3 ms·

This is a preposterous statement. This is not about relying on their beneficence. This is about relying on the core values of the company, the things that the c

by eridius 11y ago

This is a preposterous statement. This is not about relying on their beneficence. This is about relying on the core values of the company, the things that the company views as a competitive advantage, the things that the company believes is one of the reasons why they've achieved unprecedented success and made boatloads of money. So you're actually relying on capitalism. The argument for why other companies (like Google) do want your personal data is the exact same one for why Apple doesn't. Because that's how they make money. You might as well claim that Google may one day decide to just throw out all the personal data they have on everyone and become a charitable organization that gives away its software out of the goodness of its heart. There is literally no reason to think Apple will change course about this, besides complete ignorance about how Apple works and what the core values that Apple believes in are.

na85 11y ago
>This is about relying on the core values of the company, the things that the company views as a competitive advantage, the things that the company believes is one of the reasons why they've achieved unprecedented success and made boatloads of money. You're being incredibly naive. History has shown us again and again that all companies will eventually screw their users over to make a quick buck. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but sooner or later some MBA grad will get shuffled in to a C-level position and decide that they can harness that good ol' Big Data for profit.
- eridius 11y ago
  That's not even remotely true. Every company has some amount of data on their customers (some more, some less), and the overwhelming majority of them don't abuse that data. The problem is you're treating Apple exactly as you would treat Google or some other company giving away its products for free, which is complete nonsense. Of course the companies giving away their products for free are going to have to monetize the customer data they have in order to make money. But Apple doesn't give away its products for free. It sells them. It's exactly like the millions of other companies in the world that charge money for their products and don't attempt to monetize their customer data.
iwwr 11y ago
>This is about relying on the core values of the company I think you place too much emphasis on companies having moral values. Companies don't have values other than profits. The people in charge may have them, but they are relentlessly driven to produce value for the shareholders, which is not necessarily an evil thing. It's not the purview of a company to have moral values. Apple have made themselves by becoming a platform rather than being strictly a hardware company. Their hardware can be regarded as tools or tokens necessary to access Apple's services, rather than products in and of themselves.
- eridius 11y ago
  Not all companies are driven to maximize short-term profits. Or more generally, there exist companies which believe shareholder value is about more than short-term profits. Apple has demonstrated itself to be one of those companies. As a particularly public example of this[1], at the company's annual shareholder meeting in 2014, the National Center for Public Policy Research (a conservative think-tank, climate-change denial group, and investor in Apple) asked Tim Cook and the board to pledge that Apple wouldn't pursue any more environmental initiatives unless it improved the bottom line. Tim Cook's response: > We do things because they are right and just and that is who we are. That’s who we are as a company. I don’t…when I think about human rights, I don’t think about an ROI. When I think about making our products accessible for the people that can’t see or to help a kid with autism, I don’t think about a bloody ROI, and by the same token, I don’t think about helping our environment from an ROI point of view. And then he told them to sell their shares: > If you only want me to make things, make decisions that have a clear ROI, then you should get out of the stock. [1] http://mashable.com/2014/02/28/apple-ceo-tim-cook-climate-change/ http://mashable.com/2014/02/28/apple-ceo-tim-cook-climate-ch...
eropple 11y ago
> This is about relying on the core values of the company I have never seen a reason to believe such a thing actually exists, and herein lies the disjoint between your worldview and mine.

by eridius 11y ago

na85 11y ago

>This is about relying on the core values of the company, the things that the company views as a competitive advantage, the things that the company believes is one of the reasons why they've achieved unprecedented success and made boatloads of money. You're being incredibly naive. History has shown us again and again that all companies will eventually screw their users over to make a quick buck. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but sooner or later some MBA grad will get shuffled in to a C-level position and decide that they can harness that good ol' Big Data for profit.

eridius 11y ago
That's not even remotely true. Every company has some amount of data on their customers (some more, some less), and the overwhelming majority of them don't abuse that data. The problem is you're treating Apple exactly as you would treat Google or some other company giving away its products for free, which is complete nonsense. Of course the companies giving away their products for free are going to have to monetize the customer data they have in order to make money. But Apple doesn't give away its products for free. It sells them. It's exactly like the millions of other companies in the world that charge money for their products and don't attempt to monetize their customer data.

iwwr 11y ago

>This is about relying on the core values of the company I think you place too much emphasis on companies having moral values. Companies don't have values other than profits. The people in charge may have them, but they are relentlessly driven to produce value for the shareholders, which is not necessarily an evil thing. It's not the purview of a company to have moral values. Apple have made themselves by becoming a platform rather than being strictly a hardware company. Their hardware can be regarded as tools or tokens necessary to access Apple's services, rather than products in and of themselves.

eridius 11y ago
Not all companies are driven to maximize short-term profits. Or more generally, there exist companies which believe shareholder value is about more than short-term profits. Apple has demonstrated itself to be one of those companies. As a particularly public example of this[1], at the company's annual shareholder meeting in 2014, the National Center for Public Policy Research (a conservative think-tank, climate-change denial group, and investor in Apple) asked Tim Cook and the board to pledge that Apple wouldn't pursue any more environmental initiatives unless it improved the bottom line. Tim Cook's response: > We do things because they are right and just and that is who we are. That’s who we are as a company. I don’t…when I think about human rights, I don’t think about an ROI. When I think about making our products accessible for the people that can’t see or to help a kid with autism, I don’t think about a bloody ROI, and by the same token, I don’t think about helping our environment from an ROI point of view. And then he told them to sell their shares: > If you only want me to make things, make decisions that have a clear ROI, then you should get out of the stock. [1] http://mashable.com/2014/02/28/apple-ceo-tim-cook-climate-change/ http://mashable.com/2014/02/28/apple-ceo-tim-cook-climate-ch...

eropple 11y ago

> This is about relying on the core values of the company I have never seen a reason to believe such a thing actually exists, and herein lies the disjoint between your worldview and mine.