering if they could accomplish the same thing many car brands do i.e. Honda Acura

Apples 'cheap' iPhone is last years (or the year before). And it works, because unlike most Android devices that get very few updates, with long delays (or no updates, ever, for the very cheap devices), they support devices with newer OS releases. A 5S will still run the latest iOS.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#242

Post by parthdesai »

tinco wrote: post #192
mark_l_watson wrote: post #32

I like Tim Cook, I think his heart is in the right place and as much as a corporation can, Apple generally does the right thing. I was having lunch with several lawyers at my company a few weeks ago. One of them was talking strongly about quality devices and Apple’s strong privacy stance. He literally said that we as a society should be grateful for having Apple.

Perhaps it is cynicism, but I'm pretty sure this is just Apple exploiting a competitive edge, and does not necessarily reflect his own opinion, he is speaking to benefit the company. Of course, it's very nice that Apple made the decision to pick this edge, but they did it because they could not compete with Google on web services. So now they're publicly speaking to try and take the sting out of Google's edge. And th…

I'm always baffled how even the tech-literate crowd here continues to give Apple a pass. This is the same Apple that gave up its encryptions keys to Chinese government for the servers located in China. If it actually had user's privacy in mind, it wouldn't give those up.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#243

Post by robocat »

leereeves wrote: post #193
robocat wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each of your complaints is because of a well-designed compromise (app quality/safety; preventing abrupt phone shutdown; removing a common failure point). You may disagree with the compromises, sure. PS: I own zero Apple devices (partly because of the reasons you have, not for the way you are misrepresenting those reasons).

Apple's App Store policies are about far more than app quality or safety. Apple has banned many apps for political or financial reasons. Slowing down old phones without notice or permission wasn't the best response to aging batteries. Even Apple didn't deny it was wrong. They apologized, once they were caught. And the MagSafe connector was not a common failure point.

My problem with your first comment is that you misrepresent the issues. Your second reply is worse because you introduce other different issues, without addressing the point (that Apple chooses compromises that you might disagree with).

> Slowing down old phones without notice or permission wasn't the best response to aging batteries.

Sure, it wasn't handled well, but you said that they did it to force upgrades... That is patently incorrect in my opinion. Apple are far superior at keeping old devices updated than most actors in the Android world (as a comparison point).

> And the MagSafe connector was not a common failure point.

And your original post complained that "and sells more dongles by eliminating features and changing ports". What does replacing a proprietary magsafe connector with USB C have to do with Apple selling more dongles? There are now plenty of compatible third party options available in more than one category.

Regards app store policies: see sibling reply.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#244

Post by gaius »

zaidf wrote: post #170
orbifold wrote: post #23

It's sad how the introduction of a new class of devices "smartphones" brought along with it a surveillance software platform in the form of Android. Where it is clear that the only incentive for google to develop it is exfiltration of as much personal data as they can. In contrast in the case of Apple you have a customer relationship with the company that sold you the device and they have an incentive to keep you as…

In contrast in the case of Apple you have a customer relationship with the company that sold you the device and they have an incentive to keep you as a customer without having a need to extract as much advertisement revenue as they can. Do you acknowledge this comes at a huge cost? Apple has a fraction of the marketshare as Android in countries like India. Apple's iPhone prices out billions of people. Android-based p…

billions of people would not have smartphones.

But what’s the downside?

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#245

Post by simias »

Ensorceled wrote: post #194

The only problem is that Apple is the Mercedes of mobile devices. We really need a Honda and Kia version, a more affordable device that doesn’t track you. Apple is never going to give up their premium position.

It seems extremely hard to achieve that though. Creating a new smartphone hardware is very difficult and expensive. Creating a new smartphone OS and ecosystem is probably even harder. In order to have a proper "libre" smartphone you'd need to basically do both things. If behemoths like Microsoft couldn't pull it off I'm not sure how a newcomer could.

I suppose the best path would be to create a new phone that could either boot Android or your privacy-respecting OS, this way you could still get the mainstream sales with Android and you'd target the niche users who value their privacy with your custom system. Still seems very difficult to achieve, if you want your phone to be cheap you need to target a high sale volume to dilute the cost of your R&D.

I think the big problem is that smartphones never really had an healthy open source ecosystem going because it was all about closed hardware and locked bootloaders. Without a decent open source stack available it's hard to bootstrap a new system. And even if you did manage to do it you'd still need to convince people to port their apps to it (because not having Whatsapp or Instagram is going to be a deal breaker for many).

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#246

Post by zmmmmm »

I wish I could separate his position from Apple's marketing stance. Unfortunately here he seems to use such hyperbolic language that it puts me on the side of "this is marketing". It seems very hard to separate cause and effect (is Apple's market strategy because of his beliefs on privacy, or is it the other way around?). But this kind of tilts me towards the latter.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#247

Post by ThomPete »

stephenr wrote: post #224
ThomPete wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear what you are saying and agree in the sense that a lot of this is being misused by people who want to take advantage of what they know about you/us in whatever shape or form they can get the data to get away with. Chinas use of data is definitely not the way to go. However, I would also caution against the push for almost complete privacy as that IMO leaves out a number of potential advantages from systems havi…

Name an advantage to google knowing what colour underwear you bought last Thursday at 3pm from an eBay seller called “thrusty jack”? Siri/iOS/macOS/etc are proof that “smart” services can be done on-device and/or without identifying information and still be useful. Google does it all server side because it’s the cash cow their entire business is built on, not because it’s the only way to do it.

Hmm that wasn't actually what I said. So not sure how to respond to that.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#248

Post by ganzuul »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #107
ganzuul wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dubious proposition. Many programmers work to solve political problems through technological means. TOR is an example of this.

And is Tor an example of a solution to the problem that has become widely adopted in society causing the problem to go away? Because if not then maybe a political solution to the problem is in order.

Another example is encryption in general. Once export restricted in the U.S. as munitions, the rest of the internet simply routed around that censorship.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#249

Post by zmmmmm »

Ensorceled wrote: post #194

The only problem is that Apple is the Mercedes of mobile devices. We really need a Honda and Kia version, a more affordable device that doesn’t track you. Apple is never going to give up their premium position.

Just buy an Android device and opt out of all the tracking?

People behave as if this is impossible, but the options are all right there in the settings. There are a few places you lose some features but not super significant ones, and mostly those are because the tracking is intrinsically involved in the functions of the app.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#250

Post by ganzuul »

danso wrote: post #131
ganzuul wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dubious proposition. Many programmers work to solve political problems through technological means. TOR is an example of this.

Many engineers worked to create a free and open Internet, but political power has been very effective in regulating and limiting the Internet.

Sneakernet is alive and well in NK.
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