451–460 of 546 posts
Fun fact: I emailed Tim Cook in August after reading this story in the NYT, asking him to publicly oppose a weak federal privacy bill in the US [1]. I thought they might do it when Bud Tribble, Apple's privacy czar, testified in Congress at the hearing about privacy [2]. He was mostly non-committal until about the time when someone asked if California's law should be preempted, and he answered 'yes' but only if the l…
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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.
They didn’t apologize for doing it; they apologized for not explaining it.
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> That was a few years ago, but Tim Cook basically reaffirmed that a few weeks ago in this interview with Vice At that time they were also storing iCloud data on their own servers, correct? To save myself and others from having to watch the Vice video, what did Tim Cook say that reaffirms no blanket Chinese government data access (honest, not sarcasm, I did not watch it)? Why are public statements about privacy alway…
Here's the exact time stamp so you can hear his answer yourself: https://youtu.be/VD1cP8SK3Q0?t=244 >Why are public statements about privacy always about the US or EU but never China? As much as Apple/Cook may believe privacy is a human right, and have seemingly extracted some important concessions regarding their products, they aren't going to shoot themselves in the head so everyone can feel good about Apple public…
What does it say that you had to link to segment of a YouTube video of an HBO show for Apple's policies left open to interpretation? To me the lack of clarity is 100% indefensible and not worth twisting your personal ethics to do so.
> so everyone can feel good about Apple publicly standing up [...]. That's a job for governments
Only in some cases where it benefits them. In other cases, they absolutely stand up. It is blatantly obvious that their principles are based on borders and are inconsistent here.
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…
EDIT: To see the equivalent from the "other side", timagine adtech companies starting a PR war against Apple's closed garden system, arbitrary app store decisions, labor conditions (I'm sure we can find some dirt somewhere in their vast business) to get laws enacted to regulate them on what they can do and not do.
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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…
Apple is also the only major computing player that doesn't make its revenue primarily off of mining and exploiting user data. Maybe Microsoft, too? Certainly the rest of FAANG have huge financial temptations to misuse their data. So Apple is the one big technology player whose interests are most closely aligned with the consumer in terms of supporting data privacy.
That's assuming that "the user" (whatever that means) is valuing their privacy more than the free services they receive. I don't think such a statement can generally be applied to the public at large. It's great to have options (ways to pay for services/phones/etc) that don't mean you have to give up your privacy and then let users decide what's best for them, but I wouldn't make generalizations that most users would definitely prefer one other over the other.
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This is true but Apple is also vulnerable to the same type of "political" attack. I can imagine Google railing against the evils of employing a workforce of indentured servants to assemble high profit electronic devices. Facebook could begin publicly questioning the wisdom of supporting a technocratic dictator who may be the world's worst offender of oppression through the use of data. Hopefully, Tim is going down th…
Indentured servants? What are you talking about? You do understand that Google’s Pixel 3 was built by the same Foxconn that built Apple devices right?
I'd like to think I'm one of the good guys here. I was one of the inventors of RSS and Atom and worked to push open content and social media. I started a social data search platform named Datastreamer ( http://www.datastreamer.io/ ) which is basically a petabyte-scale content indexing engine. We provide API feeds to search engines and social media analytics companies needing bulk data but don't want to have to build…
And people wonder why I've argued that, at some point, IT needs to be a certified and regulated profession like lawyers, doctors, engineers, nurses, pilots, accountants, electricians, plumbers, teachers, etc. If the future is going to be built using software and data, it's probably going to be essential that the general public have some agency -- public or private -- to safeguard the public interest. It takes years o…
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Here's the exact time stamp so you can hear his answer yourself: https://youtu.be/VD1cP8SK3Q0?t=244 >Why are public statements about privacy always about the US or EU but never China? As much as Apple/Cook may believe privacy is a human right, and have seemingly extracted some important concessions regarding their products, they aren't going to shoot themselves in the head so everyone can feel good about Apple public…
Had to watch with CC on, no audio for me atm. But he is saying the encryption is the same around the world and they own the keys. I'm afraid this doesn't allay fears of blanket data access. But a simple public statement on Apple's website like "we only provide icloud data on per user requests" or "we do not give the Chinese government large swaths of data". Or how about something as simple as "We disagree with the la…
It's your prerogative if you want to continue to insist they're being hypocrites. I don't need Tim Cook to be a saint, I'm happy with the practical wins they've managed to maintain.
So someone like Equifax would be on the hook for $1.4T in civil penalties for losing the data on 143 million customers. That would have effectively put them out of business.
If you set up such a system, then it is very easy for engineering in an organization to explain why they need to invest in the security safeguards they need, and it is very hard for product managers to argue for collecting even more detailed information. All because you have created an existential threat to the company if they screw up.
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I struggle with Apple's China situation as well, but the more I turn it over in my head, the more I think it's that Tim is pulled between two parties: 1) His team + Apple Directors that I firmly believe, both in words AND in their action, are strong proponents of privacy of the user 2) The Apple Board + Sharedholders that would revolt if the privacy principles from (1) prevented access to a market of ~1.4 billion peo…
Yes, I agree that there is a nuance to it. But, if they said "We'd like the United States to stand up for the privacy of its citizens and create a law like that if GDPR. Apple is in full support of it because it helps our business too(it is our competitor's weakness)" I'd agree that they are talking the truth. But, writing that we "absolutely" care about your privacy, and that "caring for privacy is in our DNA" and s…
That's what Tim Cook is doing here: hoping the US doesn't go in the direction of an authoritarian government, and lobbying as much as he can to prevent that. Imagine if the US adopted a similar law or set of policies that required "backdoors," or data pooling (a la social credit system) - what are his choices?
1) Not operate in the US? Not realistic
2) Ignore them and pay hefty fines up the whazoo? Maybe for a short period of time until Shareholders revolt or the Feds push to start pulling some folks in court.