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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”

#491

Post by jamamp »

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.

The reason Apple moved to the USB-C charging on the MacBook is because it no longer served the purpose it was originally for. Older MacBooks and MacBook pros were a bit bulky and heavy. Tripping on a MagSafe charger cord connected to one of these would disconnect because the friction of the laptop on its its surface was stronger than that of the magnetic pull of the MagSafe connector.

With the new Macook, however, I believe it was much lighter to the point that it would have pulled the laptop down with it upon someone tripping on the cord. It wasn't doing anything to benefit the user at that point. Because of this, they probably opted for a slimmer charging port (USB-C), and it went well with the growing use of USB-C in the industry.

I do wish they included more USB-C ports, however.

I do not know exactly the reason they opted for USB-C in the new MacBook Pro, however. I believe it would still be heavy enough for MagSafe to be effective. However at this point, USB-C is saturating the market and consolidation in their products may be a more important issue for Apple at this point.

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

#492

Post by saagarjha »

kkarakk wrote: post #235
theshrike79 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siri is far behind because Apple has a pro-privacy stance. They've effectively hamstrung themselves by anonymising the data and not cross-correlating between users as much as Google does. Google on the other hand has no qualms about using the mountains of data they collect on every single user on their platforms. They can teach Google Assistant stuff that Siri can't even try to do yet.

siri is behind because apple thought buying a natural language assistant startup was enough work/money spent to get into the smart assistant game. there is literally no research coming out of apple on smart assistants or machine learning(that isn't photos) and it shows

> there is literally no research coming out of apple on smart assistants or machine learning(that isn't photos)

https://machinelearning.apple.com/

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

#493

Post by threeseed »

paxys wrote: post #474
s3r3nity wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can make this exact argument for Google or Facebook or anyone else. Simply bringing up "evil shareholders" doesn't absolve any company or individual from criticism.

Apple has a record of doing the right thing.

Google and Facebook don't. It really matters when you are being asked to blindly trust a company.

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

#494

Post by threeseed »

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…

Gay people are killed in many parts of the world for just being gay.

Don't believe for a second that privacy isn't personal to him.

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

#495

Post by threeseed »

ariwilson wrote: post #477
jimbokun wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Certainly the rest of FAANG have huge financial temptations to misuse their data. I don't get this. FAANG have every interest in protecting user data as their moat is products users want to keep using, which would not be the case if they started sharing user data widely.

Except that they have already shared their data widely.

Cambridge Analytica didn't steal all of their data. It was obtained legally and with consent from Facebook.

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

#496

Post by simonh »

izacus wrote: post #93
OskarS wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and you can also tell that Apple is on the right side of this because of that FBI phone unlocking case. Apple fought the government tooth and nail, and they made it literally impossible to do for later models of phones. That whole incident really impressed me. Of the "giant evil megacorporations that will dominate our cyberpunk future", I think Apple has slightly more moral sense and backbone compared to Goo…

That's an interesting view, considering all the outrage on this site related to Google potentially entering the Chinese market under their law. It was deemed utterly immoral... and Apple gets a free pass although their own CEO it talking about human rights?

Google is building surveillance and personal information harvesting systems designed to minimise individual privacy and maximise government control. It’s unavoidable because Google’s systems are based on the fundamental principle of gathering and analysing as much information about people and their behaviour as possible.

Apple have bent over backwards to ensure they themselves, and anyone in their data centres, have as little personal information about their customers as possible. FaceID and TouchID don’t Store face scans, only secure hashes of the data and only in an inaccessible local data store. AI analysis of most user data and activities is done locally on the device, pulling down reference data from the cloud as necessary rather than pushing the user data up. User activity data is protected by powerful new anonymising techniques. User personal data that is stored centrally e.g. for syncing, is encrypted end to end wherever possible so it’s only accessible to the user.

I’m not saying they store no unencrypted user data centrally or know nothing about user activities, but they have gone to crazily extreme lengths to avoid it. When law enforcement has gone to Apple with warrants to get user data or open up user phones, Apple has often been able to honestly say it has squat.

A lot of people here know all this and are just taking it into account, that’s all.

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

#497

Post by FireBeyond »

harywilke wrote: post #371
leereeves wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My second post addressed your claim that these issues are "well-designed compromises" by disproving it with counterexamples. MagSafe was at once an example of a port changed (MagSafe 1 to 2) and a feature removed (replaced with USB) that didn't fit your explanation "removing a common failure point". Even Apple didn't try to claim that slowing down old phones was a well-designed compromise; instead, they apologized. A…

"About a year ago in iOS 10.2.1, we delivered a software update that improves power management during peak workloads to avoid unexpected shutdowns on iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and iPhone SE. With the update, iOS dynamically manages the maximum performance of some system components when needed to prevent a shutdown. While these changes may go unnoticed, in some cases users may experience long…

That's a ... highly rose-colored ... definition of what the issue was.

And if it was such a good, but misunderstood feature, why wasn't it touted as such in the first place, but denied initially, and then only acknowledged apologetically with the removal of such?

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

#498

Post by ariwilson »

threeseed wrote: post #495
ariwilson wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Certainly the rest of FAANG have huge financial temptations to misuse their data. I don't get this. FAANG have every interest in protecting user data as their moat is products users want to keep using, which would not be the case if they started sharing user data widely.

Except that they have already shared their data widely. Cambridge Analytica didn't steal all of their data. It was obtained legally and with consent from Facebook.

The ability of Facebook as an engineering organization to align with their business incentives has increased over time. The Cambridge Analytica data hoovering happened in 2014-2015.

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

#499

Post by FireBeyond »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #469
danaris wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that happened twice, maybe three times, right? The iPod and the iPhone were it (and maybe the iPad). It's not something Apple did twice a week like clockwork while Jobs was alive, then just suddenly stopped when he died. This is exactly the kind of rose-colored glasses nneonneo was talking about.

Here are some things I can think of off the top of my head that Jobs had a hand in during his career: - Created the personal computer industry (Apple Inc) - Revolutionized the personal computer industry (Macintosh) - Revolutionized film animation (Pixar) - Shifted the electronic device industry to minimalist industrial design (iPod) - Changed the entire music industry's distribution model (iTunes) - Completely shifte…

> There are several other things people may consider visionary (candy colored iMac

Come on. "We changed the color. Visionary!"

> - Revolutionized film animation (Pixar)

Pixar was doing lots of work before Jobs was on the scene (after seven years, when Lucasfilm decided it was successful / profitable enough on its own to spin it off) - he was an investor.

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

#500

Post by Viliam1234 »

microcolonel wrote: post #272
burtonator wrote: post #258

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…

Ultimately, I think there are far too many actors involved to rely on the ethics of third parties to protect your privacy. If Saudi Arabia wanted to track down gays and apostates by mining the same data you did, they could do it themselves. The first line of defense against this is, and always will be, not publishing so much information about yourself . They can not mine what you do not provide. We can argue all day…

Even if you publish nothing about yourself, information will leak. Some of your friends will post things about you... for example they have a photo together with you, will upload it to a social network, enter your name, provide a date and place for the photo... with enough photos with your name, the social network can make a guess about which other unnamed photos contain the same person... and gradually a profile on you is being built.

And it will only get worse, as more data will be shared by other people. Soon the streets may be full of people using cameras all day long, just because it allows them to make cooler diaries or blogs, and then the data companies will get universal surveillance.

The only way to keep privacy will be to have your face covered in public (but hey, that will be made illegal, because terrorism or something), or avoid public places completely.

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